Speaker 1: I'm a god fearing man who doesn't believe in ghosts.
Speaker 1: But having said that, I do believe there are things
Speaker 1: out there that we can't fully explain. Call it paranormal
Speaker 1: or whatever you'd like. I also believe that some people
Speaker 1: are more sensitive to the great mysteries than others. I'm
Speaker 1: forty three years old, and in nineteen eighty four when
Speaker 1: this happened, I was just under six years old, living
Speaker 1: in the state of West Virginia, as full of dreams
Speaker 1: and mischief as any boy my age. When I was born,
Speaker 1: my parents lived in out of the way place and
Speaker 1: the boonies called Webb, West Virginia and Wayne County. I
Speaker 1: was six when we made the move to a small
Speaker 1: town called Fort Gay. The house was owned by an
Speaker 1: old man named Frank Aliff, who also rented a large
Speaker 1: majority of the property within Fort Gay, and as we
Speaker 1: were moving in, we had heard rumors that that place
Speaker 1: was haunt and that no one chose to live in
Speaker 1: it very long, but we passed all that off as gossip.
Speaker 1: Old man Aliff favored this particular house that we were
Speaker 1: renting because he and the other men in town used
Speaker 1: to hang out there and gamble and get drunk, they
Speaker 1: would do all the kind of stuff that would be
Speaker 1: frowned upon in an upstanding Christian community. If you've ever
Speaker 1: lived there there's a church on every corner, then you
Speaker 1: know how people will whisper and judge behind your back. Apparently,
Speaker 1: one night, during a poker game, a man in a
Speaker 1: drunken rage accused another man of cheating at cards, and
Speaker 1: one of the men ended up with his brains being
Speaker 1: blown out right there in the living room. The family
Speaker 1: thought this was a piece of hope and meat to
Speaker 1: scare people, even though later on down the road we
Speaker 1: would come to believe that the story was true. For
Speaker 1: several days before the move, my parents were already doing
Speaker 1: some light work inside the place, like painting and fixing
Speaker 1: door hinges and changing out light switches. There was a
Speaker 1: second bedroom that my sister and I would be sharing.
Speaker 1: Interior pain in those days gave off a powerful and
Speaker 1: dangerous fume. While we allowed the toxic paint time to dry,
Speaker 1: my sister slept on the couch in the living room,
Speaker 1: and I had to crawl in bed with my parents,
Speaker 1: which I hated with a passion. I always got too
Speaker 1: hot or I felt pinned down in between them. By
Speaker 1: the covers. I was always afraid of moving too much
Speaker 1: and waking them up. My parents had been sleeping for
Speaker 1: the better part of an hour when suddenly I had
Speaker 1: to go to the bathroom. Well, that meant I had
Speaker 1: to crawl over one of them to extricate myself, so
Speaker 1: I chose my even tempered mother. I had one arm
Speaker 1: on the bed and the other arm holding onto the
Speaker 1: headboard post, straddling my mother with my toes searching for
Speaker 1: the floor and trying not to wake her up. The
Speaker 1: most god awful sense of something watching me went through
Speaker 1: my body. Every fiber of my being was sending warning sirens.
Speaker 1: There was someone behind me. Well, maybe it was my
Speaker 1: sister standing there awake like I was scared to be
Speaker 1: in a strange house and on her way to climb
Speaker 1: into bed with the rest of us. So I slowly
Speaker 1: turned my head and I saw something peeking around the
Speaker 1: doorway from the partially lit hallway. This thing had the
Speaker 1: shape of a human being, but it was completely faceless
Speaker 1: and featureless. It was like a shadow, and it reminded
Speaker 1: me of the clips that you would see in documentaries
Speaker 1: about black holes. It felt as though you could stick
Speaker 1: your arms straight through its body and enter into another dimension.
Speaker 1: It had no eyes or facial features, and I knew
Speaker 1: that it was looking right at me. And the fear
Speaker 1: that was surging through my body that night was almost undescribable.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I was facing something demonic. I believe it
Speaker 1: was casting a different kind of terror through me, like
Speaker 1: a spell. I wanted to scream bloody murder and wake
Speaker 1: up my parents, but I couldn't yell, I couldn't move,
Speaker 1: I couldn't do anything. I was paralyzed. Once the feeling
Speaker 1: of being powerless left my body, I returned to my
Speaker 1: parents' bed, very deliberately, climbing over my mother and wedging
Speaker 1: myself between her and my father. I pulled the covers
Speaker 1: completely over my head and I closed my eyes. I
Speaker 1: still had the urge to go to the bathroom, but
Speaker 1: for my own sake that night, I held it. I
Speaker 1: woke up the next morning alone and I could hear
Speaker 1: my mother down the hallway in the kitchen, clinging pots
Speaker 1: and pans and making breakfast. I jumped out of bed
Speaker 1: and ran to the bathroom. After assuring myself there was
Speaker 1: no demonic creature loitering between the bedrooms, I made another
Speaker 1: mad dash to the kitchen, and I told my parents
Speaker 1: everything that happened in the middle of the night while
Speaker 1: they were sleeping. Well, they chalked it up to either
Speaker 1: a bad dream or a young boy's wild imagination. The
Speaker 1: fear during this bad dream compared to the fear of
Speaker 1: something experienced in real life, and their feelings as different
Speaker 1: as night and day. Over the four years we lived
Speaker 1: in that house, everyone in my family would encounter something
Speaker 1: just as strange and unexplainable. Throughout my life, I have
Speaker 1: been faced with different levels of the unusual. I've seen
Speaker 1: small black figures dashing across the floor in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. I've heard voices in conversation when there's
Speaker 1: no one there in bizarre languages where I can't make
Speaker 1: out the words. I have felt my bed vibrate like
Speaker 1: it's lifting up off the floor. And I've had sleep
Speaker 1: paralysis where I've witnessed presences in my room as I
Speaker 1: did the night as a six year old boy, too
Speaker 1: scared to leave the safety of my parents' bed for
Speaker 1: an urgent midnight trip to the bathroom. I can't fully
Speaker 1: explain any of this. I believe there are things in
Speaker 1: this world that will never be fully understood. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it's a blessing or a curse that I've
Speaker 1: come to view these things as just a normal part
Speaker 1: of my existence. I guess I've grown unafraid of the dark.
Speaker 1: In the summer of nineteen ninety four, my husband and
Speaker 1: I bought a brand new home and one of the
Speaker 1: many housing subdivisions being built in the Sacramento Valley during
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties housing boom. The area had originally been
Speaker 1: mostly farmland and floodplains, and there were dozens of subdivisions
Speaker 1: being built, and each subdivision displayed beautifully decorated home plans.
Speaker 1: The homes were much more affordable then, so we applied
Speaker 1: for a first time buyer loan and crossed our fingers.
Speaker 1: The loan process seemed to take forever, but when we
Speaker 1: were approved, we got to pick out our very own
Speaker 1: flooring style and upgraded the kitchen appliances, which was so
Speaker 1: nice since the apartment we lived in had no dishwasher
Speaker 1: or self cleaning oven. We moved our family, which consisted
Speaker 1: of the two of us, our four year old son,
Speaker 1: and our future baby girl, who was due in mid August,
Speaker 1: and we were happy to have accomplished so much in
Speaker 1: a relatively short amount of time. The house was on
Speaker 1: a dead end street since the owner of the property
Speaker 1: behind the subdivision did not want to sell any of
Speaker 1: his property, which would have allowed for the street to
Speaker 1: go through and join up with other subdivisions. There was
Speaker 1: still a lot of open land and homes in various
Speaker 1: stages of construction, and our neighbors had kids about the
Speaker 1: same age as our son, and he made new friends
Speaker 1: and all the kids played on the street since there
Speaker 1: was no traffic during the day while most people were
Speaker 1: at work. Unfortunately, my husband was not able to find
Speaker 1: a job in Sacramento right away, so he would stay
Speaker 1: with his mom back in the Bay Area during the
Speaker 1: work week, and then he would drive back to the
Speaker 1: valley to check in on us so we could do
Speaker 1: shopping and other errands. At that time, we only had
Speaker 1: one car, and I was left stranded until he was
Speaker 1: back from the Bay Area. It was a long commute,
Speaker 1: but my husband was so happy to buy us the
Speaker 1: house that he was willing to commute with the hope
Speaker 1: that he would find a job in the valley soon
Speaker 1: enough and stop commuting. It was a whole year before
Speaker 1: he was hired at one of the local auto body shops.
Speaker 1: When our daughter was born, my husband was able to
Speaker 1: take a week off from work to be with us
Speaker 1: and enjoy our new baby girl, and then he went
Speaker 1: back to work and to his commute. He would get
Speaker 1: up at three am and make his coffee in get
Speaker 1: his overnight bag, and leave at three thirty am so
Speaker 1: he could be at work by six thirty am. Back then,
Speaker 1: he was the bread winner, so we really needed him
Speaker 1: to keep that job, even if it was one hundred
Speaker 1: miles away. I would normally get up with him and
Speaker 1: spend a few minutes with him before he would be off.
Speaker 1: I would go back to bed and try to sleep
Speaker 1: before the baby would wake up to nurse around five
Speaker 1: thirty am. I would feed her in bed and lay
Speaker 1: her between me and our four year old son, and
Speaker 1: the three of us would snuggle in sleep until around
Speaker 1: eight thirty before we started our day. We were so spoiled.
Speaker 1: On this Monday, after he left for his commute, I
Speaker 1: felt uneasy and I felt scared, but I didn't know why.
Speaker 1: I decided to go back to our bedroom and lay down,
Speaker 1: thinking that the baby would be up soon enough to nurse,
Speaker 1: so maybe it would be better just to lay back down.
Speaker 1: I fell asleep, and I had a horrible nightmare. I
Speaker 1: dreamt that our son was missing, and that we were
Speaker 1: running to different streets looking for him and calling his name.
Speaker 1: I woke up suddenly, and I was relieved that it
Speaker 1: was just a horrible dream, and my boy was fast
Speaker 1: asleep next to me, and the baby was still in
Speaker 1: her bacinet next to the bed. I turned over on
Speaker 1: my side facing the bacinet, and I saw a bright
Speaker 1: light coming in between the window blinds, and thinking out loud,
Speaker 1: I said, is it morning already? The light was coming
Speaker 1: in between the blinds, and it was so bright, but
Speaker 1: the rest of the room looked dark. There was a
Speaker 1: bright light on the wall next to the window, and
Speaker 1: I looked up to see where the light was coming from,
Speaker 1: and to my horror, just above the bacinet was an
Speaker 1: alien gray's face. It was just the head, no upper body, legs,
Speaker 1: or arms. The head was dark in color, very round,
Speaker 1: ending in a pointed chin, and there were small slits
Speaker 1: for his mouth and nostrils. But the eyes, the eyes
Speaker 1: were large and almond shape and very shiny black, and
Speaker 1: it had some sort of glass lamp on the top
Speaker 1: of its head. The light on the wall was coming
Speaker 1: from the lamp. The being was looking down at the
Speaker 1: baby in the bacinet. Oh my god, I couldn't speak.
Speaker 1: My heart started pounding so hard that I started trembling uncontrollably.
Speaker 1: It saw me, and it scowled at me when it
Speaker 1: realized I was looking at it, and it moved towards me,
Speaker 1: and I started screaming and swinging my arms and kicking,
Speaker 1: and I remember that I sat out loud. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm going to lose my mind. I felt that I
Speaker 1: could not take the fact that this creature was there,
Speaker 1: and it was just there in the room above my
Speaker 1: baby's basinet in the house. It floated from its original
Speaker 1: position above the basinette to just above my face, and
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this light blue fog build up in
Speaker 1: front of my face. And then, in a dreamlike manner,
Speaker 1: I remember a sound like pigeons mate, like a cooing sound.
Speaker 1: I remember feeling that whoever was talking to me was
Speaker 1: stern and was telling me that it was for our
Speaker 1: own good. When I woke up again, it was still
Speaker 1: dark out, but it was around six am, and the
Speaker 1: blankets were perfectly made around the bed, like nothing had happened,
Speaker 1: and everything felt still. My son was asleep next to me,
Speaker 1: and the baby was in her bascinet. And I got
Speaker 1: out of bed and turned all the lights on in
Speaker 1: the room and the rest of the house, and I
Speaker 1: checked all the rooms in the house, and I checked
Speaker 1: the locks on the front door and the lock in
Speaker 1: the backyard sliding glass door, and everything was just like
Speaker 1: I had left it. After my husband had left for work,
Speaker 1: I decided to stay up and just start my day.
Speaker 1: In fact, I got in the shower, even though that
Speaker 1: was not my usual time to shower. When I was
Speaker 1: washing my hair, there was a sore spot on the
Speaker 1: top of my head. There was no blood, no bump,
Speaker 1: just very sore. I got dressed, and I went to
Speaker 1: the kitchen and I had some coffee. While having my coffee,
Speaker 1: I was trying to make sense of all those events. Now.
Speaker 1: I remember the nightmare that I had woken up from,
Speaker 1: and how relieved I had felt that it had just
Speaker 1: been a bad dream. But then that thing was there,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't decide if it had been another bad
Speaker 1: dream or if that second part was real. It didn't
Speaker 1: make sense. But how can a bad dream as scary
Speaker 1: as that could be was still making me afraid. My
Speaker 1: son was up at nine am, and I kept checking
Speaker 1: in on the baby and she kept sleeping. She should
Speaker 1: have been up once to nurse, but no, she wasn't.
Speaker 1: And I called my sister and I told her about
Speaker 1: my weird dream and I started crying because it seemed
Speaker 1: like it had been real, but I kept thinking that
Speaker 1: it couldn't be real. I checked on the baby and
Speaker 1: she had no fever, no rash, but she did not
Speaker 1: wake up to nurse until two pm that afternoon, and
Speaker 1: by then I was sore and engorged with milk. As
Speaker 1: the day progressed, I became anxious, and before it was evening,
Speaker 1: I called my sister, asking if she could come over
Speaker 1: and pick us up. I didn't want to be there
Speaker 1: alone with the kids when it was night again. She
Speaker 1: came over and took us to her apartment. My sister
Speaker 1: wasn't sure what to make of this whole thing. I
Speaker 1: was just grateful that I didn't have to be alone
Speaker 1: in the house. We stayed in her kids room that night,
Speaker 1: and I remember feeling very scared because I didn't know
Speaker 1: if it would happen again. But I put both kids
Speaker 1: and me under the twin bed we were supposed to
Speaker 1: sleep on, but we slept under the bed. I called
Speaker 1: my husband and told him about my bad dream, but
Speaker 1: he thought it was just stress from being left alone
Speaker 1: so many nights and taking care of the kids in
Speaker 1: the house. My husband picked us up from my sister's
Speaker 1: place and drove us back to our house. That evening,
Speaker 1: I tried to go about my normal routine, making dinner,
Speaker 1: bathing the kids before bed, and watching a movie. And
Speaker 1: then it was time for me and my husband to
Speaker 1: go to bed. I put both kids in the bed
Speaker 1: between us, and I put a large toy sword next
Speaker 1: to me in the bed. I was terrified that it
Speaker 1: would come back, that I would wake up, and that
Speaker 1: face would be there looking back at me when I
Speaker 1: opened my eyes. I knew there was nothing I could
Speaker 1: do to protect us, and that made me more frightened
Speaker 1: than anything. My husband continued to commute for another six months,
Speaker 1: so I was still alone in the evening, and that
Speaker 1: was the worst part. For weeks, every night, I would
Speaker 1: stay up just until I could see daylight before I
Speaker 1: felt safe to fall asleep. I would leave the TV
Speaker 1: on in the bedroom, lights on, and fight sleep until
Speaker 1: I would see the early sunlight peek through the windows.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel safe until around early spring, when the
Speaker 1: morning light starts just a bit earlier each morning. I
Speaker 1: went on like this for three years every winter, and
Speaker 1: for years I was terrified to look out any window
Speaker 1: in the evenings. I would close all the blinds in
Speaker 1: the house at night and leave some lights on before
Speaker 1: going to bed. My husband would just tell me that
Speaker 1: it had been a bad dream. After a few months,
Speaker 1: he didn't like me to talk about it. My daughter
Speaker 1: was only three months old when this happened. She doesn't
Speaker 1: have any strange scars or ill effects from the experience.
Speaker 1: I no longer fear the winter nights, but I know
Speaker 1: that it was not a dream. Regarding the description of
Speaker 1: the creature I saw, in the book titled Operation Trojan Horse,
Speaker 1: there is a description of an et that has been
Speaker 1: described wearing some type of light attached to or on
Speaker 1: the top of his head,