UFO Week Wrap Up - A Parallel Experience

After I witnessed the SpaceX Starlink Satellites last week, my friend, Kathy Bateman, posted a comment on that blog post that gave me the shivers when I read it. Why? Because there was an eerie resemblance to my second sighting.

To be clear about this, I had never shared my experiences with her - only a few family members knew about them. To have Kat share her own experience that mirrored one of my own was sobering and more than a little hair raising. It was also a bit affirming to me. "I'm not crazy! I don't have a wild imagination! Someone else saw the same thing!" and more went through my mind when I read her story.

To refresh your memories, go here to read about the experience that I had and which Kat's mirrors so well.

With her permission, I share some of the conversation we had via text and Facebook Messenger as we discovered that we had had very similar experiences.

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Kathy's comment on the SpaceX satellite post, written before I posted any of what I had seen in the past:

March 3, 2024 (Kat)

I knew it was Star Link as soon as I started reading, lucky you ! I am a bit of a sky nerd and really like stuff like that. Have yet to be able to see them although I've "seen" the space shuttle once and the ISS several times. I too had a UFO experience once. I was at Lodge Park for their 4th celebration, laying back on a blanket. I looked up during a lull and a section of stars were suddenly just not there, just blackness, and then reappeared moments later. No sound, too large an area to have been a plane. Very disturbing to say the least and like you, generates a bit of anxiety recalling it.

I think my jaw dropped when I read what she had written. I responded by sending her the link to the Teachinmama blog where I had originally recorded my three experiences in August, 2013.

March 3, 2024 (Lynn)

Here is the link to my night sky experience that is so similar to yours. I wrote it down in 2013 but it happened in the 1980s. I'd love to hear your thoughts.

https://teachinmama.blogspot.com/2013/08/at-risk-of-sounding-crazy-2.html

Lynn

After reading the original blog post on Teachinmama, Kat responded. (Actually, two responses - we were chatting via both email and Facebook Messenger.)

March 3, 2024 (email, Kat)

Almost exactly what I experienced. I just know that "something" large blocked out the stars and then the stars gradually came back.  I too had a sudden (irrational ? instinctive ?) feeling of dread and foreboding. I never spoke of it to anyone. I wonder if it was the same year as yours. I honestly don't remember. 

March 3, 2024 (Facebook Messenger, Kat)

I sent an email reply but should have noted that the stars reappeared because the "something" slowly moved/disappeared. It was not a sudden movement. My recollection is that the "something" slowly "swallowed" the stars and then the stars came back. It was also in the 80's. I know I had Shannon with me and recall covering Harley's ears when the fireworks went off. He would have been a toddler (or a bit younger) born in 1983.

Kathy gives me permission to share her parallel experience here and adds a little more information as to where her experience occurred.

March 6, 2024 (Kat)

Yes, you may. I already sort of did in commenting on your blog entry. Mine was July 3 either 1984 or '85 based on Harley's age, most probably 1984 (he would have been 8 months old. I do recall a stroller but I don't think he was walking). I don't think that I've ever felt that level of primal fear and dread before or since and I think that that may be what sticks with me more than the actual “something".  Lodge Park, a Forest Preserve park along the Sangamon river close to Monticello. They have their 4th of July fireworks on the 3rd.

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Mid 1980s, two different towns in Illinois (Urbana and Monticello) but ones that are geographically close to each other, both of us outdoors on summer evenings with our kids... and we see something strikingly similar.

What did we see? Was it the same thing? Neither she nor I remember the actual year (Kat knows it was July 3, 1984 or 1985 while I wrote that it was mid to late 1980s) but it was summer, and very well could have been. (I'd also written that what I saw was large and that it could've been sighted in several areas across town.)

My guess is that it's possible that we did.

That wraps up what I've come to think of as UFO week. LOL. Tomorrow we will be back to the usual posting about horses, models, sewing, and family.

And... the March give away will be posted.

Stay 'tooned!

At the Risk of Sounding Crazy #2

Today I am sharing my second encounter with something odd and mysterious that I saw in the sky, something that I still cannot explain.

Interestingly enough, just after I posted about seeing the StarlinkX satellites and before I posted any of these stories, a blog reader shared her own sighting with me. It was eerily similar to the one I am sharing today. Talk about things that give you the shivers!

Teachinmama Blog, August 18, 2013

My second experience with something abnormal in the sky included my children, although they never knew what was playing out in the sky above them.

#2, Urbana, Illinois, mid to late 1980s.

The Urbana Park District used to offer free movies in the park during the summer. (VCRs were still new, and so most people did not have the luxury of watching a movie any time they wished in the comfort of their own home.) Since we had a large family and no money, movies in the park were a perfect activity for us.

CrestviewPark on Florida Avenue was the location. Craig had an evening class to teach or a meeting to attend (I don't remember which), so I loaded up the car with blankets, bug spray, and bambinos, and we headed over to stake a claim on a choice grassy spot. Gradually the sky darkened and the movie began.

Now, I am a horse lover, but I am NOT a unicorn lover, so the film, The Last Unicorn, didn't hold my interest. I had lain back on the blanket and was finding constellations in the sky while the kids focused on the giant screen, their attention completely captured by the movie. As I lay there, suddenly an irregular black shape, very flat and huge, abruptly came in from the south and stopped right over us. 

I cannot guess how big it was, but I could see it because it was blocking out the stars. I knew it was not a cloud; it was black and flat, plus it was moving against the direction of the prevailing wind. And clouds don't just stop, holding in place motionless. 

The black shape did not change in size or scope, and like a blanket, hung over the park. I got the sense that it was massively large and, just as clouds can be, could be seen from several areas in town should anyone look up. (And maybe they did; I don't know. I never heard any reports on the phenomenon. But then, I didn't make a report, either.)

I also got a sense of... foreboding? Oppression? Brooding? It's difficult to describe although I still remember the feeling all these years later.

No other adults noticed the shape as it loomed over us. I remember feeling a need to press myself down against the ground in the hopes that whatever it was could not "see" me. And I was frightened for my children. Should I gather them up and run? Shout out to the other adults in the park and point to the sky? What should I do?

Before I could decide, the flat, black shape began moving, reversing its direction and going back in the direction from which it had come. I remained pressed flat in the grass, shaken by what I had seen. When I finally sat up, I did ask another parent or two if they had noticed anything unusual in the sky, but the people to whom I spoke had not. (And I did not tell them what I had observed over the park.)

I remember that, when the movie was over at last, I hustled my children into the car and home, glancing up at the sky in case whatever I had seen returned. I even ducked down a bit as we walked across the grassy park and back to our car, instinctually trying to make myself smaller and less visible.

So, what had I seen? I have no idea. It could not have been a cloud; they do not look like that or act that way, in daylight or at night. Clouds simply do not swoop in, hover motionlessly, then suddenly whisk themselves off in the direction from which they just came.

The sense of vulnerability coupled with helplessness at knowing I could not protect my children from whatever it was I saw returns whenever I think back to the incident and has remained with me ever since. And sometimes I look up at the night sky, wondering if perhaps I shall see it again.

I hope I never do.

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Just reading that old journal entry has made my heart beat faster. I can still feel that sense of fear as I laid there on that blanket, wondering if my kids were safe and what I could do to protect them.

Unlike the white disk I'd seen in the sky as a child, I had no doubt that what I was seeing was really there. I didn't turn away or close my eyes, hoping it would be gone when I looked again. In fact, I felt so threatened by it that I didn't dare look away.

Nearly forty years later, I still feel shaky whenever I remember that night.

Tomorrow I will share my third encounter, the most terrifying of the three.

Stay 'tooned.