U is for UFO #atozchallenge
My interest in UFOs goes way back to my childhood. I can’t recall the first time I contemplated the possibility of unexplained aerial phenomena, but it’s intrigued me for decades.
When the X-Files came along, I didn’t get into it until season two, but once it caught me, I was hooked. In the meantime, I’d had experiences of my own.
The first was during a ride home from Toronto to Bradford late one Christmas Eve. I saw strange triangular lights in the sky. Another time, I was sitting outside with some neighbours, again in Bradford, and two of us spotted a light moving in an impossible way. It zig-zagged and then shot away.
When we moved to Newmarket in 2005, I joined a UFO meetup group. When the organizer came by for pizza and a chat one day, we talked about UFO sightings. He explained that they tend to run in families and asked if my kids had had any experiences. I shook my head and said, no, I didn’t think they had.
At that moment, my son arrived home, so we asked him if he’d ever seen a UFO. His reply stunned me: “Yes, with my mom.”
As soon as he said that, I recalled the incident.
We were walking home after dark and cut through the school that led to a field located behind our house. As we walked through the deserted schoolyard, we saw something in the sky. All I can remember is looking up and saying, “What is that?”
My next memory is of entering our backyard through the gate from the field. Until my son mentioned it, I had no memory of the incident at all.
Shortly after we moved to Bradford in 1986, I learned it was considered part of what some ufologists call the Bradford triangle. This area, which spans Bradford, Aurora, and Uxbridge, supposedly had a high number of UFO sightings. I doubt that’s an official title, and I haven’t been able to find statistics to back it up, but all of my UFO experiences happened within that triangle.
In my Valiant Chronicles novels, I based two incidents on true stories, one told to me by someone close to me, who gave me permission to use the story, and another that I personally experienced.
I’m not going to give away here which ones they are. I’ll let people speculate.
For a more researched discussion on UFOs, check out my article on the validity of paranormal events.
