My Journey Through Time Part Three
By rayjones
- 1317 reads
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changeable. Maybe with proper filtering I could recreate the
light in my head on Earth, and thereby create a link between what I was seeing
in my mind feeling in my heart and the outside world, which felt so foreign to
me.
Even as I leaned boards against our old swing set frame, I
knew what I was doing was crazy. I was trying to open a portal, construct an
ambiance chamber that would capture the appearance, the feeling, the memory of
that inner light and make it real in this world.
Waning sunlight streamed through the carefully measured
spaces between the boards and touched my mind. However, they did not transport
me anywhere. Of course, they didn’t. How could they? I stood there behind the
boards feeling foolish yet wondering if the setting of the sun had spoiled my
plan.
After all, one cannot
stop the sun. And maybe that was what I must do to stand in the ‘right’ light
long enough to turn my inner world, my memory into something tangible,
traversable. Again, crazy thoughts and even crazier actions from a little boy
who should be thinking about baseball or fishing, anything but this
foolishness.
Several weeks later I, my mother, my sister and several of
our neighbors and other family members were sheltering from a thunderstorm in
our neighbor’s house. We had been barning tobacco when a storm came up. Anyway,
we were all together in the living room. The storm was ending, but lightning
was still sporadically flashing. A pot- bellied stove attached to an old
fireplace by stove pipe sat a few feet from the wall. A ‘basketball’ of
sparkling color and light just popped from it and glided about four feet above
the floor toward the center of the room. It floated nonchalantly, faltered,
then zipped down and under the chair where my uncle sat.
There was an electrical reciprocal under the chair. He fell
out, jumped up surprised and amazed as were we all. The thing is none of us
believed it was anything supernatural, or extraterrestrial. We all knew it was
ball lightening a fantastic but perfectly natural phenomenon. No one can yet
explain it. But that doesn’t make it other worldly. Sad to say, so far as I
know, that was the only strange sighting, I have ever shared with anyone. I was
a few feet from it, could have easily touched it, but I sensed nothing truly
strange from it. Unlike the next ‘sighting’ I had some years later…
I was thirteen when I had another seemingly weather- related
sighting. Standing in our front yard fooling around with a ‘super ball’, a
popular toy at the time. I looked up and saw clouds being caught up and wrapped
around, what was clearly an invisible cylinder slowly rotating on a horizontal
plane directly above our house.
Had it not been for the fluffy white clouds tracing the
giant tubular object’s perfect symmetry, I would have never known it was there.
But as I stood beneath that summer blue sky watching puffy white non-
threatening clouds wind around and slowly dissipate over the football field
sized, invisible, gently turning ‘craft’, I realized it did not want to be
seen. And here I was gawking up at it.
Try as I might I could not make myself believe it was some
odd tornado or dust devil. I’ve seen tornadoes and dust devils. This was
nothing like that. This was no funnel, but a massive tube- a cloaked vessel.
And I knew it could see me
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more easily than I could see it. Suddenly fearful, I went
inside, carrying yet another secret that I was afraid to share with anyone.
There are tubular cloud formations that are formed by
intense storm fronts. But it was a pleasant afternoon. There was no storm. This
was no natural event, at least no ‘Earth natural’ event.
Years past, I graduated high school took a job as a tack
welder at ‘Superlock’, a fifth wheel plant in Rocky Mount, NC. Two years later
I married and settled into adult life. It was 1973.
On my way to work one late winter morning, driving down 301
highway north, I had another UFO sighting. The sun was well below the horizon.
The road, dark and empty, cut a straight line through trees and fields. Off to
my right something caught my attention. I slowed but not so much that I had to
down shift. I was driving a straight stick at the time, a significant detail.
Anyway, I glanced over long enough to see four dull white spheres. Each sphere
was about twice the size of my outstretched thumb, gliding northward over a
narrow band of trees just beyond a small field. They did not illuminate the
ground or trees. They did not radiate light. They were simply pure flat white.
Just as I was about to glance back at the road, the third
sphere from the end dropped out of formation and sank into the darkness slowly
vanishing from sight much like a coin disappearing in murky water.
The remaining three lights curved left without banking. I
slowed down glancing back at the road then looking back at the strange display.
At no time did the roof of my car block my view as they stayed inside the upper
half of the window frames. And though I was going quite slow. I never had to
down shift. Soon the white spheres were curving leisurely across the road less
than quarter mile in front of me.
I never stopped or saw anyone else on the road as I watched
the spheres complete a slow elegant U- turn and proceed to go behind me
shrinking into the distance as I drove away from them. Being alone therefore
having no one to corroborate my sighting, I decided to tell no one unless
someone at work happened to bring it up. No one did, so neither did I. I have
to say I wasn’t frightened by the sighting. In fact, I would have to
characterize it as serene, comforting and rather elegant.
Later in the eighties, I changed jobs and started working at
the Firestone Tire Plant of Wilson N.C. At about two P.M. I was walking a dirt
path behind where I and my former wife Brenda Gooch Jones lived and happened to
look right and saw what I first took for a black balloon gently sliding north,
just above the trees at the far side of the field. Didn’t think much of it at
first. I mean it looked like a party balloon, that ‘escaped’ a party. But
something about it did not feel or look right. It did not wobble or drift. I
had seen balloons in the sky before, even blimps and hot air balloons. They
drift, just a little, and toy balloons always wobble. But this sphere moved
with intent and a steadiness I’ve never seen in any lighter than air object. I
stopped walking and fixed my eyes on it. The more I looked at it the more its
blackness appeared green, deep, deep, green. “Are you a balloon,” I asked
aloud. Then I thought, ‘if you are not a balloon but one of them, then land in
the field so we can talk.’ At that very moment it arced up into a massive cloud
bank and sank from sight. I thought, ‘yeah right, that’s what I thought.’ The
whole UFO thing is frustrating. You have an experience. Then it ends. And all
you must show for it is impossible memories and a truck load of questions.
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When I was about thirteen, I became a Christian. Decades
later I divorced my first wife because of her adultery. A few years after I
remarried to my current wife, Gloria Darlene Smith Jones. We moved to Tarboro
N.C. It was during this time I began going out knocking on doors sharing my
faith in Christ with others, to fulfill the Great Commission, my responsibility
as a child of God. Anyway, one night I had a dream. It was as if I were looking
down the wrong end of a telescope. I saw two sturdy masculine hands rolling two
little figures of Joseph and Mary, typical nativity figures, except these two
objects were spattered with various colors of paint. A man was speaking, but
his voice was low. It sounded like he was whispering from behind a thick oak
door. There was no way I could make out his words.
About two weeks later I and a friend from church went out on
visitation, knocking on doors. I was trying to find my cousins trailer. I had
heard he moved to Elm City so that’s where we went that night. I knocked on his
door. No one answered. There were plenty of other doors to knock on, so we did
just that.
We knocked on the next trailer over, a man answered, total
stranger, we told him who we were and why we were at his door. He smiled and
welcomed us in. We all took seats. I and Mike Fulk my friend from church began
to tell him about Jesus. He listened politely. Afterwards, he asked us if we
believed in ghosts. We said yes, in fact we told him we are all ghosts inside
fleshly bodies.
He proceeded to tell us how his recently deceased father sat
down on a log beside of him while he was out in the woods grieving his passing.
He, his father, assured him he was all right, then faded away. We listened with
patience and compassion, determined not to deprive him of the comfort that
unusual event had afforded him. We did not dispute his account or argue with
him. That would have been disrespectful and hurtful. We were not there for that
just the opposite, in fact.
Then he pulled two little paint spattered figures of Joseph
and Mary out of his pocket. He turned them over in his sturdy masculine hands
and told us how these figures and a bunch of other stuff had been tossed into a
crusher while he and his crew were preparing to demolish an old house. These
two little fragile objects were the only things not crushed to powder. I said
nothing (wish I had now). But I’m sure my mouth dropped.
It seemed my paranormal past was not through with me. I
tried to put it behind me but it’s like I have another life or at least other
connections I can not break or shake. Sometimes I feel like an amnesiac. Every
so often some bit of my past or possibly some small part of my other self from
that other place, finds its way into this world, and pricks my memory.
Once, while I was on break at work, sitting in a straight
back chair, leaning against the concrete wall. I felt a small gentle hand grasp
my left shoulder. Granted I was taking a nap, working a swing shift will make
you sleepy at the oddest times. In any case it startled me, woke me. For a
split second I thought it was one of the housekeeping ladies waking me so she
could mop under my chair. But no one was there. The room was empty. The wall
behind me was made of concrete blocks. Whoever, whatever, grasped my shoulder
had to have been standing or stooping directly behind me. I can still feel the
tiny bones of that little hand caress my shoulder. It was real. It was
comforting yet disquieting.
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My last experience happened three -years before I retired.
Early spring of 2013, I was on day shift. The sun was peeking over the horizon.
Time to go to work. Backing out of my driveway, I looked right to check for
traffic. Then I looked left. The road was clear. The shoulder, however, was
not. Standing just above the ground on my side of the road less than a quarter
mile away, a golden streak of light hovered vertically in the air. It was twice
the length of my outstretched index finger, a narrow crack of what looked like
bright golden sunlight.
That section of the road has nothing that might catch or
reflect sunlight. Besides it looked for all the world like sunlight shining
through a crack in a curtain. And I was staring directly into it. Except the
curtain was invisible.
I guess one could call it a rift. That’s what it felt and
looked like. But then that suggests the light was coming from some other place-
another world, and that notion is rife with all kinds of impossible,
uncomfortable implications. Maybe that is why I conveniently remembered my cell
phone has a camera after I was well on my way to work. Maybe that’s why I
didn’t go down there and touch the darn thing. Maybe I didn’t want to fall in
or get sucked in. Maybe I just don’t want to know. Maybe I’m just a coward
hiding in my oh so comfortable mundane life. But then it reaches out and teases
me, spontaneous, unprovoked and never summoned. Sorry for the self -absorbed
rambling.
I have backed out of that same driveway many times since,
same time of day, same weather conditions, and have not seen that ‘rift’ again.
If it were some strange trick of light, some atmospheric phenomenon, then why
haven’t I seen it again? Still trying to figure this out.
I whole heartedly appreciate what I have in this life. My
wife, my kids my grandson are priceless to me. The last thing I want to do is
jeopardize all the good things this world has given me. But I still want to
peer deeper into this rabbit-hole, without being swallowed by it. If that’s
possible. But who knows? Like I wrote
earlier, maybe I came from that rabbit- hole. Maybe I still want to go home.
That sounds so crazy. And there’s the rub. Is reality unfolding or unraveling?
I suppose time will tell.
This is my account. I’ve been here for 66 years. It seems I
carried something into this world that does not fit or belong. Maybe that thing
was me. Well despite that, I took root and grew. What choice did I have? Everyone
has a story and mine is just one little leaf in a vast forest, except mine
sounds like a collaboration between Stephen King and Ray Bradbury.
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Comments
Thank you for sharing this
Thank you for sharing this extraordinary piece of life writing Ray
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I agree with insert and have
I agree with insert and have so much admiration for you. Everything you've written here is so much what I believe in myself.
A big thankyou from me too for sharing your story.
Jenny.
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Hi Ray,
Hi Ray,
just to let you know I'd be very interested to hear how your UK podcast goes. I make a point of watching all the the UFO, Alien and project blue book programmes and I'm so interested in hearing about abductions and people that have had experiences. I'm very open minded and know that there are stories that can be explained, but there's also so much out there from people who are in the millitary and of high ranking positions, that it can't possibly all be made up.
Please let me know how you get on.
Jenny.
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No I haven't Ray, but I am
No I haven't Ray, but I am open minded and believe that some people are the chosen few.
Jenny.
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