Do you believe in aliens?

I used to answer that question, unequivocally, “No. One hundred percent, no.” I’d add an eye roll for good measure. But that was before I think I saw one.

Now, I’m questioning all of my beliefs and assumptions.

But, frankly, it’s embarrassing; I don’t want to believe in aliens. I’m a “smart,” educated, rational person. I’m a journalism major and former reporter. I believe in facts, data, proof, and things we can all see, touch, and feel. “Aliens” don’t fit into any of those categories, at least they didn’t … before.

My change of attitude happened in Sedona, Arizona

Sedona is known for dark skies, spiritual awakening, and vortexes of pulsing energy. The Earth itself hummed with a mysterious knowledge as the bold sun beat down upon the too red rocks.

My goal in visiting Sedona was to see the stars and go to the vortexes. It is one of several places on Earth that seems to vibrate if you are still enough to listen. Like the great pyramids of Egypt, Stonehenge, or the ancient Mayan ruins of Tulum, this place has an ancient power. They are considered sacred sites long recognized as portals for connecting to the universe.

Sedona is an International Dark Sky Community

There are no streetlights, and even the small airport is unlit unless a plane is immediately landing or taking off. Because of these efforts, the stars can glow with an intensity more often found in the middle of the ocean.

After chatting with the hotel concierge, she slid a brochure across the desk toward me. It read “UFO Sighting Tours” across the top. I drew my eyebrows together and nearly slid it back, but then I read, “with military night-vision goggles” and further down, “We’ll visit a UFO hotspot well known for frequent sightings and is also a vortex location.”

I’d wanted to try a pair of night-vision goggles and thought it’d be cool to go to a vortex at night. That’s something I wouldn’t do on my own. This guide, I read, also happened to be a psychic, medium, and paranormal investigator.

My curiosity and sense of adventure won out, and I booked the tour

The next night, as the sun was setting, I waited with a group of seven others outside the new age center for our guide to show up. It was past our appointment time, and the woman inside, where they sold crystals, rocks, and bundles of sage, said our guide was late returning from an “emergency reading.”

The group chatted as we waited about why we were taking the tour. A few people were diehard alien believers, and I felt bad admitting that I wasn’t but stopped short of rolling my eyes.

“I hope we see some UFOs tonight,” one of the guys said excitedly, clearly looking for me to return his enthusiasm, but all I could muster was, “Well, if not, at least we’ll see some good stars. I’m excited about the goggles.”

The Alien Hunter Appears

About 10 minutes later, a dark green minivan came tearing into the parking lot and pulled to a stop in front of us. We exchanged glances as she bounded out of the van full of apologies and pulsating energy.

Melinda was a large woman, tall and wide with short dark blonde hair and light, laughing eyes.I could tell right off that she was a character in the best sense of the word.

After she took a quick trip to the bathroom — she’d been holding it for hours! — we all piled in our respective vehicles to follow her to the site.

The Chase Begins

She pulled out of the lot like a bat out of Hell, her minivan blending perfectly into the night, but I raced through the streets and found her before she was too far gone. We followed her up into the hills at the center of several powerful vortexes where a small parking lot led to some trailheads and one large, flat area.

We stood at the back of her minivan, examining lawn chairs because some of them were a “bit broken.” She handed us each one and instructed us to place them in a circle facing each other in the clearing. I was starting to worry she’d try to make us have a seance.

She spent quite a while longer at the back of her van before coming over with several super-powered green lasers and night vision goggles. But, before we could use them, she had some stories to tell us about UFOs.

Alien Education

She explained the difference between “known” and “unidentified” flying objects that we might see in the night sky. Known objects included airplanes, helicopters, drones, military aircraft, satellites, shooting stars, and planets. She detailed what each would look like with and without the googles and why she was qualified to identify them.

“Basically, once we’ve determined we cannot identify an object as ‘known,’ we can safely classify it as ‘unidentified.’ Just because it’s ‘unidentified’ doesn’t mean it’s an alien.”

She then explained the different types of Unidentified Flying Objects that we might see and every kind of UFO that she has ever seen in her 20-plus years of UFO watching. This took a while.

My Doubt Was Peaking

I learned about the different shapes of UFOs, including circle, oblong, oval, triangle … the formations that multiple UFOs might fly in, and how many times she has seen each one. I’ll spare you the details by saying the formations go from two to seven, which is the most she personally ever saw.

Melinda was a good-spirited laugher, talker, and a tall tale teller. With each bit of information imparted, she also shared a personal anecdote. She spent five minutes explaining how she’s learned to translate the term “haul ass” in multiple different languages and the complexity of doing so.

So far, this experience was turning out exactly as weird as expected.

I smiled and looked around the circle to see if anyone else was as amused as I was, but they only seemed enthralled and full of questions.

Night Vision

As they talked, I laid my head back cautiously in my rickety chair and stared at the Milky Way in front of me. Never had I seen it so entirely obvious. Layers and layers of stars filled the sky, and it seemed like they might be multiplying before my eyes.

She pointed out Mars, Jupiter Saturn — glowing brighter than any stars — the Andromeda Galaxy, and several constellations. Then, lesson over, she began to hand out the night vision goggles. If I’d thought there were a lot of stars before, this new vision made what I saw before seem like I’d been in a fog.

Before there were millions of stars and now there were billions. The Milky Way now seemed like it might be a gaping portal into another realm. An entirely new universe literally and figuratively had opened before me.

What Am I seeing?

Minutes must have passed while the others also received their goggles and I heard them each whispering “Wow” and “Oh my God” before Melinda chimed in and said, “Oh look, there’s one!”

We looked where her laser pointed, and sure enough, there was an object unidentified by our predetermined standards, among billions of stars, moving slowly across the night sky. It looked like a star — a white glowing dot — but moved at a slow and steady clip from west to east toward the Milky Way.

I removed the goggles, and half of the stars and the objects, which included many “known” objects, disappeared. Then I put them back and found the “unidentified” object again moving off into the distance until it blinked unexpectedly out of sight.

Taking them off again, I asked, “What was that?”

“Unidentified,” Melinda answered.

“Yeah, but what was it?”

There were chuckles from the believers who seemed to know what it was and enjoyed the cognitive dissonance I was now suffering. Nothing in my experience or belief system allowed me to accept UFOs as a fact, but what then was I seeing?

Alien Superhighway

Melinda said she chose this spot because it was one of the “portals” she frequently saw UFOs come and go. She compared it to an exit ramp on a highway. One common belief about energy vortexes is that they exist at ley lines that make up the Earth’s electromagnetic field. If you believe that, it makes sense that they would also be the ramps into and out of galaxies.

I put the goggles back on, and every couple of minutes, there were more sightings of objects we could not identify. As someone would spot something, a green laser would light the direction, and we’d try to identify it; often, we could not.

“I think this is one,” someone would call, or “Oh look a double” as a pair moved in perfect tandem. “It’s a double!” would be the verifying response as someone confirmed what they were seeing.

Then I saw It

At one point, I spotted an object that looked to be a moving star and was tracking it with my laser pointer. It was small and dim, but as I began rhythmically flashing it with my laser, it, seemingly in response, began to glow brighter. To my amazement, it kept glowing brighter until it was pulsing as bright as Mars itself.

“Oh my God, guys, are you seeing this?” I called out.

“It’s communicating,” Melinda said. She said that sometimes they recognize that we’ve seen them and acknowledge us by “powering up.”

I watched in awe as the shining orb moved across the sky, glowing brightly and slowly began to fade into nothing until it blinked out of existence, or at least out of our atmosphere.

If I believed what Melinda did, then this thing, unidentified, had seen me too and wanted to acknowledge the mutual recognition.

Shifting My Reality

We continued to see other objects flit across the sky, speed up rapidly, slow down, move together and go from a faint to brighter glow or blink out of sight. I could not say what they were, but even my logical mind could not deny the evidence before my eyes.

There were more things in this universe than can be explained. Our human egos would have to be incredibly huge to think that we know and understand everything in the world, but up until this moment, I think, maybe I had.

Melinda believed the things we saw to be alien crafts from other universes. She said the ley lines were like a highway, and they were merely passing through like cars on a roadway.

Government Disclosures

The government too seems to be starting to acknowledge that there may be some Unidentified Flying Objects in our galaxy, or what they’re now calling Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. This year, the Department of Defense released military videos that depict scenes like those I’ve described. On them, experienced specialists had responses like mine: Stunned, awe.

What isn’t in doubt is that there seems to be some type or types of unidentified objects flying in the night sky, but what or who is operating them, if anything, is unknown.

If There Are Aliens

The obvious question is, why don’t they communicate with us in a more concerted, public way?

But that question assumes they think, feel, and communicate in the same way we do. That everything in the universe is humanlike in sensibility and reasoning.

Perhaps aliens are more like dogs — or to them, we are like dogs, or maybe ants, not worthy or able to understand their type of communication. Perhaps they’re flying by saying, “Why don’t they respond to our constant communication?”

Melinda said some people believe that humans could be an alien experiment, and Earth is a sort of fishbowl for them; perhaps they created and are learning from us, or to them, we are nothing more than a drive-through safari. They go by looking and pointing through their windows at the funny humans flashing their green lasers.

None of These Things Satisfies Me

Being unable to find a satisfactory fact or proof, it feels more comfortable to deny its reality. Religion has the same problem.

As the night wore on, and our part of the Earth rotated further away from the sun, we could see less and less. Eventually, we packed up our goggles and said our goodbyes.

A few in the group left more firmly entrenched in their beliefs about UFOs and aliens than when the night began. Others were still vocal nonbelievers while unable to explain what we had collectively seen.

As for me, I’ve been converted to a believer, though of what I don’t exactly know.

What I do know is: I saw an object in the sky, and someone or something in, or on, or of that object saw me too. In the middle of the American Southwest, on a star-filled night of mystery, I have been seen.

It hasn’t left me yet, this feeling that there is something else happening in our universe. As I walk the city at night, no stars in the glow of a million light bulbs, there is something, or someone out there, watching me too, and it’s only a matter of time until we all see it.

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