Files From the Edge

by Philip J. Imbrogno

  More Electromagnetic Effects

  On July 12, 1982, at ten o’clock in the evening, a resident of Stamford, Connecticut, was watching television when he noticed the power in his home slowly dying. The lights in the house faded to the point of visibility and his fan slowed down to almost a halt. The TV picture shrunk to the size of about 2 inches across, but the picture was still visible. The rest of the screen had a reddish glow, but there was no sound.

  Sitting in his chair, the witness noticed the room and window glowing from a light apparently coming from outside. The man walked over to the window and looked out and saw a bright, round, orange-and-white object hovering above a tree about 50 feet from his home. He described the object as being the size of a large beach ball “floating” above one of the power company’s transformers, seemingly attached to it by a glowing wire. He thought this object was draining power from the transformer, and it made him consider that it must be something living or under intelligent control. As he watched, the object shot away to the east at great speed leaving a luminous trail behind. After hearing the man’s story I called the power company, United Illuminating, and was told that there was a power drain in that area of Stamford at that time that lasted several minutes, the cause of which was unknown.

  The balls of light seen at the time of the Hudson Valley UFO flap all had similar characteristics to ball lightning, including the electromagnetic and physiologic effects on people and animals. Animals seem to get very uneasy, even before the light is seen, and people can feel a tingling sensation on the back of their neck or a shiver up and down the spine. A strange encounter with one of these balls of light came to my attention in July 1984, when a middle-aged Connecticut woman had an encounter that was too close and resulted in injury.

  Burned by a Glowing Sphere

  On July 26, 1984, I received a call from a woman named Peggy from Hamden, Connecticut, who said that she had a sighting of a ball of fire outside her home at three in the morning—and that it burned her face. In Ufology, we call this type of case a “close encounter of the second kind” because the object left some type of physical trace. In all my years of investigating, this was one of very few trace cases that came to my attention so I made arrangements to visit Peggy as soon as possible. Any type of physical effect on a human after a paranormal encounter is a rare event—I wanted to make sure this one was properly documented. I arrived at Peggy’s home on July 27. When she answered the door, I was a little taken aback—half her face was a bright red, while the other half was normal (in her case) pale white skin. Peggy told me that on July 25, just after a severe thunderstorm, she woke up at about 2:45 am hearing strange loud cracking and buzzing noises that seemed to come from outside her home. Peggy’s husband was away on a business trip that night, and her children are married and live in different parts of the state; whatever was making the noises she would have to face alone.

  Peggy’s greatest fear was that during the storm, lightning had struck the wires of her home and started an electrical fire. She walked toward the kitchen to the back of her home and looked out the sliding glass doors that led onto the deck. She noticed that the ground and trees were glowing red as if on fire. In a panic, Peggy opened the glass door and looked around the deck. Without warning, a glowing fireball the size of a basketball came up over the trees and started to move toward her. Fearful, she ran inside and closed the door. The ball of fire came to within 20 feet of the deck and Peggy stared at it, mesmerized: “It was almost hypnotic, I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was scary but also beautiful.”

  Peggy noticed that the object started to get brighter and something like sparks began to shoot out from it in all directions. It changed in color from a crimson red to a bright yellow. It was so bright, she had to turn and shield her eyes. However, the right side of her head was still facing the object and it was then she felt a tingling sensationon her face. Peggy then ran to the phone, but it did not work—there was only static. Then, as if a light turned off, the fireball was gone. Bravely, Peggy once again opened the sliding doors, looked around, but the glowing ball had vanished. The entire incident lasted only ten minutes, but Peggy said it felt like a much longer time had passed. Her face felt very irritated so she grabbed a flashlight, ran to the bathroom, looked at her reflection in the mirror and noticed the side of her face that had faced the object was red. She tried putting ice on it and that made it feel better for a little while, but her skin was feeling like it was on fire; the burning sensation was getting worse.

  Afraid that she had been exposed to some type of harmful radiation, the following morning, Peggy made an emergency appointment to see her doctor. After his examination, Peggy’s doctor didn’t have an explanation for the burn on the right side of her face, but said that it was only a first degree burn that should heal in a few days, with a little peeling. The doctor suggested that she may have fallen asleep on her deck and exposed one side of her face to the sun. Peggy told the doctor about the ball of fire, but he looked at her with disbelief so she said nothing more about it. The burn faded within a week (with no peeling) and she suffered no further ill effects. So the question is: did Peggy see an alien probe from a UFO or did she have a rare encounter with a form of ball lightning? The actual cause of the event remains unidentified in my case files.

  A similar experience to Peggy’s took place in the summer of 1986 at Fishkill, New York, when a limousine driver en route to pick up his customer was driven off the road by a “yellow ball of light the size of a basketball.” The driver lost control of the vehicle and veered into a ditch on the side of the road. The time was nine in the evening and the road was quite desolate. He got out of the car and there was a strong smell of ozone in the air—so strong, it irritated his eyes and lungs. The man looked up and saw the ball of light hovering above a telephone pole across the street. He watched it for about five minutes, then the object started shooting sparks into the sky. After doing that for a minute or so, the sparks then focused to one point and created a tunnel in the sky into which the ball of light vanished. The next day, the driver had to visit his doctor because his skin was itching and his eyes were red and irritated. Although there were no other witnesses to this event, something caused him to lose control of his car and the irritation to his eyes and skin. I interviewed this witness to a great extent on the phone and was convinced he had an encounter with something that could not be conventionally explained.

  Is the Sky Really Falling?

  I have a number of cases in my files of sightings and close encounters with similar balls of lights sent to me from all over the United States and Canada. In the world of the paranormal, this type of occurrence seems common, but what is it? Are the glowing spheres some type of interdimensional intelligent life form, alien probes, or a rare form of natural electrostatic phenomena? Although sightings of unusual balls of light take place in many paranormal experiences, another type of frequently reported event is falls from the sky. These falls include; fish, frogs, stones, blood, and ice, just to name a few. I’ve also heard of an unidentified material simply referred to as “angel hair” because of its silk-like (ectoplasmic?) properties.

  I have personally investigated thirteen cases in which different forms of matter apparently fell from the sky. Five of these cases involved stones that either floated silently in the air or came crashing down with a boom. Two of these falling stones turned out to be meteorites.[10] In the three other cases, however, the falling stones were indigenous to the area and involved as many as one hundred rocks ranging in size from a pebble to almost 5 pounds; these rock showers were reported to have periodically fallen over a several-day period.

  Star Stones

  Before the nineteenth century, observing a meteorite striking the ground would have been a paranormal event. The mentality of established science at that time was that since stones were not found in the sky, they could not fall from it, and the idea was therefore ridiculous. Even the great scientist an
d explorer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), who Thomas Jefferson called “the most important scientist [he had] ever met,” doubted the idea that rocks could fall from space despite the fact that he was one of the first scientists to accurately observe and plot meteor showers. Like many others in his day, Humboldt thought meteors originated in the upper atmosphere of our planet.

  In the early afternoon of November 7, 1492, in the town of Ensisheim, in Alsace, France, a farmer looked out his window one morning and witnessed a fiery object fall from the sky into his wheat field.[11] The next morning he went out to the field and found a dark stone about 5 pounds in weight sitting in a small depression. He picked up the stone, took it to Paris, and presented it to the learned masters at the University of Paris. When asked by the scientists where he got the strange looking stone, the farmer replied it had fallen from the sky. The scientists all started to laugh and dismissed him as a nut; according to everything they had learned, it was impossible for rocks to fall from the sky. The rock was kept in the museum cellar for four hundred years after which it was re-examined in the mid-nineteenth century by scientists who by then had begun to accept the idea of rocks falling from the sky—they were even given a name: meteorites. The rock the farmer found on his land was in fact a stony-type meteor and one of the first of many that were recovered and identified as not having an earthly origin. When I think of the farmer’s story, I wonder how many other falls from the sky are laughed at because they don’t fit into currently accepted ideas of science. I’m sure the farmer felt quite silly and embarrassed when he left the museum. His negative experience most likely stopped many others from reporting similar phenomena to authorities.

  It wasn’t until 1835 that some scientists began to take rock falls from the sky seriously, but the academic community was divided on this subject and spawned many heated debates. The famous Aristotle is credited with the idea of “falling stars” that could have landed on Earth more than two thousand years ago. The earliest record we have of falling meteorites is of one that fell at Aegos Potamos in 465 bc. It is so well described by great writer/historian Plutarch in his epic story Lysander that I quote the passage in full; it sheds light on ancient Greek opinions on such phenomena and possible causes.[12]

  There were those who said that the stars of Castor and Pollux appeared on each side the helm of Lysander’s ship, when he first set out against the Athenians. Others thought that a stone, which according to the common opinion fell from heaven, was an omen of his overthrow. It fell on Aegos Potamos, and was of prodigious size. The people of the Chersonesus hold the heavenly stone in great veneration, and show it to this day. It is said that Anaxagoras had foretold that one of those bodies, which are fixed to the vault of heaven, would one day be loosened by some shock or convulsion of the whole machine, and fall to the earth, for he taught that the stars are not now in the places where they were originally formed; that being of a stony substance and heavy, the light they give is caused only by the reflection and refraction of the ether; and that they are carried along, and kept in their orbits, by the rapid motion of the heavens, which from the beginning, when the cold ponderous bodies were separated from the rest, hindered them from falling.

  In the 1820s, the U.S. government was trying to establish a more open line of communication with the Native American population. Scientists and doctors from a number of universities met with Native American medicine men and shamans. The meeting’s purpose was to see if these Native Americans had any “natural cures” or medicine that nineteenth-century doctors could use. In one meeting, when asked if they used anything in particular to help fight infection, a medicine man emptied his medicine pouch on the table and out fell a number of strange stones. The doctors asked what they were and the medicine man replied that they had great power for healing. The doctors asked where he got them and the medicine man replied “they are star stones that fell from the sky.” The doctors began to laugh and ensured the medicine man it was impossible—stones could not possibly fall from the sky. Well, the last laugh is on the doctors: one hundred years later, the so-called “star stones” that were part of many medicine pouches were analyzed and found out to be meteorites, some of them very rare ones.

  Flying Rocks

  The falling of rocks from the sky that seem to be thrown by an invisible force are frequent happenings in the paranormal world, especially in cases that involve poltergeist activity. In the late seventies I investigated an occurrence where rocks would fall down from the sky on a number of homes in an isolated neighborhood in Monroe, Connecticut.[13] Although the case history and investigation were both complex, I will present the basic facts here and focus on the falling of rocks, omitting the bizarre claims of alien contact that surfaced during the investigation. The rocks fell straight down from the sky several days a week and always after eight in the evening. Residents thought an angry spirit had invaded their property, but local police were sure that pranksters were involved. I personally investigated this event and on one occasion, while interviewing a witness in their home when a falling of rocks took place. The stones fell on the roof making extremely loud sounds; I ran outside but didn’t see anything except the roof, now covered with a new layer of rocks. I went back inside and several minutes later, the rocks began falling again, but this time near the home’s entrance. Once again I dashed outside where I saw several new stones ranging in size piled up against the side of the house. It’s interesting to note that there was never any damage to the side of the home or the roof. I picked up one of the larger stones and it was very warm, as if just heated. The larger stones cooled down to a normal ambient temperature within several minutes.

  The stones were all quite common granites and rhyolites found in the area, but the interesting thing about them was all of them were rounded and smooth as if they had been in a fast-moving stream for hundreds of years. I checked other homes in the neighborhood and, although they had experienced the rock falling phenomenon on previous dates, on this particular night the home that I was in was the only one affected. The rock falling took place two days a week for several weeks, stopped suddenly, and as of 2009 has never happened again. Despite a very involved investigation in cooperation with the Monroe and Newtown police, no conventional explanation was ever found.

  The Litchfield, Connecticut, Poltergeist

  On November 19, 2004, I received a call from a young couple who owned a home on a secluded dead-end street in Litchfield, Connecticut. After hearing me discussing the paranormal on a local radio talk show, they called to relate an experience they found both perplexing and terrifying. The couple told me that on numerous occasions, their house was “bombarded” by rocks of all sizes—the stones even entered their home by breaking windows. The frightened couple asked me to come and investigate since they were sure that it was an angry spirit that wanted them out of the house.

  I arrived at their home on November 21 during the day and was greeted by the couple who at the time were recently married and in their late twenties. After some brief introductions, I asked to be taken outside to view the property. I walked around the perimeter of the house and noticed hundreds of rocks against the walls of the home and chips and cracks along the siding as if they had struck with considerable force. Just as in the poltergeist cases in Monroe, Connecticut, all the rocks were rounded and smooth as if they had been in running water for a very long time. I asked for a ladder and climbed up to look at the roof where I noticed only fifteen or so stones, several of them appeared to weigh at least 10 pounds. It seemed that most of the attention was focused on the south side of the home. We then went back inside and began the interview; it was two hours in length and the important facts are presented here.

  IT ALL STARTED WITH A OUIJA BOARD

  The couple had just moved into the house in October 2004; neither of them had ever had a paranormal experience prior to that. The house is seventy years old, and the previous owners (whom I contacted) never saw or felt anything unusual
in the twenty-five years they lived there. It was Halloween eve when the new couple finally moved in and they decided to “have some fun” and play with a Ouija board they found in the attic. As they began to ask questions, the couple was surprised when the planchette (pointing device) went “wildly” across the board and spelled the words “GET OUT.” Both were quite scared and blamed the other for fooling around and moving the pointer around the board. The next night, at ten in the evening, they heard loud thumps on the south side of the house and, thinking some kids were throwing rocks, they both ran outside but no one was there. They went back into their home and the thumping started again, this time louder. The husband grabbed a flashlight to go outside, but before he even opened the door the noise stopped. He went outside anyway and walked along the side of the house and found dozens of rocks piled up in a row 2 feet in width and 8 feet in length. He went back inside and all was silent. That same night at two in the morning they heard the same sound, but this time it was coming from the roof. His wife became very frightened and called the police who found nothing and left.[14]