What was your personal epiphany to begin an interest in the UFO phenomena?

Myself, I was about 12 or 13 years old. Living in the United States, on the outskirts of a medium sized city. The house where I lived was on a street in a rather congested residential neighborhood, where the distance between the houses was the width of the driveway. It was late one night, oh, about 11:00pm, I was sitting watching TV, when I saw a bright bluish light breaking through the venetian blinds on the front window (the window facing the street). My initial reaction was, "oh, another cop car going by", when the light-beams reaching through the blinds began to move not horizontally (as they would if a car was passing), but vertically (as if the light was rising up from the ground)!

I was astounded, and puzzled at the moment, however, I did not get up from the chair and look out the window (which upon reflection was strange in itself). There was no sound, none but the TV in what was now the background of my attention. I sat there, pondering this experience for what seemed no more than a minute or two. Shrugging it off, I shifted my attention back to the TV, and discovered the show I was watching was over. Not only was it over, but the show after that was over as well! So, in retrospect, what seemed like a minute or two was actually more like 90 minutes.

Over the next few days, I kept thinking back to how strange that experience was, and still not realizing the time discrepancy. When my mother asked me why I had a bloody nose overnight (seems my pillow was bloodied and I never noticed). I had not answer, when she told me I might be suffering the same nose bleed issue I had as a small child (of about 2-3) periodically overnight.

She made an appointment to see my pediatrician, who gave me a physical exam, etc... He noticed a small point-like item under the skin in the back of my neck. He asked if I had been stabbed with a pencil in school, which I had not. He asked if it hurt at all, which it didn't (I didn't even know it was there). He offered to extract it there in the office, numbing it with freeze spray as a local anesthetic. My mom agreed, so he went to work. Once he had it frozen, he cut into the skin, only to find the point-like item had dissolved. It was odd, but at that time, nobody thought anything of it, so he put a small bandage on the incision, and we went on our way.

It was this incident that got me thinking more about that strange light, combined with the nose-bleeds, and odd thing in my neck. My interest was sparked more when I learned of the incident at Roswell in 1947. It was then I began my personal research into the topic, hoping to find SOME positive evidence of what this UFO phenomena was all about. That was 40 years ago now, and as a scientist, I still have not seen ANY verifiable evidence to explain if anything is going on at all.

I have NEVER told that entire story to anyone in the past 40 years. But, thought I'd offer it up as a good-faith measure to ATS to hopefully allow others to open up with their stories of how they got interested in this topic. All my life since, I have been interested and supported the space program, and search in vain for any evidence to explain all of this.....

Go ahead, I have my flame resistance tile suit on....

A Honest as the day is long Guy i had known all my life was followed home by one early one morning.....i looked into his terrified eyes and knew he wasn't lying to me....That's when i really started to get more into the subject...

being probed...


Oh, and witnessing an event first hand.

I've never had any type of experience that would lead me to conclusively believe in extra-terrestrial life. I've seen some UFOs, but dots in the sky moving erratically could really be almost anything.

So my interest in the subject might seem without grounds. And while this will sound extremely strange and would never hold up under scientific scrutiny, it remains true: I've just always "known" there are beings outside our ken.

Maybe its delusional, maybe not. But that's my story.

S&F

Watching the skies while being outside with friends a lot when i was young.
My imagination/what ifs took hold of me.

Wow, what a way to develop an interest! I never really had an epiphany moment of my own. I started reading books on the Loch Ness monster in our school library when I was ten. After gaining an interest in Cryptozoology and reading the other books available about Bigfoot, the Jersey Devil, etc., I came across a small paperback called "Chariots of the Gods." I read it and was enthralled almost instantly. I started using our local library to find books about UFOs in our past and modern UFO incidents. It was from those resulting readings that I finally developed an interest.

Not extraordinary, but it's my story.

Originally posted by slapjacks
being probed...


Oh, and witnessing an event first hand.

What kind of being 'Probed' you ..EH!

I was nine. TV had only three stations and those broadcast limited programming. We could not have dreamed about tv as we know it now. Even then my parents were very restrictive and about all I could watch were the old Loony Tunes. I Would wake up in the morning and wait fit the programming to begin. There was no 24 hour programming. Just a stationary test pattern for about 6 or 8 hours a night.

In our movie houses, we didn't call them cinemas, a large portion of the movies were still in black and white.
That didn't matter to me because I could only go with my parents and then only rarely. How did we ever survive?

I fill in these details to set a context for my sighting. Unlike today we were not completely saturated with saucers and aliens and scifi. Sure there was some but for the most part UFOs were all about crazy people where I came from.

There was no space program that we knew of. No Sputnik. It was 1956

So there I was on a warm summer night. Camping out with my friend in the back yard looking up at the stars. Just looking and wondering when we notice a star moving through the sky. It was moving at about the pace as would a satellite today. But no satellites yet, remember? We considered that it might be a highflying airplane but the light was not flashing or fluctuating. It was just floating along at a straight and steady pace.

After five minutes or so I noticed that it's path was taking It directly towards a bright star directly overhead. Now one of my favorite cartoons was one where the rabbit or the pig or the fat whatever is being chased by the hunter or the fox or whatever villain. The chasee would try to find a place to hide and find nothing but a skinny tree, which was of course to skinny to hide behind. But hide he would. Just disappearing fat body and all behind the skinny tree.

So I thought to myself,my nine year old self, as the moving star drew closer to the bright star overhead," Wouldn't it be funny if it came up to the other star and didn't come out the other side like the hiding bunny.
A minute later as it drew very close to the star overhead I marveled at the amazing coincidence that the moving star I had first noticed way over there, had traveled half way across the sky and was about to be in the exact same place as the stationary star. It didn't come close. They matched exactly. And it didn't come out the other side. There was only the bright star left overhead.

I have never had an actual experience but have been interested in the mystery and possibility for years.. after my dad passed a few years ago I started googling all types of things. Eventually an image or 2 led me to ATS and I have been here ever since.

I am absolutely intrigued by the possibility... hope one day I have my own "good" experience! Just knowing there is more to "our world" and other living beings, makes me so curious!

Originally posted by smyleegrl
I've never had any type of experience that would lead me to conclusively believe in extra-terrestrial life. I've seen some UFOs, but dots in the sky moving erratically could really be almost anything.

So my interest in the subject might seem without grounds. And while this will sound extremely strange and would never hold up under scientific scrutiny, it remains true: I've just always "known" there are beings outside our ken.

Maybe its delusional, maybe not. But that's my story.

S&F

Honestly, I don't think anyone can say ET life doesn't exist, because we've only explored a really small part of our universe. We're just starting to explore exoplanet surfaces to see what they contain. And we've only found 700 so far. And we're really not that far into our galaxy. Let alone all the other galaxies.

Never had one, an epiphany that is.

For me since i could reach the books on the bookshelves I was able to leaf through my mums old UFO books from the 50's, sure they were mostly written by Adamski (and yeah ive known all his stuff is all a load of bollocks for a long time now) but it was those photos of fuzzy blobs of light and their captions, plus my mums own retelling of her sightings of UFOs when she was a child growing up out in the logging forests in the 40's that started it for me.

We also as a family have always had ALOT of books around on all sorts of things, including alot of books on astronomy (first book I opened about it was the readers digest atlas of the universe, damn thing was almost up to my waste ) so I was always looking and reading up on stuff like that or watching TV series about space like Cosmos when it aired (they dont stuff like that anymore), throw in my interest in pretty much everything cryptozoological, paranormal, forteen and the like (again thanks to books) and it was inevitable at that young age to develop a balanced interest in all of it..

So yeah, never had an epiphany, just always have been interested in this and alot of other similar subjects from day one. That being said my interest has evolved over the decades, from blind childs acceptance of anything i heard or read, to active searching out info as a teen to the more guarded and questioning mentality i have today.

And as for experiences, ive had a few over the last 30+ years but nothing I can say WAS a UFO, and even though they are my experiences I still will never say that i did see something... after all, no way I can honestly say they were what i thought they were, because there is always the chance they were something else entirely.

Originally posted by TerryMcGuire
I fill in these details to set a context for my sighting. Unlike today we were not completely saturated with saucers and aliens and scifi. Sure there was some but for the most part UFOs were all about crazy people where I came from.

There was no space program that we knew of. No Sputnik. It was 1956

So there I was on a warm summer night. Camping out with my friend in the back yard looking up at the stars. Just looking and wondering when we notice a star moving through the sky. It was moving at about the pace as would a satellite today. But no satellites yet, remember? We considered that it might be a highflying airplane but the light was not flashing or fluctuating. It was just floating along at a straight and steady pace.

Sounds similar to my mothers and around about the same time too (although there where no TV's and had no real contact with movies, not of those types anyway). Although for her given where she lived out in the forests as a child and how remote it was she often says she saw small groups of craft crossing the night sky on rare occasion. And again all pre-satellite like your own, and New Zealand at that time sure didnt have any sort of military operations like that going on out there... hell i dont think we do even now

Originally posted by smyleegrl
I've never had any type of experience that would lead me to conclusively believe in extra-terrestrial life. I've seen some UFOs, but dots in the sky moving erratically could really be almost anything.

So my interest in the subject might seem without grounds. And while this will sound extremely strange and would never hold up under scientific scrutiny, it remains true: I've just always "known" there are beings outside our ken.

Maybe its delusional, maybe not. But that's my story.

S&F

Interest in a subject does not need "grounds". That was not my point of the post. I offered my story up as one example of how my interest in the subject was sparked. I was interested in how others here "got their start" following this odd and sometimes infuriating subject.

For the record, I need evidence of visitation, real evidence. Even though I have my own story, I still have not seen any incontrovertible evidence (the point-like object in my neck dissolved into nothing). So, what I have is my experience, nothing more. Yet I still search, but my "bar" is very high to believe visitation.

- Do I believe there is intelligent life in our universe (outside of this planet - although sometimes my belief in even that is shaky)? A resounding YES.
- Do I believe the Earth has been visited now (or in the past) by an intelligence outside of this planet? No...not yet.

reply to post by Krakatoa

My interest started similar to yours, only I was perhaps earlier and younger. I was in many foster homes in the 40's, and I had a number of events of seeing these large eyed beings staring down at me. Then I would have these damn nose bleeds. I never talked about it as life was hard without making it more so.

I also had attacks that would seem to take over my mind which I fought for many years. And i became stronger. By the fifth grade level, I was designing motors for ufos with counter rotating magnetic fields, but knew nothing of what I was trying to do technically. Never stopped with my interest from the early years.

Curiosity.

When I was 13 I mentally called out during a very stressful time in my life. Twenty minutes later 'they' showed up. I saw a few strange spotlights searching the area. When I went into the back yard to see where the lights were coming from, I saw the large circular metallic object from which the lights were emanating.

One of the lights swung up and shined in my face. At once, I was standing in my driveway again, except now there was an individual standing beside me holding some type of gadget. Communication was telepathic and I was instructed to interact with this technology, which I did. Suddenly, I felt much better and at that instant the individual disappeared. I went into the yard and looked, and the ship had gone as well. I felt abandoned, and gathered my thoughts for a few minutes.

I later discovered that about three hours had gone missing. My mother was pissed because she had been out looking for me. She gave me a beating, but I didn't tell her what happened, as she would've had me committed on the spot.

Since then it's been a hell of a ride, I must say. Maybe not an epiphany, but it will do, eh?

reply to post by Krakatoa

Researching Ancient Atlantis.

Well I know I have shared this before but it has been a long time, and I honestly have no idea where it is buried in the threads of ATS. My interest in the UFO phenomenon specifically began after my first sighting when I was about 14 years old . Actually come to think of it I documented this sighting on the old ATS media site but not sure its still there. Let me see if I can find a copy of my video because hearing me explain it is soo much better than trying to visualize it in text. Found it. It is unlisted so this is the only way to access it.

Fishing with friends when we were 14, when 3 fast moving balls of light in formation passed in front of our cove at the lake, then made an instant full right hand maneuver then blinked out.

I was instantly sold

Prior to 2012, I was not at all interested in this sort of topic. I would occasionally watch a tv program about UFO's & Aliens if there was nothing else on, I detested any type of Sci-Fi movies/books, etc. I have, however, been interested in astronomy, stars, and planets.

My views experienced an abrupt change last summer when I had my first sighting driving home from work. I watched a very fast moving object zoom across the sky, traveling at an unbelievable speed. It was not an airplane, helicopter, or other type of aircraft that is normally seen around my hometown. This was something different, very bright, and very fast. A few months go by and again, on my way home from work I saw another object. This one appeared to be three orange glowing orbs that made up a sort of triangular shape hovering approximately 100 or so feet in the sky above the express way. Many other drivers appeared to see this phenomena as people were pulling over and some (like myself) just stopping on the highway. The lights just sort of hung out in one general area for a minute or two and then BAM, all of a sudden it was just gone. I was like "what the he** was THAT"?

That's when I began reading, watching, and researching the topic and remembered an incident that occurred when I was around 4 or 5 years old. It was very near Christmas, may have even been Christmas Eve. My sister and I slept with our mom for some odd reason that night when she awoke in the middle of the night to find three "elves" standing at the foot of the bed. She has stuck to the SAME story for over 30 years and can remember it like it was yesterday. I asked her not too long about this incident and she just sort of got real quiet, turned a bit pale, then said "yeah, I'm pretty sure those were aliens". It was extremely chilling, the way she said those words. I guess they were there for her, since I didn't see them nor have I experienced any symptoms (other than occasional sleep paralysis/panic attacks shortly after falling asleep) that are reported by the majority alien abduction victims.

I have known about ATS for several years, but never joined and never read this forum. That all changed the night I saw the orange object and I came right to ATS to look for answers.