Speaker 1: When I was young, I had a close group of friends.
Speaker 1: We were an neglectic group of guys who first met
Speaker 1: early on in high school. Our group consisted of dungeons
Speaker 1: and dragons, nerds, jocks, martial artists, rich kids, poor kids,
Speaker 1: and some with trouble backgrounds. Despite our many differences, we
Speaker 1: managed to bond and remain close, partially because we understood
Speaker 1: the other's personal traumas, but also because we shared some
Speaker 1: pretty strange experiences together. A favorite pastime was to get
Speaker 1: together late at night play a game that we called
Speaker 1: TESSO Tactical Environmental Scouting Operations what teenage boy wants to
Speaker 1: admit playing hide and seek. We would play TESSO in
Speaker 1: graveyard or parks, but we weren't above playing it through
Speaker 1: a random neighborhood either. Vermont in the nineteen eighties was
Speaker 1: a good place to grow up. We felt safe there.
Speaker 1: Wherever we went. We were kings of our domain. As
Speaker 1: far as we were concerned, we owned the whole state
Speaker 1: and it was our personal playground. A couple of us
Speaker 1: had driver's license, so it was nothing for us to
Speaker 1: leave our city and drive thirty minutes into the country
Speaker 1: to find the perfect woods for our nighttime operations. One
Speaker 1: thing about Vermont is there is always plenty of snow,
Speaker 1: and one cold winter night we headed out to a
Speaker 1: spot on the lake near Shelburne. Apparently we thought it
Speaker 1: would be fun to up the coal factor by adding
Speaker 1: the freezing winds off the lake to make our game
Speaker 1: more challenging. We drove down the road leading to the
Speaker 1: beach under a bright moon, and we parked. The large
Speaker 1: sheets of ice were fascinating to watch as they wave
Speaker 1: in the turbulent water, and the sounds of the ways
Speaker 1: slapping across the ice chunks intermingled with the occasional popping
Speaker 1: and crashing sounds as they slammed against each other. We
Speaker 1: were so enthralled with the sight that we were oblivious
Speaker 1: to the unnatural quiet around us. We didn't exactly have
Speaker 1: permission to be where we were, but as kings of
Speaker 1: all we surveyed, we didn't care. We were near barns
Speaker 1: where horses were kept on the property, and in our youth,
Speaker 1: it didn't occur to us that we should have been
Speaker 1: hearing the normal animal sounds that should have come from
Speaker 1: that barn or from the fenced in pasture behind us.
Speaker 1: We assessed our playing field. We were on the beach.
Speaker 1: Calling it a beach might have been a bit optimistic,
Speaker 1: but there was no more than fifteen feet of it
Speaker 1: before it dropped into the icy water. Between the beach
Speaker 1: and the pasture was a small playground outfitted with swing
Speaker 1: slides and a jungle gym. An erosion wall stretched the
Speaker 1: distance from the playground to the beach. Once our boundaries
Speaker 1: were set, we made sure no one else was around
Speaker 1: and we began our game of Tesso. This night was
Speaker 1: special in that we had brought along some special guests
Speaker 1: to play the game with us. One of the guys
Speaker 1: was trying to get friendly with a girl from school,
Speaker 1: and we invited her and a couple of her friends
Speaker 1: to come so we could introduce them to our strange
Speaker 1: nightly activities. As girls, they were enchanted and expressed their
Speaker 1: joy with the giggles and whispers, and as boys, we
Speaker 1: decided we'd give them a good scare. Halfway through our game,
Speaker 1: at the designated moment, one of the guys pointed to
Speaker 1: the edge of the woods near a horse pen and said,
Speaker 1: did you hear that? And, as if on cue, a
Speaker 1: cracking sound came from the beach. It was only the ice,
Speaker 1: but it added to the sun sudden change of emotions
Speaker 1: from play to an early silence. Everyone stopped to stare
Speaker 1: at the tree line. The boys knew it was a joke,
Speaker 1: but the girls were looking uneasy. They each took an
Speaker 1: unconscious step to close in their ranks, and then a long,
Speaker 1: piercing shriek of a howl came from that exact point
Speaker 1: in the woods where my friend had pointed, and now
Speaker 1: we were all looking. I had never heard a wolf's
Speaker 1: howl before, but I knew that wasn't what it was.
Speaker 1: It sounded a lot bigger, half animal, maybe half female scream.
Speaker 1: Now it was the boy's turn to step closer. Together,
Speaker 1: we took a mental note of everyone present. We were
Speaker 1: all there, but none of us was hiding in the
Speaker 1: woods making that awful cry. Surely no one in their
Speaker 1: right mind would be out in the woods after midnight,
Speaker 1: and whether that cold just to play a prank on
Speaker 1: a bunch of teenage We wouldn't have been there if
Speaker 1: not for the fact that we were afraid we'd miss
Speaker 1: the opportunity to frighten these girls. Thirty seconds later came
Speaker 1: a second howl. It was even more evil sounding than
Speaker 1: the first, and it broke our stupor. Panic ensued. The
Speaker 1: girls were crying. We so called kings, were panicking and
Speaker 1: screaming too, just like them. Someone yelled for everyone to
Speaker 1: run to the cars, and all at once we were
Speaker 1: in motion, each of us overwhelmed by terror and feeling
Speaker 1: that the second howl was meant to be a dinner
Speaker 1: bell ringing. All eight of us, five boys and three girls,
Speaker 1: piled into the two vehicles and slammed the door shut,
Speaker 1: and we locked them and then everything went quiet. Were
Speaker 1: we all holding our breath? I don't remember. After a
Speaker 1: minute or two we began to relax. False security fueled
Speaker 1: by window glass and sheep metal, enhanced our bravery. I
Speaker 1: felt my shoulders relaxed for a second before one of
Speaker 1: the girls laser locked on the woods and pointed her
Speaker 1: finger and screamed. We instantly turned to see what she
Speaker 1: was pointing at and found ourselves staring into a pair
Speaker 1: of red glowing eyes from just inside the tree line.
Speaker 1: And then a third howl rattled the windows, seconds before
Speaker 1: a black blur shot out of the edge of my
Speaker 1: line of sight. Then the car was shaking, as if
Speaker 1: something were rocking it side to side. It felt like
Speaker 1: it was almost lifting the car off the ground. We
Speaker 1: all yelled and streaked with the realization that mere sheep
Speaker 1: metal was no protection against our impending doom. We scrambled
Speaker 1: around trying to see what was shaking us to death.
Speaker 1: And it should have been easy to make out features,
Speaker 1: a shape, anything, but all we saw was a black
Speaker 1: blur outlined by the white light of the moon. And
Speaker 1: then the vehicle rocked to a stop as the same
Speaker 1: black blur raced toward the beach and out of sight.
Speaker 1: A minute passed, and then two, and finally someone rolled
Speaker 1: down the window and shouted over to the other car,
Speaker 1: did you guys see anything? We saw your car shaken.
Speaker 1: Someone replied, yeah, but did you see it? And after
Speaker 1: a pause, they answered, now we didn't see anything. We
Speaker 1: sat there for another ten minutes, shouting back and forth
Speaker 1: between the vehicles. I can't honestly say why we didn't
Speaker 1: immediately leave. Maybe we were too frightened to move. Eventually,
Speaker 1: our nerves settled and bravado won out over common sence.
Speaker 1: Oh to be a teenager again, showing off for the ladies. Simultaneously,
Speaker 1: we opened our car doors and we all got out.
Speaker 1: We were clearly still shaking and doing our best to
Speaker 1: hide it. Everyone was talking at once and asking questions
Speaker 1: and offering opinions. What was that? I don't know. What
Speaker 1: did it look like? I couldn't see it. What was
Speaker 1: it like being in the car as it was being shaken? Well, hell,
Speaker 1: it terrified me. Where do you think it went? I
Speaker 1: started to pull away from the group. I was sure
Speaker 1: i'd seen something ahead toward the beach. I walked through
Speaker 1: the crunching snow. The ground was covered in our footprints
Speaker 1: from earlier, and that's when I saw it. It was
Speaker 1: in the middle of a patch of clean, untouched snow,
Speaker 1: and it was a very large, pall print. It was
Speaker 1: a single padded print with claw marks extending from them,
Speaker 1: isolated and ice covered white. And it was huge. It
Speaker 1: was easily eight inches wide. And I called everyone over
Speaker 1: to check it out, and in shock, we murmured to
Speaker 1: each other about what could have made that track, And
Speaker 1: then one of the guys yelled, hey, over there, and
Speaker 1: sure enough, there was another print eight feet away. Whatever
Speaker 1: it was, it must have been enormous, and it was
Speaker 1: running on two feet. We found five tracks in all,
Speaker 1: and their distance apart and sizing reinforced the fact that
Speaker 1: some huge thing had run toward the beach. We scoured
Speaker 1: the entire area looking for more prints, but it was
Speaker 1: like it dissolved into nothingness. We searched both left and right.
Speaker 1: It never turned. But where could it have gone? I
Speaker 1: walked down to the beach area and there was a
Speaker 1: break in the wall and had ice covered stairs leading
Speaker 1: down to it. I more fell down the steps than
Speaker 1: I walked down them, and the wind had stopped. The
Speaker 1: resulting lack of sound from the water increased the eeriness.
Speaker 1: Now I could hear the crunching of my own feet
Speaker 1: pushing through the top layer of snow. Then I found
Speaker 1: what I was looking for, more tracks. The first one
Speaker 1: was fifteen feet from the wall, and now yelled to
Speaker 1: everyone to come down. There was a moment of comic
Speaker 1: relief as I watched them slide and fall down the
Speaker 1: icy steps. There they were, and there we were, huddled
Speaker 1: around the first of the princes that led into the
Speaker 1: edges of the freezing lake water. We determined that the
Speaker 1: last step above the wall was fifteen feet from it,
Speaker 1: and the first step below was another fifteen feet, A
Speaker 1: thirty foot jump, A three and a half foot tall
Speaker 1: wooden railing ran along the top of that wall that
Speaker 1: it also had to maneuver over, and it sailed over
Speaker 1: that rail and dropped a minimum of twenty feet to
Speaker 1: the beach below. It was time for us to leave.
Speaker 1: We went back the next day. The prints were still there,
Speaker 1: confirming that we had indeed witnessed something strange, and over
Speaker 1: the years we've joked about our run in with a werewolf.
Speaker 1: The term dog man hadn't entered the lexicon yet. Later
Speaker 1: we found a plaque posted to a tree at the
Speaker 1: far end of the beach. It stated that the land
Speaker 1: there was once the site of an Indian massacre or
Speaker 1: something worse. It's been so long that I no longer
Speaker 1: remember the story written on it. But over the years
Speaker 1: we went back to the beach many times and it
Speaker 1: sort of became our spot, a place to hang out
Speaker 1: and chill. It was left unspoken that we were there
Speaker 1: to see if we would ever encounter this thing again,
Speaker 1: and luckily we never did. I wonder now if we
Speaker 1: somehow summoned that thing there that night. I'm now a
Speaker 1: well armed child of God, ready to speak with the
Speaker 1: authority of Jesus against any such encounters. Be watchful, be viligent,
Speaker 1: and most of all be ready. When I was twenty
Speaker 1: years old, I went to work in the clothing mill.
Speaker 1: After a few years of working in the winding room,
Speaker 1: I was transferred to the print works on second shift.
Speaker 1: It would get really hot in that room, so while
Speaker 1: they were shut down and cleaning the machine between batches,
Speaker 1: I would go out into the cool air and catch
Speaker 1: a breath. One night in November of nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: as I was standing outside, I saw something out of
Speaker 1: the corner of my eye that was coming around the building.
Speaker 1: I turned to see a circular object that was one
Speaker 1: hundred feet in diameter. It was flat on the bottom,
Speaker 1: It had a dome on the top, and it was
Speaker 1: flashing colored lights that spun around and rotated with the
Speaker 1: spin of the craft. There was a dark hole in
Speaker 1: the center of the bottom. It was a clear night,
Speaker 1: with lots of stars in the sky except where the
Speaker 1: craft blocked them out. I want to make it clear
Speaker 1: that I have never done drugs, nor have I consumed
Speaker 1: alcohol or even so much as smoked a cigarette. This
Speaker 1: was not un hallucination. I had never seen anything like
Speaker 1: this before. I wouldn't even have known what I was
Speaker 1: looking at if I hadn't watched the day the Earth
Speaker 1: stood still. This craft was only about forty feet off
Speaker 1: the ground, and it was moving slowly. It didn't make
Speaker 1: a sound, not even a wooshing sound. It was quiet
Speaker 1: in the building, so there was nothing to drown out
Speaker 1: any of the noise. I'd have heard it if this
Speaker 1: thing made any sounds. It crossed my field of view
Speaker 1: and I yelled for a coworker to come out and
Speaker 1: see it too. He was a retired Air Force officer.
Speaker 1: He said he'd never seen anything like it either, and
Speaker 1: we watched as it drifted along and followed the river
Speaker 1: in a northerly direction toward Greenville, South Carolina. When I
Speaker 1: got home that night, my husband told me a flying
Speaker 1: saucer had been spotted over Greenville around eleven pm. I
Speaker 1: had seen it at ten pm, so it took an
Speaker 1: hour to reach a Greenville. I told him I had
Speaker 1: seen it too, and he laughed at me. He was
Speaker 1: an abusive man who laughed at me and made fun
Speaker 1: of me all the time for being a simple country girl.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he hit me when he was angry. It was
Speaker 1: a stressful marriage, so I didn't pursue a conversation. He
Speaker 1: worked third shifts, so he had to leave for work anyway.
Speaker 1: The next day he came home all excited. He'd driven
Speaker 1: down the road that paralleled the river the craft had followed,
Speaker 1: and he'd seen it too. I thought that was strange.
Speaker 1: Had it come back? He said, A bright, pulsating light
Speaker 1: was hovering above the tree, so he stopped and turned
Speaker 1: off his lights, and he watched it for a few minutes,
Speaker 1: and then turned his lights back on, and it shot
Speaker 1: straight up into the sky and disappeared, but it didn't
Speaker 1: stop there. That same week, I had the oddest dream.
Speaker 1: I dreamed I was floating out the door and up
Speaker 1: the dirt road we lived on. There was a big
Speaker 1: circular object hovering over the road that I was being
Speaker 1: drawn to, and I could see a wide light coming
Speaker 1: out of the bottom, and it seemed like there were
Speaker 1: bodies standing under the craft waiting for me. Then I
Speaker 1: started feeling like I was spinning, or maybe I was
Speaker 1: feeling extremely dizzy. Either way, it felt like I was
Speaker 1: spinning around really fast, like I was in the spin
Speaker 1: cycle of a washing machine. And then I found myself
Speaker 1: sitting on a table in a white room that appeared
Speaker 1: to circle around me. There were machines that looked to
Speaker 1: me at the time like vending machines. We didn't know
Speaker 1: about computers back then, but later I came to realize
Speaker 1: as that's what they looked like. A man dressed in
Speaker 1: white pointed at the machines and asked me what I wanted.
Speaker 1: I want to ham I said, yeah, I know how
Speaker 1: funny that sounds, but that's what I told him, and
Speaker 1: a hamburger popped out of one of the shoots. I
Speaker 1: don't remember eating it. The man stuck me in the
Speaker 1: arm with a needle, and the next thing I remember,
Speaker 1: he was showing me around the ship. We were standing
Speaker 1: at a long curving window, and I realized we were
Speaker 1: not on Earth anymore. We were speeding through space. We
Speaker 1: stopped in midair, and I found myself looking at these tall,
Speaker 1: twin buildings and a place I'd never heard of. He
Speaker 1: said there were going to be changes on Earth, but
Speaker 1: he didn't elaborate on what those changes were going to be.
Speaker 1: Mostly he warned me of my predicament. He said that
Speaker 1: I would have to change myself because the life I
Speaker 1: was living had no future. I don't remember anything after that.
Speaker 1: The next morning, I was back in my own bed.
Speaker 1: I thought about that dream and how real it feel.
Speaker 1: Oh At three pm, I headed to work, and as
Speaker 1: I drove down the road where I had seen the
Speaker 1: craft in my dream, I thought to myself, this is
Speaker 1: where it happened. And then I looked up into the
Speaker 1: sky and there it was again. It had a bright
Speaker 1: silver bottom that sparkled in the sunlight, and as I
Speaker 1: watched it, it shot straight up into the clouds and
Speaker 1: out of sight. I only trusted a few people enough
Speaker 1: to share this story with in the past, and then
Speaker 1: only because they had shared with me something that had
Speaker 1: happened with them. The more UFO stories I hear, though,
Speaker 1: the more I realized the UFOs are getting bigger and bigger,
Speaker 1: like mother ships coming down to Earth. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen to us, but it's getting to
Speaker 1: be a bit scary to think about. After that first dream,
Speaker 1: I've had several experiences when I would wake up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night feeling as if I were
Speaker 1: being pulled up to the ceiling. It was so scary.
Speaker 1: Would think Jesus helped me, just help me, and then
Speaker 1: I would float back down to my bed and feel
Speaker 1: loving hands rubbing my face. That's no joke, it really happens.
Speaker 1: I don't think all of these alien creatures are evil,
Speaker 1: but I know these last ones trying to abduct me
Speaker 1: felt evil. No, I'm not insane, nor am I out
Speaker 1: there as some people call it. I have several degrees
Speaker 1: in various technical courses. Now. I manage my own business
Speaker 1: for years, and though I am retired now, I still
Speaker 1: try to get out and work as much as I can.
Speaker 1: I built my own house by myself, and it looks amazing,
Speaker 1: And the funny part is that I built it in
Speaker 1: a bigfoot hotspot. I've caught them on my game cameras
Speaker 1: and I have many casts of their footprints. My life
Speaker 1: has been a really amazing story. Thank you for reading it.