72 I'm Up in the Air About You

It took me a long time today to figure out if I wanted to relate my story of mystery, wonder and confusion to you. What I am about to tell you is for you to decide whether or not it was innocent confusion or a wondrous oddity. Confused? Not half as much as I was.

Approximately 15 years ago, in the early morning hours, I was walking up a hill here in Kingwood. At a certain elevation you can overlook the main part of town, from the old Exxon toward the mall. Beyond that is Caddell, the river and Camp Dawson. It was about 530 or 6 in the morning and as I looked at the view, feeling quite serene, I noticed movement above me. I saw above me at approximately 500 feet, a decent sized fireball with a tail, waving somewhat like the way a fish swims. I stood in awe, thinking how badly I wished I had a camera( no cell phones in those days, remember?) and then it hit me: this thing wasnt really moving that fast. It seemed not much faster than a speeding car and if it was a meteorite, you would think it would be moving pretty fast.

AS I stared in wonder and a little fear, the fireball descended toward the mountain on the other side of the river. I could see the mountain silhouetted behind the fireball and I became quite excited that I was going to witness an actual meteorite impact. Judging by the distance when it appeared above me and the clarity with which I observed it, I would say it was roughly the size of a car. I am NO astronomer, but something that big impacting even the mile or two away from me was going to explode with a decent amount of force. My intention was to watch the impact for posterity(and the story rights). As it descended, I could see the glow as it disappeared below the tree line past my field of view, which ended around the mall. A quick second went by and at an almost blinding speed, the fireball reappeared, shooting up at a very steep angle, still moving east and was soon out of sight.

You dont have to believe me, and for the record, I never said it was a UFO, not then, not now. I just know what I saw. It shook me then and I still get a chill now, wondering what it was and what could have happened. Was it a near-Tunguska like meteor? Could it have had some thermal property that caused it to "bounce" out of our atmosphere? Was it some weapon I had never seen when I was IN the military? Was it something else?

I went home and for a while(quite a while) I never told a soul. Just as some of you are sitting there thinking I'm nuts, I didnt want others ridiculing me. I have witnessed 2 other incidents, one was very similar to this one and was near the same area a couple years later. The other was witnessed around 2003 or 4. Half of Kingwood reported it. We heard it on the scanner and my family was with me, along with others when we witnessed it.

We heard reports of a helicopter crash, oddly enough, in the direction of the aforementioned object. We piled in the van and drove to Maplewood Cemetery, went to the highest point and looked out over the valley. We saw the lights flitting around the hill and at one point they went into the trees. For about half an hour we watched what could only have been search vehicles driving back and forth. I know, they had already reported the crash, right? I'm just telling what we saw. There were many reports that night of the craft going down into the tree line and a couple days later there was a story in the paper reporting that nothing was found. The article did mention that there were numerous calls reporting the event. I really doubt that dozens of people hallucinated some kind of craft going into the trees, all of them saying it crashed in the same spot.

Now, all this being said, I think by now you all know I have a pretty open mind. I firmly believe that the universe is too vast not to contain intelligent life of some kind. It may not be as advanced as us, it may be infinitely moreso. Do I think they have visited us? I'm not sure. I believe there have been civilizations with great technological advancements right here on this planet. I think numerous times over many, many eons there have been rises and falls in our development. Enough time will erase just about any trace of our current civilization, it could have happened before. While it IS possible that a far-advanced race could have developed the technology to travel to the farthest reaches of space, I cannot say definitively that what I have witnessed was a result of such.

I would like to say that the event I witnessed alone was in some ways scary and in some ways it was inspiring and wondrous. It was a bit frightening, thinking that there could have been a natural disaster of potentially huge proportions and yet, after it streaked away, I realized that I had witnessed an event that few see and even fewer are believed of. I really dont care what you believe as far as UFO's or other intelligence, and you dont have to believe whether or not A.- I actually witnessed it or B.- that it could have been something either not from this earth or something long hidden. The first event stirred something in me and set me on a path to personal realization. It became profound over time and self-introspection.

I frequently listen to late-night talk radio and there are occasionally guests that come on saying they were abducted, poked, probed, bred, abused and sometimes communicated with about some ethereal, higher goal. Most of these people are freaks. You can tell if you listen to the timber of their voice, the conviction or lack of and many times, the details that sound too manufactured, too specific. I only told 3 people about this until now. I did not see anything in the way of little green men, little gray men or tall nordic looking humanoids. I didnt see a definitive craft. The fiery tail of the ball DID move in an odd manner, as I said before. It moved, undulating back and forth much the same as a large fish would swim (lazily). That and the whole-moving-slow-in-a-downward-arc-and-then-shooting-off-at-a-high-speed-at-almost-a-90degree-angle thing. Yeah. That would do it.

If you have ever witnessed anything like this, did you or would you relate it to anyone else? I felt almost violated because I knew many wouldnt believe me, even if I understated it.

So there we are. I gave you what I had. You make of it what you will and judge me if you must. I know what I saw, I know how I felt and I know what it did to the way I have looked at the world every day since. It didnt change how I feel about my concept of God and spirituality, but it did change how I viewed the world and how we react to one another-across political, racial and religious lines.

Regardless of whether you think I mis-understood what I saw, hallucinated or whatever, it still changed me. I like to think I grew as a person from it and it helped provoke me to expand my mind. I still, to this day, wish that it had been more like Close Encounters or ET. Hell, I'd settle for Spaceballs....