UFO Stories: In Your Own Words

"45 minutes of memory, frozen in time, in space. I stood by my car and stared at the light until my neck ached."

My dog and I were tent camping in the Apalachicola National Forest west of Tallahassee, Florida. On the night of January 15, 2000, we had followed a long trail off the main road, down the gravel road, bouncing along the dirt road until it came to an end, turning into two grassy footpaths. The break in the woods was a little meadow, but looking up, the dark sky was expansive over the Gulf of Mexico. A perfect setting for a close encounter with our other-worldly neighbors.

Around 9 or 10, as I stood there by my car in observance of the beauty, a bright light suddenly appeared in the west, darting around over the Gulf. Mesmerized, I couldn't take my eyes off the single, unblinking light, which distinguished it from manmade aircraft of any kind. Obviously other than Earthly, the craft would hover and dart from one spot to another. It was so close, I was concerned that it would pick up a reflection from my car and be attracted to it like a hornet to a gorgeous flower and suck me up like nectar. So I moved the car quietly into the cover of the trees, without turning the lights on. It was close enough to send adrenaline through my body and cause me to consider my responses to a close encounter of the THIRD kind, which was all that was left to happen, if it was going to, to complete the event. These were a scary 45 minutes!

With gratitude born of fear, I was not unhappy to observe the craft disappear as suddenly as it had appeared, on that memorable evening in the woods.