Files From the Edge

by Philip J. Imbrogno

  [17]. I found this one in 1973; the actual day it took place seems to have been lost while taking notes from the microfilm. I could not find it again in the archives.

  [18]. At the present time, I am still investigating these sightings since they involve possible encounters with an alien intelligence. I hope to publish my finding in my next book.

  [19]. Most of the people who called or emailed had read my book, Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings, and knew how to contact me. A local newspaper, The Journal News, also ran a story on my research in the summer of 2008.

  High Strangeness

  “High strangeness” is a term used to describe an event that is more unusual than a typical paranormal experience. Although Fortean phenomena are strange to begin with, there are reports and claims that are so bizarre they must be placed in a special category. The term “high strangeness” was originally used in UFO research to describe encounters that involved more than just a sighting of an unknown object; today it is used in all areas of paranormal to denote a very bizarre case.[1] UFO investigators have always been in the forefront of paranormal research and because of this, many of them (including myself) have had the opportunity to investigate a number of very bizarre cases.

  The majority of these high strangeness reports seem to involve some type of extra- or ultra-terrestrial contact, but in most of the claims, no UFO was seen and some experiencers never had a sighting in their lives. The stories present, in my opinion, some type of contact with a being from another physical dimension, or perhaps another universe. Although the claims may be very hard to believe, witnesses (or experiencers) are relating what they believe is the truth. Because the intelligence behind the contact never fully represents itself in its true form, the experiencer is left trying to interpret the encounter and make sense of it by drawing from their education and cultural beliefs.

  High Strangeness Case Number One: Moving Through Time

  In September 1982 I received a call from a man then in his early forties. His real name is Frank, but to protect his identity, I will not publish his last name. Frank had an outrageous story to tell and his claims seemed to be so fantastic that I felt no one—not even the most imaginative science fiction writer—could invent what he was to tell me. I agreed to meet Frank the next day in the afternoon at a restaurant in Darien, Connecticut. I arrived at the restaurant early and when Frank arrived, I invited him to sit at my table. The first question he asked me was “What day and year is this?” Frank claimed that since his interaction with an “alien” intelligence, he had been moving backward and forward through time. Frank said, “I was thirty years in the future and the towns from Norwalk to Greenwich were destroyed by an atomic explosion set by a terrorist who will soon become known only as “Carlos.”[2] I asked him to slow down and start his story from the beginning and tell me how this all started happening to him. Frank’s claim was so fantastic that I will present what he told me word for word. I was interested in what he had to say; according to my background check, he had until this point led a pretty normal life as a successful corporate executive and property owner in Connecticut.

  Frank’s Story

  “I guess you can say my life was normal until I had my first contact with what I thought at the time was an alien emissary from another planet. I owned my own home in Darien, had been happily married for ten years, and although we had no children it was still something considered for the near future. In December 1981, at about eight in the evening, I was watching television alone at home when suddenly the power went out. My wife was away visiting her mother who lived in New York City; the thought of spending the night alone without power did not sit well with me. I tried calling the electric company, but when I picked up the telephone there was no dial tone. I went and got a flashlight, looked out the window, and noticed that the power was still on in the neighborhood. I then started to go down to the basement to check the circuit breakers when the phone started ringing in short, loud bursts. It didn’t even sound like my phone, but as I picked up the receiver there were two voices: one of a man and the other of a woman, but they didn’t sound human. I think they were computer generated.

  “The voices took turns speaking and said: ‘Greetings. We are from another galaxy and have chosen you to communicate with. Do not be alarmed—we mean you no harm but we have neutralized the power to your home so that we could speak with you.’ I tried talking back and asked them what they wanted with me, but it was as if they used some type of pre-recorded message; they didn’t respond to my questions. The voices also said that in ten seconds after the communication ended, electrical power in my home would be restored and at that time I was to go back into the living room and sit by the television. This seemed like a strange request, but the voices did not sound threatening and were very polite; they often apologized for the inconvenience and they often said the word ‘please’ when they wanted me to do something.

  “The power came back on just after the voices stopped and the dial tone on the phone returned. I walked into the living room and sat near the television. As I sat there the set turned on all by itself and although the picture was fuzzy there was an image of a person. He had very large eyes that wrapped around his head, which looked almost like the shape of a pear. I could not see a mouth moving, but the being spoke and said, ‘Greetings to you from the light of the radiant ones. My name is Lomunk and I am projecting my image to you from a ship located behind your moon. I come from a race of beings called the Ashtar which has been observing your planet for over ten thousand of your years. We are now making contact with individuals who have been genetically programmed to assist us in saving your planet.’

  “I told this Lomunk guy that I wasn’t interested and they should find someone else. He said, ‘You have no choice in the matter and we shall have your assistance even if we have to use force.’ I then went over and pulled the plug on the television, but it was still on and this Lomunk said, ‘You can’t get rid of me that easily. I am very real and control all that you see and hear on this primitive device.’ I was really getting scared! I picked up a glass ash tray and threw it at the TV screen which made the tube explode, causing glass to fly everywhere. I was so scared, my hands were shaking so I went into my private supply of alcohol and drank several shots of whisky. I convinced myself that the whole incident was just a bad dream or hallucination of some kind. I cleaned up the glass in the living room and wondered how I was going to explain all this to my wife when she returned home. I was very upset, but the alcohol made me sleepy so I decided to go to bed and try and forget what had taken place. My wife would be back the next day, and my life would hopefully return to normal.”

  A Shadowy Night Visitor

  Frank went to bed, and for some reason he was very tired and “drained.” He slept until the wee hours of the morning and woke up in a cold sweat with a feeling of terror. Here, his story continues: “When I woke up, it was about two in the morning and the room had a heavy-like atmosphere to it. I felt incredible fear as if something awful was in the room with me. I can only describe it as a presence of pure evil somewhere in the dark, waiting to pounce on me. I sat up and the bed began to vibrate. A shadowy mist came out from under the bed and hovered at the foot. Although the room was dark, it was partly illuminated by a night-light, but this cloud was jet black. The mist formed into a human-like shape; it was very tall and seemed to have a hood. It looked like the angel of death and the first thing that came to my mind was that it was there for me because I was dead or about to die. I could not see any facial features, but this image had long arms with no hands. It stood at the foot of the bed and pointed its arm to me and as it did, I yelled at it asking why it was here. Then it formed back into a black cloud and went through the ceiling. I turned on the light and noticed a slight smell of cigar smoke in the room. The feeling of fear was still with me; I stayed up all night with the lights on until sunrise. My wife returned about noon
the next day and asked what happened to the television set. I told her everything that had taken place, and she didn’t say a word but just looked at me with a concerned stare of disbelief.”

  I didn’t know it at the time, but what Frank described was an encounter with a shadow person. Shadow people seem to be some type of dimensional entities that exist in a reality very close to our own. They also seem connected to UFO-contact-abductions and cases of demonic possession. Paranormal researcher Rosemary Ellen Guiley has done extensive research on the shadow people and has complied hundreds of case studies.[3] Her initial findings indicate that encounters with this type of entity are increasing and are global in nature. Shadow people sightings are discussed in the chapter “Entities from an Unseen World.”

  Encounter With the Silver Ball

  Frank was so upset about his nighttime visitor that he stayed home from work the next day. At one in the afternoon he decided to go for a ride in his car to clear his head. Frank drove down to Greenwich, Connecticut, into the backcountry, and as he was driving, he heard a buzzing sound. He looked back and noticed a silver ball about 2 feet in diameter behind his car just above the hood, following him. No matter how fast he went, the object kept up with the car and the buzzing sound was getting louder. He looked around for another person, but no other cars were on the road. Suddenly, the object shot down three red laser-like beams on the trunk of the car, causing the vehicle to vibrate wildly. Frank began losing control of the car and finally had to pull over to the side of the road; as he did, the engine died. Frank looked around and to his relief the object vanished. He opened the door, got out, and walked around his vehicle looking for damage. Looking at the trunk, he noticed three silver spots where the silver ball shot its “lasers.”[4] Shortly later, a Greenwich police officer stopped and helped him with his car. Frank didn’t tell the officer about the object because he didn’t want to look “crazy.” The officer gave him a ride home to Darien and about an hour later, the tow truck delivered the car.

  The spots on the trunk were still there, and when he placed a compass near them the needle spun around in circles. Later that evening, Frank’s wife came home from work and asked about the car. When Frank told her his story, she once again gave him a strange look and said she did not believe him. Frank then took her out to the car to show her the circles but they were gone. Frank’s wife started to yell at him, “What’s wrong with you? First the TV, now the car!” She suggested he see a doctor and get some tests done since what he was saying happened to him was “just plain crazy.” To make a long story short, Frank did see a doctor and had a CAT scan of his brain and it showed nothing abnormal. His doctor suggested that Frank should see a psychiatrist, but he was reluctant to do so despite his wife’s insistence.

  Several days later after the encounter with the silver ball, Frank began hearing voices that spoke in some language he didn’t understand. He also claimed that at night, he would close his eyes and have visions of people and alien-looking beings in some type of operating room. Two days later, Frank would disappear for forty-eight hours, returning home with an even more incredible story for his disbelieving but concerned wife. Below is his account.

  A Trip Through Time

  “Things were not going well for me: my wife thought I was losing my mind and I could not function at work so I decided to spend the day walking through Bruce Park in Greenwich, Connecticut. I parked, got out of the car, and began to walk down the path when all of a sudden everything around me got blurry and I felt as if I was spinning around in a circle. After a minute or so, things settled down and the dizziness stopped. My vision was clear but something had changed. The path ahead of me looked different, with plants and flowers that were not there before. I continued to walk and saw three people, two men and a woman, walking toward me on the path. They were dressed strange, like what people wore in the mid-1800s. As they approached I said, ‘Nice getup, are you going to a costume party?’ One of the men replied, ‘Excuse me, what do you mean, sir?’ They looked at me like I was some kind of nut and walked past me. I looked back to apologize and they were gone. Then, without warning, the dizzy feeling and blurry vision returned; I fell to the ground and looked up and saw an alien being. It was that Lomunk person from my TV. I got up to my feet and he told me that I moved from one hundred years in the past to thirty years in the future. He then said he had something to show me, but first we had to go up to a ship cloaked and five hundred feet above us.

  “Lomunk waved his hand and a device attached to his wrist glowed. I saw a bright light and the next thing I knew, I was in a room that had all kinds of equipment with people strapped to five tables. The people were human; two of them (a man and a woman) looked at me, smiled, and said hello. I asked this Lomunk guy what they were doing and he said that these people like me ‘were volunteers who are being conditioned to help us save your planet from disasters that will take place at different points in time.’ I yelled at him and said I never volunteered for anything. Lomunk told me that I did and pointed to a wall where a screen appeared. The screen played some type of video of me when I was a teenager, talking with him and agreeing to help. It’s strange—I remember that experience, but always thought it was a dream. Lomunk pointed to another screen and told me to look, and what I saw shocked me. Several cities along coastal Connecticut were in burning ruins, thousands of people were dead. Lomunk said that a terrorist set off a nuclear device, and it was my task to stop the disaster by disarming the bomb. He then said that they were going to take me back in time twenty-four hours and place me at the location of the bomb. I told him that I didn’t know how to do this and he replied, ‘We will teach you.’

  “He took me into a room and instructed me to sit in a chair. Another alien-looking guy came into the room and attached a small circular disk to the right side of my head. He pressed a button on a device that looked like a remote control and I felt a vibration that shook my skull. It felt as if electricity was being shot into my brain. It only lasted about ten seconds and when the procedure was finished, I had all the knowledge to do what they wanted. I was then taken into a room that Lomunk called the ‘travel chamber’ and was told that they had the ability to travel 175 years back or forward in time. Lomunk said that I would be transported to the correct time and place to disarm the bomb, and when the mission was complete, they would transport me back to the park in the year 1982, close to the time that I left. I asked him why they didn’t do it themselves and he replied, ‘We would, but we can only stay in your dimensional reality for a short period of time.’

  “I was transported to the site by a beam of light and saw the bomb—it was in the basement of a large building, and I did what they trained me to do; I disarmed it. I then found myself sitting on a bench back in the park. I walked to my car and found myself drifting through time—every five minutes or so I seemed to be in a different time period.

  “After what seemed like forever, I felt steady enough to drive home. As I pulled in my driveway my wife yelled, ‘Where were you?!’ She told me that I had been missing for two days and that she filed a missing persons report with the police. It’s strange, because I was not hungry or thirsty; my beard hadn’t grown and I didn’t have to go to the bathroom, so how could I have been gone for two days? I told my wife what happened and she said, ‘That’s it, now I am calling the doctor!’ To make a long story short, I was forced to see a psychiatrist or my wife was going to divorce me. The doctor said I was having delusions to escape reality and was afraid to face life. I tried to explain that my life was fine until this Lomunk person appeared. The doctor and my wife forced me to take medication and although I no longer heard voices during the day, just before drifting off to sleep at night I would find myself traveling through time to different periods of human history. On several occasions, my consciousness was beamed aboard Lomunk’s ship where I was introduced to others from his race and was introduced to other humans from around the world who were also helping them.”
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  Beings of Plasma

  If we limit our thinking to what we were taught in school, Frank’s story would be impossible to believe. Eventually, Lomunk identified himself as not an alien from another galaxy, but a being that represented a race that exists in a very nearby dimension. After multiple meetings, Lomunk told Frank that his race really didn’t care about humanity and if we wanted to destroy ourselves, it was our own business. According to a conversation with Frank in the spring of 1983, he discovered that Lomunk’s civilization was so near us, the atomic explosion would also have damaged his world. It seems that Lomunk’s race is susceptible to magnetic fields and EMPs (electromagnetic pulses). When taking a look at some of the entities reported in paranormal cases, the sensitivity would make sense—many otherworldy beings seem to have shape-shifting abilities and don’t appear to be composed of matter as we know it.

  According to Islamic legend, an ancient race of beings that predates humanity called the Djinn exist in a very nearby parallel dimension. It is said they are composed of smokeless fire, which sounds a lot like plasma to me. Plasma is often called the fourth state of matter, and although many schools still teach that there are only three states, there are actually four. To put it very simply, plasma is an ionized gas into which sufficient energy is provided to free electrons from atoms or molecules. The gas allows charged atoms and electrons to coexist. It might sound strange, but this fourth state is actually the most common one in the universe.

  A charged particle soup has powerful electrical properties and creates a magnetic field—the excited, charged particles radiate light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The biggest chunk of plasma in our solar system is the sun. The sun’s enormous heat rips electrons off the hydrogen and helium atoms that make up our star. Plasma can be found on earth in glowing neon lights and in severe electrical storms. Plasma can be manipulated or disrupted by an intense magnetic field or an EMP. A being composed of plasma would not have a definite solid form and might be able to change its shape by rearranging the magnetic field that contains it. Any type of EMP might be very dangerous to a creature of this nature, perhaps that’s why Lomunk’s race needed a human to disarm the bomb—a powerful EMP is emitted during an atomic blast.