So this tape went straight into a fringe topic, very strange. Also, this is the first case where the host refers to his setup as “radio equipment”. His voice recording sounds compressed, like it’s being captured from a live A.M. broadcast, the accompanying music sounds clean, like it was added later. Idk, maybe I’m not the first person to find these recordings and add something to them. I’ll keep restoring what I can, maybe the last person to work on these left a message in one of them.
[start of recording]
Good evening. My regular listeners will recognize this broadcast as one of my impromptu productions. Tonight, I sat down behind my equipment with no plan, just a strong desire to radiate radio waves and started scrolling through my mental rolodex searching for a topic. I remember an experience I had a dozen or so years back, and I feel compelled to tell that story now. It’s important to pursue this type of compulsion, and to ask yourself why this experience has stuck around.
And so there I was, a dozen or so years back, standing on the edge of the tree line that ran along a powerline clearing. The sky was dark and clear, the air was cold, it was midnight, and I had stepped outside to do some star gazing. Not the rigorous kind, where I might trace a constellation and trick myself into believing I could see the crab, but a more introspective kind, where I would try to clear my head and posit the existence of something beyond the void.
In those days it was not uncommon to see the occasional pulsing red and white anti-collision lights indicating a passing plane, but on this night the soft twinkling of distant stars was joined by something that felt out of place. Amber and steady, rising above the tree line near the horizon, it slowly traced an arc across the night sky. It reached the 12 o’clock position in around a minute, and as it did, another arose behind it. This continued for a time, a procession of silent orbs, each following the same path.
The true size and distance of the lights was undiscernible, and so I was left unable to identify what I saw. I had ideas, sure. But a part of me revealed in the fact that I was seeing something anomalous, even if someone, somewhere knew exactly what these were.
I do not personally find extra-terrestrial explanations of UFO’s very appealing. The truth is, we know there are objects in the sky. Planes, helicopters, drones, even birds occupy a space that humans do not, and could easily be complicit in fooling the eye from time to time. But I also do believe there are far too many cases where hundreds of people see something independently, where radar pings off an object and police lines are flooded with questions, to simply write the entire phenomena off as conspiracy. In most cases, people saw something, though we may disagree as to what it was.
And then there are the countless cases of professional pilots witnessing all manner of flying objects. Some claim the strength of this evidence arises from the expertise pilots possess in identifying airborne objects. I counter that, as I have read numerous reports that would indicate even the experts are fairly terrible at making basic estimations of velocity and size. Instead, the quality of this evidence comes from the witness’s exposure. That is, pilots see more objects in the sky simply because they are watching more often.
I’m not insane, I know what I saw was real, albeit most likely tame. But I don’t know what it was, and that is what excites me. For a curious mind, being proven wrong is not a punishment, it is a reward. Because it means you have discovered something new. And as much as I would love to find an answer, sometimes it’s best to live with the feeling of unease and wonder that can come from the unknown. The truth will never be as interesting as the fiction you built in your mind.
Daylight reveals to us a version of truth about our immediate vicinity. But at night, without the Sun’s light illuminating our bodies, we can look further beyond ourselves into what could be. When the Sun’s light no longer obstructs our view of the stars, we can dream. I am a night person. I often stare into the night sky and wonder about the rest of existence. And if that were all it was, I wouldn’t be talking about it. Because sometimes, when I look at the stars, I am scanning, looking for something that has appeared to thousands. Something that feels out of place, something unidentified.