UAP EXPERIENCER
I share my firsthand UAP experiences to illustrate these things happen and to demonstrate it's okay to discuss them. These narratives may help someone, and a goal of helping someone is always worthwhile.
August 2022
"Orange Marmalade Orb"
Pike National Forest, Colorado
To me it was just another backpacking trip in the sprawling national forest I am grateful to live near. Starting at Deer Creek trailhead, I shouldered my pack and steadily hiked six miles into the interior. At a high pass I left the trail to grab the top of 12,441-foot Kataka Mountain. On its apex I watched a lethal storm zap 14,050-foot Mount Bierstadt, 14,258-foot Mount Evans, and The Sawtooth, a narrow and well-named ridge that connects these two "14ers." With storm clouds gathering over Kataka Mountain, I hastily descended, recrossed the high pass, grabbed the summit of 11,980-foot Tahana Mountain, and set my sights for a high clump of stunted evergreens on the massive flanks of 13,523-foot Epaulet Mountain.
Due to off and on rain, I set up my tarp in a low A-frame and crawled underneath it. Perched at 11,800 feet, it was quite the campsite with one hell of a view. I ate dinner and happily dozed off. It had been a long day. I was awoken around 2:00 a.m. by a strange "thick orange light" filtering through the stunted trees surrounding my little campsite. I stared at it for a few seconds, and though I had never seen anything like it before, it was met with indifference. I plopped my head down and immediately feel back asleep.
A minute later, while lying supine, I opened my eyes due to a compulsion to look at something, though what that something was I had no idea. In one fluid motion I rolled onto my side and immediately and precisely focused on a red-orange orb hovering two miles away to the northwest. What on Earth? Next to me was my digital camera with its 20x telephoto lens. When I reached for it to photograph what I was seeing, I felt it immoral, that what I was seeing was intended only for me. I put it back down.
Upon focusing on this strange object my consciousness moved toward it. Instead of me being two miles away, "I" was perhaps a quarter-mile away. Now I could really see it. It hovered over The Sawtooth at an elevation of 13,000 feet. This glowing orb had a thin yellow corona. It looked like the sun, plasma, lava, energy. It somehow "looked like knowledge." It was alive, a churning gob of orange marmalade. I received a message. Non-verbal, yet not even a message, really. Pure understanding. "We are here. Goodbye." Somehow I knew that meant, "Yes, we do exist. We will see you again, Erik." The object slowly disappeared among the clouds of a dissipating storm within ten seconds of me finding it. I collapsed into a deep sleep.
I uncharacteristically awoke late from an unusually deep sleep with no recollection of the event. I packed up my campsite and climbed toward Epaulet Mountain among the tundra, and a massive view opened. I stared at The Sawtooth. Something had been in my campsite. I figured it was a bunny, maybe even an elk. It didn't matter. I roamed the high country, summited 13,575-foot Rosalie Peak and 12,444-foot Bandit Peak, passed a herd of seventy elk, and camped on top of 11,495-foot Royal Mountain. With rain threatening again, I set up my trap in my preferred A-frame style.
At this point I had only a fuzzy and muddy recollection of something about a big red orb, but it wasn't worth thinking about. Despite having basically no recollection of the visitation, for some reason I took the four- by six-foot bright orange signal panel I always pack with me and laid it on the ground, pinning its four corners with rocks so it wouldn't blow away. I felt I was going to be "taken" this night. But by what and to where I did not know. The panel would help searchers find my camp but not be. I felt I was going to vanish, a feeling I've never had in the mountains. This second night out was uneventful, just the way I like my nights out. On day three I descended, returned to Deer Creek trailhead, and drove home.
The moment I entered my home and dumped my gear on the floor I experienced a flood of memory I can only describe as "having the top of my head cut off and then having a five-gallon bucket of ice cold memories poured inside it." It was all there in indescribable detail. The light, The Sawtooth, the orb, the message, the sleep. Everything. Memory knew no bounds. That night I submitted a report to MUFON out of fear of forgetting my experience. I struggled with what I thought happened. I wrote to the MUFON field investigator, "My biggest struggle has been accepting the authenticity of it. I've been hard on myself and have caused myself much anguish. I feel like I'm lying to people I confide in – that it was just a silly dream I read too much into. I feel like a liar, a fraud."
For the next six days every waking moment was consumed with seeing an orange light in my mind's eye. Replaying the event became an insatiable obsession, and recall accepted no limits. I was hypervigilant and easily startled and didn't sleep for 72 hours. I was scared of the dark. I became upset when seeing round or orange or red objects. I felt detached from my fellow humans. I somehow still went to work. The owner of the mental health practice I then worked at took me aside. "What's going on? You look terrible."
My Acute Stress Disorder symptoms lasted six days. I contacted a person in the UAP community for insight. I thought I was losing my mind. This person shall remain nameless though most would recognize the name. We emailed back and forth. He had uncanny insight, like when he told me I received a message. Something like, "Nice visiting with you, Erik. Goodbye for now. We'll be back." But to be honest, I wasn't as interested in his enigmatic insight as I was in not feeling alone anymore. The gantlet had been run.
When the foaming seas calmed a month after my experience, a friend asked what it was all like. I appreciated his delayed inquiry. I told him, "I'm different. But I don't know in what way. That orb has known me my entire life. When I saw it over The Sawtooth, I realized it was the same age as the rocks that comprise that ridge. The orb is as natural as a redwood or a whale. It was not made by any thing, any one."
December 2024
"Seven Lights Orbs"
Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, New Mexico
As my friend and I hung out in her camper van at night a few miles into the gravelly and scraggy New Mexico desert, I glanced out the open side door and noticed a small, round, orange object to the west. Presuming it was a low-orbit satellite, and considering I like to look at things in the night sky, I tried to focus on it. When I reacquired it, it disappeared. A moment later I regained it. The object brightened for one or two seconds, stayed fully illuminated for ten, and then dimmed to black across one or two. It vanished for a minute or two only to reappear in the same spot with the same brightening, brightened, dimming pattern. As it racetracked the sky, I said to my friend, "Come look at this."
Three identical objects joined it. Most traveled up and to the left. One made a "J" flight path. Others flew in coordination, maintaining precise separation as they traversed the sky. The brightening and dimming intrigued us. The objects did not shine. They glowed. They wouldn't illuminate when aircraft were within a few miles of them. They were nine miles away. Nothing in that location was portrayed on my flight radar app. After forty minutes of observing them, they vanished for the night. How strange.
While camping in the same area during the following three nights we didn't see a thing. The next night there they were again in the same spot. This time they were five miles away. My friend shot a video and caught four instances of them illuminating. After an hour they vanished. When I got home I submitted a MUFON report and was interviewed. The video was examined. Between me, my friend, and the investigator we found no Earthly explanations. The case was closed. Or so we thought.
Nine days after the second sighting, my friend and I got to talking about the objects. We decided to watch the video together for the first time. When an orb came into view on her phone she got a pit in her stomach and said, "I'm really scared." She closed the video. I said, "It's okay. We don't have to watch it."
Without warning the lights in the room aggressively flickered. I asked, "Do you see that?" She replied. "I don't want to do this." But what was "this"? A wave of dread washed over me, and I couldn't resist the compulsion to stare at a spot ten feet in front of us. Though I saw nothing, something was there, and it was staring me. My hands sweat, my cheat pounded. I was paralyzed engaging with whatever was watching me. I was unable to speak. My friend pulled a blanket over her head and hid. She could not speak either. The only way to describe my feeling is it was like an invisible rabid grizzly bear was staring at me.
After two minutes she managed, "Let's go in my room." We swiftly absconded. She locked the door, hid under blankets, and asked it to not scare us and not to harm us. But what was "it"? The bedroom episode lasted two more minutes. I was still unable to speak as my mind processed a message of sorts. I somehow knew we were engaging with something that was part of the orbs and that it had followed us back. Ten minutes later we felt entirely normal. Strangely, we did not discuss what had happened.
The next morning my friend asked something to the effect of, "What the hell was that?" I replied, "One of the objects found us and said, 'This isn't for you.' I think it didn't know we were recording it until last night." She said, "I felt like a scared child being scolded for seeing something I should not have seen."
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