Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #8
I’m pretty skeptical about people’s stories – especially the more bizarre and flamboyant they get, but I’m not interviewing people to judge their credibility. I’m interviewing them to hear about all the different experiences people have (or claim to) with the paranormal, be it ghosts, aliens, monsters, or other unexplained phenomena. The experience I will relate in this week’s article is one I collected from an interesting person with a particularly interesting experience.
Nelson, as I will refer to him since he didn’t want me to use his real name, caught my attention at a local coffee shop when he asked the cashier if the change she was handing back to her was “marked.” She assured him it was not, but he still insisted on her replacing the three bills and several coins with different ones, just to be sure. Now, I usually have to look carefully for people with stories, but Nelson fell in my lap and I had to ask about his paranoia.
“Someone after you, man?” I casually ask Nelson.
He glances nervously from side to side as he answers – never making eye contact, “There’s someone after EVERYONE, pal. You should be worried about who’s after YOU, in fact, it’s not safe here for you.”
“It’s not?” I ask as I also glance around, just in case.
“Talking to me,” Nelson waves his coffee at me and the other patrons in the coffee shop as he says, “It’s not safe for you, safe for me, or safe for them.”
“Why not?”
“Look, pal!” Nelson shouts, then realizing he’s brought attention to himself he lowers his voice and offers, “You really wanna’ know about things, take a walk with me. But I warn you, you can’t un-hear what I’m gonna’ tell you and your life might get dangerous after that.”
I agree to his terms, but before joining him on a walk, ask him if it would be okay to put his story in an article for ParanoidGamer.com. He shrugs and says that’s the perfect spot for his story – especially since he had never heard of the website before, his story would live on in low profile even if he did not. Gee, thanks, Nelson.
I leave with him and we walk down the tree-lined streets past the boutique shops and vintage music stores and he tells me why “they” are after him.
“It all started in ’73, and it wasn’t the LSD, no it wasn’t,” Nelson starts as he sips his large coffee, “I was an engineer in the Army back then. I was the guy they’d send out to the middle of nowhere and I’d survey the site for a makeshift airstrip, or forward combat hospital, or strategic command center or what have you. They’d usually drop me off by helo, and pick me up two days later once I had scoured the area for any and all resources and obstacles. It was overseas, it was domestic, and sometimes I didn’t even know where I was, just that I was there and had a job to do. Did one, sometimes two a month. It was one of those times I didn’t know where I was exactly that I got in a heap of trouble.”
Nelson went on to describe where he thought he was. He figured he was somewhere in Russia or maybe Alaska, but probably Russia due to the flat terrain covered in pines and the only sign of mountains was far off in the distance. He had flown out from Beale Air Force Base northwards, and his flight was almost 14 hours before they dropped him in a meadow. They had left the late summer of California behind and entered the early winter of the northern climes; but he admitted he could have been in Canada for all he could tell.
“They came when I was just getting ready to climb into my tent for the night,” Nelson recalls, “I was shivering so damn hard I couldn’t piss a straight line if I wanted to. Didn’t matter, they fell on that meadow like they had purpose. Quiet as a church mouse’s fart, the ship landed with no noise and no mussin up the grass – like it wasn’t even there, wasn’t really real, you know? But it was real, too real.”
Nelson had stopped walking by this point; we were standing on a small arched bridge crossing a stream in the middle of a park. He set his empty coffee cup on the hand-rail and stared out over the waters and the park as he finished his experience.
He described the “ship” as a conical vessel not much larger than a Chinook, it had only one light and that was aimed directly at him. It was the bright light that caught his attention, since there was no rush of air or loud noise that would have been expected of common aircraft of the time. He thought it might have been shiny on the outside, but in the dim light of the early evening and the bright light shining in his face, he was never certain.
“Next thing I know, I’m bein’ shook awake by some damned warrant officer and my ass is on fire,” Nelson shouted as he pushed his cup off the rail and watched it fall into the stream below, “They picked me up and brought me home, never asked a word about the two days that I had no memory of. Still don’t remember them – but the hair up my ass is that my survey was done, just like I always did it – in my handwriting and everything! I wasn’t kiddin’ about my ass, either… Seriously felt like I had eaten two gallons of fresh Texas lava-bean chilli for the next week!”
“You just… littered,” I murmur before asking my real question of Nelson, “So the aliens probed you?”
“Who the hell said anything ‘bout damned aliens?” Nelson laughs, “It was the Army did it to me! Awful convenient to be abducted by aliens right after I arrive and returned with no memory of the past two days, don’t you think? ‘Sides, it happened four more times before I finally told ‘em if they wanna’ probe me, they can just come out and say so. I told my CO after my last mission, ‘You wanna’ probe me? Do it! Do it right here, no reason to freak me out if you’re gonna do it no matter what! They gave me a PMC Discharge a few months after I refused to take my last mission. Crazy part is, I haven’t been abducted and my ass hasn’t been on fire since I got out.”
Is Nelson’s story of the American Military conspiring to conduct research on its own troops the truth, or was he truly abducted by aliens and a far more mysterious plot than even he suspects underway? If Nelson’s story is true, does the United States have technology capable of mimicking UFO’s and the medical capacity to conduct research without leaving marks, only pain? Nelson, as he later told me, is a believer in UFOs and aliens, but believes his experiences were made to seem like alien abductions to throw him of the scent of the military’s actual actions. It goes without saying, that Nelson is the quintessential conspiracy theorist, but was he actually abducted and experimented on? What do you think?
Next Week’s Everyday Paranormal Experiences, Interview #9: “The Evil Inside.”
On the Article Series:
I myself am a huge skeptic of all things paranormal or extra-terrestrial and I tend to take most tales of either with a huge grain of salt – sometimes even an entire salt shaker, depending on the tale that’s being weaved. I have even had a couple ghostly and otherworldly experiences myself, which I may relate in later stories – and I’m skeptical of those! Is what I experienced the truth of the experience or is there an empirical explanation that I simply have not yet unlocked? Regardless of my skeptical nature, ghost stories and alien encounters have always fascinated me as they have all of humanity for thousands of years.
It is this fascination that I wish to convey in a unique and different paranormal or alien experience every week – Thursday, to be exact. I will be conducting interviews with everyday people to hear their stories and relate them back to you, the Paranoid Gamers. Perhaps I’ll be interviewing some of you, as well.
Do you have an experience of a haunted item, place, or person? Have you been visited by aliens or heretofore undocumented intelligent life – terrestrial or extra so? If you’d like to share your experience and possibly have your tale published in this series of articles, please contact me and we can relive your experience.
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bleachorange
September 28, 2012 @ 10:33 pm
Introducing my new “Odorometer” – It scales from 1 to 5, with 5 being the high end.
This story registers a 4 on the scale.
Numbers on the scale:
1 – Mintos – smells fresh to me (with a sprig of mint!)
2 – Fresh Roadkill – it’s been sitting out, but it hasn’t spoiled yet
3 – Out-of-Date-Milk – better toss that milk, failed the smell test
4 – Week Old Fish – You can smell this a few blocks away
5 – County Landfill – Leave now, before your property values drop any further!
I propose adopting the Odorometer for rating skepticism of paranormal experiences.
Rustyn Clark
September 29, 2012 @ 10:22 am
Ha! I love it! I may have to tweak the syntax on your scale, but I think I will adopt something along these lines for future articles. Maybe even update past articles with my rating? I wonder if I can add a poll to each article… hrmm…
Nice suggestion, Bleach.
Like I said, I just relate the story people give me as “honest to goodness truth,” and I myself remain a super-skeptic.
Mike Bonura
September 30, 2012 @ 7:08 pm
Bien Bien