Some nights ago—I guess it was the night before Christmas Eve—I had a strange experience. I call it strange because I can’t explain it. I have the annoying habit of knowing when I don’t understand something. On the other hand, it was a totally private and very brief experience; but I can’t quite get it out of my mind. It was around midnight, and I had just finished some minor chore. So I was in a state of relaxed vacancy.
I suddenly had the impulse to step out on my porch and look up into the late night sky. The impulse was spontaneous, an uprush from who knows where—and I don’t know why. But I stepped out into the cold night air and was immediately transfixed by what I saw directly above me through a gap in the overhanging foliage of my neighbor’s tree: a tiny dot of light (as large as a distant star) moving in a straight line at a moderate speed very high in the sky.
My attention was riveted on what I was seeing with the question: what is it? It was not a plane, not a star—was it perhaps some kind of satellite? Following its trajectory, it suddenly jumped from its path, I should say, vanished and reappears instantly in another part of the sky. I had to step off the porch into the backyard where I could more clearly see the light again moving along smooth and straight, and then again it instantly shot from its path onto another point in the sky and resumed its leisurely passage. I watched this quantum-hopping of the light several times until I was convinced it was no illusion. If it was a satellite, how could it hop around space that way? If anyone can explain what it was that I saw, I’d be grateful.
There was also the coincidence of having an uncharacteristic impulse on a cold midnight to step out my house to look up into the sky. And lo! at that very moment I observe what at first glance seemed impossible. Perhaps I can construe my little sky epiphany as a sign--but a sign of what?
Are there unknown powers that dance in the sky that like to play with us? I can think of two other weird encounters that support this idea of playful powers. One is a UFO that danced in the sky to the music of John Coltrane for me and two other witnesses in Greenwich Village. The other is a tropical plant that flowered on a freezing cold Christmas Eve that healed a lovers’ quarrel. I tell these two stories in my book, Soulmaking, and they resonate with what I saw the other day. Each oddity or mystery that I encounter adds a little to a pattern of signs that keeps growing. But what are they all pointing to? That’s the question.
3 comments:
Amazing - I have been having exactly this experience over 6-7 nights since the beginning of December. I live in Liverpool, UK and the phenomenon appears in the western sky. I have attempted to rationalise it but cannot.
Thanks for sharing Michael. What you witnessed may have been very unusual (there are several possibilities), but there is also a practical and prosaic possibility. Sometimes, as a satellite passes along its given trajectory, it is rotating. As it rotates, it reflects sunlight more at one angle and hardly any at others. This appears as a slow increase of brightness, then a disappearance, then reappearance. However, it continues on the same trajectory at the same speed. Its not clear if this was the case to not in your experience. Just wanted to offer it up as one of the less mysterious possibilities.
Rossome, thanks for your comment, this may be less mysterious than I first thought. The curious part for me was my sudden impulse near midnight to step outside and look up into the sky. I do know that far more mysterious sightings are widely reported.
Neil, let's keep our eyes open. There are indeed more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by most of us.
Try my book, Smile of the Universe, for a ride through the universe of amazing phenomena.
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