A    T  R  U  E    S  T  O  R  Y

Editor's Note: This is the first of many strange stories -- of all kinds -- that we will be sharing with our readers. We welcome you to submit your stories by pasting them in to an e-mail and sending them to myristicin@hotmail.com with "strange stories" in the subject. We will contact you prior to posting. - Thanks, Viewzone.

by Matthew Lanier

I have been reading this magazine for several months now and I have been wanting to tell a story that happened to me some years ago. I have never told anyone about this, well hardly anyone. When it first happened I tried to explain it to some close friends, mostly just to try to put it into words, but the smiles on their faces made me give up any hopes of being taken seriously— until now.

When I was in my thirties I was adventurous and on a couple of summer vacations, I rode a motorcycle and camped across Canada, from Montreal to visit with some friends in Vancouver, British Columbia. On my first trip out, I stopped at gas stations along the Trans-Canadian Highway at 100 mile intervals, because that's about what my gas tank could hold. On the way back, I not only stopped at the same gas stations but also at the same campgrounds. Each leg of the trip took me six days.

On my second trip, in 1984, I again visited my friends in Vancouver, staying at the same places and stopping at the same gasoline stations. I had a small logbook that I used to help me remember which exits had the best food and notes from my previous journey. I enjoyed remembering each location, comparing my old notes, and it made the trip that much more enjoyable. After spending a couple of weeks in Vancouver, I was again Montreal bound on the Trans-Canadian Highway and I stopped at one of my camping spots— a lonely and free campground just outside of Lethbridge in Alberta.

As I began to relax and lay down again,
I heard the humming noise get louder
and high pitched.

The campsite was in a large flatland with no trees and just some tall grasslands and the highway. At night there were hardly any cars and so it was quiet and peaceful. I set up my pup-tent beside my motorcycle and settled down for a good rest and quickly went to sleep. After a couple of hours of sleep I was suddenly wide awake and my heart was pounding. At first I was confused and didn't understand why I was awake and so alert. While I was sitting up in the tent I could hear a low-pitched humming noise outside and I imagined that it was a diesel truck that had pulled over to rest. I convinced myself that the truck had probably made some noise when it stopped had made me wake up.

As I began to relax and lay down again, I heard the humming noise get louder and high pitched. It didn't sound like a truck anymore. I remember thinking that, if it was a diesel truck, it was going to explode or something and so I fumbled with my tent zipper to take a look. Just then a very bright flash of light, like from a camera flash, illuminated the tent from outside, in the direction of the noise. Abruptly, the sound was gone. It was dead silent.

I crawled outside but saw no truck. I could see the highway for a couple of miles in each direction but there was no truck. There was nothing else in the campground either. I was confused but managed to go back to sleep and was on my way again the next morning.

One of my favorite spots to camp was down an old dirt path just outside Kenora, near the lake district in Canada. As it began to get dark, I saw a landmark and knew I was right on schedule. I found the path and quietly set up my campsite just off the highway. This area was heavily wooded and I was surrounded by trees and bush. No one could see me so I was safe. I had stayed in this same place three times already.

That night I had the strangest nightmare and awoke in a panic state. The dream was so real and had ended in such an upsetting way that I was trying to understand it. In my dream, as best I could remember, I was in a gray room, with no windows and nothing in it, that was made of metal, with little holes perforating the floor, like a spaghetti strainer. I remember being so scared that it was unable to move or even think clearly. I was naked and I noticed that one of the walls was curved and the room was shaped like a wedge of pie. I felt something warm on my legs and looked down to see that I was urinating on myself. That's when I noticed the holes in the floor, like it was designed for something like that. My next memories are of me being in a smaller round room. I was held down on the floor while someone who I thought was my mother, or someone like my mother, was telling me I was going to be okay. I felt a burning in my left arm and then I felt like I was going to fall back to sleep— only it was then that I woke up in the panic.

All the way home I kept trying to figure out
how I had lost an entire day.

It wasn't until that afternoon when I stopped at the gas station and entered the distance and gasoline consumption in my log book that I noticed that I had missed a day. It was confusing, and still is. I had accounted for every day and my distance until that night near Kenora. By all calculations I had somehow been in Kenora for an extra day, yet I know that I wasn't. All the way home I kept trying to figure out how I had lost track of an entire day.

A week or two later, back in Montreal, I noticed a couple of lumps on my left leg, just above my ankle and facing front. The top lump seemed to have something hard inside it, about the size of a "BB" pellet but it seemed to be kind of crescent shaped. I played with it but couldn't figure out what it was. I could feel it move just under my skin. I've still got it. At times I have tried to lance it, thinking it was a boil or something. The pin hits something very hard and the skin seldom even bleeds. It doesn't ever bother me— it's just weird to have this in my leg all of a sudden, and so close in time to the other odd stuff.

About an inch below that lump I had another lump that was soft and has since healed as a small depression, like the flesh was scooped out, but there is no scar. I don't remember ever injuring my leg. Neither lump has ever bled or formed a scab like they were injured.

Whenever I think back to that nightmare I had, and the way I was so afraid and helpless, like now when I am writing about it, my heart starts pounding and I get the feeling like something bad is going to happen. It eventually goes away but I guess that's just one reason I have never liked to talk about it.

I don't understand any of it and I wonder if there are other people who have ever had anything similar happen to them. I don't know what to think about it anymore.

 

And nearby in Toronto...

Glynis writes of her encounter:

It starts at 3 PM in the morning. I see a cluster of lights in the sky. I am talking on the phone with a girl that I work with. The only reason that I saw the cluster n the sky is that the lights in my living room were off. I notice that not only are the lights too close together, but they are moving sort of the way that a water balloon does, bulging out here and there. I think that at first I am looking at stars, but realize that the stars are too close together and blinking intermittently and not at the same time.

I go out on my balcony. I live on the top floor of my building. The only thing over me is the roof. I look straight up into the sky and notice that I am directly under the cluster of stars. I feel a sense of awe. Not because it is close to me or anything, but because I realized that the space surrounding the cluster is particularly dark. I KNOW that I am looking at something much bigger than it looked, but only the center bottom of the thing was barely visible.

I went back inside and told my friend that I had to call the police because I was staring at a UFO. She said to go ahead and call her back. I called the police and sure enough, they did not believe me. I panicked. I then thought that I would call some people in my building so that I could get them to come out and look as well but because it was late nobody wanted to.

Now I was desperate. My son and I were having a slumber party out in the living room and he was asleep since it was so late.

I grabbed the yellow pages and looked for a UFO organization. I found something under something called, "UFO Services", I called the number and got an answering machine. I called my girlfriend back and we discussed it. She believed me and even tried to get a look on her balcony, but that was not possible as she lives all the way across town.

As I was talking to her in the darkened room, I looked to the walls around the window where some street light was coming in. With me moving around and dialing people, my son woke up. I suddenly saw the walls around the window change from golden yellow, to a type of orange. This frightened my son and I tremendously. We immediately dropped to the ground and crawled while under he blanket to my bedroom which had a window in the same direction as the one that we were looking out of previously.

I phoned my girlfriend again and told her that this was getting too freaky. Now my son was awake and stayed under the blanket in my bed in order not to see anything else. He was scared. I took the phone and walked to the window. I was so happy. In spite of the fact that the police did not come out to see what my problem was, I felt that someone believed me as far ahead in the distance, I could see what appeared to be a helicopter light in the distance. It seemed to have a bright headlight in the front and I thought that it was just sitting far enough away from the cluster of stars overhead so that it could observe it.

In the next few minutes, I became greatly relaxed. It seemed that the lights were under observation. As I stood in the window, I helicopter actually did come right by the front of my window. I thought that this was unusual, because it came so low and I did not think that they were allowed to do that.

Anyway, things started to happen now. The cluster of stars seemed to slowly be moving overhead of the building. As it was doing so, the headlight in the distance started moving inwards toward my window. I was so happy, because someone else besides myself and my son had obviously seen this.

Wrong!

When the light came closer towards my building, I realized to my horror that my window was open! That light that I had thought was a helicopter was not making any sound whatsoever. In fact, it slowly turned in circles and after the first turn, I realized that there was nothing in the back of it. No propeller, no sound, no nothing, just a light.

That was too much for me and my son. We climbed into my bed and peeked at the thing just shining in the sky.

My son looked for a minute at a time and then he hid under the blanket. By now, the ufologist had called me back and was listening to me describe what we were seeing. As I looked at the light, I spoke with him.

That was when it happened. I got a message. In my mind very quickly I go information. Something was trying to communicate with me. not to have any type of conversation, but to sort of see if I was aware of them. The second that the sensation started, I knew that they knew I was watching. My eyes were on the light, and for the life of me I could not tear them away. I was locked on them. I started trying to tell the ufologist that they knew I was watching, but it all happened so fast that all I could get out of my mouth was: "They know-ow-ow-woo!". I went into a seizure. It threw my body flat in the bed and each part of my body shook uncontrollably. The phone in my hand fell away as both my arms straightened at my sides.

My son was under the covers shouting now for me to stop. I couldn't. I was awake, but not able to get control of myself. I was aware of what was going on, but short of breath. I could also feel a type of probing of my abdomen during this seizure-type of behavior. I got a glimpse of them, (however I don't trust the image that I have of them, it came much too fast.)

My son threw the covers off of himself and saw me flat on my back shaking. He started shouting at me not to look. "Don't look mom! Don't look mom!" I couldn't tear my eyes away. He then jumped right on top of me to block my vision and he even covered my eyes. I slowly stopped shaking. He picked up the phone and started talking to the ufologist. I couldn't talk again for the longest time. I was so out of breath. He was very worried and had an extra extension in the house which he was going to use to call 911 to sent them to my house.

I had never had a seizure before and didn't even realize that this is what it probably might have been. He said that there are usually only three things that cause them: high fever, epilepsy, and high electrical activity to the brain.

After that had happened he asked me some questions regarding how afraid I was. He wanted to see to the best of his knowledge if perhaps I was just so afraid that I just brought the behavior on myself. I assured him that I had been staring out the window so long that theory didn't seem possible.

Anyway, it was near morning. The ufologist stayed on the phone with my son and I for hours. I watched the light for an extremely long time. I still had tremors occasionally that night. They were very small and seemed to be small reactions to the bigger tremors that I had experienced earlier that night.

As morning approached, the light in the sky moved in slow circles. it had two or three prongs resembling elephant tusks which pointed down towards the earth as it turned. It behaved as if it could shift shapes in a fluid motion. At 5:30 AM in the morning, it was quite light out. There didn't seem to be any stars in the sky, except for an orange light terribly far in the distance. After 5:30 AM, the light started to move away. I had lost sight of the cluster of stars now, (it had slowly moved over the top of my building).

I thought that the episode had ended. I watched the light and described its movements to the ufologist as it drifted away from the building and went higher into the sky. That was when I saw that the orange light had been a third conspirator to the two previous. The first (white) light that I had been staring at all night slowly moved towards the orange light and from the point that I had been looking at it, it seemed to line itself up with the orange light that had seemed much farther away to the point that I couldn't see it. It seemed to be sitting behind the white light, (out of my vision). Then the white light picked up speed and as a pin point in the sky, it moved (not in a straight line), but from side to side slowly up, up into the sky to nothingness.

The whole procedure to leave took exactly 45 minutes (to 6:15 AM) and then it just wasn't there anymore. I continued to talk to the ufologist. It was then that he revealed to me that he had been taping our conversation the whole night, after I took the "seizure".

After that episode, He came with his partner and they videotaped my recollection at my home. I showed him the windows where I saw these things happen with my son.

 

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