Many of us were out in our yards a few days before Christmas staring at the sky. We were searching for a bright star being created by a planetary event that last occurred 800 years ago.
Regina and I might have gotten a glimpse of what was being called the Christmas Star. Or maybe what we saw through the binoculars was the light on a cell phone tower across town.
This bright spot in the sky, which was a little hazy that night from a cloud cover, was the result of what scientists referred to as “the great conjunction” of Jupiter and Saturn.
All the hype as this phenomenon approached was that Jupiter would catch up with and pass Saturn and that we earthlings would see a vibrant light while those celestial bodies were close together.
My understanding of astronomy is extremely limited. If they had astronomy classes when I was in school, nobody told me about them. So astronomy is nearly as mysterious to me as anything related to math.
But we were told by the media as they prepared us for the great conjunction that Galileo saw one of these occurrences through his telescope in the 1600s and documented it. Even I know that Galileo was to extraterrestrial matters what Nick Saban is to football.
So I pretended to see the intense glow in the sky that night since Regina wanted us to share the experience. But the truth is I had trouble adjusting my binoculars and just saw some blurry lights.
All this hullabaloo about things in outer space reminded me of the night I encountered the unidentified flying object that still has me wondering about extraterrestrial activity.
I wrote a piece about it years ago when it happened and have shared the story with folks a lot of times since. But I have no more understanding now about what I witnessed than I did then.
It was a dark, cold night, and I was returning to Natchitoches on Highway 1 after a late dinner in Alexandria. The sky was black with no sign of the moon or stars, and the road was deserted except for an occasional 18-wheeler.
Suddenly, some pastureland just off the highway about the size of a football field was flooded with bright light. Cattle, livestock feeders and watering troughs that had been cloaked in darkness were now in clear view.
The blazing light came from an oval shaped object a hundred feet or so above the field. It was the size of crop dusters that skim over farmlands around here. Looking at the lights was like staring into the sun.
When I slowed down, the aircraft stayed parallel with the car and traveled along with it at the same speed
In the rear view mirror, I could see that the pasture behind the moving lights that was bright a moment earlier was dark again as the hovering aircraft moved past that area.
When I sped up, the bright lights moved faster with me, and they slowed down when the car did.
I put a window down to listen for sounds coming from the aircraft, but it was eerily silent.
Then the airborne object and its lights disappeared without a trace. It didn’t streak across the sky in any certain direction, it just vanished.
Stories of UFOs and beings from outer space have never interested me. I always considered that stuff just material for supermarket tabloids with no basis in reality.
Surely there would be an explanation in the news the next day about this silent, mobile light in the sky. But there was never a word about it in newspapers or on radio or television newscasts.
I’m not sure I ever spotted the Christmas Star, but what I saw that night along the fields and pastures of Highway 1 is still vivid in my memory even if it remains inexplicable.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES