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Witness Accounts: Volume 42

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“So, Hilton called to me the superstition concierge to make your fan rituals a reality. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition.”From the transcript

In Witness Accounts: Volume 42, we return to the heart of the podcast: YOU, the witnesses. Four people share encounters they’ve carried with them for years. A strange illuminated craft in Florida transforms into three lights. A massive black triangle silently hovers over a field in Ontario before vanishing. A glowing sphere drifts over an Oregon neighborhood in broad daylight. And U.S. Army veteran Vince Hall shares a deeply personal encounter with a bluish-white orb while deployed in Baghdad, Iraq. As UFOs become increasingly consumed by government investigations and disclosure debates, these stories remind us why I started this show in the first place. Behind every sighting is a person whose life may have been changed forever, once again proving, YOU are the disclosure. Special thanks to Tim, K.G, Patrick, and Vince for sharing their stories. If you want to share your story on Witness Accounts, email me at: [email protected] to discuss further. Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/somewhereskies ByMeACoffee: http://www.buymeacoffee.com/UFxzyzHOaQ Send us a voicemail: https://www.speakpipe.com/SomewhereSkiesPod Substack: https://ryansprague.substack.com/ All socials and books: https://linktr.ee/somewhereskiespod Follow Suzanne on X: https://x.com/csuzannelanders Email: [email protected] Opening theme song by Septembryo Closing song by Per Kiilstofte Background music by: OBSIDIAN SOUNDFIELDS Copyright © 2026 Ryan Sprague. All rights reserved. #UFO #UAP #UFOSighting #UFOEncounters #AlienEncounters #Paranormal #HighStrangeness #SomewhereInTheSkies Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Witness Accounts: Volume 42

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Somewhere in the Skies — Witness Accounts: Volume 42. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.

College football is back. So, Hilton called to me the superstition concierge to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oho, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching bandwink up call it 555 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for this day. Brussels clean up nicely at Sweet Green. Maple glazed, roasted and edges perfectly caramelized. Sweet Green's fall harvest is back on the menu, and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweet Green app. This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be.

Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes. Payday bars have a bone to pick with the other candy bars, enough with the toppings and layers and stuff. Payday bars are just salty, crunchy peanuts and sweet caramel. Delicious! Payday, peanut caramel bar. While our government's official position is not to speculate on this subject, we can choose to let our minds explore other possibilities. The use of our Nigerians, for it we consider that astrosciences agree on one point. That the possibility of life elsewhere is not only quite probable, some field is there without a doubt.

Let us suppose that these objects are real space vehicles, extraterrestrial warriors, and not an illusion of the mind. I'm Ryan Sprig, and you are now somewhere in the skies. Welcome to somewhere in the skies, I am your host, Ryan Sprig. And today we have another volume of witness accounts. Now you guys know how much this series means to me, this will be our 42nd volume of witness accounts. That means hundreds of you who have reached out to me and decided to tell your UFO story or your close encounter. And I can't tell you what that means to me, that you would trust somewhere in the skies with your story, some of you for the very first time ever telling it.

And I think what these episodes do is they put me back into the shoes of the curious young UFO researcher who wanted to do nothing else than to contribute to this large vast field of UFO studies. And the way that I decided to do that was through you, the witnesses, the experiencers, and to help tell your stories and how these events have changed your life for affected you in so many different ways. And these are my favorite and apparently they're your favorite too. They are the highest downloaded and highest listened to episodes of somewhere in the skies across the board, all 10 years that we've been doing this show. And why I think it's important that we continue to do these witness accounts is because this topic of UFOs has gone mainstream. And that's great, it's exciting, it's empowering even.

But it comes with some baggage. The reason it's so mainstream right now is because of the involvement of the government. You could even go as far as to say the intelligence communities, whether it's former intelligence people who have come forward and said they know the truth behind UFOs and the occupants that pilot said UFOs or the cover up and the legacy programs. And all of that stuff, it's interesting, but it's not the whole story and it will never be the whole story. You guys know, I always say disclosure does not come from a government, it does not come from one country, it does not come from one leader. It comes from you, it comes from every single person who's looked up into the skies and seen something unexplainable staring back at them. That's the disclosure person by person, you, your parent, your significant other, your next-door neighbor.

And that's what is most important about this topic. So I want to take just a moment to thank the four individuals who are telling their story tonight on witness accounts. So to Tim, to KG, to Patrick and to Vince, thank you. Thank you for making somewhere in the skies the platform you decided to come forward with. Thank you for your courage, your bravery, no matter how mainstream this topic goes, it never gets easier to tell you what you're doing. It's easier to tell your own personal UFO story. So huge props to you guys that commend you and thank you. I want you to pay close attention to the last story tonight, that Vince Hall. Now, Vince was a speaker at Enomicon, a free virtual conference that took place this past week on September 12th of 2026. And Vince really blew me away with his presentation. It resonated so much with me, as I know it will, with a lot of you, because you were going to hear Vince's story of his UFO sighting that he had in Baghdad, Iraq as a service member.

And the way he describes what happened after and what's most important about everyday people coming forward and telling their stories, it's what we do here. That is the reason I started somewhere in the skies. Will we continue to interview authors of books? Yes, will we continue to do case histories? Of course. Will we probably have former intelligence people, military witnesses, government officials on the show? Yeah, we probably will, because I do believe that everyone deserves to have a voice in this topic. I truly do. But I also want you to remember the heart of this mystery. And that's you, the observers. So I hope you enjoy this very special episode of Summer in the skies witness accounts. And I hope you'll take just a few moments to write and review Summer in the skies on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts that truly, truly does help us in ways I can't even tell you guys.

So thank you. Thank you for those who have done it and thank you to those who will do that. I hope you'll continue to write and review on Apple Spotify anywhere you possibly can. If you're watching this on YouTube, take a moment to just click like this video, subscribe to the YouTube channel if you haven't already. Go back and watch all 11 hours of Anomacon or free virtual conference. It's right there in the archives as well. And yeah, thank you. Thank you for supporting everything we do here. We have our supporters. We have options to do that as well. Patreon, Apple Premium, YouTube channel membership. All of these links are in the show notes or video description. And that goes a really long way of helping us out too. But that's it. That's it for me guys. Enjoy this episode. And again, my very special thanks to the witnesses that came forward in this volume of witness accounts and all other volumes throughout the years. You are the disclosure. You are somewhere in the skies. So thank you so much and hope you enjoyed.

Hey Ryan, how you doing? It's me Tim from Tallahassee, Florida. And I just want to tell my story of that kind of that meat and a friend had of a night. That we saw a spaceship. And I do sometimes like I stutter over my words. So if I do stutter my words and it's taking a little minute, just please on me. I bear with me if you have any. But yeah, this is my story of a spaceship that we saw. So me and my friend we worked at a restaurant in the city of the city. It was a sunset at the time. And it's not there anymore. They tore down a few years ago. But at the time we got off at 12 o'clock. When we got off at 12 a.m., we went to my friend's house, you know, something that in your typical 19, you know, you know, you're a typical 19, you know, you're a typical 19, you know, you're a typical 19.

You know, 20 year olds would do, you know, after you get off work, you just go chill. So we went out to his house, chill, which he stayed maybe like 10 minutes away from the job. So we were outside just chilling and at this time now it's in between one-ish and two-ish, right in between. And we were just sitting outside talking and all of a sudden it sounded like like a helicopter was coming straight forward. We were just starting to turn around and we're looking like, like, hey man, like, do you hear that helicopter? But we don't see it. And like, at this time we're been standing there for like three, four minutes waiting on this helicopter to come. And we're not seeing a helicopter. So we're just like, all right. So the helicopter sound, it just went away. It never came. It just went away. And we turned our heads, like, just we just forgot about it. We're talking, talking. Next thing you know, in our vision, in your, you know, you're looking straight, but you can see on the side of you.

And you can see like a bunch of lights. So I looked. And then I was like, hey bro, look. And we looked. And it was a spaceship, like a regular, like a real spaceship. And the size of like a car, like a long car or like a nice size truck. And it had like a dome top on it. And the middle part of it was spinning and like rainbow colors. And it wasn't spinning fast. And it wasn't spinning slow. It was like almost like it was spinning like at a perfect time, like just so perfect to wear like it. Almost like it hypnotized you like, because when we looked at it, it seemed like time, it seemed like it's slow. It took forever to fly right here. Like it was like a like on a movie. But like, whoa. It was one of those moments where it like seemed like it took forever. So it's flying over our heads. And as it flew over heads, we're not talking, we're not saying nothing. I don't know what he's doing. He don't know what I'm doing. We're both just looking up straight up.

And as it gets in a distance before it went over a tree, there was a tall tree right in front of it down, like maybe like maybe like 20 feet ahead or whatever. There's a tree, a big tree right there. Then it goes in the woods. Just before it got over that tree, the whole spaceship turned into three lights in the shape of a triangle. So it turned from spaceship into like three orbs in the shape of a triangle. So there was an orb to the left. There was an orb to the right. And there was an orb down at the bottom in the middle part of the left and the right. So if you picture that, that's like a shape of upside down upside down, no triangle. And when it turned into the triangle, it just flew away in the shape of the triangle and went over the tree line.

And at the time, I was able to pull my phone out at the time where it flew over the tree line. So you were, so on my recording, you was able, I was able to see the three dots. But that was like 15 years ago. And I went to, I went through like five, six phones in the 15 years from now since that happened. But after that, I did what you know what, you know, you usually do it as a teenager. I went home to my mom. She didn't believe me at first. My friend, we talked about it the next day. I called her, it was like, hey bro, were we dreaming or did we see the spaceship? He was like, yeah, we definitely saw a spaceship. And we told a few people about it. And we had to be together to make people believe us. But they were like, yeah, y'all definitely saw something. And now that I, I was quiet about it. But now I'm coming out more about it and telling my story to more people. My mom was like, now since you're talking about it still after all that time, she was like, now I definitely believe y'all saw something and y'all wasn't just after seeing anything or tripping. So yeah, I don't want to hold too much time because I could talk about this all day long, this subject all day long.

But, and I've seen, and this is not my first encounter. I've seen more encounters as well. But, um, thank you for the time, Ryan. And I appreciate you. And I hope that other people can hear my story. And I'm so excited to hear other people's stories as well. Thank you for the opportunity, Ryan. Thank you. Hey, Ryan, my name is KG Michele. I wanted to talk to you about a strange, like paranormal encounter that I had had before. So going back to when it first happened, this would have been somewhere around 2014. I mean, me and my boyfriend at the time, we were driving. Well, I was driving the car. I was leaving a little town of Comber, Ontario, heading towards the city of Windsor. And there's nobody outside. Like there's no cars on the road. It's like midnight.

You can't see like there's nobody out. Nobody's outside. We're driving. And, you know, the music's off. It's pretty quiet. I'm just focusing on the road in front of me, you know, it's a long stretch rose, but about a 45 minute drive to where we have to go. And you're basically just like surrounded by like corn fields and every now and then you'll pass a house. But it's mostly just fields here. So we're driving down the road. And out of the corner of my eye, I want to say it was like the top left corner of my vision, looking through the windshield. I notice a black shape in the sky. Now it's kind of off like over to the left. It's not moving. It is a solid black triangular object. Just like hovering over this field. Now this thing was huge. Like when I say big like it looked like it had to have been bigger than the field itself for sure.

And in my opinion, I couldn't tell if it was, you know, really low to the ground or if it was just a huge object in itself. So as I'm driving my boyfriend's in the passenger seat, I'm staring at it. I keep like kind of looking up to it, then looking at the road, looking back at it. And every time I go ants up, it's not moving. It's just staying in one singular spot. It's not floating away. It's not moving. It's not coming lower. You know, it's not moving at all. There's no lights on this thing. There's not a single, you know, light coming off of it. It just, it looked almost as though it was trying to blend in with, you know, the darkness outside. And as I'm looking, my boyfriend goes, oh my god, do you see that? And I'm staring at it. I'm like, ah, yeah, the big black triangle in the sky, yeah, I see that. So as we're both now noticing, I know I'm not going crazy. Like the person beside me is now seeing this object as well. I decide really quick that I'm going to pull the car over and try to, I wanted to try to get a photo of it.

So I go to pull over as soon as I, my car hit the gravel on the side of the road. I saw the object move over very slowly. It just kind of did like a little, a little shimmy, like it just moves over like pretty slowly. And then as I'm looking, it's just gone. Like it's there one second. It moves over very slightly. And then it's, it's vanished. Like we didn't see it go in any direction. We didn't see it go up, go to the side. Like we don't know which way it even traveled in. It was gone in literally the blink of an eye. And the one thing that was really weird about this is just the fact that like when I had rolled my window down, there was no noise coming off of this thing. Like there was not a single, you couldn't hear an engine, like there was nothing. There wasn't a light on it. Like this is where I started to, like I really came to terms with the fact that, okay, we just saw UFO. Like what else could it be at that point?

So I ended up doing some research later and tried to figure out like, like I was looking at different spaceships and you know, people were trying to say it was the military because there was a lot of military activity happening with them like moving things. But yeah, when I looked it up, it basically said that it was the, it was the US military or something. The thing that caught me so strange with that was why in the world would a US military ship that doesn't make sense because we know they don't have anything like that. I mean, as far as we know, they don't have anything like that. But why would it be randomly hovering over a dark cornfield in the middle of staples on tarot in the middle of the night? Even if they did have a ship that looked like this and it was them, why in the world would they be sitting there? Like it, the whole thing just made no sense. And you know, after the fact, after we saw it, the only thing going through my mind was we were seconds away from possibly being abducted, like I don't know.

This thing definitely knew that we saw it because it seemed to vanish like as soon as it knew, as soon as we started to pull over. And I mean, I thought it was cool. I wasn't really scared by it. I thought, I thought it was a pretty cool experience that like, hey, you know, I actually saw one of these things for real. But yeah, I mean, that was my extraterrestrial experience. I kind of hope one day I get to see one again because, I mean, like I said, it was so surreal. It was cool. But yeah, that's my story. And thanks for allowing me to come onto the show and share this with you. Hello, this is Ryan Spreg, the host of Summer in the Skies. If you're enjoying our podcast, our live streams and our videos, and you'd like to support the show, there are several ways to help while unlocking exclusive perks. Join our Patreon community for early access to episodes, priority guest questions, exclusive articles, bonus content, and access to a growing community of fellow UFO enthusiasts.

You can also subscribe to Summer in the Skies Premium on Apple Podcasts for ad-free listening, early access, and exclusive premium content. If you're watching on YouTube, consider becoming a channel member to unlock bonus content, members only posts, badges, and so much more. No matter how you choose to support Summer in the Skies, your contribution directly helps fund our research, our production, travel, interviews, and the continued growth of everything we do here. So, to learn more, check the links in the show notes or the video description. And real talk here, guys. Thank you for listening and supporting us for almost 10 years. And thank you for supporting independent content. And I hope you'll continue to join me somewhere in the Skies.

We gotta make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey. Oho, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching bandwink up call at 555 and 55 seconds. Hit it! When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for this day. Brussels clean up nicely at sweet green. Maple glazed, roasted, and edges perfectly caramelized. Sweet greens fall harvest is back on the menu, and the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured. You know what to do. Order on the Sweet Green app. This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them.

Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes. Payday bars have a bone to pick with the other candy bars, enough with the toppings and layers and stuff. Payday bars are just salty, crunchy peanuts and sweet caramel. Delicious! Payday, peanut caramel bar! Imagine if this stability piece and the innovation piece were each other's missing piece. First citizens' bank and Silicon Valley Bank are combining financial security and innovation expertise to create a full suite of solutions for all your business needs. With the scale to back every state of growth, from pre-seed to IPO and beyond, you have everything you need to make your big ideas click into place. First citizens' bank and Silicon Valley Bank. It's the best of bank worlds. Hello Ryan, and the Summer in the Stys podcast. Big fan, enjoy your show, listen to it regularly.

My name is Patrick, and I'm from Seattle, Washington. I am only a living organism, an experimental, free-unprovised musician, guitarist, a noise maker, and I perform under the un-easy chairs. So up here, it's up around the one here's some noise, there it is. Anyway, my story goes back to approximately 1985 in a little town called Kaiser, Oregon, where I went to high school. And this happened approximately sometime in the summer. I was riding a small, I think it was like a Dawson pickup truck, little small one. And my good friend was driving, I was sitting in the passenger side, and our friend John was sitting kind of in the middle of the seat.

And his head was kind of pressed up against the interior, so he couldn't really see out much. Which will be unfortunate later. But anyway, it was again like summertime, middle of the afternoon. I just remember being a very sunny, beautiful day out in Kaiser. Again, Kaiser is kind of a little suburb, side city of Salem, Oregon, which is the capital, obviously, of Oregon. Anyway, we're driving down a main road, heading back to my friend who's driving the pickup. We're heading back to his parents' house. And none of us are talking, we're just kind of driving along. And I happened to turn and look to my right, and there was, I could kind of overlook the top of kind of one of the suburban kind of,

neighborhoods. And loading over the neighborhood, coming from the north, and it looked like it was heading to south. And it looked like it was probably, well, what was flying overhead was a very large, phosphorescent glowing sphere. But in my mind, I remember it being, oh, at least I would say probably at least 150 feet in diameter. It was moving slowly, no sound. Again, it was glowing kind of like almost like mist coming off of it, like this phosphorescent mist. And the interior of this sphere underneath this layer of phosphorescent, it was just, it was kind of as pure black.

It was kind of like a pure black sphere, and all of this phosphorescence around it, sort of like a mist that was coming off of it. And again, totally silent. So when I saw this, I immediately yelled out like, what the actual fuck is that? What is that? And my friend driving, his name is John as well, like my friend in the middle seat, and he yelled out too. We were both just like, what the fuck is that? And my friend, my other friend, John, who's in the middle seat, was like, what? What is head being pressed up against the ceiling? He absolutely missed the entire sight. Sighting lasted just seconds. Again, we were driving in this pickup truck, small pickup truck while this sighting happened.

And the entire thing lasted only maybe like three, four, five seconds, very short. But in that time, I saw it gently, silently, head from the north to the south, over the suburban neighborhood. And again, middle of the acronym, beautiful weather, just the weirdest thing I've ever seen, probably. And one of the weird things about it was that after the signing, we just kept driving for a few more blocks to my friend John's parents house, the driver. We all, both of all three of us got out of the pickup truck, walked into his parents house, nobody was home. And we all just kind of just sat down in the living room, didn't talk about it.

I don't remember us ever talking about it. And we just kind of, I don't know what it's hard to say, almost feeling we took a nap or just, chilled out. And I don't know, this sighting has come back, this sighting or this experience has kind of come back to me over the years. I always remember it clearly, every connected with my friend John, who was driving and he clearly remembers it. And I friend John, who was in the middle seat, obviously never got to see it. I never spoke into it again. But yeah, I just wanted to share this story. I've heard a lot about bringing kind of fast for us and things like this. Usually it's like people trying to explain media rights. I don't think that's like, seems like would be a higher atmosphere thing. Again, this is very low. I mean, it was probably a couple hundred feet in the air, very low silenade.

And it seemed to, again, while I was following its path, it seemed it's probably just disappear and see the snavery. There was no crash, no explosion, nothing. Nothing reported afterwards. So again, there it is. I'm glad that you have this forum for people to share their stories. This is one of my favorite episodes that you do. And again, I appreciate everything you do and big fan of some more of the skies. Keep us at the worst. And thank you. Hi everyone, first off, I just want to say thanks to Ryan, this guy right here. My name is Vince with the UAP pod. A little bit of a background on me. I am a US Army vet. I spent some time in psychological warfare.

I do know that there is some baggage when it comes to SIOP. And I totally get that. But I do take the UFO topic seriously. It's near and dear to my heart. So don't worry, you're going to be in good hands. I'm also a former pastor. I got my undergraduate degree in ministry and leadership. I got my master's degree in theology. I also planted two churches, but in 2020 I chose a different path. One rooted more in discovery than in doctrine. I have five kids. Yes, you heard that correctly. It's never a dull moment around here. I am happily married. I currently work in sales and marketing. What I'm about to share with you. I wasn't looking for. At the ripe age of 18 years old, I joined the military. In 2003, I did basic training. I did my AIT, my advanced individual training. I graduated from the John F. Kennedy School Special Warfare. I trained some more. And then eventually I arrived in Baghdad, Iraq in August of 2004.

We flew into Baghdad, Iraq in the middle of the night. We flew in on a C-130 and we dropped in on one of those very steep tactical landings, like right over the airport almost. Like your heart just goes right up into your throat. My heart's pounding because this is my first time in a combat zone. We arrived at Baghdad International Airport, which is just outside Kent Victory. We get to Kent Victory. We are assigned our living quarters. And for whatever reason, I still fully understand. I ended up with my own trailer, my own little house. And as a junior and listed guy, that was really highly unusual. The first night, the base gets hit with mortars and rockets. The ground is shaking. I am scared out of my mind. The only thing that caught me down was looking out a small window of my trailer at the night sky. And I've always been drawn to the stars for however long I can remember. So I lay there just looking into the night sky and I set a simple prayer and eventually I just dripped off to sleep. Little did I know, I had no idea that a couple months later, something would happen that would change the course of my life forever.

Pretty quickly into my deployment, I had overnight fire guard duty. Basically, while everyone else slept, I stayed up in our operations center. Everyone actually had to do fire guard at some point. We were on a rotation. And I actually kind of enjoyed those nights. I'd grab a cup of coffee by myself, my shoot hoops in the hallway, I'd listen to music, I just passed the time. And also, I would often just step outside and look up at the stars. Baghdad was surprisingly peaceful at night. You could occasionally hear distant gunfire or helicopters, things like that. But most of the time it was just quiet. There was very little light pollution so the stars were amazing. And one night while I was staring at the sky, I noticed a point of light that seemed to be getting brighter, making its way towards me. And at first I assumed it was an aircraft. But it wasn't moving like an aircraft and it wasn't making any sound whatsoever. It wasn't a helicopter. That's for sure. I didn't hear that.

And then the brighter that it became, the more I realized that I was looking at something that I couldn't identify. What I saw appeared to be a sphere of bluish white light suspended in the night sky. It was an orb. It was clearly there, clearly moving in my direction. And when people have asked me the size, I can really only describe it as a little bit smaller than the full moon. And don't ask me how high up it was, I really don't know. And then something happened that I've struggled to explain for more than 20 years. When I'm about to tell you, I know it sounds crazy, but the orb communicated with me. And I didn't hear it like in a voice, right? But I received a message called a telepathic and it spoke to my heart and to my mind clear as day. And the message was, no harm will come to you while you were here. I remember blinking and rubbing my eyes and looking back up at the light. It was still there. And just as really suddenly as it appeared to me, it fades off into the night sky. Like a literal fade, just fades off.

And I sat there just waiting for someone else to be like, yo dude, did you see that? And nobody did. It was like 2 a.m. right in the middle of the night. And deep down, I knew that that experience wasn't meant for anybody else. It was meant for me. And that sentence, no harm will come to you while you're here. Prove to be true, my entire tour in Iraq. And there were moments in time when something tragic should have happened to me and it didn't. I'm talking about mortars, rockets, roadside bombs, gunfire, dangerous meetings, dangerous helicopter rides, being in the right place at the right time, that kind of stuff. And for whatever reason beyond me, I was protected. Now, I'm not here to say that I am special in any way. But I also know that if I wasn't here today, if death did take me, my five children wouldn't be here.

And that is enough of a reason for me. So there are many points in my life, huge points that would not exist if I were not here. At the time, the only way I knew how to make sense of that experience was through faith. Maybe it was divine, maybe it was an angel, maybe it was something else entirely. I didn't know really, didn't have context for it, right? So what I did know was that the experience changed me. When I returned home, I eventually threw myself into ministry. I earned degrees in ministry and leadership and theology. I became an orthopedic pastor. And ironically, while I spent years preaching about faith and hope and God's protection, I never ever shared the story of what happened in Iraq. I'd talk about Iraq, but never about an orb. That just wouldn't go very well. I certainly never told my command when it happened at the time.

I was a soldier with a security clearance. So there was no way in hell that I was going to tell them that an orb spoke to me. I never talked about it with my family. I never talked about it with friends. Not with my congregations, not with my therapist. No one. Not because I feared the mystery. I definitely feared the ridicule. And so for nearly 20 years, that experience remained one of the most important and most private moments of my life. And then something pretty cool happened. So 20 years later, in my own backyard in St. Louis, Missouri, I began having experiences that stirred up some of those feelings and wonder and curiosity and mystery all over again. And I can see and interact with orbs on the regular. And I know that that sounds freaking nuts. Believe me, I'm not past that. The orbs today, those, that's a whole other topic all in its own. There are so many different groups of people that have had experiences in their life that they cannot explain or it shifts their paradigm.

And yet they don't know how to talk about it. Many experiences remain silent, not simply because they fear ridicule, but because they're truly struggling to find the language for what happened to them. Anomalous experiences often refuse to fit neatly into our existing categories. They can be physical, yet deeply personal. They can be objective, yet profoundly subjective. And so when people share these experiences, they quickly discover that others want simple answers. This is what has happened to me with this kind of stuff. Like, hey, man, you saw an orb. Was it an alien? Was it a spirit hallucination? Secret aircraft? They just want these simple answers to questions. And it's not that easy. The experiencer is often left holding a mystery rather than a conclusion. So even when experiencers choose to speak, many intentionally leave out details. Some details feel too strange. Like, hey, I don't want to come across as weirdo.

I've had the privilege to hear so many stories from people that have messaged me. We say, hey, man, I want to remain anonymous and I just want to tell you something that happened to me. And it's brief. And the result is that many people kind of share the safe version of their story, right? Which is understandable. Like, hey, yeah, man, I saw lights in the sky and I know that they were not airplanes or satellites or drones or, hey, I saw an unusual object flying mock Jesus across the sky. And I had this strange coincidence that didn't make sense or whatever the case might be. And a lot of times during these stories, people are omitting the emotional or psychological or intuitive or consciousness related aspects, which in my opinion are the most significant part of the experience. They are not necessarily hiding the truth, but I feel like they're protecting themselves from judgment or misunderstanding and the possibility of being dismissed altogether. I know that's what I feel.

And at the same time, we appear to be entering a period where the stigma surrounding the UFO and high-strangeness type experiences is beginning to weaken. You've got government officials and military personnel and intelligence officers and pilots and scientists. I mean, really just ordinary everyday citizens, right? And teachers and doctors, all kinds of people who are increasingly willing to come forward and say, look, I have had an encounter or something happened. People are starting to come forward to discuss their encounters. While skepticism remains important, the conversation has really become more acceptable. This creates an opportunity that did not exist for previous generations of experiences. Now is the time for more people to speak up. Not because every story should be accepted uncritically, but because every story represents a potential data point. Patterns cannot emerge if the data remains. Researchers cannot ask better questions if witnesses remain silent.

The goal is not to convince everyone of a particular explanation. The goal is to gather observations, to compare experiences and to better understand a phenomenon that has consistently appeared across cultures and decades and backgrounds. And so the more voices willing to share, honestly, the clearer the picture may become for all of us. And I'll leave you with a few final thoughts. First, be willing to share your own story. Maybe it's not about UFOs, maybe it's a strange coincidence, a profound dream, an unexplained moment, or just simply a time when you are understanding of reality completely shifted. Vonerability has a way of giving other people permission to be vulnerable to. So you never know when your story might help someone connect the dots in their own. Secondly, just listen before you start explaining. If someone shares their story, one of the greatest gifts that you can give them is simply believing they believe what happened.

You don't have to agree with their interpretation. You don't have to have all of the answers. Just create enough space for them to tell their story without immediately trying to solve it. Thirdly, show genuine curiosity. Instead of asking, what was it, what's going on, what happened? You know, maybe just say, hey, man, what was that like? Or how did that change you? Curiosity invites more conversation, certainty often just shuts it down. Fourthly, pay attention to the almost stories. Come on, we all have work with people. We go to school with people. We live with people in our own homes. You'll notice this if you listen carefully. People often say things like, hey, this is going to sound crazy. Or I never told anyone this. Or you'll probably think I'm nuts. You see, those are invitations. And so interrupting, just be like, dude, yeah. Dude, go ahead. I'd love to hear it. That one phrase, I'd love to hear it, probably is unlocked more stories than almost anything else.

So to tie this all up, I love a good government hearing. I love a good UFO conference. I love when UFO files dropped via the Department of War. I love cool YouTube videos. I love all of it. But I do truly think great conversation happens around dinner tables between neighbors, between friends. When someone finally feels safe enough to say something happened to me. Because the experience or next door isn't someone else's neighbor. They're yours. I love you. I love you. I love you. Brussels clean up nicely at sweet green. Maple glazed, roasted, and edges perfectly caramelized. Sweet greens fall harvest is back on the menu. And the season's most overlooked little green vegetable is dressed to be devoured.

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