Rural Britain, is there any greater value out there than giga-clear full-fiber from only 19 pounds a month? It's out of this world! Speed and reliability! Fast upload and downloadiness! Right here in Rural Tranquility! Saturn's Rings! Is that a bull? Gigaclear, faster broadband for Rural Britain from only 19 pounds a month! TZZ's Apply, 18-month contract, prices may rise during contract. Check availability at gigaclear.com Rural Britain, is there any greater value out there than giga-clear full-fiber from only 19 pounds a month? This episode is brought to you by my newest supporters, Stephanie, Dave, Penelope, and Jason. Thank you for making the show possible. Rural Britain, is there any greater value out there than giga-clear full-fiber from only 19 pounds a month? Tonight, I'll be revisiting my personal experience with the unknown. It's an encounter that has baffled me for over three decades, and since I first discussed it on the podcast back in 2017, I've remembered some additional details that I'd like to share with you. So, let's get into it. Thank you for joining me and welcome. I'm your host, Nick Ryan. Have you ever experienced something that affected you so deeply that you have trouble processing it? I'm not talking about just confusion, but more like a deep frustration with trying to analyze and understand something that is unfolding before your very eyes. But even stranger, at least in my case, after the experience has ended and in the hours or days that follow, you almost entirely forget that the event even took place until something jogs your memory. It's at this time when the experience comes flooding back to you like some sort of long-forgotten memory. Well, this is exactly what I experienced almost 31 years ago. Now, if you're not familiar with my story, I'm referring to something that I witnessed while living in a rural town in my home state of Michigan. I discussed my encounter in episode 6, which aired in 2017, but more recently, I realized that there were some details that I failed to include in that episode. Nothing earth-shattering, just minor things that I think are important to put down on paper. At the very least, this will help me to document the exact series of events that unfolded that night for my own records, but perhaps it will also help someone listening who may have seen the same anomaly that I did, and hopefully compel them to come forward. So tonight, I'd like to once again share my experience and include all the missing details that I previously overlooked. I appreciate you joining me, and please remember that if my experience shares similarities with something that you encountered, please don't hesitate to reach out to me, because I would love to hear about your experience. My story begins in southeast Michigan where I was born. I was raised in a fairly small town outside of Detroit, where Friday Night Football was the high point of everyone's week, and our version of social media was to meet down at the local Dairy Queen and hang out with friends. Life was good, quiet, even predictable. And besides the occasional night terrors that I had as a younger child, the realm of actual paranormal phenomena never factored into my daily life. That is, until elementary school. I was in the library one day and I came across a series of books by Time Life called Mysteries of the Unknown. If memory serves, one of the books in this series focused on time anomalies like portals and alternate dimensions. I remember one story in particular that involved a pilot who was flying near the Bermuda Triangle, and somehow made what was normally a several-hour flight in just under an hour, after flying through what they described as a circle in the clouds. I can still recall the bizarre illustration on the page, portraying a small, sesame-sized airplane navigating through an ominous cloud formation. That image has always stayed with me. From that point on, my interest in the unexplained slowly began to grow, but it was never anything that I sought out to explore. It was merely a curiosity that stayed in the back of my mind. It never caused me to question the world around me. After all, I had more important things to think about, like birthday parties, sleepovers, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Of course, I did have small and what I would consider at the time to be insignificant experiences that I assumed all kids had. For instance, my grandparents' basement was always dark and musty, and I distinctly remember always running up those stairs, feeling like someone was always right behind me. And then, of course, there were a couple of times that my friends and I messed around with a Ouija board, and we all swore that someone else was moving to plan chat. This would inevitably lead to a night of telling ghost stories, or reading the infamous book by Elvin Schwartz, scary stories to tell in the dark. And let's not forget the terror-inducing game called Bloody Mary, where there was always that one friend that swore that they could see something looking back at them, in the mirror. Again, all these experiences created positive core memories that I and my friends still enjoy reminiscing about to this day. They were creepy, sure, but they never felt truly real, and ultimately they gave us a way to connect and have fun. However, just a handful of years later, something did happen that made me take the paranormal much more seriously, and to this day, I cannot explain what I witnessed. To the best of my recollection, this took place during the summer of 1995, and I believe it was just before midnight, eastern time. I wish I could be more specific with the time and the date that this occurred, but try as I might. That particular part of the memory alludes me. In any case, I was about 15 years old, and I had recently finished my freshman year of high school. At that time, my mother and I lived in a duplex in a rural area just outside the small town of Hamburg, Michigan. Our daily routine played out as it usually did, and since it was summer break, my mother dropped me off at my grandparents' farm, which was only about 10 minutes from where we lived, and she then went on to work her typical 9-5 shift. I enjoyed a normal day with my grandparents as usual, and before long, it was late afternoon. That evening, my mother picked me up from my grandparents. We drove home, and shortly thereafter, she made dinner. As the sun went down, we watched TV and talked about our day, and nothing unusual happened the entire evening that I can recall. Then, at around 10pm, she told me that I should get some rest and to go to bed, so I got up from the couch and went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. She decided that she was going to go to bed as well, so we said goodnight, turned off the lights, and we went to our rooms. I closed my bedroom door, sat down on the edge of my bed, and took my glasses off, which I then placed on my nightstand. By this time, it was around 10.30, but I wasn't very tired, so I laid there for at least another hour just thinking about my day, and staring out my bedroom window. My room had only the one window, and my bed was in the opposite corner from it, which made it very easy for me to look out and see the clear night sky. Although I had taken my glasses off, I could still make out the moon and stars. For reference, the direction that I would have been facing when looking out my window would have been south by southwest. And toward the direction of Dexter, Michigan. Out my window, I also had a clear view of our next door neighbor's old dilapidated farmhouse, as well as a couple of large dead trees that stood on the northeast side of their property. These trees were very tall, and the branches jutted out in front of the moonlit sky, which made it very easy to notice when a plane or satellite was moving off in the distance behind them. I do remember the air being very still that night, so the stationary tree limbs made any moving objects in the distance, extremely obvious. As I lay motionless in bed, I began to notice what looked like a star behind the branches of the trees. This object looked as if it was pulsating or breathing very slowly, as some stars appear to do. As I observed it over the next few minutes, it remained stationary, but it continued to fluctuate from dark to light. At this point, I was absolutely sure that what I was seeing was in fact a star, satellite, or possibly even an airplane that was very, very far away. But as I continued watching, it appeared to start moving horizontally. Again, I used the large tree branches in our neighbor's yard as a point of reference, and after a moment or two of keeping my body absolutely motionless and trying to debunk what I was seeing, I was ultimately convinced that this object was indeed moving. Although I was hesitant to look away, I wanted to put my glasses on, thinking that my poor eyesight was to blame for this anomaly. But reluctantly, I reached for my glasses and put them on, nervously looking back out the window and worried that it would be gone. But there it was, in the exact same spot, and still moving very slowly. Although it was strange, I was still convinced that it must be something completely normal, but as I watched, it stopped moving, and it then began moving horizontally in the other direction. This is when I realized that whatever this thing was, it wasn't normal. It didn't move like a plane or a helicopter, and it would stop and change direction instantly. I watched it do this back and forth movement for several minutes, and it was at this point when I began to feel slightly uncomfortable. I wasn't scared, but I knew something wasn't right. I laid there in my bed, staying perfectly still, and mesmerized by what I was seeing. Then, without warning, the light, which was still in the same location in the sky, and still appeared to be the size of a star, began to get a little brighter. And at this moment, a piercing white light seemed to emanate from the object. I don't know how, but I could actually see the light travel from this object toward my bedroom window, and then light up the entire wall next to my bed. It was like a strobe light, but with only a single flash, and it happened in a millisecond. In fact, it happened so fast and with such intensity that I flinched and blinked after the light had already gone. Absolutely stunned by what I had seen, I looked out my window, trying my best to locate the object once again, but I could find no trace of it. It was in this very moment when I had the overwhelming feeling of being watched, and this was accompanied by the sensation of having my privacy invaded. It was a bizarre, visceral feeling that I wasn't accustomed to, and it felt inescapable. After several minutes, I reluctantly got out of bed, went to my mom's room, and I tried to wake her, hoping to tell her about what I had just witnessed. I wasn't upset, but I was fairly unsettled, and I didn't know exactly what to say, but I just felt like I needed someone to be aware of what had just happened. My mother, however, is a very deep sleeper, so I couldn't fully wake her, and after a few minutes of me trying to tell her what I saw, she eventually just rolled back over, and went back to sleep. At this point, I went out to the living room, which was only a few feet away, and since I was already feeling a bit exposed, I didn't turn on any lights. I quietly walked across the carpet toward the two large windows that were located in the corner of our living room. From these windows, you could easily see our driveway, a small dirt road leading to the main road, and you could easily see our neighbor's farmhouse and the two trees that I mentioned earlier. Everything was silent, and although I once again looked for the odd light, it did not make another appearance. As I stood there in the dark, staring out the windows, a last wave of unease crept over me, but as soon as it came, it left, and was instantly replaced by a feeling of unnatural calm. Everything seemed peaceful, and I became very relaxed. It was like something had flipped a switch, and I was now completely uninterested in contemplating what I had just experienced. I then returned to my bedroom, got into bed, and I went to sleep. The next morning, I woke up and started my day as usual, but it wasn't until a day or two later that I remembered what I experienced that night. It's like I blocked it out, and to this day, I still have long stretches of time where I'll forget that it even happened, until something reminds me of it. The older I get, the more I think about my experience, and of course, I wonder what it was that I saw, but over the years, the question that really seems to haunt me the most is what the object was doing. Was it actively searching for something, or did it just notice me noticing it? In that moment, after getting out of bed, I remember feeling as though I had been targeted. It was almost as if I had interrupted it as it was in the middle of doing something nefarious, and it then turned its attention towards me. Is this really what was happening, though? I don't know, but it's how I felt at the time it occurred. What bothers me the most about this experience is the feeling of my privacy being invaded. You see, I thought this object was hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away, only to have it shine a light directly into my bedroom window. What I also find disturbing is how I felt fear and anxiety one moment, and absolute peace the next. Was it a higher intelligence putting me into a state of relaxation in an effort to make me forget the encounter, or was it simply a natural reaction to a stressful event? I don't know. I know it may sound like I believe this was some type of encounter with a UFO, but the truth is that I really don't know what it was. As many of you know, I pride myself on being skeptical, not in the sense that I don't believe in certain phenomena, but instead, I try to look at everything from a practical perspective first, before turning to the paranormal for answers. But no matter how many times I revisit these events, I simply cannot find a mundane explanation for what I saw that summer night, back in 1995. So there you have it, my personal encounter with the unknown. Maybe someone listening has witnessed something similar, or perhaps even the exact same thing, and if so, I would like to hear about your experience, which you can email to me at Paranormal Mysteries Podcast at gmail.com. Please remember that all experiences, no matter how insignificant or outlandish you believe they might seem, are always welcome. Until next time, thank you so much for listening, and please remember, don't wait for the unknown to come to you. Get out there and find it. It's out of this world. Speed and reliability. Vast upload and downloadiness right here in rural tranquility. Saturn's dreams. Is that a bull? GigaClear, faster broadband for rural Britain from only £19 a month. Season C's apply. 18 month contract. Prices may rise during contract. Check availability at gigaclear.com. At Simply Health, we know that workplace healthcare can feel like... We're currently experiencing a high core volume and you're in a queue. But now's the time to untangle it and go from inaccessible health to Simply Health. Support all employees with 24-7 access to GP and mental health support. Plus pay-as-you-go services. We're simplifying access to workplace healthcare. Simply Health. See why we're different at simplyhealth.co.uk. Benefits depending on product, T's and C's apply.
