NEW and long overdue to the Spooky Places website is our new UFO / alien contact page.  If it's something Spooky we talk about it.

This is the story of this UFO and how we became acquainted.  The graphic on the left shows the first and last really close encounter I had with this UFO.

This UFO story doesn't start with me however it begins with a friend of mine named Albert Cloniger.  We were school mates but didn't spend much time together.  Albert was a straight arrow.  He was smart well manored and an all around good guy.  Let's just say that doesn't describe me or most of my friends at that time.

I recall the story as it happened but later called Albert to confirm his side of the story.  You see Albert didn't care to share his story with the rest of us but he did tell a close friend of his back then who told another friend and in less than a day everyone knew what had happened.

Continued...

Albert had been out on a date and at that time he and his family lived on the Old Pearl Hill.  This is the hill south of Pearl, IL.  It's a bunch of fairly flat farms with surrounding trees and a big old sand ditch.

On the way home from his date a glowing bright white craft landed in the road in front of him.  His car died and he had to slam on his breaks to keep from hitting the thing.

He was frightened not knowing what was going on or what the intentions of the beings inside the craft might be.  Just as quickly as it had come it flew away.  His car started and he went on home.  The thing that caught everyone's attention was he never missed a day of school unless something really bad had happened and everyone knew it.  The follow day however he did show up and that's when he told his story to his then best friend.  In no time we all knew about it.

This was a young man who would rather have died than told a lie and this story was so far out there he just knew no one would believe him.  The truth however is we all knew he was as honest as a person could be.  If he said something you best believe it.  The fact we got the story from his best friend back then was something else.  You see most of us knew David H. was ah, well let's just say he wasn't quite as honest as Albert.  The question that came to mind was David playing us, had he made up this story?

There wasn't many of us back then who would confront Albert to ask him if the story was true.  Years later however he was working as a police officer in a town not far from Pearl and I called him.  I asked him about the UFO and the first thing he said was "how do you know about that?"

I told him he wasn't the only one who had seen or had a close encounter with that UFO.  Yes he said the story is true.

I ran with a rough crowd back then and you would find some of them working at Nelson's floating fish market.

Have you ever watched professional fish cleaners at work?  The Shank's brothers were amazing.  They cleaned fish so fast if you blink you miss it.  Yes they frequently smelled like fish.

"Rabbit" Shanks lived in a little house at the fish market. He was the night security and he opened the place in the morning and locked it up at night.  You could usually find him and most of his brothers there at quitting time.  A perfect place to meet on Friday and Saturday night for a round of cold brews.

I drove my 1970 Charger R/T down there, met up with Bim and his crew and we were knocking down  a few cold ones while beating the mosquitos off with the other hand.

I was walking around in the parking lot of the fish market when I noticed a brilliant white light coming down the river.  My first thought was it was a barge light, but barge lights, if they are on they swing from one side of the river to the other searching, and this one wasn't.

Seeing the light coming our way and being curious I asked Bim what that was.

"Oh? That's our UFO." Bim answered.

"You're what?"  I asked.

"Sure, it will come down the river, go up over the rail road bridge here.... " He pointed at the RR bridge.  "Then it will turn, go up over the power tower on the mine hill there. " Again he pointed.  "Then it will hover there for a bit before it crosses town to the south west and then will turn south again and leave."

We watched and I couldn't believe my eyes, the UFO came up over the RR bridge right beside us then turned and went up over the power tower above the quarry hill.

I must have been out of my mind about then because I jumped in my Charger with my friends joining me and we raced up the road, made a right then a left and cut up a dirt farm road to the top of the hill as fast as I could safely go.  Just as we got there the UFO was leaving the power tower and heading across Pearl toward the south west.

I turned around went back down the steep dirt road, made a mad dash to the Gasville Hill road that comes up in the middle of Old Pearl.  When we got there we thought we saw it but then there was nothing.  I pulled up to the road that turned right heading north back toward Pearl but I was moving very slow.  Finally we got out and stood there in the night looking around for the UFO, but we saw nothing for a bit.

"There it is!"  Bim pointed.

We all turned to see it hovering about a half mile from us glowing brilliant over some trees.  They were watching us, messing with us.  They could blink in and out at will.  Then as we watched it began moving south again and we watched until it was out of sight.

Bim explained the UFO was a regular and what nights and between what times they usually saw it.  I began showing up down there more often to watch the UFO and occasionally we chased it in my Charger.

Sure we got real close to it a few times and I'm saying like within a half mile or less a few times.  The night Butch and I saw it however we were not chasing it, we were pulled over stopped beside the highway just watching.  And what happened ?  It flew right up to us and hovered a few yards away.

You hear the UFO witnesses describing their UFO sighting and most of them are lucky to have been within 10 miles of the "light."  Most of the time you can't tell if it's an aircraft or the Goodyear blimp.  When a person stands within 20-30 steps of a hovering UFO that's 10 feet above the ground now that's a real UFO close encounter.

Leslie "Butch" Allen and Albert Cloniger were outstanding people.  Honest hard working people who any town or city could be proud of.  If they say they saw a UFO you can believe it.

Any serious UFO investigators can still talk with people who knew about or saw this UFO.  Michael "Bim" Shanks died of a heart attack in 2012.  Leslie "Butch" Allen is still in the area.  Danny Baldwin is still somewhere not far from the Milton, IL area at the last report I had on him.  He was with us on some of those UFO chases.

I'm fairly sure that Bev Shanks saw it and she still lives in Pearl.  I think Renee Guthery saw it and she still lives in Pearl.

I've met more than a few who have one or another mindset that such things do not or can't possibly exist.

I was taught several things that were wrong from a young age and I realize that's why many people choose to belive incorrectly.  I was raised in a haunted house yet I was told that ghosts do not exist and that all things paranormal were of the devil.  I don't think my dad or those who taught me to believe things that were not true did it on purpose, they were simply misinformed.  They were taught something that wasn't factual and they in turn taught the same flawed information to others.

There's no place in the bible that says ghosts do not exist.  In fact the bible speaks of spirits of various kinds regularly.  If you were raised in a haunted house, doors opening and closing and footsteps heard regularly when there was no one there then you know spirits do exist.

The best way for someone to know for a fact what exists out there in the ether is to either have the ability to see spirits or go OBE and walk among them, as I have done.

The preacher can't explain why there are ghosts today therefor they must not exist.

There are those who choose not to believe in such things for one reason or another and maybe they were taught that when they were little.  Many people who are highly religious and refused to challenge what they are taught prefer to believe that we are the only "intelligent" beings Creator God ever created.  If that's true then UFOs and alien beings can't possibly exist.

If however the the Creation Story in the bible was taken from someone else's account of creation, oh let's say the book of Enoch and if some of the terms used were for the sake of humans being able to understand then we should consider the Earth was not made in 6 literal days but was made in 6 ages.  God being eternal as been in the creation business far longer than we could ever comprehend.  Creation therefore is just as old as God and had no beginning and will have no ending.  God didn't just wake up one day and decided to start making things.  God has always been making things.  Who and what God is is beyond our ability to comprehend.

If these things are true then we can consider that we are not the only creatures God has ever made.  We are not the smartest and we are not alone in the Galaxy.

Some people can't believe in something if they can't see it.  Some people choose not to believe in some things for other reasons.  My dad saw the UFO Butch and I saw and said it had to be a helicopter simply because he had been taught such things do not exist.  Therefore he needed another explanation for what he had seen and though I had stood within a few steps of the flying saucer he chose not to believe his own son and preferred to believe something that was not true for many years after.  Later he learned that some of his friends that he had grown up with had also seen it as well as other types of UFOs they had seen flying up and down the ILL river valley.  Then he finally accepted the possibility that such things could exist.

There's a discussion thread on another website asking about the possibility that the movie the Forth Kind might actually be for real.  I answered their post with the following message.
 
I have the movie in BluRay but saw it first at the movies.  I agree that Hollywood tends to push things off on people in order to lend some credibility to their productions.  Many years ago I shot fishing shows and you can be sure if a sponsor has a product to sell the TV show will lie to you to get your money and make the sponsor's products look good.
 
I laugh thinking of ol Earl Sinclair (Dinosaurs) saying "TV is a powerful medium and I don't feel comfortable questioning it."  ;-)  I say question everything and everyone.
 
They did a good job making those videos look like actual and split screen.
 
What I can say is from early on our government has been involved in the recovery of what they call alien craft and if possible the beings in those craft.  Investigators have accumulated a pile of pieces of the puzzle and some of it must be somewhere near center.  Some of it must reveal clues as to who these beings are.  Problem is with any puzzle it's to have the edge pieces to begin with.
 
Everyone goes back to the UFO(s) crash of Roswell, NM 1947.  I spent a week in Roswell (2 weeks total in NM) doing interviews and research.  Two of the people I spoke with was Glen Dennis and Frank Kaufman.  Frank was a secret agent for the government/military and he was there investigating the UFO sightings.  He helped recover a "craft of unknown origin" and "five dead little people with ash colored skin."  He says they were not grays.
 
Glen Dennis the mortician says he had a friend who was an Army nurse there who witnessed an autopsy of a being they called a gray and said there was one of these beings that were alive that was taken away.
 
The two stories are so different these people have learned to hate each other over the years.  Glen's story was hearsay to him but if this friend of his actually did exist, and I think she did then what she saw was completely different from what Frank saw.
 
What happened?  There was not one but at least 2 UFOs buzzing around Roswell, NM and White Sands area.  Frank said he watched them on radar at Alamogordo base that covered White Sands area.  The two craft of unknown origin collided in a very bad thunderstorm.  One of them crashed on Mac Brasel's sheep ranch and the other came down in Lincoln forest.  There were witnesses of both crashes.
 
The craft that came down on the Brasel's ranch was the one with the five little ash skinned people.  The one that crashed in the mountains was the grays.
 
Everything in the military is compartmentalized but nothing more highly than classified projects.  There was two recovery teams and two full sets of doctors and neither the paths crossed.  They didn't know about each other.  So the more the stories sounded different the better the cover up worked.
 
Possibility the crash(s) actually happened based on eye witness is better than 90%.  This puts both aliens, alien bodies and alien craft in the hands of the US government.  The question now becomes who are these beings?  Where do they come from and what are they doing here?
 
There are a few historical records that place god like beings in the skys around the earth many thousands of years ago.  Some of these describe a great battle that took place in the sky and in the heavens above earth.  It was clear there were at least two races if not more taking two sides and they against the other.  Powerful races of beings have a technology capable of literally destroying life on earth.
 
We look to certain other texts such as the Bible and we read of a great war in the heavens that took place between the angels, literally before the creation of Adam and Eve.  We are told the commanders of these armies were lead by beings called by some Archangels.  And one side was defeated and cast down to the earth.  One group being lead by the Archangel Lucifer.  It is also said the reason that Lucifer turned against the Creator was because he discovered what the Creator intended for humans to become.  It was also suspected this being was involved in genetic research for what ever his purpose.  Perhaps to throw a proverbial wrench into the Creator's plans for humans.
 
We read on to see the ones who fell were transformed and no longer having their "former glory" some became earth bound and highly deceptive.
 
A spirit is energy and we are told that energy can be transformed but not destroyed.  Those who ascribe to this believe the soul and spirit of a being transcends death.
 
The question now is are these beings the government has encountered aliens or are they "fallen angels?"
 
Now we have come full circle back to the movie The Fourth Kind.  Could it have happened?  Sure, I think it's possible.  If any of these other things are to be believed it may also be likely.  The thing is it didn't.  It is a mockudrama.  A documentary done as if it were a real event like the Blair Witch Project.

I write a novel series called Ember Reign, a story about a girl who's half human and half angel.  It has aliens, UFOs, angels and demons in it and when ever I can I write things I know to be factual into the series.  I write a fictional story with true things mixed all through it.  They did a fictional thing as if it were true and that's the difference between them and me.  I've had people literally come to my door to ask me if certain parts of my novels were true.  If people ask the right questions I will tell them.  That big midnight blue triangular UFO sighted around the world is real and it does belong to beings I call the Great Elders.
 
I've stood within a few short steps of a hovering UFO in Pearl, IL on Rt. 100 in 1970 with a friend of mine.  These craft and ETs actually do exist.  I know this for a fact from personal experience.
 
I hope to have some of the story of the Miami, OK UFO investigation on here before long.

The mystery man himself told me not to give out his real name back then but it's been years and I've not heard from him in several.  The last message I got from him was very short and it read basically "I'm still following your adventures old friend."  And it was signed "Griffin."

I've been involved off and on in video production work since before 1989.  I'm not a young man anymore and though my heart is still in production I must limit my work according to my health.

If someone wanted to do a very impressive TV show on UFO related things they should try to find Mr. Ray Griffin and ask him a few important questions.  I say this because back then he was being contacted by the beings in the Delta Class Lightship on a weekly bases.  They often told him of future events and he would send out letters of those predicted events to several people, myself being one of them.

I will say I understand because I was contacted in the same way at one point and when I asked him if that's what it was like he said "Yes, but there are always more than one of them when they come to visit me."

When Mr. Griffin vanished he didn't say where he was going but said basically there's no telling where he will be and don't bother to try to find him.  I can't help but wonder why he would want to vanish like that unless it was to hide from someone or something he considered a threat.  Then again maybe he's up there with them.  If so he wouldn't be the first person to have been taken away to the heavens by "angels."

I for one believe the people have the right to know these beings exist and I don't believe the government has the right to lie to us and try to make us look like fools for being aware that such things do exist.  There's far too much lying and deception being served from government sources.  The more they do it the more they feel the need to do more of it and it can only end badly.