 https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-mystical-window-bach-sun-2899453/ First, they define “sleep paralysis” as a waking nightmare filled with anxiety and hallucinations. I guess at the time not only was the term unknown, but I was around thirteen years old and did not have my first “nightmare” (not really that scary I might add) until I was eighteen. It turns out that a few of the dreams I had had, during my teens, could be defined as nightmares but I did not feel afraid during them or after I woke up. My one instance of sleep paralysis goes like this. I believe I awoke during sleep (which follows the common definition) and sitting upright in my bed. I discovered that I could not move my arms, legs, or torso. My head and neck moved a little, but I saw something that would make me want to remain still anyways. There, at the foot of my bed, was a white misty form. It was not really in the shape of anything, but the height was similar to that of a child. We seemed to observe each other for a few seconds before it moved left passing from the front of the dresser and out of my room through the door. A moment later I saw a flash outside the window to my right. Now, had I not seen the light outside my window my investigation into this might have come up with a reasonable explanation for the light. The only problem is that the explanation does not fit all of the needed parameters to be possible. Our house was located a half a block from a roadway where three streets met on a small incline. This meant that the headlights of cars coming up two of the hills could, theoretically, shine at just the right angle to illuminate the side of our house. It was the most plausible theory, at first, but nearly two years of observations after ruled it was very unlikely to be the cause. There wee two factors that ruled out vehicle lights. First, the area between the hill and our house was visually blocked by a number of leafy trees (though in winter I concede that while the trees were bare the light would still be rare to reach my bedroom). Second, the angle of the headlights were incorrect to be able to enter into my bedroom to match the incident. The white light form appeared below four feet and this would be impossible to achieve with headlights located a storey below and over one hundred feet away. My studies concluded that, for the headlight theory to even be plausible, the beams of light would have streaked across the ceiling midpoint, from the right window, across to the door on my left and not below the halfway up the wall location of the windows. In other words, to get lower that the window ledge the light would have had to be up in the air slightly above my window ledge and over one hundred feet away to not be intense. This light moved with a sense of being. It remained long enough for me to be aware of its presence and to move in a way that defied a reasonable, albeit remote, explanation. That being said, and even though it can not be proven with repeated observations, I have ruled this incident as the hallucinogenic effects of sleep paralysis and not a paranormal entity. This instance, however, did open up my mind to the possibility of transient spirits. Ghosts that are not tied down to a single location or material item but drift at random or by conscious thought across our mortal plane. This concept was later supported by my reading of works of literature and movies I watched that showed spirits flying through the night sky lost without a place to call home.
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 Here is another story to tell you about, from four different convenience stores located in north-west Columbus, Ohio. One is in a district called Linworth, another Muirfield, the third Hard Road, and the last one in North High Street. It has been over fifteen years since I have worked in these stores so to distinguish from one another will be a challenge. Each of these stores is believed to be haunted in some way, one by the spirit of a deceased maintenance worker and the one in Muirfield by disturbed ancient natives said to have lived in the area hundreds of years before the district was developed. At the very least the paranormal experiences included the distinct sound of a twelve pack of beer bottles being placed on the counter (sometimes after hours) to items being thrown or knocked off a shelf. Let us talk about the beer bottles first. Anyone working in these toes became familiar with two sounds. The first is the sound when someone smacks a hard pack of Marlboro lights against their flattened palm. The second sound is the thump and clink of a case of beer bottles being placed on the counter (a 12 pack of Bud Light usually). The latter was such a unique sound that you could hear it halfway across the store on a quiet day with light traffic. That sound became even more apparent after hours when there would be, at most, two of you locked (in some cases) in the store. I recall, at least two times, hearing the sound in a couple of stores. Once I recall working in the back of the store with a co-worker when both of us heard the sound. We both walked out onto the sales floor to find that no one was there. Another time, also with a co-worker, same situation but this time at the Muirfield store which was closed for the night. Next, and as I now know having looked into the paranormal more, were shadow people. I never asked if my co-workers had witnessed this, but at least one time I saw a shadow in the cramped back hallway of one of the stores. It was only a fleeting moment, out of the corner of my eye, but someone or something was there. You would feel a presence at a couple of the locations particularly when you knew you were alone in that part of the building. It was strong enough you would speak aloud thinking it was your co-worker but discover they were nowhere in sight or busy at the front counter with a customer. There are three specific incidents I can tell you about. One I will call “ghost music”, the next “window bang” and the third “stock tumble”. I was working as an assistant manager in each of these locations during the paranormal events. In the office of one store you could hear ghost music. It sounded like, and at first, we believed it to be, a ventilation fan turning slowly overhead. The blades making a squeak that sounded almost like the musical notes one would hear from a jewelry music box. It was not overly loud, but clear enough it sounded like a song that none of us knew. Imagine, if you will, opening a small music box and letting it play down until it almost needed to be wound up again, slow but steady pinging almost squeaky notes. My ex, who also worked for the company, and I would hear it while doing paperwork in the small office space. It was re-affirmed when we held a meeting with one of our new shift leaders. About five minutes into the meeting he got a strange look on his face and when we asked him what was wrong, he looked up and asked if we could hear the music too. We had a maintenance worker come in to do some repairs and we asked him to take a look in the ceiling for the defective fan, maybe he could oil it or something we thought. He told us a couple surprising but not entirely unexpected things. First, there was no fan located in the ceiling above our heads. The cover above us was for an intake and did not include a fan. The nearest fan was way down at the other end of the hallway over fifty feet away. When we told him about the sound of music, he told us that his father, who had died some years earlier, had been the regular mechanic for all of the company stores in the area. We both agreed that the sounds could be made by something his spirit was doing, letting everyone know he was ‘still on the job’. The “window bang” story took place at the Linworth store. For a short time, we had a store manager who lacked both people skills and a sense of humour. We told her the store was haunted and she absolutely refused to believe it, telling us we were crazy and to stop telling her stories she did not believe. That was until one day she was working along for a few hours one afternoon. She told us that she was working in the first aisle stocking pop bottles with her back to the large plate glass windows along the front of the store. Suddenly, while she was knelt down, there came a loud bang against the glass. It startled her and she spun around quickly to see what made the noise. She could not see anyone through the windows or seconds later when she stepped outside. The parking lot was empty, no cars, no people. She felt “something” had made their presence known to her and she became a believer (at least of the store being haunted) after that. The last story to tell you about happened to me personally. Back then I had somewhat of a short fuse temper, and when people did stupid things that made my life harder I would get angry and sometimes throw or kick things, never at people of course and usually to my financial or physical detriment. For a couple months our store manager got the brilliant idea to keep the service door locked when they were not at the store. Apparently, we were all thieves and needed to be restricted (interestingly this same manager was later fired months later for theft). As a result of the door being locked, we were forced to pule the disgusting bags of garbage inside the door and someone would take them out in the morning. One evening I had had enough, and I took the garbage bag and threw it at the door with a thump. It did not break open, fortunately, but it did make me feel a little better. I walked down the runway behind the counter to the break leading out to the sales floor. It was next to the cash register and faced the novelties endcap (one of the most cluttered and disliked displayers in the store). As I stepped onto the sales floor, at least six feet away from the endcap, one of the taller cardboard shelf displays fell over and spilled products all across the floor. My co-worker was nowhere near the display and there were no customers in the store. It was as if a spirit or even the store itself was displeased with my angry outburst and decided to teach me a lesson by knocking over a display it knew I would dread having to pick up. I am inclined to believe a poltergeist was to blame for the clear reaction to my actions halfway across the store.  RE-ENACTMENT OF EVENT NOT ACTUAL FOOTAGE For this UFO/UAP story I was young, I think around twelve, so you can take that into consideration when you read this, I still do.
I was living in Chesley, Ontario, on a corner lot on the east side of town near the community center. My childhood bedroom was on the second floor with two windows that faced the northern sky. My view was over the houses on the next street over. A single, very tall, pine tree stood between us and the fourth house down that street, ten o’clock to my position. It was late, but summertime, so just past dusk, I would estimate past eleven at night. I was laying in bed and happened to look out right when the light appeared. It traveled in a horizontal direction and then hovered in the sky to the right of the tree. Recalling the event now I estimate that the light source would have been at least halfway across town (over half a kilometer away). It was a single bright white light resembling the landing light on an aircraft, but I could not see any lights of any other colour. The possible craft hovered silently for a minute and, at the same time, I heard a distant airplane engine-like sound. I do not think it was the craft for reasons I will explain. The light moved vertically straight up and out of sight above the visible roof line of our house. I do not believe it was a domestic aircraft for the following reasons. First, yes, there was an airplane noise, but this has two special considerations. Commercial aircraft, that typically flew over our town at night, were usually at ten thousand feet or higher. And, ninety-nine percent of airplanes in existence cannot fly vertically straight up. I thought that it could be a helicopter, but helicopters typically sound distinctively different from airplanes and we lived far away from anywhere helicopters would be. The police use helicopters, but our sleepy rural town was far from being an epicenter for crime back in the eighties enough to warrant the use of a helicopter. I am, to this day, not willing to conclude that the light source was alien in origin, but it remains an UFO/UAP in my books. In my life, so far, I have had only two incidents of witnessing a UFO/UAP for myself. I am certain other instances have occurred, but I have paid far less attention to the skies since 2000 due to the substantial presence of satellites and manmade debris.  RE-ENACTMENT NOT ACTUAL FOOTAGE FROM REPORT It was a typical evening, August 31, 2015, in Nordegg, Alberta. I was working the closing shift at the local general store. I had just walked up the slight hill, to the store, returning from the nearby hotel where we dropped off our paperwork. It was normal for me to look into the night sky as I walked, and tonight was no exception. I'd been living in the area for over a year and had grown familiar with the variety of satellites, space debris, and high-altitude planes that frequented the night sky. In our higher elevation satellites appeared as bright as aircraft. One, in particular, made a routine trek across the sky appearing brightest as it neared the horizon of the mountains. I was about twenty meters from the store when something caught my eye in the sky just east of the hamlet. I saw a bright orange light heading directly towards the west. I thought it was a light on a landing plane it was that bright, but it was orange like a streetlight, and it appeared to waver like it was on fire. It approached the town then turned in a slow semicircle to the south, then headed back east and disappeared into the clouds. After it had disappeared, I went back into the store, completed my closing and proceeded to head home. When I got home, I checked the internet for a possible explanation for what I had witnessed. I was immediately able to rule out a few possibilities. There was no sound or typical aircraft lighting so that ruled out airplanes and helicopters. Next, I considered military drones, as the craft was too big for a domestic sized drone. I checked the internet and the nearest known military base equipped with drones was Winnipeg (CFB Winnipeg). While it is possible, I calculated that a drone could make it to the mountains it would not be able to make the return flight back to base. Add to the fact that I am pretty certain drones, like aircraft, would not be illuminated in this way if at all. The next possibility, albeit remote, was that of a hot air balloon. While a hot air balloon follows similar flight characteristics, a bright orange shimmering glow from the burning fuel, to give it life, would typically illuminate part of the balloon as well. Add to that when you increase the burn to give the balloon life a roaring or wooshing sound can be heard even from the ground. As I mentioned previously no sound could be heard from this anomaly. We must also take into account that hot air balloons typically do not fly at night or launch from such high elevations towards mountains. I can not see anyone reasonably choosing to pilot such a flight or even authorization of such a risky flight for a view of the darkness. After I ruled out other possibilities such as Chinese lanterns, and smaller aircraft like gliders and ultralights, that left only one category, UFO/UAP. I checked for other UFO/UAP reports that night and I found a similar one in Winnipeg, I think it was. I cannot recall the calculations I used to determine travel time, but it seemed to match up closely to the other sighting by their description of it. Even with this collaborating eyewitness account, and three other on-the-ground witnesses in Nordegg to the event I, still, to this day, rule the event as witnessing a UFO/UAP. I have since read multiple accounts, from across North America, describing a similar, if not exact, UFO/UAP. Similar eyewitness accounts:
https://youtu.be/zmBtaeTYvmE https://www.fox46.com/news/indian-trail-family-claims-to-have-seen-ufo/ |
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