If you’ve read this post, see the UPDATE at the end about our interview with Whitley Strieber for Dreamland.
This shaky photo was taken with a cell phone, in rural Tennessee, at about 4 a.m. on June 23, by one of the abductees we wrote about in Aliens in the Backyard. He sent it to his mother, Connie Cannon, who was one of the four main experiencers featured in the book. He also called her later that morning and told her what had happened. Here is what he said…
“He told me that he sat up in the bed about 3:50 a.m. upon hearing what he described as a ‘squealing’ in his ears. He decided to go outside, (said he felt “pulled” to do that), and was stunned by what was in the sky. He went dashing back into his house and grabbed his cell phone, afraid that if he took the time to get his good camera out of its case, the object would be gone by the time he got back outside. He yelled at his wife to wake up, but she didn’t move.”
As soon as he was outside, the squealing in his ears stopped. He saw a V-shaped series of very bright, large lights in the night sky. He snapped several photos and trailed the object as it moved slowly away. He stopped as he came to a nearby ridge that overlooked an old graveyard. That’s when he saw a “straight red line,” like a laser, coming out of the object, and shining on one of the gravestones.
Connie’s son, John, described the object as completely silent, just like the surrounding landscape. “He was terrified, not so much by the craft as that red beam. He said it reminded him of the lasers that snipers use on their rifles when pinpointing a target in their sights.” He took several photos, but the red beam didn’t show up.
“He told me there was absolute silence there….no typical night noises that are heard in the South….no night birds, no tree frogs, no crickets, no katydids, nothing. Just utter silence, and that spooked him even more because the object was moving slowly across overhead and making NO sound.”
The flying lights took about fifteen minutes to move out of his sight. He went back in the house and fell instantly asleep. His wife hadn’t awakened.
“I have a sense he was abducted…..he IS an abductee…..and had just been returned to his bed when the “squealing” was happening inside his head and he was pulled outside to see the craft.
The next day, Connie’s son went to the cemetery to locate the grave the object had targeted. Here’s the grave. Notice the Masonic symbol in the center of the grave. It’s interesting how the lower part of it resemble the V-shape of the light in the photo.
It should be noted that we sent this photo to Whitley Strieber and from there it was examined by a photo expert, who said he thought it looked like what one might see when a time-lapse photo of the moon is taken with a hand-held camera. Connie notes, though, that the cell phone camera is automatic and the exposure time can’t be changed. She also said that when he first went outside, he thought he was looking at the glowing full moon until the object moved and the V-shaped lights became noticeable. He also said the moon was visible in another part of the sky.
Interestingly, Maury County, Tennessee has recently been the site of other UFO sightings and also some other unusual incidents. On Dec. 26, 2012, 17 silent orange orbs floated over the county, according to this report. That report evoked another on from May 16 of this year that reportedly involved a military helicopter and a plane chasing an orb in the county.
Here is what was reported by Michele Hood of Spring Hill, TN.
“We just saw the EXACT same thing in Spring Hill, TN – a military helicopter tailing an orange orb followed by a really, really illuminated military cargo plane coming from the west. The helicopter was booking but couldn’t seem to catch up with the orb. Also, there was a stalled engine sound during the chase – like nothing any of the four adults watching had ever seen. We get a lot of weird sky activity out here in rural Maury County – saw a strange orange orb in the western sky around dusk just last night that stayed stationary, flashed bright.”
We also found a case reported by BBC News in 2009 that sounded eerily similar to John’s experience. The article was headlined…UFO ‘fired laser’ over cemetery,’ and included reference to a high-pitched noise ‘like cats wailing.’ The sub-heading said: “A UFO was seen hovering over a Cheshire cemetery before firing laser beams, according to a police log released by the government. The case dates back to 1996 and was released as part of a 3-year project to release UFO files by the Ministry of Defence and the National Archives.
+++
So, if we take John’s report at face value that he is telling us what he saw, then the question is: What is the connection between aliens and the dead? Is there a connection? Ufologists tend to back away from this corner of the UFO phenomena just as ghost hunters typically don’t want to hear about any connection between the dead (i.e. ghosts) and aliens. It’s like two sub-cultures that want to preserve their realms and keep things neat and tidy. Ghosts and graveyards on the one hand, aliens and UFOs, on the other.
But let’s expand the possibilities for a moment and see what connections could exist. Maybe the aliens – or some of them – are not from this dimension. Let’s also say the dead are not dead, but exist in another dimension. Hence, the aliens, who have access to them, don’t see them as dead.
But why would UFOs hang around graveyards? Unfortunately, when the idea of aliens and the dead come together, many people tend to think of darkness, evil, Satanic rites, vampires, zombies, etc….Maybe to the aliens, graveyards are something else altogether. Maybe, because of the human after-life traffic, they are portals between dimensions, an access point to reach our world.
ADDENDUM: Trish and I, along with Connie Cannon, will be interviewed this afternoon by Whitley Streiber on his Dreamland radio show about this case. It will be recorded and we’ll let you know when the show will be broadcast.
UPDATE: We had a very interesting and unusual Dreamland show – our third. Connie was fantastic and carefully explained her son’s experience. We discussed the possible meaning of UFOs and their connection with graveyards. Connie also talked about her father’s unusual death, and we got into Masonic links and numerology. The show will be available next weekend, July 12 or 13.
What was really startling was the ‘sideshow’ going on. First, even before we started, there was an unusual and persistent noise in the studio that Whitley said sounded like a truck. He was baffled because the studio is typically very quiet. Then, during the interview, we were disrupted on a couple of occasions by voices. Whitley would stop and erase the interference, baffled by where it was coming from. When it happened again, he left it in and explained what was happening to listeners. The equipment was in perfect condition, he said. Everything was in order. Yet the glitches continued.
At one point, Trish and I and Connie were talking for several minutes when we realized that Whitley was no longer with us. Oddly, he could hear us and apparently continued recording, but we couldn’t hear him. Again, he said, nothing was wrong with the equipment. We got off the line, he called us back, and we continued without any problems to the end.
Mercury retrograde? Spirit/alien interference? Hm, maybe all of the above.
Sharon, the actual photos my son sent to me were much more defined and clear than they appear here on the blog. The “V” was inverted, (similar to the Mason’s “square” on that symbol of the square and compass), and it was made up of what appear to be “inter-connected white lights”, with a dark shadow surrounding the V after that enormous brilliant light that was initially behind it “evaporated”, to use my son’s word. Still, a cell phone camera is by no means the best way to capture something this strange, especially when the person taking the photos is more or less stunned by what he is seeing in the sky while attempting to hold the cellphone steady!
On the subject of Whitley Strieber, I saw an early photo of him and thought he looked a bit like Rick Moranis out of Ghostbusters.
I put the two photos up on the Sync Book Facebook site and one of the guys sent me this clip –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=e-K6nS8OAUE
from ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ which when the plant in that movie says “feed me” made my think of Whitley’s book ‘The Hunger’,which was made into a film starring David Bowie –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=l9IDoAPC6Ps
Take a look at those alien type glasses the actors are wearing in the clip.
I did a post on a few more strange coincidences in this post –
https://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/rick-moranis-and-whitley.html
I like how Whitley had written a novel called ‘The Night Church’ and Bowie’s latest controversial film clip (it was banded on You Tube) is about a nightclub type church.
Not for the squeamish,but click on the link below to see it.
https://vimeo.com/65723010
Don’t get me wrong,I love Whitley and David’s work,but you have to marvel at the unconscious (?) forces at work here.
More links! Thanks, Daz. Will take a look. I loved The Hunger – book and movie.
Last night my boyfriend Karl was watching an interesting show on UFOS – On the record – This one was about UFOs in the 1980s and 90s in the Petite Rechain area of Belgium . One of the photographs to me looked similar to the one posted here but has more definition. I found the photo in a link. Here https://www.theufochronicles.com/2011/09/ufo-news-update-petit-rechain-ufo-photo.html
Sharon
Thanks for the link, Sharon, I’ll check it out!
Sorry I did not read on the website that this particular photo was a hoax – trust me to not check what I was posting first – I just got excited when I saw the photo – but there were many other photos shown on the show that looked very similar and with that red light in the middle. There also were drawings from witnesses who were considered reliable. Not all could have just imagined the same shape and light configuration.
Forgot to mention that when my son told me about the large, round-but-elongated brilliant, blinding light that was intially behind the V-shaped array of lights, I wondered if it could possibly be the “Light” that so many us us see during NDEs and as we transtion from this world to another? Maybe a portal or vortex or opening to another dimension? Especially since it “evaporated” as he was snapping photos of it, and the Moon was in a completely different area of the sky from the V. More food for thought.
Noncy, that “laser” as a marking device is a fascinating observation. People rising into the air during The Rapture….what about folks whose physical bodies have been cremated? Something to think about…..???
i’ve not read/heard much of ufo’s/graveyards so this is all especially interesting to me – i do like the supposition that perhaps the connection between aliens and graveyards is something other than most think…that…”maybe, because of the human after-life traffic, they are portals between dimensions, an access point to reach our world.”
sounds like a great interview and i, too, am anxious to hear it in full – really neat about the happenings during it…
Fascinating. I can’t wait for the interview on Dreamland. I have to admit to being baffled by the connection to graveyards, but the first thing that came to my mind was the “Rapture” where the dead will supposedly rise and be “taken.” I’ve always suspected some sort of link between people rising through the air during the Rapture and alien encounters. Could the lasers be some sort of “marking” device?
The lasers: maybe they are some sort of marking device.
Just saw this post about spook-lights which you might find interesting –
https://michaelmhughes.com/wordpress/?p=2074#.UdNSxW0yCSr
Thanks, Daz. I had a quick look and am going back for a deeper look!
Check out this band that was linked on Michael’s page also,
Y.A.C.H.T. — an acronym for Young Americans Challenging High Technology
https://www.redefinemag.com/2010/yacht-band-interview-transformation-under-mystery-lights/
” For two months in early 2008, Portland-based electropop duo YACHT set up camp in a small town located in the desert of West Texas, away from the city lights, but at the threshold of a completely different type of lights. Known as the Marfa Lights, the inexplicable dashes of lights that appear every night in the sky of Marfa, Texas, impacted Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, the two members of YACHT, in a profound way. On many occasions during their two-month stay in Marfa, the pair would grab a blanket, sit on the roof of their car, and observe the lights in the open desert. Not only did the lights go on to become the biggest inspiration for YACHT’s latest album, See Mystery Lights, but they also changed Bechtolt and Evans’ view of the world.”
” But like
the lyrics on “See Mystery Lights”, the band’s websites also include statements about darkness, light, free thought, afterlife, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Bechtolt and Evans promote free expression and invite anyone to become a member of YACHT. “
Wow, fascinating. Mystery lights. I’ll run to check this link now, too. Thanks!
MomWithWings, Kenny remembers every detail of the experience. One thing of interest is that when he rushed back into the house to grab his cellphone, he tried to wake his wife up, but she remained in a deep sleep. The next morning he was in their kitchen and she came in from the bedroom sobbing and put her arms around him. Of course he asked her what in the world was the matter, and she sobbed that she’d had a nightmare that he was “GONE”, and when she woke up and saw his side of the bed empty, she thought it was real and that he was REALLY gone! I think she probably woke up briefly and looked at his side of the bed while he was outside, then fell back into a deep sleep. But he may have been on the craft when she had the “nightmare” that he was gone. Very high weirdness.
MomWithWings, night before last as I was sitting propped up on my bedrest watching mindless TV, being quite still, I experienced a sudden horrible vertigo episode. Yelled for my husband, who was downstairs and came running….he managed to get some medication into me which was difficult because my entire body was having severe tremors. This episode made me feel as if I had fallen off the edge of the planet head over heels and was simultaneously spinning in total blackness with nothing to hold onto. It is terrifying. I don’t have seizure disorder. This kind of vertigo is the most terrifying physical experience! So I understand totally!
My husband wrapped his arms around me tightly until it passed, because I had that awful feeling of falling even though I KNEW I wasn’t, I had to hold on because I FELT that I was. Just awful. A remark about my son’s experience with the V-shaped UFO: when he first went outside, the V of lights was IN FRONT OF what he thought was the Moon behind it. He rushed back inside to grab his cellphone and when he flew outside again, the brilliant elongated light was still behind the V and he snapped pics of it. Momentarily, the brilliant white light he thought was the Moon seemed, he said, to “evaporate,” but the V of lights was still there, surrounded by a dark “shadow” of some kind and moving to the NW in utter silence, slowly, until it moved out of sight.
During this time, he turned and saw that the Moon was actually in a completely different position in the sky….so, it was NOT the brilliant white light that had been behind the V-shaped UFO lights. He isn’t ordinarily frightened by such phenomena, but he wanted to go inside his house, and couldn’t move his feet until the V slid behind a distant hill and was no longer in his sight. Very strange. To add to this, he moved to Maury County, TN, in late December and got married there, and he and his bride live in the country, far away from any kind of city lights, on a ridge above the cemetery. Cemeteries hold no fear for him, either. It was the red “spot” on that grave at the end of a straight “beam” coming from the bottom of the craft….or whatever it was….that made him jumpy.
I hope that you are feeling better!
The brightness of the UFO brought back memories from a few years ago when I saw a UFO during the day on my way home. It was huge and bright and then was gone. The other day I saw a cloud formation in the same area but, they weren’t big enough and I remembered that brightness. It was not something you normally see.
I can understand why your son would be concerned with seeing a laser pointer!
Has he had any other memories from the encounter?
Very interesting.
Last night Connie popped into my head again and I wondered how she was. I awoke this morning to pretty bad vertigo and a general feeling of malaise.
UFO’s and Graveyards is interesting stuff. I think that a lot more stuff goes on in Graveyards than we realize. I know that as a child I wanted to live near one. It worried my family.
My youngest daughter when she was 3 could see all kinds of things by people’s graves. So I’ve often thought there is more there.
Very interesting. I’ve often felt that there is a link between UFOs and some Spirit (Ghost) sightings as there are similarities between them from witnesses. Such things as: buzzing noises, a tingling feeling etc.
I remember reading about the Large Hadron Collider, where it was thought that subatomic particles had beaten the speed of light – if we open our minds all things are possible. We tend to put too many limitations on everything.
This is one topic you probably won’t see on Ancient Aliens. I’ve noticed a decided anti-paranormal edge to the show. They will bring up ancient tales of ghosts and spirits, , then try to turn them into alien sightings, making it sound like a more practical explanation. But I’ve yet to see the spirits mixing with the aliens on the program.
Interesting stuff.
I saw the latest Superman movie today and reading the last part of your post found it interesting that a lot of these themes appear in that movie,bearing in mind that Superman is an alien,as well as his father,who spends most of the movie as a ghost.
Check the movie out yourself to see what I’m talking about.
It will be interesting to listen to the interview.
Can’t wait.
Imagine an entire culture, a whole world, of Supermen & women. Being an air traffic controller would be a challenging job on that planet!
I don’t know about that,watch a group of birds in flight,they don’t seem to have much of a problem with it.I’ve been observing birds in flight lately and it is fascinating to watch them navigate around the streets at speed totally aware of power poles,trees and other obstacles in their path.It is amazing to watch.
I watch birds do that around here at dusk, when many of them head out toward the Everglades for the night. It IS fascinating to watch.
OK, superman goes onto my list of movies to see.