Mike is a 50 year old man with a background in electrical engineering, and he had a truly bizarre encounter with an ostensibly alien elemental entity on December 20th, 2003 in California’s Litchfield. Mike is actually his real first name, but his second name has remained unknown to protect the anonymity of the witness. He told his story thusly:
The Incident[]
‘It was night-time in the winter and the moon was out and very bright in the clear sky. I live alone, and my street is a dead-end, and there is quite a bit of space between the houses. I like this area because I prefer my privacy. But that night, I wish I had a great number of neighbours so I could call them to come and see this thing. I went outside to get some air and clear my head because I was working on this project for IBM, which was designing a power relay station for one of their main computer rooms, and it was starting to get to me because I couldn’t figure out how the wire should go through the junctions without burning the building down. I went outside and looked up, and saw a dark, cigar-like object in the sky, hanging there like a giant blimp with no lights. At first, that’s what I thought it was - a blimp. It was right above my yard and not that high.
I said to myself “what the hell is this guy doing, just hanging in the sky with no lights?” and all of a sudden there was a flash of pink light - and in my yard was this figure that looked like a man made of smoke. I have about an acre in my front yard, so he was pretty far away, but I could make him out. He looked like he was made of grey smoke, and his form was being illuminated by the moon. At that point, I don’t know what happened to the object in the sky, since my eyes were transfixed on the man or whatever it was, slowly walking towards my front door. I then heard the dogs in the neighbourhood start howling and barking, and this figure kept walking towards me. I called out “can I help you?” - and this thing was now less than 100ft in front of me, and still getting closer. It looked just like a man made of smoke. It was about 7ft tall and very slim, and I could see no face or hands, just arms, head, legs and a body.
I quickly went back into the house and closed the door, and pulled down the shades. Then, the lights went out - and that really freaked me out. I went to the phone to call the police, but the phone was dead. Then, all of a sudden there was a pounding on the door and on the walls of my home. The pounding was so loud and strong that things were flying off a shelf I had in the living room. I ran upstairs and got a baseball bat to protect myself. As I was walking back down the stairs, I heard what sounded like voices in the living room. I could not understand what they were saying - it sounded like a chant or a prayer in some strange language. I went downstairs and yelled, swinging the bat as I walked into the living room, knocking lamps and breaking my television in the process. Then, all of a sudden the voices stopped, and the lights went back on. Still shaking, I grabbed for the phone, and thank god it was working - I called the police. The two officers came over in about 10 minutes and took a report. I could tell that the officers did not believe me, and they asked me if I was drinking or did drugs. I have never seen a ghost or had anything happen to me that was supernatural or whatever - but this changed my mind and made me realise that we are not the only living beings sharing this planet’.
Encounters with beings that could be interpreted as shadow people, ghosts or elementals are not usually associated with UFO reports - and this report simply hammers the point home to me that the UFO phenomenon is extremely important in understanding the existence of a wide variety of other paranormal entities. Philip J. Imbrogno said in his book: ‘Once we consider that there are multiple dimensions, other parallel realities - we can understand and make more sense out of his (Mike’s) encounter’.