Sightings - It's A Mystery

Episode Date: April 20, 2026

When a family discovers a strange metal sphere on their Florida land, they fall down a supernatural rabbit hole. Is it man made, or something more? Story Music tracks used by kind permission of CO.AG Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@sightingspod⁠ Refresh your wardrobe with Quince at https://quince.com/SIGHTINGS for free shipping and 365-day returns. Sign up for BetterHelp and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/sightings #ad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's something else here now. Something new. From. Exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. This episode is brought to you by Tellus Online Security. Oh, tax season is the worst. You mean hack season? Sorry, what? Yeah, cybercriminals love tax forms.

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That's the Volkswagen Taos. Capable and confident, the Volkswagen Taos is fit for everyday life. Nimble in traffic, agile and tight spots, and still spacious enough for weekend getaways. While available 4-motion all-wheel drive gives confidence in rain and snow. The capable Taos, you deserve more confidence. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. We like to believe that the world is knowable that given enough time, enough science, enough determination, every mystery eventually surrenders its secrets.

But what about the ones that don't? The objects that shouldn't exist. The phenomena that refuse to be explained. The discoveries that leave even the sharpest minds staring into the void. Some things, it seems, were never meant to be understood. Welcome to sightings. I'm MacLeod. And I'm Brian, and we are excited to be back with you for something a little bit different this month.

Ooh, I like different. Yeah, we heard you guys, and we know you love the stories where McLeod can really get into character and bring to life kind of these infamous supernatural events and incidents. So today, we're going to bring you exactly that. It is a touch shorter than our normal stories that we did last year. But don't worry, we've got an equally mysterious listener story coming up. right after that. But for now, put your thinking caps on because we're about to explore the mysterious Betz sphere found in Florida in the 1970s. Is it a man-made metal ball or something much

more perplexing? Find out on this episode of Sightings. This episode is sponsored by Quince. McLeod, this time of year always makes me rethink what is in my closet. Monsters! Yes, obviously there are monsters. I was thinking more along the lines of clothes for the purposes of this. And when it comes to clothes, I am trying to keep fewer things, but better ones, which is why I keep coming back to Quince.

My wife and I love Quince. The fabrics are great, and the fits are spot on. We actually recently got some pots and pans from them, and they're working great. Which is amazing. And that's because Quince works directly with Ethical Factory. They cut out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. So everybody out there, it's time to refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com slash sightings for free shipping and 365 day returns.

Now available in Canada, too, eh? Go to Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash sitings for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash sightings. Okay, so here we go. My name is Terry Betts. I'm 21. I'm about to show you something that is absolutely wild or let you hear something that's absolutely wild. Actually, no, I should start from the beginning because otherwise this isn't going to make any sense. And even then, I'm not entirely sure it does. So a few weeks ago, I found something that is, well, it's pretty darn unexplainable.

And believe me, I've tried to explain it harder than most people probably would. I guess that's, you know, that's just how I'm wired. So a few weeks ago, my mom and I drove out to Fort George Island to check out this land that my parents bought. It's a bunch of acres of marshland and timber east of Jacksonville. But here's the kicker. There'd just been this big brush fire on the land, so we needed to see how bad it was.

And since my dad was away at sea, he's a marine engineer. It was up to the two of us. And, yeah, it was. pretty bad just huge stretches of growth were scorched to nothing like literally there was nothing left well nothing except the sphere I remember I was I was walking back to the car when I saw it just sitting there on the blackened ground was this metal sphere or ball or whatever you want to call it and it's it's weird there was no crater no disturbance like it had fallen from

somewhere. It was just there, like someone had placed it there. So I called my mom over, and once we decided it wasn't like a bomb or something, I picked it up. And even though it was only eight inches across, give or take, it was way heavier than it looked, 20 pounds at least, and it was perfectly smooth with no seams anywhere, nothing at all, except this little triangular mark on one side. So my mom and I pass it back and forth trying to figure out what it was. And she thought it was maybe

some kind of fancy cannonball since Fort George has a long history of, I don't know, colonial era stuff. But there were no signs that had ever been fired out of a cannon or handled or anything. And it wasn't all rusty like most cannonballs that you would find.

So anyway, I decided to take it home with us. It didn't seem dangerous. if anything, it just seemed unusual enough to be interesting. I kept it in my room, mostly on the window seat, you know, in case it wanted to enjoy the view, and it didn't really do anything. I mean, why would it? It's a ball. But then, one night I was in my room playing my guitar, and I noticed it.

The ball was vibrating or humming. It's like a tuning fork when it hits that exact frequency, and I played a different chord, and the ball stopped. Then I played the first chord again, and there it was. I sat on my floor for probably an hour just playing different notes at this metal ball, watching it respond to some notes and not others.

Then after that, I started testing it more deliberately, rolling it across the floor, stuff like that, and I realized that if you gave it a push, it would roll a foot or two, then pause, kind of like it was thinking. Then reverse course and come right back to you. I figured maybe it was just some curvature in my floor, so I tried other surfaces too. Same thing.

On my mom's glass coffee table, it would roll to the edge, then stop, and change direction. Every single time, it did it. It never fell off. Even weirder, when you put it on some angled surfaces, it rolled up the incline on its own. I still can't explain that. Oh, another thing, sunlight. It seems to respond to light. Somehow, like it's noticeably more active on bright days.

On cloudy days, it just sits there. Kind of sad. I tried putting a lamp next to it to see what happened, but it made no difference. It's only the sun. So all this got me realizing I was dealing with something unusual, which brings me to now. I have this hammer. It's in my right hand. That doesn't matter, but it's in my right hand.

And I'm going to tap it very gently just to see what happens. See? Did you hear that? And then earlier, I tried shaking the thing, and it made this low vibrating sound like there was something inside, not loose or rattling exactly, but there. It was inside it. I don't know. So, I don't know if any of this makes sense.

But you can hear the ring. You can. And if there's some explanation for any of this, I don't know what it is. All I know is that sure as hell isn't a cannonball. Till next time, this is Terry Betts, over and out. Okay, so I wasn't planning on making another one of these so soon, but things have gotten a little bigger than I expected,

and I figured, you know, like a good field test agent, whatever, scientist, I should just keep doing what I'm doing. I guess the main thing is it's not just me realizing there's more to this ball than meets the eye. I showed my mom everything, and she ended up, calling the local paper. They sent this photographer, and I could tell right away that he thought we were just wasting his time,

which honestly fair. But I handed him the sphere, and I told him to, you know, hey, just roll it across the floor, you know? And he did, and it rolled a few feet, and then stopped, and he gave me this look like, okay, and, and I just told him, wait for it.

And a few seconds later, the ball came back to him, and his face, It was pretty great, actually. So he turned the ball over in his hands for a long time after that, and he just looked for some kind of trick to it, but he didn't find anything, same as me. And then the article ran.

And after that, things got crazy. Calls started coming in from all over, papers from New York, London, Tokyo, scientists, too, including this guy named Dr. Wilson, who came out from Louisiana, and spent six hours with the ball. After that, he told us it was emitting radio waves and that its magnetic field was fluctuating

in ways he couldn't account for, which, wow! Of course, I don't have equipment to measure that stuff myself, so I have to take him at his word. But here's the weirdest thing. It doesn't seem to behave the same way for everyone. Sometimes it moves exactly like all these times I've described. Other times, it just...

sits there and then people look at me like i made the whole thing up which is frustrating because i know what i've seen it's like it picks when it wants to cooperate and i know how that sounds i do uh which makes what i'm about to say sound even worse because at night there's these sounds kind of like tones i guess not loud not constant just something you notice if you're sitting still long enough and it's really quiet, like when you're going to bed. Is it connected to the ball? I don't know. But it started after I brought the ball home, and it hadn't happened before. Anyway, I just wanted to get all that on record, because a few days ago,

things went to the next level, because the Navy called. They heard about the ball and wanted to investigate it, not just for a day. They wanted it for two weeks. And my mom was paranoid or protective or both. I don't know. And she wrote up this whole contract. that said we would get the report they made, and when they returned it, it wouldn't be government property. The Navy signed it.

Apparently they have this giant X-ray machine they think can get through the shell. So, will they find something inside? I guess we'll have to wait and see. Hey guys, Terry Betts, just figured I'd kind of wrap this whole thing up. So the Navy brought it back. They dropped it off, and the ball looked the same as it did. before, so if they did anything to it, I couldn't tell. They also gave us their report, and it was kind of a bummer.

Basically, a lot of technical detail that added up to nothing. But anyway, here's what they found. The ball is 7.96 inches in diameter. It weighs just over 21 pounds. The shell is stainless steel, about half an inch thick. Their giant X-ray machine, which apparently is 300-kilovol, which I don't know what that means, but that's what it is, found two round objects inside. Not bouncing around, but fixed in place inside. I don't know how.

They also said the thing has multiple magnetic poles, and they aren't aligned the way they should be. One of the guys tried to explain it to me, but it kind of went over my head, so the short version is, this thing isn't normal, but, um, yeah, that's kind of... basically where it ends. It's not radioactive, thank goodness, it's not explosive, but still it's not identifiable. They did ask if they could cut it open, but my mom shot that down immediately. Maybe I should have argued with her because part of me kind of wants to know what's in there, but I didn't, so the ball just went back to my window. Eventually the Navy spokesman told the that the ball's movement was just down to our uneven floors.

They said the ball was so well balanced that even a small change in the floor surface could make it roll or change direction. But I know that's a lot of BS. I ran this thing on glass, carpet, hardwood, surfaces. I leveled myself. And the floors... our floors aren't that bad, but sure. Whatever. Anyway. While all this was going on, this UFO organization reached out and said they wanted to show the sphere off at this science, panel in New Orleans. The panel was organized by the National Enquirer, which I know it sounds bad, but the people on it were legitimate, like Dr. Heineck was there, and he's a big deal. So I drove the ball to New Orleans, and the panel had two days with it. They ran tests, and then Heinek told me his conclusion. He said it was probably man-made, which, yeah, not that I ever thought it was anything. alien or something. I just kind of hoped for more than it's man-made. But they couldn't tell me

anything more than that. So the ball's back on the window seat in my room. It's been a while now and you know we're basically just back to where we started except now half the world knows about it and our phone just won't stop ringing. I still roll it sometimes just to watch it come back and personally I still can't explain it. Maybe no one can. But here's the only thing I do know. That ball and whatever's inside it, it isn't nothing. And it was in that field long before I found it.

Which means it was waiting for something. I don't know, I can't say, I don't know if that something was me. Maybe. All right, McLeod. Well done on that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Fun story, huh? Really fun story. It kind of like, it struck a similar note of uncomplicated wonder that like Valiant Thor did for me. Like there's just like kind of something sweet about it.

Yeah. Like it's innocuous, you know? Here's this ball. It's definitely not a scary supernatural story. Yeah, but I like that. I think, I think, I think awe and wonder are an important aspect of the supernatural that are often superseded by like terror and fear and horror. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of just a fun mystery.

Yeah. Like what is this ball? And it's cute. It's adorable. It's like it becomes his best friend. Yeah. It's like it's like the 1970s version of Furby or something. Right.

Right. It's like in it like the idea that it has emotional reactions to like different people. Kind of. Is that so I'm guessing some some version of this happened. Right? The whole version of this happened. The whole version of this happened. I mean, other than your character embellishments, like the events, like he found the ball in the field that had burned down.

And it started the rolling and the sounds it made and the, you know, the weird sounds at night. And I left out a whole thing about the dog was scared of it. Oh. And, you know, but the Navy took it and examined it. And they took it to these panels in Dr. Allen Heineck, who not at the time because it wasn't public yet, but he was the guy behind Project Blue Book. He investigated all this UFO stuff. Oh, wow. So they really took it seriously.

All kinds of people were looking at this thing. And no one knows definitively what this thing was. I think some people have kind of come up with recently. We're pretty sure what this is. But the behavior of the ball is so weird that I'm like, really? What? Yeah. Well, you know what?

The behavior of it, I can kind of almost like explain. Like once they found that there was like weighted balls on the inside, like I'm like, okay, it's sort of like one of those like punching bags. you can't knock down that always like stands back up because like the weight is unevenly distributed and so it will like only roll so far before it kind of like pulls itself back with like the uneven weight distribution like so I'm like okay that's not so wild and like even the vibration I'm like everything has a natural frequency and so sure it has its own natural frequency that matches with one of his guitar with a specific tone or note. It's the provenance and the uniqueness that's just such a head scratcher.

Yeah. Like that it's just found sitting in the middle of a field also importantly after a massive fire. It would seem to me like did the ball cause the fire somehow? Like I would have thought like did it fall from space? Right. And I think a lot of people thought initially like, oh, this is maybe a satellite or something like that. But like it had no machining on it or anything. Like a ball wouldn't just.

Is it possible that like can a meteorite be a perfect sphere like? this? I am not a meteorite scientist, but I would think no. That seems awfully... What good are you, Brian? I don't know. I don't know. But, you know, there are theories. Now, I should say that an equipment supplier identified an 8-inch, 21-pound stainless steel ball that was made by a company net called Bell and Howell. And they're like, this is what it was. But there's no indication that the ball had anything inside of it that I could find. So I don't know. Also, what was it, how to get there? Well, there's one story that came out in 1974, which was the same year that this all kind of happened. There's a sculptor who claimed to have lost that and a few other orbs when they fell off of his car while he was driving through Jacksonville. Oh. I don't know if he was driving on that island, but he apparently had stolen, he or a friend had stolen these spheres from some manufacturing plant. There were two different sizes of them.

And yeah, he's like, oh yeah, they fell off. They fell off a thing and that's what they are. So they're like a kind of specialized industrial ball bearing or something? Kind of is what I was thinking. But I didn't see him produce any other spears for his art project or something like that being like here they are. Right, right, right. So that's kind of an explanation for what this could have been. In my mind, could it have just literally just been like a ball bearing or, you know, with something inside of it?

That, you know, it started rolling weird in this family just kind of like, not like, it's not. not like a situation of mass hysteria or anything like that, but like, it's like, this is really cool. Like, let's do a whole bunch of stuff with it. And like it does it sometimes. It doesn't do it other times. Yeah. And they just kind of, you know, it's almost like the personification of inanimate objects. You know, like it became a thing to them, you know, this whole family. Right. Because it sounds like when Alan Heineck and some of these other scientists were looking at it, it didn't do anything for them. Right. You know, but they still couldn't figure out what it was. And which is weird. Like, if the Navy takes it for two weeks and comes back and says, like, we don't know, that's kind of

Yeah. Obviously there were people who like one dude, one scientist looked at this and was, he's an engineering professor from Berkeley. And he said that the whatever was inside the, there's like the inner balls inside of the main ball were heavier than any known element. What? Which doesn't, I don't, wouldn't it be heavier than 20 pounds if that were the case? It would seem to it. Maybe the balls inside were very small. Yeah. But he said though that if you drilled into this ball, it could explode like a nuclear weapon. Wow. That's something. So he thought it was some kind of like alien doomsday device or something like that. Oh gosh. And so we're just like hoping nobody like finds it and like just takes a drill to it. I guess so. So that's what we got basically is either a ball bearing, which is seems like the most likely explanation for this. Or an alien doomsday device. To wrap this up, I guess I can say the only thing to really note is like after the 70s like no one, it never really came up again ever, you know.

Yeah, I was just going to say. Where's Terry now? I don't know. There's no record of the ball or Terry or anyone else like doing anything with it in a recent years. So that's it. So it's still kind of a mystery to me. Yeah.

Even if it is just a normal ball, pretty cool. It's a very tantalizing little bit of kind of magic in an otherwise mundane day, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And we'll put some pictures of the ball on Instagram for everyone so they can see it too. Because there are pictures of this ball.

Like it is a thing that exists in the world. Right. This is not a, we have to take people at their word. Yeah. That the ball exists. Yeah. My guess is it will look like a shiny ball. It will look like a shiny ball.

That is what it will look like. So you know what, listeners, don't even bother to the Instagram. Oh, man. Well, on that note, listeners, we are going to jump to an ad break. And when we come back, we have another really cool, mysterious listener story coming your way. This episode is sponsored. by BetterHelp. Financial stress affects far more than our bank accounts. It can take a serious toll on mental health and relationships. I'm not surprised that 88% of Americans are feeling some kind of

financial stress at the start of 2026. I'm one of them. And while trying to juggle rent and work and family and living, it's a lot for me to try and keep a grip on. So this month, BetterHelp wants to normalize the emotional weight of financial stress and remind people that struggling with money doesn't mean they've failed. Sometimes it's just about accessing the right kind of support. So if you want someone to talk to, try BetterHelp. BetterHelp does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. With over 30,000 therapists and over 6 million people helped globally, a fit is out there for you. So, when life fills overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com slash sightings. That's BetterH-E-L-P-com

slash sightings. Thanks BetterHelp for sponsoring this episode. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News.

Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. milk. Habaniero, more like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. All right, welcome back, everyone. We have got this listener's story, cute up and ready to go for you guys. Love it. Hit me. All right. So this story, McLeod, is from Bill, from Connecticut. I don't know where this story took place, though, because it doesn't quite sound like Connecticut.

It's just a rural, so maybe he's in the woods somewhere, but it seems like there's like fields and stuff. There's Fields in Connecticut. Yes, there are. So anyway, let's get some music going. All right. Whoa, no preamble. Just launching me in. All right.

Bill in the woods. He's older now, but I don't know how long ago this happened. So I think he's 20s, 30s, 40s. Just make a choice and go with it. This was back when I was still living at home in the mid-80s. There you go. Definitely Bill from Connecticut. My thick Connecticut accent.

Poor listeners. We came here for the stories. No, well, you're here for our witty and awesome banter, too, right? Yes, you are. You know it. Yes, you are. All right. This was back when I was still living at home in the mid-80s. I must have been 16 or 17 at the time.

We lived on this rural property about 20 minutes outside of town. Not completely isolated, but definitely country living. Our nearest neighbors were maybe a quarter mile down the road, and there weren't any streetlights or much traffic after dark. Just farmland and woods and the kind of quiet you only get when you're far enough from civilization. Our house sat on about three acres with a big yard that backed up to this open field. The field wasn't ours. It belonged to some absentee owner who had lived in the city and never did anything with it. No fence between our property and the field, just this gradual transition

from mowed grass to tall weeds and wildflowers. The field stretched back maybe half a mile before it hit a line of trees and then more farmland beyond that. I loved the back of the back porch, especially at night, since you could see everything from there. Deer would come out around dusk to graze, and on clear nights, the stars were incredible. After about five years living there, I knew the house and that backyard well. Like every sound that house made, I knew it by heart, but still nothing ever felt strange or off about the place. Then I saw the light. It was probably late spring when I first saw it. I was up watching Saturday Night Live. I was up watching Saturday Night Live, or some old movie on the living room TV.

We didn't have cable, and the reception wasn't great way out there, so pickings were pretty slim after midnight, but I was a night person like my mom, and I liked having the house to myself when everyone else was asleep. I got up to get a snack from the kitchen and happened to glance out the back window. That's when I saw a small light moving slowly through the field, just a tiny pale yellow glow bobbing gently through the tall grass

maybe 200 feet from the house. My first thought was that it was someone with a flashlight, maybe teenagers messing around or a neighbor checking on something. The light wasn't moving fast, just a slow, steady, bobbing motion like someone walking carefully through uneven terrain. I watched it for maybe 30 seconds, then went to get my dad, took a minute to wake him up, and by the time we got back to the kitchen window, the light was gone. He looked out at the dark field and shrugged, said it was probably just someone taking a shortcut, or maybe a guy checking his own. hunting stands, even though it wasn't a hunting season. And that made sense to me. We lived in farm country and people were always walking through fields for various reasons. I went back to watching TV and pretty much forgot about it. But the light came back. Not the next night, but maybe

three nights later. Same thing. Small bobbing light moving slowly through the field at roughly the same distance from the house. I watched it for a few minutes before it disappeared. Over the next couple weeks, I started paying more attention. The light kept coming back, but never came closer than that invisible line about halfway across the field, and it never moved very fast. Sometimes it would bob back and forth in a small area like someone was searching for something. Other times it would move in a straight line parallel to our property, then disappear into the tree line. I tried to get a better look with my dad's old binoculars, but it was too dark to make out any details, just that pale glow moving through the darkness. I thought about trying to record it with our video camera, but the light

was too faint and too far away. Probably wouldn't have shown up anyway. I mentioned it to my friend at school, and he immediately started joking about aliens and ghosts. I laughed along, but when I suggested he come over and see for himself, he suddenly had excuses. I got the feeling the whole thing made him nervous, even though he was trying to play it off as a joke. And the light kept coming, but there wasn't really a pattern I could figure out. Sometimes it would show up three nights in a row, then disappear for a week, sometimes just once every few days. But it was always in that same general area of the field and always that same slow bobbing motion.

My mom saw it once when she was up late reading. She mentioned it at breakfast the next morning, saying she'd seen someone with a flashlight in the field. Dad just shrugged and said maybe it was the landowner checking on his property. End of conversation. But then things started feeling different. Our dog Rex was this old lab mix who was usually pretty calm. One night I was watching for the light when Rex started going crazy, barking and growling at the back door like something was threatening the house.

I looked out and sure enough, the light was there just sitting still in its usual spot. I let Rex out thinking maybe he'd chase off whoever it was, but he just stood on the porch barking. The light stayed put for maybe ten more minutes, then slowly moved away. toward the trees. Rex calmed down as soon as it disappeared. After that night, I started sleeping with my curtains closed. Something about the light being out there while I was trying to sleep made me uncomfortable, like it was watching the house even when I couldn't see it. One night, our power flickered, just for a second like someone had jiggled a loose wire. It wasn't stormy or windy outside, so there was no reason for the electricity to act up. Rex started whining and pawing at the

back door. I looked out and the light was there, motionless in the middle of the field. The whole thing was starting to get to me. I wasn't sleeping well and I kept finding excuses to check the back windows even during the day. So finally, I decided I had to go out there and see for myself what was going on. My parents had gone to bed and my sister was spending the night at a friend's house. I'd been watching the field for about an hour when the light appeared right on schedule, just sitting there like always pale and steady in the darkness. I put on my shoes and grabbed a flashlight. Rex was lying by the back door and he looked up at me when I reached for the handle. Usually he'd want to come outside with me, but this time he just whined and stayed put.

I should have taken that as a warning. I walked slowly across our yard toward the edge of the field and the light was still there maybe a hundred feet away just hovering in the tall grass. When I got to where our yard ended and the field began, I stopped. The light seemed dimmer up close and I realized I couldn't hear anything. No insects, no rustling grass, nothing. Just this strange, heavy silence. So I clicked on my flashlight and aimed it toward where the light was floating and for a second nothing happened. Then the light flickered and went out completely.

I stood there in the dark wondering if whoever it was had finally decided to leave. But then the light reappeared and this time it was much closer. maybe 50 feet away and moving slowly in a circle like it was aware of me. That's when I felt this cold sensation like something was very wrong. The light wasn't behaving like a flashlight anymore. It was too steady and perfect, and it was moving without any of the natural bounce you'd get from someone walking. I called out and didn't hear anything,

so I turned and ran and didn't look back until I was on the porch. When I finally turned around, the field was completely dark. no light anywhere. Rex was waiting for me inside with his tail between his legs like he knew something had happened. I sat on the kitchen floor petting him and trying to calm down. I eventually went to bed that night, but I couldn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept thinking about how the light had moved toward me, how wrong everything had felt out there in the field. I must have been lying there for an hour when I noticed a faint glow coming through my bedroom curtains. At first I thought Maybe it was car headlights from the road, but my room didn't even face the road.

I got up and pulled the curtain back just enough to peek outside. The light was in our backyard, not out in the field where it belonged, but right there, maybe 30 feet from the house, and it was bright, brighter than I'd ever seen it before. It was so intense I couldn't tell if someone was holding a flashlight and pointing it directly at my window, where if the light itself was just that much stronger. It hurt to look at directly, but I couldn't make out any shape behind it, just this blazing white glow sitting motionless in our yard like it was waiting for something. I ran to wake up my dad and told him there was someone in our yard with a light, but when we went downstairs and looked outside, there was nothing. The yard was empty and dark except for the weak glow from the porch light.

Dad stood there for a minute scanning the area, then turned to me with this look like he was starting to question my mental state. He asked if I was sure I'd seen something and I said yes, but I could hear the doubt in my own voice. The light had been there. I knew it had been there. But looking out at the normal, peaceful backyard, I started wondering if I'd imagined the whole thing. Dad told me to go back to bed and said we'd talk about it in the morning. But we never did. The next day he acted like nothing had happened and I didn't bring it up again.

The light never came back after that night. I watched for it every night for the next. next month, but the field stayed dark. Rex went back to his normal behavior and the house felt safe again. I went off to college soon after that, and I never told my family what really happened that night in the field. How could I explain that I'd gone out to investigate a light and somehow felt like I'd barely escaped something I couldn't understand? I'm not saying it was a ghost or aliens or some kind of supernatural phenomenon. Maybe it was just someone playing elaborate pranks, but I know how it felt that night when I went out to investigate, how the light moved like it was alive and aware,

how the silence felt wrong and heavy, how running back to the house felt like escaping something that shouldn't exist. Bye, everybody. Well, I think the reason that I really like this story was we've had some other UFO kind of stories, and I don't know if this is even like UFO category, But, like, what was unnerving to me was even if it's nothing supernatural and there's someone watching your house for, like, a year, it seems like, with a flashlight. Yeah, I, uh. It's, it's just a very unnerving story. Yeah. Man, things get weird out in the country, huh?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Like, I was thinking to myself, like, some sort of reflector or reflection, like, that, like, from inside, it looks like it's moving. It's actually like a reflection of a light somewhere. But like, but like your perspective is thrown off because you don't, you can't place where it should be because you don't see it as a reflection. You see it as something that's outside. And then you're like, oh, is it moving so weird? Like, because your mind keeps trying to place it as being outside, but it's not, I don't know.

But then he can see it when he's out there. Yeah, he does go out there. Yeah. So, I mean, clearly, I mean, that's a good theory to start with, I think. Yeah. And then the thing obviously comes into the yard and. Yeah. I was, hello.

Yeah. I'm surprised I didn't come on the house. Me too. You know, we would have had a repeat of that one listener's story where, you remember that one where that person woke up and there was that red light with tentacles or something? And he wrote it off as like just like kind of a waking nightmare, but then his friend saw the same thing. Or it's like his brothers saw the same thing. Yeah. It would have been interesting.

I mean, it sounds like the mom saw the two in this case. But I don't know. It just, it was a very unnerving story to me. And that's why I think I really liked it. Yeah. I kept thinking ghost maybe, like some sort of ghost thing. He described me as like a yellowish light, though. I just, I always think of, this is just maybe my limited view of ghosts, but I always think like it would be like a bluish light or like a whitish.

Oh. You know, like that, you know, like that, you know, because ghosts always have that like, think Casper. You kind of like that. Right. That chilly, like that chilly, a chilly light. Yeah. Yeah, rather than like a warm light. Because warm lights always feel.

An angel. More like angels or fairies or something like. Maybe you had a fairy in your. Is it a fairy, a country fairy? I don't know. Did you know that in my genealogy that my grandmother did, like tracing back to the Isle of Sky in Scotland, the Clan McLeod? Wait, you're a fairy?

Yeah, apparently, some guy in our family line married an elfin. What? Wait, like that was their name? No, like married a fairy creature. Oh. Like married an elfin entity, person. And this is written down somewhere? Yeah. Yeah, it's like written on her genealogist

It's like supposedly married like an elfin. I think so's elfin. Now, did that relative's bloodline lead to you? Yeah. Oh, so you're part? I'm part fairy. I can't tell if you're joking or not. I'm not.

Yeah, no, that was like a very cool gift that our grandmother left us. Oh, you need to get little wings for your daughters now. They have them. Oh, man. Do they know that they're fairy? too. That's a, you know what? I need to have that discussion with them. I need to have that talk with them.

Your children are magic. Listen, they are magic. This is true. It's like Percy Jackson, the Olympians, but for fairies, it's like, by the way, you are special and the world hinges on you. No pressure, girls. So, anyway, we went way off of track from a, like, dude with a flashlight. I don't know. I like fairy.

I'm into fairy. It's very bright fairy, though, if it was like... Yeah. I don't necessarily think fairies are only a night. time phenomenon though. Maybe it's harder to see them in the day. Yeah, I don't, I don't know. I mean, before you said that you were part fairy, I would have been like fairies or a bunch.

A bunch of hooey. Yeah, because I don't know. I don't know. I never really gotten like the whole fantasy realms thing. Well, sure. That all comes primarily from Norse mythology, I think, and where they truly believed in fairies and whatnot. Well, whatever you saw seems like quite the mystery bill, because just like the Bettsphere

that we heard about earlier. It's kind of unexplainable. And McLeod, I guess that wraps it up for today. Oh, man, this was a fun one, you know? Yeah. I got to say, I kind of dig this format. Like the kind of hybrid that we got going on? Yeah, the hybrid, like a little bit of the listener story,

a little bit of the supposedly real story. Yeah. And I like that we were able to give the, you know, all you listeners who have been itching for McLeod to kind of play a character to do that. Nice. So yeah, next month, we've got some cool stuff coming your way on that front. We've got some listener stories queued up. We've got another neat, true, allegedly true, supernatural event to bring the life for you guys.

And you just have to wait until next month to see what it is. I can't wait. All right, awesome. Well, thanks for listening, everyone, and we will see you then. Sightings is hosted by McLeod Andrews and Brian Sigley, produced by Brow. Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and MacLeod Andrews, written by Brian Sigley, music by Mitch Bain, mixing and mastering by Pat Kickleiter of Sundial Media, artwork by Nuno Sarnatus. For a list of this episode sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com.

Sightings is presented by reverb and cue code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, so you're first to hear new episodes every week. And if you know other supernatural fans, tell them about us. we'd really appreciate it.