Sandia ER and a Case of Mistaken Identity

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Albuquerque, NM. The year is 1988. 

My girlfriend and I had had many discussions about life on other planets and other planes of existence.  We were both basically on the same page as to the reality of it all.  However, the other staff members at the hospital where we worked varied on the subjects.

We worked the “war zone” at the hospital's Emergency Room. I was in an administrative position, so it was stress-relieving fun for the staff to give me my ration of s__t for my beliefs. 

It was all in good fun and I took it that way but to me a person should never be ridiculed for their beliefs; be it religious, political or life in general. 

One day in the midst of our duties, my ward clerk suddenly came running in from the ambulance entrance, breathless. It was about 5 or 6 in the evening and the setting sun had cast it’s coloration along the Sandia Mountains turning them the color that gave them their name…a watermelon red.  

He was very excited and urged me to go quickly outside and look just above the ER.  He said that their was a metallic craft hovering, and it wasn’t moving. I thought that this was quite odd as I didn’t have any tingling that I would normally associate with the presence of a craft. 

I walked out the ambulance entrance and down the drive.  I looked up and indeed there was a metalic object just sitting there in the sky. I went back in and retrieved my clerk. We walked back out and I pointed to the object. It was sitting there quietly hovering and not moving perceptibly.

I looked at my clerk and said “That, my friend, is what a weather balloon looks like.  Notice how it looks like an ice cream cone? That's a dead give away.” He looked at me in disbelief.  He said he could understand how someone could actually mistake one for an unidentified craft.  I smiled and went back inside.

My girlfriend and I were planning an end-of-the-season ski trip. 

More on that next time.

Manzano Mountain, Sandia Labs Sightings

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Back to the timeline…1985...

After a long period of abstinence, both from sightings and females, I started seeing the girl who would be with me for 10+ years. She didn’t have any problems with my history, at first.

Our first outing was camping in an area just South of Belen, NM, in the Manzano Mountain range. Keep in mind that the Manzano Mts were where Sandia Labs were doing propulsion and weapons testing. Much of our nuclear stockpile was stored there during the ‘Cold War’.

We drove down I-25 South, took the turn off for Isleta and headed down Hiway 47. This trek took us thru Bosque Farms, Peralta, and Los Lunas. We followed it down past Belen, NM and took a dirt road that ended at a trail head. 

It was early October, the air was very crisp and there was the promise of snow in the air. We hiked up the trail head about 2 miles when I noticed a very large, shallow cave on the right side of the trail. We made our way to the cave and set up camp for the weekend. It was just dusk when I got the campfire started. We had our supper, sat there telling stories, jokes and I passed time blowing on a harmonica that I always took camping. 

After it was dark we sat looking at the sky, and my companion looked at me and said “I’ve never thought we were the only ones here. That would be the stupidest statement one could possibly make.” I agreed and we turned in for the night.

About 2 hours passed, when I got that tingling in my neck. I woke her and we went out the tent opening. There was a glowing object passing from West to East, silently, at a fairly rapid rate. It was about the size of a match head at arm’s length. We turned back in and snuggled down in our down bag.

The next morning, we decide to hike along the ridge that was just East of our camp. As we came up a draw, near the top of the opposite ridge, was a bubble-like object sitting next to a pine. I quickly took a photo of it and wanted to hike towards it. My date, however, felt otherwise.

Needless to say, we did not go and explore near the bubble. This was the beginning of an interesting 10 years.

Note:

I am currently going thru multiple boxes and photo-books to find that print. When I do I will post it here.

UFO Sighting and Albuquerque: Lost Week-end

Please forgive me for a bit of regression here. 

It is amazing what friends remember.

This past week I was talking with one of my friends from my years at NMMT in Socorro. I was mentioning this blog and we were comparing notes from that time. She asked me if I had mentioned what I apparently called a “Lost Weekend”. The following is the meat of our conversation.

Apparently in late 1976 or early 1977 my friend had agreed to take a mutual acquaintance to the Albuquerque Airport. They had left Socorro at around 4 a.m. on a Saturday morning. Her friend was headed back to Pennsylvania for a family emergency. They were headed North on I-25 when they got to the “Twilight Zone” just south of Belen, NM.

She was driving her Triumph sports car, when they pulled over to the side of the road. She was unable to recall exactly why they pulled over, but as soon as they had come to a complete stop she looked above them.  Moving silently across the sky was what she describes as a HUGE deck shaped object.  She judged the length of one side to be about 300 yards. There were multiple lights between the top of the craft and the bottom, making the appearance of it being a multi-storied object. It moved silently, heading West across the interstate.  Her other observation was that it appeared to be landing, just West of Los Lunas, NM. She said that if her passenger hadn’t had to be at the airport to catch his flight, she would have chased the thing.

According to her, that weekend I had headed up to Albuquerque. I left Socorro right after band practice, so that would have put it around midnight. When I returned to Socorro, I complained that I had ended up coming into Albuquerque from the West side. I had taken a cut-off that I was sure was a shortcut to Albuquerque. I arrived in ABQ late Saturday afternoon, feeling blank. I told them when I returned to Socorro that I felt like I had lost my weekend.

Even more interesting is that I hadn’t remembered that incident until we talked this past week. Even now it is a piece meal affair of memories. 

Mass UFO Sighting at the 66 Multiplex Drive-In

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After my girlfriend and I stopped seeing each other socially, I did not pursue another. During this break time, I was seeing some craft. Mostly they were night time sightings. Quick and gone as I like to describe them.

I started working a clinic job. During this time I met my next companion. She was an intake RN for this clinic. It was only a short time before we started seeing each other. I opted not to share my personal beliefs with her, feeling that what she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

One evening, in a cold November, we went to the 66 Multiplex Drive-In to see “Transylvania 6-5000”. We were snuggled in the front seat, covered with a blanket, when from out of behind the screen came an object. The total length looked to be about 3”. It was composed of 4 white lights in a row, then a white light at about a 60 degree angle above the 4, and then 2 more white lights in the same row as the four. It looked like a constellation. 

I rapidly rolled our windows down, it was completely silent. It covered the distance between the multiplex, which was just off of I-25 on the West side of the freeway, to over the Sandia Mountains in less than 10 seconds and it was gone. Multiple movie viewers had gotten out of their cars to see it more clearly. However, my girlfriend at the moment did not see it. Not at all. This being about 1984-85, I couldn’t take a picture with a cell phone, nor did I have a VHS recorder. This would have been a very close range photo.

We finished watching the movie and headed back to our apartment. I tried to nonchalantly quiz her about the object. But she was adamant that she did not see anything at all. Just as we were approaching our apartment complexes parking lot, in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, a golden orange globe of light hung just above Sandia Peak. As I mentioned this to her, it shot straight up into the clouds. Once again, my relationship was on the way out. 


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Me and you and a ...Silver Disk? Remembering Grand Canyon Memories

After leaving Socorro I played in bands, met the ex, went to Nursing School and led an extremely robust existence. For the 3 years of my first marriage there were no “sightings” just awkward transitions of my body from one space to another.

The first sighting that took place after the divorce was during a trip to the Grand Canyon. I was excited about going as I had always meant to go there, but never really had the chance to do so. 


On the morning of the trip, I was loading up the car preparing for a weekend of relaxation. My girlfriend at the time and I headed out of Albuquerque going West towards Arizona via I-40. Just outside of Grants NM I felt an odd tingling at the back of my neck radiating up over my scalp. 
There, sitting about 11 o’clock in the sky, was a brilliantly reflective disc.


 It was about the size of a match head held at arm’s length. It remained motionless for 30-40 seconds, long enough for my girlfriend to see it just before it shot straight up and out of sight. She looked at me, and I said that these things sort of followed me. She had a hard time resolving what she had just seen.


We made our way thru NM and AZ, winding our way to what I still consider an awe inspiring sight. As the pine trees dropped away and the canyon walls came into view, I felt that tingling once again. I tried in vain to find the source, but I could not.

We made camp at one of the campsites along the Village Loop. We hiked most of the day taking photographs, then went back to set up camp. I had a quickset dome tent, so camp was up and going in no time. After supper, we retired to the tent and got to sleep around 11 p.m.


At 3:00 a.m., on the nose, the inside of our tent was lit up like a light bulb. The light was intense, white. So intense that you could feel the light. Just as suddenly as it was on, it was off. There was not a sound to be heard around the campground, but the tingling sensation was as strong as I have ever felt it.


On the way back from the canyon, we stopped at Barringer’s Crater. I was impressed by the site, but my girlfriend was extremely quiet. Our affair lasted 2 more months after this trip. She felt that she was never quite alone with me. At least that was her excuse.

A Signal from M Mountain and Missing Time.

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This will begin my post-Socorro experiences. They are frequent and continue to occur regularly.

I left NMIMT after graduation in the spring of 1979. 

The band I played in at the time played a farewell performance at the swimming pool. During our rendition of “Whipping Post” I got the strangest feeling along the back of my neck. I looked to the West, and sitting above the M on M Mountain, glinting light , was a lenticular disc. It hovered for about 1 minute and shot straight up and was gone.

The next day I left Socorro.

After leaving Socorro, I felt that I didn’t have the drive to pursue my biology. I worked at several minimal wage jobs and played music. It was a good time in my life. Then I met my ex-wife.

I tried to explain to her about the experiences from Socorro. But her paradigm did not allow such occurrences, therefore she blew me off. Until one night when I was gone for about 20 minutes.

According to my ex-wife, she had fallen asleep rapidly after we had gone to bed. She didn’t remember having any dreams and woke up feeling something was amiss. She rolled over to wake me, and I wasn’t there. Then according to her recollection, she went directly back to sleep. She was awakened when the bed “bounced”, much like I had jumped on it from dresser height. I was now back in bed and still sleeping.

I tell this from her perspective, as I have no recollection of anything, not even dreaming. I must admit at the time I had trouble believing her story, and chalked it up to her dream patterns. 

During my brief marriage to my ex, there were several occurrences of the “bouncing” feeling to the bed after we had gone to sleep. I began to mark these up to having out of body experiences. I’ve had those since I was very young. There were no sightings of craft during the three years we were married. 

That would change after the divorce.

Abduction, Budd Hopkins and a Backward American Flag.

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This will bring the beginnings of my noticing of what was occurring, to a close. Next post will start my post-Socorro life, which has been as interesting to me.

We Continue…

I got the feeling that someone wanted me to walk forward, and I immediately walked up the ramp. 

On either side of the ramp were markings, on my left side was an unknown symbol, which I cannot for the life of me remember. 

However, on the right side was the American Flag. I remember thinking that the star field was in the wrong place. Instead of being in the upper left, it was in the upper right of the flag. Years later I would notice that on aircraft, especially military aircraft, that the star field is on the upper right.

After all of us had entered the craft and were safely belted in, the Earth rapidly fell away from the ship. That is the best explanation as to how it felt. We were able to view the Earth thru the floor getting rapidly smaller.

At this point all went black. I woke up in my bed, just as tired as when I went to bed, 8 hours after I had initially went to sleep. Very reminiscent of how I felt in Socorro, after that first incident.

This left me feeling that I had questions. So I contacted the Intruders Foundation and Budd Hopkins. He felt that I had had some sort of incident and referred me to a female investigator in California by the name of Kathryn McCampbell.

I spoke with her for over 2 hours via telephone. Told her the exact same story that I am telling you now. She felt that I had definitely been abducted. And, due to some extra information, the beginning of the story if you will, from my childhood, she felt that these events probably started shortly after I was born. 

Her concern however was with the apparent military involvement. According to her research at that time the military had been working on using sound to control human response.

I have withheld certain names. Some are dead, and some are just close friends that I would not share without their consent. Make of this story what you will.

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Editor's Note: Why the flag flies backward on military equipment and personnel: This flag is symbolic of the men who used to march into battle with an actual flag. So steady and strong, the flag would blow behind them. On the arms of our soldiers, the flag faces as if being carried into battle, blowing behind them.
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