Space Aliens, UFOs and Me

Whether or not we are alone in the universe has been the stuff of legend and wonder for decades.  This last year, just one more stone added to everything else we've been dealing with, the talk of UFO's and ET's have escalated.  The Pentagon declassified videos showing UFO's performing unusual feats.  I just watched a video on YouTube about declassified Soviet information about underwater divers seeing underwater aliens and flying saucers above and below the water.  Last year a bunch of people wanted to crash Area 51, which I don't think really happened.  A new documentary called The Phenomenon, which I haven't watched, is stirring up more debate.

It's hard to know what to believe, really.

When I was a kid I thought I might have seen a UFO.  I say might because sometimes it feels like I might have been hallucinating.  It couldn't have been real, right?  As a kid I would sleep on the trampoline starring up at the Milky Way.  One night I was looking up, and suddenly there was this big bright light growing bigger and bigger as it came close to me from the South.  How close?  I don't know.  I closed my eyes, and when I opened them it was gone.   I looked up and saw the blinking light of an airliner, as we lived under a flight path, but the object of light itself was gone.

And want to know what's weird?  As I write this I'm watching an episode of Brad Meltzer's Decoded, S2, Ep7 "Proof of UFOs Reveled" off of YouTube, and as I typed the above paragraph I was listening at minute 32.37, relating an experience President Reagan had in 1974.  He was in an airplane near Bakersfield CA.  He saw a bright white light, they followed it to Bakersfield where they saw the white light shoot right up to heaven.  

Get this, when I was a kid I lived an hour driving distance North of Bakersfield, and it was a bright white light.  This is the first time I've heard someone seeing something I saw, and in the neighboring area I saw it.  Albeit I saw it in the early 90's, but still.  Crazy, right?  I'm a little freaked out right now.  I always wondered if I dreamed it.  I started suffering from Sleep Paralyses attacks at age 9, and still deal with them.  My last attack was a couple weeks ago and was quite terrifying.  It's why I sometimes fear sleeping.  But with SP attacks hallucinations are involved, and then some.  My SP experiences I'll never talk about, though my family gets an earful.  It's why they won't tell ghost stories around me.  I've lived it.

But all growing up I wondered if what I saw that night was a dream or not.  I wasn't paralyzed. I was fully able to move.  But even though I saw the white light, I don't recall any light being on me, and I don't remember hearing anything.

For the longest time I kept it secret, until several months ago when I heard both my Dad and my brother Steven saw lights doing weird things in the sky when we lived in Porterville.

So, this will go down as a childhood mystery.  Did I or didn't I see a UFO?  And if so why was it getting closer to me before disappearing?  I wished I didn't squeeze my eyes shut, but I was scared, so I don't know if it shot up to heaven or not.

With all this alien and UFO talk I've been seeing an increase in discussions if whether those of us who are Christians would suddenly lose our faith if we found out alien life was real.  I'm apart of a Facebook group called "Super Geeks of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," and a little while back such a discussion broke out with 298 comments.  The resounding answer was that we wouldn't lose our faith.  I wouldn't.  At all.  Our faith believes God created worlds without end, and that there's life on other worlds.  It's probably why there are so many Latter-day Saint nerds, because we're curious about the universe.  The statistical probability of there being intelligent life out there is so minuscule, what with all the conditions that must be met with a perfect world, etc, that if there was alien life it would prove intelligent design as legit.

Even so it's all interesting and fun to talk about.  Have fun looking at the stars.

Sarah

The Suspicious Area 51

When I was a kid Area 51 was the stuff of legend.  It was a mystery.  A conspiracy.  And everyone had an opinion on it whether they loved space stuff or not.  I actually debated in my own mind if Area 51 was really some top secret base holding imprisoned space aliens.  I even have an ex-uncle-in-law who claimed to have seen a dead alien in a body bag at Area 51 while serving as a Marine.  I didn't believe him, and I couldn't tell if he was serious or not.

There were jokes and jabs about it on Science Fiction shows.  Area 51, along with Roswell, which got its own television series, were hot topics back in the late 90s, early 2000's.  Or maybe I heard a lot about it because I'm a nerd who's into really geeky things, and my friends and family like geeky things as well.

Yesterday while cleaning up the music room in preparation for cool music equipment I found this Area 51 security badge.  The music room used to be my brothers bedroom, and some of their things are still in there.  Finding this brought back memories.  All those times we wondered as kids if aliens were on Earth and around us.

Now that I'm older I don't believe in aliens in that way, at all, though I do believe there's life out there in the Universe, and that we're not alone.  But then I'm LDS, and Latter-Day-Saints believe God created Worlds without end

It's all fun.  And since my brothers don't read my blog--shame, right?--I'll bring this badge to our next Talea meeting to see who claims it.

Here's to hoping, dreaming, and believing.