What if the world is a lot stranger than we think?
Imagine a world where angels, demons, and other supernatural beings are walking among us. A world where weird things happen that can’t be explained by science or the rational mind. And while most of us never experience any of it, there are highly credible people who do.
You’ve stumbled into the world of high strangeness, a place where people encounter things that are just plain bizarre—and no one can explain them. But there’s one event that seems to connect everyone who has these experiences: It starts after they see a UFO, or what is now called a UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon).
“The UFO event is like a door that opens a person to a non-ordinary world.”
The quote above is from the religious scholar and college professor D.W. Pasulka. In her book Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences, she reports on several people who have not just had a UFO sighting but have encountered beings from another dimensions.
It’s unclear where these beings come from. But some speculate they are not from a distant galaxy in outer space. They are from another dimension that overlaps and coexists with our own, allowing them to freely move from one dimension to another. They are sometimes seen as small aliens with glowing red eyes, but in other instances are viewed as angels or spiritual beings. It seems to depend on the personal perspective of the witness.
Pasulka sees these encounters with the unknown as “a new form of religion or religious expression.”They are tough to describe because as she points out, they are “not formalized by traditional religious categories” or recognized by any church. She identifies them as “esotericism” which is defined as knowledge “which is specialized or advanced in nature…and available only to a narrow circle of enlightened people.”
Get past the UFO sightings and visits from supernatural entities, and the story gets even weirder. People report all manners of weird experiences from dreams so vivid they are realer than real life, altered perceptions of the world around them, and encounters with phenomena that include glowing orbs and telepathic communications. In her words:
Many people who see UFOs experience supernatural or unwanted paranormal events, such as time distortion, sleep paralysis, and a feeling that the entities they see are evil or divine. They experience meaningful coincidences that appear to be intended just for them—synchronicities. Like some Catholic saints of bygone eras, experiencers sometimes levitate or report being floated upward or around their rooms.
Meet one real-life experiencer: Chris Bledsoe.
In the book, UFO of God: The Extraordinary True Story of Chris Bledsoe, the author chronicles his “spiritual journey of missing time, clouds of fire, healings, and transformation.” (He has also met with and discussed his experiences with Pasulka.)
Have you ever heard those stories of people who saw a UFO and were then abducted by aliens? Well, this is nothing like that.
Bledsoe is from rural North Carolina, a small business owner and dedicated churchgoer. But his life goes topsy-turvy after he encounters a fiery UFO during a fishing trip on the Cape Fear River. The UFO seems to chase him and the event is witnessed by several others including his teenage son. Bledsoe tells his story only for he and his family to be shunned and ridiculed by his community and church.
By far, the strangest part of Bledsoe’s story isn’t the UFO that he witnessed or the “missing time” that was part of that encounter. It’s the weird happenings that follow him home. One day in his backyard, a tree spontaneously bursts into flames. Brilliant “white beyond white” orbs begin appearing in and around his home. Shadowy figures materialize in front of his wife and children, disappearing as quickly as they appear.
What’s more, those around him, including friends and acquaintances who visit Bledsoe at his home, begin to experience what he calls “the phenomena” as well. Some begin seeing UFOs and orbs in the skies around their homes. As if just being in Bledsoe’s proximity is enough to export the high strangeness.
Bledsoe visits with a divine figure he calls “the lady.”
One night Bledsoe is lifted from his bed through the roof by “a brilliant bluish-white light” hovering above his house. He senses he is being transported to another dimension and winds up in “a canyon carved deep into the land.” There, three entities lead him to a brilliant light where he meets “the lady.” He describes her like this:
Her dress was such a bright white I could hardly look at it. She was seated on a massive stone-carved throne in a recess in the canyon wall. As the beings led me to her, I watched her, unmoving, powerful, unspeakably beautiful.
He describes her as “the Mother Spirit” and you could speculate she represents the divine feminine consciousness. Bledsoe comes away from the experience “with a newfound ability to feel others’ pain as well as an impulse to help them though it.” Just as important, the debilitating Crohn’s disease he has suffered with for years begins to mysteriously dissipate.
Here’s the part of the story that may surprise you.
Instead of seeing his experiences in a negative light, Bledsoe views the high strangeness he encounters as a positive and a part of his spiritual journey. He sees these experiences not as the product of evil entities or spirits but as the spirit of God. He sees “a benevolent aura surrounding all my experiences with the phenomena.”
Bledsoe believes the phenomena is all around us as well, “interacting with us all the time, asking us to be recognized.” We can choose to ignore it or we can open ourselves up to the possibility of witnessing it firsthand. His parting advice for those who we want to experience the phenomena for themselves:
You don’t have to follow some sort of formal instructions…it is between you and God. Just pick one spot in the night sky, surrender yourself, and say “I AM HERE.”
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