Hello! I'm midwest. Nice to meet you.

Hello everyone. I'm glad that I finally decided to join this site. I've been lurking for about a year and have visited numerous times before that. I believe that ATS is a valuable resource and I sincerely hope that I can do my part to make it a better place.

I decided to join as there is just too much crazy stuff happening in the world right now, and ATS is on top of everything. Good work team!

So without further delay, here is a little (ok a lot) of information about myself:

I am a somewhat young white male (of European and Native American descent) from the Midwestern United States.

I have nearly completed graphic design and photography degrees with a marketing minor (over 170 credits at this point), and am still at university. I believe I am well qualified in determining fake photographs from real evidence. I understand how cameras and optics work, and have some experience with computer animation and video editing.

On various personality tests I am often labeled as a concrete and abstract thinker, which is kind of interesting and funny. I believe this often helps me bring perspective and insight into the conversation, as well as the ability to sympathize with both sides of an argument and help mediate.

I am interested and somewhat versed in numerous sciences, such as meteorology, astronomy, geology, psychology and physics. I believe that science is a useful framework for describing the universe, but in my opinion it can't describe everything because it is incomplete and the universe is rather flexible. I read my first college level meteorology textbook when I was in 6th grade. I enjoy storm chasing. Once a tornado chased me. My wife was concerned after that, so I haven't done much chasing since. At least not in very dangerous storms.

Once I saw an unexplained animal with my wife. It was only for a few seconds before it ran away. Upon further investigation, we believe it to be similar to a Chupacabra, but with a head similar to the Jersey Devil (pointed more like a Kangaroo). It was at least 3 1/2 to 4 feet tall when standing on it's hind legs from behind a bush that we later measured. But when it ran away, it was real fast and moved like a big cat, low to the ground. It was rather startling to say the least. We got my wife's brother and wife, I grabbed my camera and we spread out searching for the animal in the field it ran into. It was night, and we didn't find it.

When I was in high school, late one night with my best friend, we witnessed three fairly bright lights in the sky moving slowly in formation, turning as it crossed the highway in front of his convertible. The lights then sped off at incredible speed in the general direction of our travel towards my house. The rest of our journey to my home, for about 5 minutes, every single street light turned off as we drove under it. Upon arrival, I checked my watch. About 5 minutes until curfew. Walking up the driveway, there was a great flash of light that stunned my vision. My friend said he turned around, and didn't see me anywhere (the top was down on the convertible). He drove off! When I got inside, it was 5 minutes after curfew and my dad jokingly chided me. I'm still not sure why it took me 10 minutes to get inside. My friend didn't really like to talk about that evening.

After that experience, I had what I call the "turning off streetlamp syndrome." Many of my friends have been spooked by this when they are with me. They always knew I was a little off, but they didn't really realize it until we would walk around town at night. The effect has faded over the years, but it still happens sometimes, usually in bursts. A more recent episode scared a friend that I made at college when we were out at night taking photos. I had never told him that I sometimes experience this. He then told me he is a big believer in UFOs, which I didn't know about him. So while it still flares up from time to time, it is not predictable any more.

When I was in about 5th grade, my neighbor friend moved to a town a few hours away into an over 100 year old house. One day my mom drove my sister and I there for the weekend. I saw many things those nights that I can't explain, mainly related to paranormal activity. Granted I was young, but it planted the seeds in my mind about alternative understanding of the world we live in.

When I was really young, I would have night terrors about UFOs and aliens, despite having limited exposure to such subject matter. I would tell my mom about getting taken at night and creepy stuff like that. She doesn't believe in aliens but she was so freaked out that she slept in my bed for several weeks until things got back to normal. I also remember we talked to a doctor about it, but I can't remember all the details. I was around age six I think.

I believe that dreams can sometimes reveal things, such as my alien terrors. Other times they are complete nonsense. Once I had many things in a dream come true. They were primarily related to the appearance of my grandparent's property, such as the trees that were all sawed down along their driveway after an ice storm that hit the following year, along with the addition of a gate after they were robbed. Nothing incredible, but noteworthy to me as these dreams were incredibly vivid. I am not a psychic, and have many reservations about them in general. But I believe sometimes we see things in advance, for whatever reason. The only other dream that I had that was that vivid was of my (then future) wife. I couldn't see her face, but everything else about her is an accurate depiction of who I ended up marrying. Long story short, she gets injured somehow (it seemed almost like torture or shrapnel from an explosion embedded into parts of her body). In this dream, I was also with a group that was moving between safe houses, and it seemed like the society was under a military rule after some sort of disaster or political uprising. It was in a suburban environment. I remember seeing tanks patrolling on side streets. Again, just interesting to note at this point as it was extremely vivid and happened in 2006 or 7 before I started opening my eyes to the changes that were taking place in the world. It is probably nothing though, but considering my dad has a similar history, who knows. When he was younger, he didn't know a darn thing about Mayans and had this miraculous dream of a glowing gold 3D ellipse that had the numbers "2013" written on it. He remembers remarking that he got the feeling that it was the coming of a different age. After he found out about the Mayans years later, he was kind of concerned, but remembers feeling that it was a positive change. Even so, my dad is extremely logical, and says that it was probably just chance and nothing to be worried about.

Speaking of sleep, once I woke up in the early hours of the morning to tornado sirens. Frantically running into my living room to grab my camera (being the chaser that I am), the wind was blowing so hard that it was coming in around the edges of my balcony sliding glass doors, spraying my living room with water. It was similar to RFD (rear-flank downdraft) from storms that I've been in before (like a micro-burst?). I'd estimate the winds to be 90-100mph (I am a certified storm spotter). During this panic, I couldn't find my CF card for my camera. While looking through the couch cushions, I get this feeling to turn around. In the sky, there were a few bright gold orbs, shimmering around their perimeter. No helicopters would be flying in that weather. I was so upset that I couldn't photograph them due to my missing CF card. They vanished into the storm after about 15-20 seconds. I believe they were either ball lightning or a UFO. I've read that UFOs are sometimes attracted to incredibly powerful storms such as this (I believe it was a large derecho). I checked the arrival/departure schedules at the local airport, which doesn't get a huge amount of traffic, and there were no planes landing or taking off near that time. The lights were also low in the sky, low enough that they were below the already low base of the thunderstorm.

Talking of my camera, I'm kind of a technology enthusiast. I have built several computers from scratch, but even so I prefer Macs. I also love my iPhone and iPad. As far as camera equipment goes, I'm a Canon man. I have a 7D with a 24-105L and 100-400L, among other pieces of kit. I hope that someday I get the opportunity to use this good equipment to capture a UFO or other unexplained phenomenon. I'm still bitter about that missing CF card when those orbs appeared.

Well, I hope I have properly introduced myself. Probably a lot for an introduction thread, but these are some of the events that have defined me and brought me to ATS in my search of the truth. I've had a few other weird things happen over the years. Some of them escape my immediate recollection, but this is a good start with the main events. Perhaps some day I will make threads about them, but lacking photographic evidence, I'll likely be torn apart. Even so, feel free to ask questions. Hopefully I'll respond within a reasonable period of time, but I've been pretty backed up with school work lately so we'll see how it goes. Thanks in advance for patience. Now time to get back to work!

midwest

hey. glad to see more midwesterners on here. where you from?

Welcome!!!!!!!!

Welcome Midwest, hope you enjoy your stay have fun and develop a second skin, Only joking have fun,

reply to post by antemundane


I try not to get too specific online, but I am from Missouri.

Welcome man!

Welcome to ATS!

Thanks for your extesive intro. I was very much into weather and aliens, secret technology etc before. After I found Falun Dafa all my questions about our future and the meaning of everything happening right now could be answerred.

I sincerely recommend you to read the book Zhuan Falun in my signature link below. I am certain you will appreciate it.

The book explains all the secrets about how to become a truly good person, opening your third eye, developing supernormal powers(inborn powers) etc etc.

The book was a bestseller in China during the 90s and then the communists banned it and started their terrible persecution of 100 million Falun Dafa practitioners(as you may realize the reasons of that persecution are no coincidence either, we live during the end of times - as we know them, in my opinion, and Falun Dafa has a massive role to play during this age, as Nostradamus, the vikings and others predicted) ages ago.

In my opinion this is the most important book published since this civilization began 5000 years ago. Please read it and enjoy.

/Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance is good, Falun Dafa is good