Encounters in North Texas, the Making of a Contact Worker

 

Joseph Burkes MD 2009.

 

This article may be distributed freely on the Internet but only in its entirety with no changes.

 

INTRODUCTION

 

I met Marilyn B…. in an online “chat-room” for CSETI members in January of 2009. She had just posted a picture of what she claimed was a UFO. Its intense blue color reminded me of the anomalous blue orbs that I had seen several times while driving on US 5 in 2007.  We exchanged email and talked on the phone thus giving me the opportunity to write this report. Since joining CSETI in 1992 and serving in Dr. Greer’s CE-5 Initiative during years 1992-1997, I have met a number of contactees who reportedly experience repeated sightings of UFOs and are apparently persons of great interest to the intelligence responsible for the phenomenon.

 

IT STARTED WITH A SIGHTING ON A BEAUTIFUL DAY

 

Marilyn resides in a small Texas town not far from Dallas Fort Worth. Her home is on two acres in a semi-rural location. Marilyn states that she had a broad daylight sighting of a UFO sometime around June 2006. It was a beautiful late spring day. She was taking a walk with her beloved collie named Caesar that she owned for 15 years. There had just been a thunderstorm and although the landscape was glowing with brilliant sunshine, majestic dark thunderclouds were still present in the eastern sky.  Ripening fruit trees were glistening from the rain that had just stopped minutes before.

 

 

Standing in a meadow surrounded on three sides by trees while looking at a distant thundercloud to the east, she saw a silvery cigar shaped object moving north. At first she thought it was an airplane. At closer inspection Marilyn noticed it had no wings and no rudder. There were no engine sounds or aviation lights associated with the craft.

 

My back meadow

 

Example of how the thunderclouds looked when I saw the cigar shaped craft.

 

At arm’s full extension she estimated its length to be four finger breaths. Marilyn told me that she could not easily estimate its absolute size or distance. The massive dark cloud that formed the background appeared to be about twenty-five miles away near the town of McKinney. The tubular shaped metallic object reflected sunlight. It moved so slowly that it took approximately ten minutes to fly across the expanse of sky, from tree line to tree line in the wet meadow where she stood.

 

HER SPIRITUALITY AND A MEDITATION EQUIVALENT

 

Marilyn told me that she has always had a great love for nature. She explained that when she does her art, or when she is surrounded by nature, she achieves an altered state of consciousness. Although she has not always had a regular meditation practice, it was apparent to me from her description that she experiences a kind meditation equivalent by doing art or feeling oneness with nature. While walking at night she visualizes connecting through the ground to the energy of the crystalline core of Mother Earth. She then brings the energy up through the chakras and connects to the universe. This is a practice that reportedly she has had her entire adult life. She explained that she has always felt one with the earth and the universe, what she calls “All That Is.”

 

TWO YEARS LATER THE ENCOUNTERS RESUME

 

In August of 2008 she started having frequent sightings of anomalous nocturnal lights. The first event occurred just after she got a new puppy that she named Twiggy.  One warm clear night she let her dog out around midnight. Marilyn reports witnessing a very fast moving star-like point of light. At first she thought it might be a satellite, but it seemed to be traveling faster than a satellite. After observing the object for about two minutes, she noted that without slowing down it suddenly made an abrupt 90-degree turn and accelerated off into the distance. She knew that she had just seen a UFO.

 

One day while photographing some beautiful clouds formations, she captured an image of a disc in two of her photos. She told me that she did not see the objects in the viewfinder when she was taking the pictures, but only on examining the digital image later on her computer did she notice the anomalies. This experience prompted her to contact MUFON.

 

Marilyn states, “I unknowingly captured this image of a disc shaped object while photographing pretty clouds.”

 

A short time later she had two consecutive daylight sightings of disc shaped UFOs. This event excited her so much that she wanted to talk to an expert; so she called the UFO hotline at National UFO Reporting Center, (NUFORC) and talked to the director Peter Davenport.

HIGH STRANGENESS BEGINS WITH A GOLDEN GLOW

 

Following these remarkable sightings Marilyn reports seeing even more bizarre aerial phenomena. On evening walks with Twiggy she noted a subtle golden glow emanating from small sections of the sky. At first she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her, but with repeated sightings she was able to clearly identify the phenomenon as real. On one occasion while driving home around midnight as she turned onto her street, she saw the faint glow above a large reservoir for the city of Dallas called Lake….. This reservoir is just on the other side of the properties running along the west side of the street. After pulling into her driveway, she stopped for a better look. To her amazement the golden luminescence was moving above the shore of the lake. Marilyn estimated that the faint yellow glow was fifty feet across, about a thousand feet up, and a half-mile away from her.

 

 

One of the first photos I took of a glowing object I observed moving behind the tree over a nearby lake.

 

On one occasion she asked her elderly mother to come out of the house to take a look at the golden glow in the sky. According to Marilyn, her mother became excited when she too saw the eerie amber glow.

 

Marilyn told me that her usual routine is that after supper if the weather is good, she takes Twiggy out for a walk. She always carries her camera to do some nighttime photography as a reference for her painting. A watercolor professor had critiqued her paintings as always being painted with the light of a bright day and the nighttime photographs allowed her to incorporate more subtle shading into her artwork.

 

BIZARRE LIGHTS SHINING THROUGH THE TREES

 

In September the number of sightings increased to a level where they were occurring nightly. In addition to star-like points of light that carried out bizarre maneuvers, and the weird amber glow, she also reported seeing strange lights from a woodland tract of land adjacent to her property known as “forty acres.” In the past this land was accessible to her as the owners were absent and appreciated her keeping an eye on things, this property consists of woods and meadows. The current owner however has fenced it off and uses it for horseback riding on weekends and during holidays. A caretaker not long moved into a house on the forty acres and looks after the horses.

 

Starting in August 2008 Marilyn began seeing strange colored lights through the trees on the forty acres property that surrounds hers on three sides. They usually were visible until very late at night, often around midnight. The lights have been multicolored, amber, green or blue. They appeared to be about ten to fifteen feet above the ground and at varying distances from her. She said that they are anywhere from a distance of seventy-five to three hundred feet away from her. The intervening trees make gauging the exact distance difficult. Each light can remain stationary for as long as twenty minutes before turning off. Then the light may reappear in another location. The colored lights have had no fixed sequence of going on and off and show themselves from any location on the forty acres.  Marilyn stated that she is well acquainted with all the light sources around her property and these weird lights are definitely not security lights. 

 

I know that there are no light sources in this part of the woods. The light on the foreground trees is from the flash on my camera.

 

The size of these near-the-ground lights varies depending on their distance from her. When they are closest, at arms full extension her estimate is they are no larger than a quarter, at a greater distance, about the size of a dime. She tells me that she imagines they might be as large as a standard light bulb. Seeing them through trees at night makes exact determinations of size and distance difficult for her.

 

Marilyn informed me that at first all these strange lights that were appearing both near the ground and in the sky, confused and frightened her.  Even more disturbing was the fact that she sometimes felt a presence and could hear rustling in the dead leaves on the ground near her. She is certain this was not merely the wind.

NO SATISFACTORY EXPLANATIONS FROM CITIZENS’ REPORTING GROUPS

 

She had never given the idea of UFOs much thought. Now she was becoming desperate to find some kind of reasonable answer for what was happening to her. She started reading anything that she could get her hands on concerning UFOs. Books about alien abductions scared her. The Internet was full of all kinds of information, much of it contradictory. She hoped by reporting her sightings to organizations like MUFON or NUFORC, that she would find someone knowledgeable who could make sense out of these sorts of things. Although she was able to communicate with UFO investigators from MUFON and did file a report with NUFORC, she still was lacking satisfactory explanations.

 

She began to try to document her sightings with her camera by photographing the weird lights that she was observing on her walks with Twiggy. Marilyn states that she is just an amateur photographer. Her camera is a Sony DSC-W300 super steady shot 13.6-mega pixels digital.  It has full HD capabilities and also has video settings. It can be operated fully automatic, or set manually. She reports using the automatic or a programmed auto setting that employs a flash that holds the shutter open long enough to allow background objects to be bright. She occasionally shoots with no flash and has also learned to steady the camera on a fence post or some other “base” to capture the best shots at night.

 

ORBS APPEAR IN HER DIGITAL PHOTOS

 

In August of 2008 after her sightings began Marilyn noted a new phenomenon appearing in her photographs. During her nightly outings she observed that flash pictures were frequently capturing images of round glowing orbs. She checked out the subject of orbs on the Net and discovered that some experts in digital imaging considered the orbs to be merely dust particles or moisture close to the camera that are illuminated by the flash. On several occasions she confirmed this explanation by taking pictures after Twiggy had kicked up dust or while photographing in rain and mist.

 

The orbs seemed to cluster around and show interest in my dog Twiggy.

 

 

Orbs began to appear in my photos under all sorts of weather conditions.

 

As she continued taking photographs the dust and moisture explanation seemed insufficient. In her digital pictures the number of orbs captured varied constantly. On windy nights when there was more dust, sometimes no orbs appeared. On other occasions it might be perfectly calm and there were still orbs of different sizes and colors being captured by her Sony digital. Most perplexing was the fact that for months prior to the start of her UFO sightings, she took flash pictures outdoors with the same camera and backs then no orbs were recorded.

 

This experience compelled her to speculate that there was a possible relationship between the orbs and the UFOs. (Some paranormal enthusiasts associate them with what they imagine are “spirits.”) On nights when there is more UFO activity in the sky she discovered that the number of orbs appearing in her digital images increases dramatically.

 

Glowing white orb.

STRANGER STILL, A SMOKE LIKE MIST APPEARS

 

As weird as all this was, even stranger was the appearance of an eerie smoke-like mist that she detected around her while walking Twiggy. Like the saucer images that caused her to contact MUFON, this strange mist first made an appearance in her photographs without being seen real-time with her eyes. On one occasion she even felt the presence of the something directly above her. Looking up she reportedly observed a strange yellow cloud descending upon her.  This bizarre phenomenon recurred. One night it was so thick that it seemed to spread out all around her. She told me that she became very concerned and started searching outside for the fire that she reasoned was responsible for the orange smoke. After searching everywhere she realized that there was no fire. The strange mist had no scent of burning.

 

Marilyn states “This unseen fog would appear suddenly in a photo. There was no source for smoke, no fog, etc and would always surprise me.”

Marilyn reports sensing an unseen presence when it appeared.

 

Often her breath fogged up when this strange phenomenon occurred, although the temperature reportedly was too warm for fog. She began to call this mysterious foggy entity “Smokey”

 

If things weren’t strange enough, she noticed that whenever this smokey-like phenomenon occurred her breath condensed into fog. During the early fall temperatures at night in her part of Texas were in the sixties. Her breath turning to fog occurred at temperatures much warmer than she thought was possible.

 

EXPERIENCING A SENSE OF ONENESS DIMINISHES FEAR

 

Her experiences walking the dog around her property had become even more bizarre when she began to feel the presence of a consciousness other than her own that seemed to be associated with the orange smoke. Despite the high strangeness of all these events, she chose not to be frightened by them. She practiced her walking meditation nightly by focusing on her physical sensations, the wind on her skin and feeling the earth beneath her feet. She visualized the center of the Earth as a beautiful glowing crystalline structure. With this image in mind she tells me that she experiences a sense of inner peace and oneness with nature. As the result of this regular mental exercise, the busy flow of all thoughts, including frightening ones, diminishes. She says that she feels confidant that no matter how strange these experiences might become, she will handle them and be OK.

 

By using this walking meditation technique and extinguishing all fear, she began to feel excitement about the possibility that the intelligence behind the UFOs and the orbs was actually trying to communicate with her and perhaps the next step could be some kind of telepathy. She mentally requested that the UFOs should come closer. She even asked out loud for the orbs to make geometric patterns. To her delight the orbs formed what she describes as triangles that appeared in the digital photos. In a light-hearted gesture she gave the name, “Smoky,” to the strange smoke that occasionally seemed to follow her around on her evening walks.

 

Marilyn continued her search for answers. She started posting her photos on “YouTube “and developed a following of correspondents on the Internet who were excited by the images she was displaying on line. She found it frustrating that people from MUFON and NUFORC couldn’t help her make sense out of her strange contact experiences and seemed to dismiss her multiple sightings. She carefully told a few close friends about some of her encounters, but was concerned that divulging too much too soon about the bizarre phenomena might frighten them. At one point she decided that she “didn’t really care whether people believed her or not.”

 

Her desire to try to communicate with whatever was responsible for her sightings became stronger. One night in frustration while out with Twiggy hoping the orbs and UFOs might hear her plea, “I want ya’ll to help me to learn how to communicate with you, I feel like I am missing something you are trying to tell me.”  That night she reviewed her email and found a message suggesting that she should check out a group called “CSETI.” She told me that she couldn’t recall who it was that gave her the tip, but it might have been someone who viewed her photos on YouTube.

 

You can find my YouTube videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/aquawoman12

 

 

When the MUFON investigator that was assigned my case told me I had photographed Venus, I knew they were going to be no help. Venus was clearly in the western sky on the night I photographed this UFO in the south. So I instead began to post videos on youtube.com.

 

After learning that Dr. Greer was the founder of the Disclosure Project and that he’s promoting peaceful contacts, she joined CSETI and purchased Dr. Greer’s book, “Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge.” Marilyn told me that CSETI’s approach of trying to interact with the UFOs appealed to her. She stated that she is a little put out by the media that seems to want to portray the “aliens” as “bad”. As the result of her research, she believes that there is a lot of misinformation about the UFO phenomenon almost everywhere. CSETI’s website however is very positive and hopeful. Once on the list she circulated a photo that showed an intensely blue object that she stated was a UFO. The color intrigued me. It reminded me of the brilliant blue orbs that I had seen falling from the sky on two separate occasions in 1997 while traveling along US 5 in the San Joaquin Valley. At an intuitive level I sensed Marylyn was probably going to play an active role in the contact movement. When her sightings as reported on the CSETI online list increased, I suggested that I assist her to write up her contacts. This narrative is the first of what I am certain will be an exciting series of reports describing her ongoing contact experiences.