Incredible Occurance
The following snippet describes an actual event which really happened to me. Incredible as it sounds, it really did occur, just as I describe it here. Names have been changed, however. I am under the impression that these kinds of things happen to me because I am very open-minded and non-judgmental. Having a little bit of telepathy also helps, I think. ---Mr. Doug Parrish
On a clear, beautiful evening several summers ago, when we still lived on Saturn Valley on the west side of Hillingdon, I had gone out to look at the stars. I did that every night because there were no street lights in that subdivision, so there was no light pollution to dim the majestic sight of the stars twinkling overhead. School had just let out a few weeks prior to this time, and I was enjoying the unstructured time that summer vacation always offered.
But I had also begun to labor under a heavy burden, even though school was over with. I was deeply concerned about the stories that I had been delivering to classes. As a treat, I often told the classes the stories, which make up the major portion of this book. Of course, I was delighted when kids wanted to hear a story. These were high-schoolers aged from 14 to 19 years old, but they loved listening to my tales as much as any small child would. What was to happen on this particular evening, however, taught me another valuable lesson about how to deal with my alien acquaintances.
I had managed to talk myself into quite an emotional state on this particular evening. I was questioning whether I should continue in the next school year to tell these stories to new classes. What would they think? I asked myself. Was telling these strange stories good for them? Or was it a harmful journey into the unexplained? I wondered. Was I even doing the right thing at all? I remember a former student who had become a federal agent with one of the alphabet agencies telling me that I was doing exactly the right thing by planting the seed of curiosity in young minds. But it was easy for him to say that-he wasn't running my classroom day in and day out, dealing with inquiring youngsters on a daily basis.
And so I was voicing my emotional concerns aloud as I stood under the darkened summer sky. I was agitated, I was upset-I was almost in tears-wrangling with this whole idea of sharing with students in a public classroom the strange events and encounters that I had had and even the ones I was continuing to experience.
Suddenly, high above my head and directly over me, a very bright light shone down. It was not a point of light like a star, but rather it was a small disk of light, pure white and brilliant. At arm's length, it was the size of an eraser on the end of a pencil. In one sense, I was surprised to see it there, but in another sense, I knew exactly what it was. As long as I addressed that light aloud with my emotional concerns and questions, it continued to shine down on me as if to affirm that I was indeed doing the right thing by my students in sharing my tales with them. I posed several questions to the light and it stayed on, moving slowly but directly to the east as I spoke. When I had finished my last question, it knew that I had nothing more to share with it. It promptly went out. I never saw it again. Coincidence? Perhaps. But after all has been said and done, the answer is what is important here. And I was searching for an answer. No matter the vehicle...I had my answer.
It was with a sense of growing relief that I had had my concerns addressed and my questions answered. Yes, I was on the right track by sharing with my high school classes. Yes, I would continue to do so when the new school year opened. Yes, I knew that some students would not be able to believe me, even though these encounters were true and I was merely sharing with them what had happened to me. And maybe even the symbol of a bright white light-the light of clarity and reason-was to be taken as such. Still and all, the germination of the seeds of curiosity in their minds was more important to me than whether they believed what I told them or not. I had always prefaced every story in class with the following: "It is immaterial to me whether you believe what I am about to tell you. Your grade in this class does not depend on whether you believe my story or not. I am simply sharing with you some very strange things that have really happened to me down through the years."
Since most alien visitors to this planet tend to be fairly devoid of any kind of an emotional template in their dealings with us, our own human capacity to generate and display a gamut of emotions and associated psychological responses has become an on-going concern for them. It is this emotional endowment that sets us apart from them. It is probably also an enduring object of interest on their part. The expression of our emotions always seems to catch them off guard. So when it occurs and is directed at them, they tend to "sit up and take notice." But this emotional outburst has to be a genuine one; otherwise, they tend to ignore us. When the emotional expression is aimed their way, they often respond in one way or another. It is difficult to predict the nature of the alien response, but it occurs nonetheless. An observant personality can often pick up on their response.
Many students have come to me over the years, sheepishly admitting to me that they had regarded me as some kind of a marginal fruitcake-until something unexplained had happened to them. Suddenly their tone of polite disbelief had been changed into something more nearly in line with my own thinking, i.e., there is more out there than meets the human eye.
From the forthcoming book, "Beyond the Mulberry Tree", by Doug Parrish.
