ANGELS, LITTLE PEOPLE, AND ALIENS?

By Brent Raynes

Back on Sunday, December 14, I descended upon Savannah, Tennessee with Night Search radio's Eddie Middleton and the Alien Research Group's Sandy Nichols to investigate a married couple's claims of a UFO sighting in that area that had occurred a little over a year before. The husband at first thought that it was a helicopter until they got close to it, stopped the car and rolled down their windows. The UFO was a metallic looking space shuttle shaped craft, about the size of two cars in length, and seemed to hover briefly and silently just over treetops nearby.

As often happens in such situations, in talking about this recent encounter the couple opened up about other UFO encounters that others in their family had had over the years. Of course, sometimes there are those really thought-provoking stories of high-strangeness that emerge involving mysterious beings. In this case, a classic "angel" encounter.

The following account was later shared with me in an email from the wife we had interviewed. She described a remarkable incident not far outside of Clifton, Tenn., between Clifton and Savannah. She wrote:

"Brent, I am guessing that the year was in the mid to late twenties because my grandmother was born in 1917. It was in the Mt. View area, what was known I believe as the Brooks Bottom. My great grandmother and her children were down past the house at the barn working in the garden. She turned back to see what the kids were making over and she saw it. It was an angel. It looked like a human. It was full sized, dressed in a flowing type garment. It had wings and long golden tresses that were curly and very shiny. It was beautiful and bright. The angel was fluttering in the air about head high. She said that it came so close to them that they could see its finger nails and toe nails. It had no shoes on. My great grandfather turned and ran toward the house to get the gun and my great grandmother said, "Stop, you can't shoot it, because it is a heavenly being." She said they went on about their business and left it alone. They were not afraid of it. I do not know if it flew away or disappeared or exactly how it ended or if it was ever seen again."

Awhile back I shared with a few of you out there a couple of articles I wrote some years back for my own local newspaper here in Waynesboro, Tennessee. In this particular article, I described how a UFO case involved what some of the family felt were angelic-type beings. This happened just outside of town here.

Date: December 29, 1983
Wayne County News

Odds and Ends by Brent Raynes

Recent reports of UFOs (whatever they are or are not) continue to be made. I have met a family on South 48 Creek who have described some interesting experiences. A 10-year-old boy, back around May, stepped outside his home about 9 p.m. to investigate a rumbling noise, and says he saw a 20 foot wide saucer shaped something with various colored flashing lights hovering just a few feet over a nearby chicken coop. Then in June, his 28-year-old mother and his grandmother were startled late one night as a glowing white beach ball sized object cruising only 2-3 feet over the ground silently glided down the gently sloping hillside toward their home. The grandmother, fearing that it might crash into the house, grabbed a flashlight and beamed it at the strange object. When she did this the object stopped and then reversed its direction, and then gained altitude and flew away.

Weirder still though, on at least three separate occasions, evenings from April to June, the children (three) and their grandmother, and once their great-grandmother, saw white human-like figures coming down the hill toward the house. They always mysteriously seemed to disappear at about the same spot. The adults speculated that they may have been "angels."

"It's hard to explain," the grandmother said. "I got the feeling that it was something holy." She noticed that the nights these beings were seen the UFOs did not appear, and they have reported seeing many odd lights.

"I am a skeptic of Martians or people being on other planets," the grandmother stated. She preferred to believe that perhaps they were witnessing secret government tests,, of some sort.

This reminds me of an interesting story of a woman on 48 Creek who years ago saw a ball of fire roll into her home! That is, this small fiery ball barged in through the back door, rolled through the house and out the front door! Within a day or two someone in the family became ill and died, and so it seemed to have been an "omen." My informant (it was his late grandmother) says the woman was a truthful and religious person.

One of those I had sent this article to, Dr. Edward Carlos of Sewanne, Tenn., replied: "Of interest to me was the comment the woman in your article made concerning the holiness of the white beings. I have always felt this sense. I have referred to the beings as angels and find the Biblical writings of various prophets in keeping with my own visual imagery."

Some years back, I had written about the influence on Dr. Carlos's artwork connected with experiences he had on the island of Iona, off the coast of Scotland, with strange illuminations in the sky and on the landscape, psychological disorientation, and inexplicable lapses in time. Dr. Carlos is retired now from his years as a teacher at Tennessee's University of the South in Sewanee. For 34 years he taught there, while also directing the University gallery and chairing the Fine Arts Department. When I wrote some about his experiences years ago, we had to be careful because of his professional background. "Now that I've retired and cannot be fired for speaking about those mystical and/or visionary experiences/encounters that befall me, I no longer hide myself from anyone," he recently wrote.

Dr. Carlos has his own unique art center called IONA: Art Sanctuary, located in Sewanee. For more information, simply go to his website: www.ionalightfall.com.

Awhile back Dr. Carlos shared with me this personal experience that also happened to him and a "priest-friend" on that Scottish island. It is truly a classic episode in terms of the mythic landscape on which this incident is said to have transpired, a land steeped in the traditions and legends of those famous beings of classic British Isle mythology: elves, fairies, and leprechauns.

Dr. Carlos wrote:

"On Iona island in the Inner Hebrides many years back, a priest and I became lost and disoriented a bit on the high mountain summit area of the island; as evening commenced we realized we would have to locate and follow the coastline of cliffs and crags until we reached an area we might know in order to make our way back to the little town of Iona. The hiker's path would disappear in the darkness, and with night at the time of the year (autumn) temperatures fall drastically. Climbing with great struggle over some coastline ridges we pulled ourselves up to the height of a small flat ledge (maybe 30 x 30 ft. in area-size jutting out from the higher cliff) to find a stone house with maybe 8 ft. high walls topped by a moss-covered roof, no doors and no windows). Surprising a wee being (maybe a foot and a half-two feet high) (dressed in knickers et al and who looked like the traditional leprechaun image), this small guy leaped off the ledge near where he was standing in the opposite direction from us into what looked (later when on the ledge) to us like a large rough mass-jumble of boulders. We could not find him, once on the ledge, but we walked all around the house, touching the sides, but as night was ensuing, we had to continue and move on. When my St. Michael's Triumph altar artwork was dedicated at a subsequent Sunday morning mass,the sermon given by the priest-friend was on belief in angels, spirits, and fairies. On another (trip) to Iona maybe 18 and or 20 years later. I searched but could not find any area resembling our earlier climb, and, thus, no ledge and no windowless-doorless house and no little guy."

Linda has had a lifetime of UFO and being encounters. At present, she lives a short distance outside of Sedona, Arizona. "These beings have never hurt me or anyone in my family, and have actually helped me get better a few times when I have been sick," Linda shared in a recent email. "Brent, if I could rid my life of these beings I don't know if I would. My life is very interesting. I have traced contact with the beings in my family back as far as 1889, on my great grandparent's ranch in South Dakota. My grandmother said she remembers fireballs coming down from the sky and landing on their property."

I wrote back asking Linda about possible deja vu experiences in her life, and what impact her being encounters have had on her life was well. She wrote that she has had many deja vu episodes. She also wrote: "Yes I know I have guides with me at all times. Are they the aliens? I believe so, but I also have seen very beautiful winged beings who make the most calming singing sounds and tones. They were flying around my grandchildren one night. I heard this very faint beautiful singing. My granddaughter was sleeping in my living room on the couch. I got up to see where the singing was coming from and there were two small winged beings, luminous in pastel colors, flying around my granddaughter making this bubbling sound. Very sweet. I think they were talking but with tones and singing. Then it happened once again (with) my brother who came to visit from Canada. He also experienced them. He did not see them but in the middle of the night he heard them singing. When I was small and very sick a couple of times my family would experience missing time and I would be cured. I was saved from a car crash. Once all of a sudden I am on the side of the road when a huge truck was coming right at me. I closed my eyes. I knew I was going to die. When I opened them I am sitting on the side of the road and the truck was driving away. My life is very paranormal. I have ETs around me all of the times, but other beings also."

Linda wrote that the winged beings were 12-18 inches tall.

Here is the other article written many years ago for my local newspaper that I mentioned earlier having shared recently with a select group of correspondents. It's another one of those intriguing "little people" encounters.

Date: October 27, 1983
Wayne County News
Waynesboro, TN

Odds and Ends

Did ET's Phone Home From Beech Creek?
by Brent Raynes

Recently, in the course of gathering local folklore from Wayne Countians. I came across a ver-ry intriguing story.

The setting was Beech Creek Road, sometime around the mid-1930s. Joe (as we'll call him) was attired in his Sunday best as he was returning home to Leatherwood Branch after a visit with his girl on Green River.

It was probably early autumn, and around 9 o'clock as Joe traversed the first stretch of Beech Creek Road from Highway 13. A sound like a bullet passing close by his ear disturbed him to think that someone might be shooting and have come so close. Then Joe noticed two small lights up ahead, just over the ground, on the right side of the road. He rationalized that they were probably just fire flies, although marveled at how they remained level, like a pair of eyes. Then the two lights seemed to merge together and become a single "washpan" sized light. It was at about this time that Joe heard another curious noise. Something like the motor of a saw mill shutting down.

Then, when it was too late to turn back, a brilliant white light appeared at the roadside, and Joe was astonished to say the least, to see a group of dwarfish men--perhaps 8 to 10--who were looking at him from around what appeared to be a round table. They were, he would later decide, the ugliest men he had ever seen. Their faces were slightly flushed or reddish in complexion, and their skin was wrinkled and whiskered, and some had beards, and apparently they all had pretty long noses. They also, by the way, had some sort of clothing on.

In terror, Joe threw his walking stick at the "little men." Although the "men" did not make any threatening moves, Joe didn't think they looked too friendly. After that he ran like the devil was on his heels because, quite obviously, at that moment he wasn't too sure that he wasn't!

Several hundred yards later, Joe's next fully conscious recollection was of picking himself up off the ground at the foot of Smith Branch Hill. His clothes were badly torn from his frantic escape from the unknown.

"Since then I've thought if there are such things it could have been people from another planet," a niece of Joe's told me as she related the remarkable account. "He died wondering about it." I later interviewed Joe's brother who also recalled the "little men' story and how his brother had returned home that night badly shaken and hurt. Unfortunately, Joe can't tell me the story himself for he passed on some ten or so years ago, but living family, friends, and relatives well recall his bizarre tale of terror and also wonder.

Don't you?

Joe, by the way, was described as a Christian and truthful man. He was first troubled by this experience for he thought it might have been an "omen." For years he had nightmares about the experience.

Although Joe and his brother visited the location of his encounter soon afterwards, in daylight, his walking stick was no where to be found.

Perhaps it is on display at a museum on a planet light years away?

Becky from Ohio has had her share of encounters with strange beings and deja vu moments since she was a young girl. She described "Having a lot of dreams, the ones that end up happening" and also "deja vu's that lasted for 5 minutes in front of total strangers, so you know what the conversation is before it even starts, but it is happening so frequently that it scares you to death because you can't understand why all of this is happening so you start crying when they ask you a question and you say, "I'm sorry, I can't answer you because I already know what I'm supposed to say." And they just stand there and look at you like "What is this girl on??"

A much more complete account of Becky's experiences are presented in this issue's Encounters with the Unknown. To learn more about deja vu and ones inner "higher self" guidance readers are encouraged to read my two interviews on this subject with British researcher Anthony Peake. The first interview we did was posted in the December 2007 issue No. 119 (www. mysterious-america.net/anthonypeakeinterview.html). The second interview was posted in the more recent January 2009 No. 132 issue (www.mysterious-america.net/peakeinterview.html).

P. Urial