Somewhere in the Skies - Witness Accounts: Volume One

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

On episode 34 of SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES, listeners take the front seat, recalling their personal UFO sightings. It's a collection of some of the most vivid and mysterious personal UFO accounts that Ryan has come across, strengthening the fact that the witnesses of UFO events remain the most important piece of this deeply enigmatic puzzle.  Special thanks to Vance, Kieran, Scott, and Bryon for sharing their stories. Closing music this week provided by HereWeGo. Song title: "Stardust" by Kosmoz. YouTube version of the song can be heard by CLICKING HERE Patreon: www.patreon.com/somewhereskies Website: www.somewhereintheskies.com Order Ryan's Book by CLICKING HERE Twitter: @SomewhereSkies Instagram: @SomewhereSkiesPod Opening Theme Song, "Ephemeral Reign" by Per Kiilstofte SOMEWHERE IN THE SKIES is produced by Third Kind Productions, in association with Antica Productions   Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/somewhere-in-the-skies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to Somewhere in the Skies. I'm your host, Ryan Sprague. This week, we're going to do something completely different. And admittedly, should have happened much sooner. When I first started the podcast, I pronounced that it would pick up where my book of the same name left off. And the book focused primarily on those who've witnessed and experienced the UFO phenomenon firsthand. And while I've interviewed many researchers and others with an interesting, I've experienced the UFO phenomenon firsthand. And while I've interviewed many researchers and others with an interesting, in this topic on the show, the core of this entire mystery rests on the shoulders of the witness. Always. So today, you're going to hear four separate accounts from four separate witnesses. They span decades, continents, and experiences. My heartfelt thanks goes out to Vance, Kieran, Scott, and Brian for sharing their stories today. These stories genuinely interested and mystified me, and I hope. hope they will do the same for you. But more importantly, I hope you'll share these accounts with

others. Maybe. Just maybe one more person will have the courage, as these four did, to come forward with their own stories. And we can then move forward without ridicule or hesitancy and begin to embrace these deeply profound experiences somewhere in the skies. I hope you enjoy. Hey, Ryan. Thank you for asking us to do the this. I'm Vance Nesbitt, but I appreciate you asking and putting the word out there because I love to hear other people's UFO experiences. My experience, it was actually my first experience into anything strange or abnormal or paranormal, however you want to categorize it. But it was my first experience. I was either six or seven years old. we lived in a two-story house in the rural suburbs of Chicago.

What I mean by that, it was an undeveloped urban or suburban area. There were houses being built sporadically throughout the neighborhood, but it really was not a fully developed neighborhood yet. Anyway, the two-story house, my bedroom was up on the second floor along with my parents, and I was laying in bed and looking out the bedroom window, I had noticed this bright light just above the horizon, and it was through the trees, but off in the distance. But it was a relatively bright light,

but it was similar to that of an aircraft. As you see, sometimes, you know, the aircraft has its landing lights on. There's a lot of candle power behind it, but it stayed there for what seemed like an odd amount of time. But I didn't pay much attention to it, because, again, I've never had an experience before. And I remember my mother calling my father. Now, my mom was in her bedroom reading a book,

or at least I kind of remember that she was reading a book, and it caught her attention out her bedroom window. And she called my father up from downstairs, and I overheard their conversation of my mother saying that she's been watching this bright light in the sky for about 15 minutes, and it's really not doing much. and I flew up out of bed and I ran in their bedroom. I'm like, yes, I see it too, I see it too, and I was all excited as a kid and wow, what is this?

And we watched it out there, bedroom window. Now their bedroom window was more a picture window style, so it was pretty relatively big window. But we all ended up going downstairs and outside into the backyard. At that time, the property was about one acre, and we stood out in the backyard, and we saw this, light, slowly approaching closer to us. It was getting larger and larger, but it was approaching closer to us, but it was moving so slowly. And now looking back on it from that experience, I would guess that it was probably anywhere between 1,200 to 1,300 feet in elevation above us, but it was moving so slow and dead silent. There was no engine noise, nothing, just dead silence.

but as this whatever it was craft was coming overhead, none of us could identify an outlined image. We couldn't see it as a triangle or a round shape or an aircraft, anything. All we saw was this front landing light, which is now not so bright because it was aimed forward. But as it started to approach overhead over our property and the surrounding, homes. This bright light came on on the bottom of this craft. Now it's not your typical UFO straight beam of white light. It lit up everything. And as far as I could see, it was lighting up everything. The neighbor's house, our yard, as far as I could see to the left and right. And it was such a profound and chilling experience, but it only came on for no more than three seconds.

and even three seconds is probably pushing it. It may have only been one full second to maybe two seconds, but looking back on it, you know, to count three seconds, that's what it might have been. The light went off, and this craft just kept floating, whatever it was, because like I said, we could not see any defined edges of it. It was dark out.

I don't remember if it was clear or cloudy, but I do remember we could not identify any edges to whatever this thing was other than that light on the front end of this thing as it was moving away. And we watched it for a total of about 40 minutes from the time when I first noticed it off the horizon until it just drifted off out of sight behind the trees and we couldn't see it anymore. But the strange thing is, you know, I don't remember to this day if I ever had a conversation with my mom and dad about what their opinion was about this whole thing. I'm sure we talked about it.

I just don't retain any information after that. I think probably because all the neurons in the brain were firing as to what this strange experience was, but it threw me into this whole world to begin with. So thanks for letting me share. Hi, my name's Kieran. I come from the West Midlands in England, and my UFO sighting took place early March

2013. I was with my brother at the time. We were on our way back from our weekly rugby session. On the way back we drive through a place called Romsley. It's on the outskirts of our hometown house oven. Romsley is a little bit of countryside. It's quite hilly and when you get to the top there's a huge open space and you can see for miles you can see Birmingham in the distance, the city of Birmingham. And as we were nearing the top, there's a huge open space and you can see there's tree lines either side of you with the occasional farmhouse and a huge white light caught my eye out to my right hand side and I slowed my car a little bit but it was difficult to focus on the light because of the tree line my first instinct was maybe it was the motorway because there's a motorway that runs slightly parallel with the road I was taking and but I soon realised that the motorway was in the distance. I could make that out.

The light kept appearing and disappearing behind the trees. I slowed my car, not to a stop, but I slowed it dramatically. We kept driving up towards the top of the hill. My brother had spotted it too by this point. As we neared the top, the light got a lot bigger. there was no one around which is just as well because I'm sure I would have annoyed them

driving so slowly eventually I put my brakes on I turned the engine off and obviously I pulled over before I turned my engine off the light all of a sudden became a shape at this point we're at the top of Romseley

so it's that big open space I mentioned earlier. The craft was, I would say no more than a thousand feet high and it was triangular. At first, I thought it was rectangular. I remember saying to my brother, you know, it's oblong, it's rectangular. My brother said, I think it's triangular and he was right. As my eyes first, I think it's triangular. and he was right As my eyes focused on the shape a little bit more it became triangular

We sat there probably for about 10 seconds staring at this thing going past us If I'd have carried on driving at 30 miles an hour We would have outrun it Easily It was quite literally just cruising

Through the sky The last lights at this point there were two lights they were at the rear corners of the craft there was no light in the centre and no light at the front as is common with triangular crafts that I've looked into before and since my sighting two lights were at the rear corners what what hit me the most at the time was the silence of the craft obviously we're near Birmingham City centre so we get a lot of planes in the sky from the airport.

We also get a lot of helicopters flying around police helicopters and that. And these were, you know, these fly at much higher altitude than this craft was. And you can hear them, you know, sometimes you can hear planes, yet you can't see them. But this thing was silent, deftly silent. There was no one else around. It was about, like I said, it's about quarter to ten. quiet part of the road and there was not a noise to be heard

my engine was off at this point my window was down and we just could not hear a thing that was very very disturbing actually just watching this thing this huge I'd say I'd say the craft was probably around about a little smaller

than a football pitch That's a soccer pitch to any American listeners. A little smaller. It was for that size, you'd think there would be a noise, but there really wasn't. I have to emphasise the fact that there was no noise whatsoever. Eventually the craft did start to go past us. I remember me and my brother constantly asking each other, you know, what the hell is this thing? we're both

we're both big lads you know we can look after ourselves but this this incident really scared us we were I remember I began crying and don't know why I'm not ashamed to admit it

I began to cry shortly followed by my brother actually he began to cry and neither of us knew why we couldn't explain why we were crying but we were scared it was petrifying

I'm not a huge fan of aviation. I don't follow planes, I don't follow anything like that, but I could tell that it was something that I'd never heard of us seen or knew was out there really. The craft eventually started to take over us, at which point I started my engine and began following it. We began going back down the hill and the tree line began to appear again. and it kind of disappeared behind the trees and we could still see the light probably for another 200 yards, 250 yards and the light eventually vanished and there was nothing there.

We were still very scared. I remember actually at the point of beginning my car again I remember looking at the clock to see if the time was the same because as I've alluded to previously I do research a lot of this stuff and missing time was on my mind at that time I just wanted to make sure that nothing had happened that I wasn't aware of

fortunately the time was about right as we descended down you begin to enter our hometown of Howes Owen becomes a bit more populated houses either side of you and in the distance you can see the church spire of how's they're in what was interesting was as we were right right on the outskirts of the town we saw this bright light in the sky just above the church probably about

a mile in the distance and this light was going up and it was fading as it was going up what was interesting about it was it wasn't fading because it was going you know it because it it wasn't getting smaller because of the increased height. It seemed to just simply be fading out. And eventually, after about five, ten seconds, it eventually disappeared. I'm not saying that that light is in any way related to what we saw. I just find it very interesting that in the space of about a minute, we saw these two things.

They could be related, but I'm not sure. we were home probably about five minutes after seeing that light and the first thing we were both living with our parents at the time and the first thing we did when we walked in we were still visibly shaken I remember having to wipe my eyes before I walked in to see my mum and dad and we told them what had happened and they kind of they looked at us as if you know are they having a laugh, are they mocking us?

But at the same time, you could see they were slightly worried, ever so slightly. What pleases me is that my brother was with me at the time. I'm the UFO nut of the family. My brother very rarely shows an interest in it. I could have a conversation with him about it, but it wouldn't hold his attention for too long. Yeah, I'm glad he was with me, he validated everything I saw, he saw exactly what I saw, he felt what I felt.

And that allowed people like my mum and dad, I guess, to believe me a little bit more, because if I'd have been on my own, they probably would have doubted me thinking I'd made it up because that's something I've always wanted to see. But my brother's, my brother witnessing it as well, gave me a lot of credence, added a lot of credence to my story. I remember not, I couldn't get it out of my head. I rang my partner at the time. and told her what had happened.

Again, she was, you know, she was kind of humouring me, I guess. She wasn't massively interested in it, and to this day she's not massively interested in the subject, really. I felt alone a little bit. I spoke to my brother about it, but he very quickly withdrew from the subject. I'm not sure whether he just didn't have an interest in it. I'm not sure whether it frightened him to the point that he didn't want to talk.

about it I'm not sure but he he was very he was very quiet and I felt alone I didn't have anybody really to talk to didn't have anybody to turn to some people you know lent me support of course but it didn't quite feel like they were taking me as serious as I'd like them to have done and that that was the sighting really and then really it didn't that for the next few days I was still shaken and You know, even now when I think about it, I just can't get my head around what it was I saw. I've spoken to my brother a few times since about it,

but nothing too deep. Yeah, so, I mean, in terms of what it was, I have no idea. It's something obviously I thought about quite a lot. Was it an alien craft? I don't know. Was it a government craft? I don't know.

It was definitely something that I've never seen. Um, you know, I've never seen this type of craft on a documentary. I've never seen it at an airport. I've never seen it in a film, unless it's a sci-fi type film. I've never seen this, this craft. Yeah, so, personally, I'd like to think it was aliens, because that's my, that's a passion of mine to, to research that kind of thing. Whether it was or not, though, I'm really not too sure. hopefully that's giving you a bit of an in-depth into what it is I've seen interestingly since that citing both me and my brother have seen more lights in the sky shall we say than I'd ever seen before that we both have a much more open mind now as to what it is that we're looking at in the sky so yeah That's me. Thank you very much for listening to what I have to say.

And I'll speak soon. Thank you. This is Scott Santa. I'm doing this on behalf of Ryan Sprague. I'm 61 years old, retired from the United States Coast Guard and disability retired from the Postal Service. I was a Newfound Fielding investigator for 24 years before I opted out.

I had an experience in 1974, August, the date unknown. I was at a drive-in theater here in my local town. It was my first year of college. Not much going on that night, so I called a friend up and said, hey, let's go see these movies. Which movie they were, I can tell you.

But anyway, at the drive-in, we get to the drive-in. It was a beautiful summer evening. stars everywhere, clear as could be, just a picture perfect summer evening. Well, we parked in the back of the driving movie, obviously looking for chicks, and settled in to watch the movie. Well, just not too long after we got there, we got some food and stuff, got back to the car, and again, settled in. I noticed something out of the top of my...

eye and before I could react, there was this huge Chevron thing. For lack of better words, I want to call it a flying craft, but it came from the west, flying from the northwest actually to the southeast. And it came just like right over top of the driving theater picture. the screen. And it was, its speed of advance might have been 10 miles an hour. It just seemed to float rather than fly.

It wasn't bobbing and it never deviated from its flight, flight path. But it was entirely black. There were no lights and there was absolutely no sound. I mean, there wasn't any sound anywhere. I could see people getting out of the car and pointing up. I looked at my friend Mike and I said, are you seeing this? He said, oh, what the hell is that? We get out of the car and we watched.

Well, as the craft, for lack of a better word, after the entirety of the craft was centered over the drive-in parking area, all the lights went out the movie stopped lights in the concession stand all the everything went black it just went dark and then and that was kind of freaky nobody was running away or panicking and I could tell people were pointing and looking each other like trying to affirm that everybody was seeing what everybody else was seeing and that was the case About that time, my ears popped.

I mean, they really popped. And I felt like I was in a vacuum. And the best way to describe it would be like if you were walking underwater, you can almost see the air shimmer around you. And it was very difficult to focus. and difficult to hear anything. I could hear Mike. He was on the other side of the car,

but I couldn't hear anything else. But we kind of just stopped talking to each other at that point, and we're looking up, and this thing, it was so close. At least it appeared that close. I felt like I could have picked up one of the gravel rocks and hit this thing if I threw it as hard as I could. Now, this thing was huge.

I mean to tell you, I'm guessing three football fields, for lack of a better word, it outflanked the length of the drive-in parking. At least it appeared to do so for my vantage point. And it was very strange. And like I said, it didn't travel fast. So we got a good look at this thing, and it just kept on going. Again, 10, maybe 15 miles and out. It took a long time for it to get over. And we stood there and watched it.

And about the time it got to the rear end of the driving theater parking lot, which behind it was undeveloped country back in that day. But when it got to that point where it had cleared the back of the park, parking a lot. The movie came on. The lights in the concession stand came on. Everybody's car came on. If they had it on, you could hear horns honking at this point. And I watched this thing until it disappeared. It never deviated its flight path. It just kept going straight, straight and straight. That shimmering, that Oz effect, if you will, ceased when it got over the back of the drive-in theater. And here's where the really weird part is weird as weird as all that was when that I watched till it disappeared over the horizon, which might have been 15 minutes, 10 minutes.

And then I just got back in the car along with Mike and we watched the movie. I remember at one point, and we never talked about it. At one point, I remember going to the back of the concession stand where the restrooms were. And nobody said a word about this thing. Nothing. And we did my business, of course, and everybody was kind of mute and mumbling, you know. And I just got back in the car with Mike. We finished the movie, at least I think we did.

And we left. And I never, we never talked about it. And that's what was weird. I would have thought that the whole place would have huddled and gathered together and tried to figure. Nobody said a thing. And I left. I dropped Mike off apparently and went home.

Now, I have no idea how long that all took. I don't remember looking at my watch or checking. And I'm just assuming that this sighting took place over a matter of 20 minutes maybe. It could have been much longer. that's just a guess though I have no recall but I do remember feeling very strange when it was over top of us again no lights no sound no spotlights nothing just black well I kind of forgot about it

believe it or not and a couple years later I happened to be in a bookstore and I saw Edward Rupelt's book book the report on unidentified flying objects in the store. And I picked that book up and thumbed through it. And when I did, it was like a floodgate opened. Bang, this whole experience came, emerged into my consciousness. And I relived it again and thought, wow.

Now, this wasn't a saucer or anything. This was a Chevron, as best I can describe it, was not a triangle. It was a Chevron. And at that point, I never looked back, and I have been in UFO uphology ever since. What do I believe it was? I really don't know. I got to think it wasn't from here from planet Earth. I just, from what I remember, I got to think it was otherworldly.

I was not frightened during the whole event, and I wasn't scared, and Mike didn't seem to be. Of course, we never exchanged feelings or anything, so it actually, when I look back on it, I mean awe, that I had the opportunity to witness something as awesome as this, was, but never was there a feeling of threat or harm. Now, that just never occurred, at least that I can consciously remember. And that's my story, basically. There's not much other detail. I have never queried in the paper and asked for affirmation from anybody else in this town, especially with this, the way UFOs have emerged into consciousness of the planet, basically, so much different now than when it was when I was a young punk in college.

But now I don't think it would be too good of an idea for me to report this. I'm not even quite sure how I would go about phrasing a question if I were to put something in the paper and ask for somebody to step forward and say, were you there? Or, yeah, I was there. but, God, I'm afraid of what might come out of woodwork. I just, I don't need the affirmation personally. I know, like the movie says, I know what I saw. And that's that.

Again, the strange thing is, is the disappearance of action or remembering of the event until a little bit later when I was prompted by that book. So again, that's that's my story. I thank you, Ryan, for listening to me and for taking this report. And I hope this helps somebody else along the way deal with the experience. Some people may not deal with it too well. And I might add, I have never consciously, have no recall of ever. seeing something again. A couple of bright lights moving really weird when I was in the

service out the middle of the ocean. Yeah, but never anything I could identify as a craft. But I did see lights in the ocean, or I should say in the sky above the ocean that didn't act normal, zigzag, back and forth, that type of thing. So that was a little strange too. But So anyway, that's it. Ryan, thank you so much. I appreciate it, and I hope this helps somebody deal with their event. And best of luck to all. My name is Brian Smith.

I was born in 12, 12, 51. I was raised in a small town of Pearl, Illinois, on Route 100, about 140 miles north of St. Louis on the Illinois River. I had some friends that worked at the fish market And occasionally I'd go down there It was kind of warm that night And we were standing there alongside the river And looking north I saw a light coming down the river

And I thought it was a barge at first And I kept watching it But it didn't look like a barge light It was about where a barge light should have been Maybe a little higher But it didn't sweep back in forth. It was just a bright point of light to look at. And it continued to move toward us down the river, toward the south. And I called Bim over there, Michael Shanks. His nickname was Bim. And I said,

what is that? And he said, that's our UFO. And I said, you're kidding me. And he says, no, he said, you keep watching. It'll come down here. It'll go up over the railroad bridge right here in front of us. He said it'll turn and it'll fly right up there over the top of the power tower. We had a coal-fired power plant town and one of the power lines ran over the top of the mine hill. There was a quarry, rock quarry, a mine in there. As we watched, this thing came down the river, came up over the bridge just like he said it would. It turned and now as it's passing us, it couldn't have been more than just, I don't know. closer than a quarter of a mile.

I would say, probably close to an eighth of a mile. This railroad track was right by us. And it went up and hovered over this power line tower. We jumped in my 70 Charger RT, and we drove up a farmer's road to get to it. We drove out into this field. There was a steep, ruddy hill that we had to go up.

It was narrow. We got up there, And just as soon as we pulled into the alfalfa field where we could see it, it started to move away towards the southwest. It crossed over town, turned south, and headed down over Old Pearl. And we turned the car around and back down the hill, and we went down to the Gasfield Hill Spring, down Route 100, about a mile, and turned north, turned west, up a gravel road, past Gasfield Hill Spring,

hill spring up on to the prairie and we came to an intersection up there and we stopped and we started looking around for it we didn't see anything but stars at that point but in a moment it just popped on and appeared over a field not too far from us uh i would say it was probably might have been a hundred feet off the ground it wasn't very high and we watched it and it flew a little ways uh we was still looking west and this disc was probably about 30 feet in diameter, brilliant white to look at, never made a sound, and it flew off towards the south. And over time, I learned that it came through three to four times a week around midnight, and we chased it several more times after that.

But one night I was with another friend of mine in his mom's car, Leslie Island. And we was coming from the roller skating rink that night. And he didn't know about this thing. I hadn't told him. And we was pulling into town, and I saw it hovering over the, it was about 11.30 at night. Saw it hovering over the tower.

And I told him, I said, get it. I said, just inside the sandbags here, there's a levy that goes around the town. I said, pull over. We'll get out and we'll watch this thing. So we got out of the car, and we're standing there watching it. and we're right in the town limits. Pearl's not very big. He had a population of around 500 back then.

And it looked to me like the light was getting bigger, but it wasn't. It was coming straight at us. And it flew down and hovered just, I don't know, maybe four or five, six feet above the road, right in front of us, just a few steps from us. And we was looking toward the east at this point. It had a black area that was narrower at the top.

wider at the bottom. And I don't know, I would say it was, I'm going to say it was 30 feet across, but it was a deep dish saucer. It wasn't thin, but it wasn't an orb either. And I was standing there kind of mesmerized by it. I thought, oh, that's beautiful. And Bush was frightened by it.

He jumped in the car, and his excitement, He put it in drive instead of reverse. I just barely got out of the way, and I jumped in the car on to move. And by the time I got the door shut and he hit the brakes, I looked through the windshield, and I was looking straight up at this thing just a few feet above the car. And it just never made a sound. It just lifted up.

Went towards the south on the same route that I'd seen it go before, and it just flew away. Now, we went home, and, uh, to tell my mom and dad about it. And dad and Gina, my sister, Gina, had just come in from feeding the ponies at the farm. And they had seen it flying away, too. And they was talking about it when we got there.

They came in a, what we called a shortcut. It was the back way to the house. We went around the long way through town. So we told him what we saw, and Gina, believe me, but dad didn't. He said, oh, it had to be a helicopter or something. I said, no, it wasn't. But that's what we saw. And to me, it mesmerized me.

I had seen it before, and I was fascinated with it. Leslie, on the other hand, he was spooked by it. He did not like it and didn't want to be around it. Certainly didn't want to be that close to it. It was definitely a flying saucer. Other than that, that changed my mind. life since I had been told. There's no such thing as ghosts and we was raised in a haunted house. There's no such thing as aliens or flying saucers were the only creatures that God ever made.

And I found out that both were untrue. The paranormal does exist. Aliens and flying saucers do exist. And I've been investigating these things since 1970. I hope that everyone understands that when you see something like that, whether you believe in or not, especially if you don't believe in it, once you see something like that, your life has changed forever. There's no going back. In association with Antica Productions and the Antica Podcast Network, to learn more, visit anticaproductions.com.