FROM GOD LIKE PRODUCTIONS

I was in high school with 2 other friends. We drove to the mall at about midnight because we heard the rumor that the Luby's restaurant in the mall stayed open later than the rest of the mall, and we had the plan to somehow sneak into the mall and run around at night.

Well we got to the mall and Luby's was already closed, so we started driving back home. On the way back there was a stretch of the highway that was slightly elevated with a lot of forest on either side. Driving past this part we all noticed a bright orange glow reflecting off these low hanging clouds to our left. This glow was coming from inside the forest.

We all thought it was a forest fire and we were looking for an adventure that night, so we decided to drive into the nearest neighborhood and see if we could somehow get closer to this fire.

Driving around in the neighborhood, we could not find a road that headed in that direction of the woods. So eventually we ended up parking our car and just walking into the woods. We had no flashlights or anything, but the orange glow off the clouds was illuminating the surrounding area somewhat. We basically just walked blindly in the direction of the source of the glow. At this point it was probably about thirty minutes after midnight.

After walking through the woods for awhile, we came across a makeshift road in the forest. It was composed of planks of wood lying one after the other. This road appeared to lead directly to the source of this glow. So we walked along the side of this road, in the direction of the glow.

Ahead of us the road curved and ended at this glow, it was enormously bright and there was a strange metallic grinding or roaring noise. We started to get nervous so we took cover in the woods and approached the destination through the woods, so that if anyone was there they wouldn't immediately see us. We came up to a clearing, my friends crouched down and I climbed a tree so I had the best vantage point.

What we were looking at was basically a clearing, at least a football field in diameter, with a gigantic crater in the center. It looked like a classic moon crater, raised on the edges. There was a HUGE flame coming out of this crater, this flame must have been over a hundred feet across and the flames were as high or higher than the surrounding trees. Standing around this crater were approximately 15-20 men in yellow hazmat suits. In the center of this flame I could barely make out a rectangular black object maybe about the size of a refrigerator. In the background of the clearing, behind this flame, were several large trailer houses.

Occasionally a low metallic grinding or roaring would be heard from the crater, and the flames would leap even higher into the air. I climbed down the tree so I could tell my friends what I had seen. We contemplated just walking out there and asking these men what was going on, but we were young and scared that maybe these people would kill us because we saw something we weren't supposed to see.

Eventually we left, and we spent the whole night theorizing about what was going on in that strange scene in the middle of the night in the woods. If it was just regular people doing some ordinary legitimate work, why do it at 1 in the morning?

Several days later I was telling a friend this story, and he didn't believe me. It was during the daytime and we decided to go back to the scene. We basically retraced my steps exactly, parked in the same place and walked through the woods. We found the road and followed it to the clearing. When we got there we discovered that everything, including the crater, was completely gone. It was simply an empty clearing now. We looked around for clues and found nothing.

I posted this story on a paranormal forum many years ago, asking if anyone knew what these guys were doing. No one could give me an answer, apparently it's very odd that these guys were doing whatever they were doing in the dead of night.