“Daniel and I already talked about it. Daniel believes in you, Ben. In fact, it was his idea to send your article to his agent in New York, Howard Dulci. He’s connected with the major publishers. May be your story could end up in the New Yorker or turn into a book contract.”
“Really? Daniel would do that?”
“Yes,” Nadine said. She cut a piece of pie for me. “Your exposé article hit Daniel especially hard. He’s very trusting of others because his intentions are good. He cares. A couple of articles about your experience would be a great way to fix your previous journalistic error by telling the truth this time.”
I sat back and chewed a large mouthful of pie. Writing an article sounded great, but I wasn’t comfortable making promises.
“You’re a writer, Ben. You’ll know when you’ve got something good. Just tell your truth in the way you know how. I’ll even copyedit it for you.”
Daniel walked in. “What are you two talking about?”
“Writing,” said Nadine.
Daniel grabbed a piece of pie crust and shoved it into his mouth. “Oh yeah?”
“Ben is going to write an article about his abduction experience.” She smiled at me. “I think it’s a great idea. Don’t you, Daniel?”
Daniel nodded, still chewing. “Writing can be cathartic. I support.”
“Well, there you have it, Ben. Daniel thinks it’s a great idea.”
I went to work on the articles, a short one for the Foundation website and extended one for Daniel’s agent. Words flew out of me at lightning speed. I couldn’t believe it. I wrote about what happened that night en route from Yakima to Seattle, what happened to me afterwards, the PTSD, the breakup with Jennifer, everything, all the while questioning the reality of my experience. Was it a fake abduction, or was it a real abduction? I focused on my interpretation of the experience, it’s meaning to me. I drew parallels and comparisons to a few other notable documented abduction experiences, from Strieber to Walton, Betty and Barney Hill. Always the questioned loomed: were they real, or were they fake? I was hopeful for the answers.
18: Sweat Lodge
We stopped at an outlet mall outside of Spokane for lunch and some shopping. Mike made a tank top acquisition at the NIKE outlet, and Daniel picked up a new pair or Ray Ban aviators. In the food court, we indulged in ice cream while discussing our plans for the next twenty-four hours.
“We’ll check into the hotel in Yakima, and then head up Route 12,” Daniel said, licking his salted caramel sugar cone. “We’ll take a look around and see if we find anything left behind by your government abductors.”
“What? We’re going to my abduction site?” It was news to me, and it was almost one-thirty. I sure as hell didn’t want to be up there on the ridge after dark.
“Yes,” Daniel said, “returning to the scene will help you get over what they did to you, and we should do some investigative work.”
“What are you expecting to find?” I asked, doubtful we’d find anything of substance to link my experience to a government abduction operation. What was he expecting to find—indentions in the dirt from the black helicopters or TR-3B landing gear?
“TR-3B residual energy fields. We have a special device for detecting them.”
“Really? Energy traces after all this time?”
“Sure. The craft create so much electromagnetic energy that they charge rock, mostly basalt, given its rich iron ore. There’s no guarantee we’ll detect it, so we’ll have to really scour the area. It will take some time.”
“I don’t want to be up there in the dark if we can avoid it,” I said assertively, setting my bowl of macadamia nut ice cream down. “And won’t us being there draw attention? Wouldn’t the government have interest in us being there?”
Daniel wiped ice cream dribble from his chin. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back to the hotel before dark.” His eyes were empathetic. “I know this is difficult, Ben, but everything will be fine. Trust me. I’ve helped many people with abduction trauma before. And no, I’m not too worried about the government. They won’t even know we’re there, especially if we keep our cell phones off.” He looked at Mike. “Or we get pulled over for a speeding ticket—”
“I’ll be careful,” Mike replied.
“—like on our Peru trip last year,” Daniel added, grinning.
“That wasn’t my fault. I didn’t know it was kilometers per hour,” Mike said before taking a mammoth bite of his cookies and cream double scoop.
“You went to Peru last year?” I asked.
“A group of us went down for a sighting event and ayahuasca experience. It was incredible,” Daniel said. “Have you ever experienced a DMT trip?”
Dimethyltryptamine. “No, but I’ve read about it. What was it like?”
“It takes a moment to cross the threshold, and then you are there in another dimensional realm. It’s no hallucination—vivid, with geometric shapes and the entities are human-like but they glow as if from an inner sun. Their eyes glimmered like diamonds, and they smiled when they saw us, welcoming us to their realm. Others sang to us. It was beautiful.”
“And the green stick figures,” Mike blurted, “the ones with the large eyes.”
“Like Gumbi?” I said, thinking about the stop-action cartoon character.
“Oh no, Ben,” Daniel said, “these were intelligent intra-dimensional entities. Everyone with us saw the same entities at the same time. Others who have been on DMT have seen these same entities.”
“Interesting. Is there a connection to the EBEs?”
“They are not the EBEs we have been in contact with, but other entities. Like the Proximians, they wanted to show me things and share their knowledge. It was a very special experience. I will have a chapter in my new book about the connection to the EBEs.”
Daniel and Mike continued reminiscing while I went over my usual dilemma. How did Daniel know that what he experienced was real and not a hallucination? What about my own abduction experience? Sure, there was a mark on my chest, and I was sure I didn’t put it there. Jennifer thought I did.
Daniel interrupted my thoughts. “Ben, you look perplexed. What’s on your mind?”
“How can I be sure what I experienced was real? Maybe I was just hallucinating.” I looked at him. “How can you be sure that each and all of the things you’ve experienced were real? How do you know for sure?”
He smiled. “First rule is you must be careful to not fool yourself and…”
“You are the easiest person to fool,” I said, smiling back.
He licked his dwindling ice cream and nodded. “It’s been well documented in the scientific literature that people have the same experiences with the same type of entities when experiencing DMT. How else can you explain that? It’s no different from abduction experiences. It’s a cosmic connection, and it’s real, not a hallucination.”
I finished off my macadamia nut, pondering the idea of shared metaphysical experiences and cosmic connections. Three months ago, I’d pass these off as crazy ideas—but now, I wasn’t sure.
We continued our journey east. In Yakima, we checked into a hotel, and then headed up on Route 12 to the spot where I first noticed the lights trailing me, and the approximate location where my car lost power. Mike pulled into the next turnout and parked. We sat in the van for a moment while Mike readied his handheld electromagnetic field reader and Daniel surveyed the canyon and surrounding hills. “This was a perfect spot for them to take you,” he said, pointing to the terrain, “the ridges provide cover, and they must have blocked the road behind and in front to make sure you were alone.” He looked at me one last time before we got out. “Don’t worry, Ben, you’ll be fine. It’s okay if you want to stay near the van.”
I stepped out of the van.
The air was crisp, and the late afternoon sun gave the surrounding hills a yellow-orange glow. Daniel walked the road ahead of us while Mike walked the opposite side with his sensor in hand. I walked alone, scanning the skies and ridge top
s for lights. After a minute, I found myself at the edge of the road in a daze, unable to keep out images of dark, lifeless eyes. A semi-truck blasted its horn, causing me to jump.
“You okay, Ben?” Mike shouted from across the road.
“I’m fine,” I shouted back, but I wasn’t. Fear and anxiety were tearing me apart.
Daniel called back to Mike. “Anything yet?”
Mike’s meter was beeping and chirping. “Getting above background now.”
Daniel disappeared into a ravine and emerged a minute later with something in his hand. “Look what I just found,” he announced excitedly as he approached Mike and I.
It was the iPhone I lost the night of my abduction. I inspected it. The screen was cracked in one corner, and the battery was dead. We let it charge in the van for a few minutes, then Daniel made sure I set it on airplane mode to prevent cell tower pings. I scrolled through the last texts and calls from that fateful night. The last call was the one I made to Jennifer.
“Check the photos and the videos,” Daniel said.
I opened the photo app and viewed the most recent images. Nothing out of the ordinary, just a handful of photos of Jennifer and me from our engagement weekend. Then I remembered that I had taken a video the night I was abducted. I checked the videos, and what I saw nearly made me drop the phone: the greenish white light and in the lower left corner, for an instant, an image of a small gray being with skinny arms outstretched toward me. The video ended abruptly.
“Holy shit! Look!” I yelled, playing the video for Daniel and Mike, pausing the frame when the first being appeared, and zooming in for its slit mouth and telltale ridge from the nose up to the giant forehead.
Daniel grabbed the phone and inspected it while Mike and I leaned over his shoulders. “Just what I thought, a robotic fake. He looked at me. “This video was planted by the government,” Daniel said. “They wanted your phone to be discovered.” He handed it back to me.
I played the video again, wondering if what he said was true. Then I remembered my smart watch data: hearty rate normal, then 120, then plummeted, then missing data. Was that government too? I mentioned it to Daniel.
“The government likely manipulated that data, too, just like your phone. They weren’t counting on me finding it. I’ve got people who will help us with full in-house forensic analysis of the phone.”
Did the government manipulate the data, or cause my heartrate to go squirrely while they took me up into a TR-3B?
I watched the video a third time. The government alien abduction hypothesis, Daniel’s discovery of my phone, and the EBE shot—was it any less plausible than aliens from a distant star in the Goldilocks Zone taking me up into their ship? Something happened to me, and here was video evidence to back it up. I wondered about Congressman Young too. Was he linked to the government abduction program?
We headed back down into the valley and to the hotel. The next morning, we drove to Yakima Indian Reservation, southwest of Yakima. Yakima is the proper name of a people who’ve lived on the Columbia River Plateau for thousands of years.
We drove down a dirt road, past a cellular tower, and several apple orchards, and we pulled up next to an old tin roof trailer at the end. A dog barked and scurried around to the back as a middle-aged man in blue jeans and t-shirt with a greying ponytail stepped out to greet us.
Daniel and Mike shook the man’s hand, Daniel and the man with the fervor of old buddies. Daniel waved for me to come over.
“Ben, this is Chief John Lightfoot.”
We shook hands. We went inside the trailer and sat down in his living room. Daniel asked him to tell us what he knew about Congressman Young.
“He’s a corporate man through and through,” the Chief said, “don’t trust him at all. He said he was going to help us with the cell towers, but he was really on the side of the cellular companies. He sold us out.”
“And he’s linked to government black ops program involving fake abductions,” Daniel added.
“Yes, it’s true,” the Chief said. “My niece was taken a year and a half ago about ten miles from here, then was returned to us a week later.”
“Is she okay now?” I asked, assuming she’d experienced the same post-abduction symptoms as I. “I’d like to meet her.”
“She will be here anytime now. She wants to see Daniel and meet you.”
Just as he said that, the door opened to a young woman in her early twenties with jet black hair and a one-year-old in a sling.
She and Daniel hugged. “So good to see you, Uncle Daniel.”
“And who’s this little one? Mia?” Daniel took the baby and sat down, cooing and bouncing the baby on his knee.
The Chief introduced Maria to me and told her that I was working with Daniel.
“We know my abduction was a fake abduction,” she glanced at Daniel and back at me, “done by the government.”
“Why do you think they took you?”
Daniel interjected. “Tell Ben what happened to you.”
Maria nodded to Daniel. “I was on my way home from visiting my sister when I noticed lights following me. Everything lit up around me, and then I was inside a craft with alien greys with small black eyes.”
I pulled my old phone out and played the video for her.
“Oh my, that’s exactly what I saw.”
“Did they do anything to you?” I asked.
She became visibly uncomfortable. “Yes. I don’t like to talk about it.”
The baby started to cry.
“Oh, she’s getting hungry, Uncle Daniel,” Maria said, as she took her baby into her arms.
“Maria was in the wrong place and the wrong time,” the chief said sadly.
“They fly TR-3Bs through this area,” Daniel explained. “An air corridor runs south of Mount Rainier and north of Mount Saint Helens to the ocean. Isn’t that right, Mike?”
Mike nodded. “They fly at night and low to avoid radar.”
“But the Proximians are here as friends,” the Chief said. “Our ancestors have been visited for hundreds of years.”
Daniel looked at John and smiled. “We’ve done a lot of spiritual work together with the EBEs.”
“Yes. Daniel and the Proxima Foundation are doing great things to bring our worlds together. Are you going to the sweat ceremony tonight?”
“Of course, we’ll be there,” Daniel said.
“Good. It will be an honor for us to have you join us tonight, giving gratitude to the great spirit together.” The Chief turned to me. “Ever been to a sweat lodge ceremony, Ben?”
“No, never,” I replied, wondering why this part of the itinerary hadn’t been disclosed to me. “How long does it last?”
“It can be several hours in the hut. Cleansings can take longer. Daniel tells me you’ve been through a lot at the hands of the government—that you are hearing the voices of evil spirits, too. The ceremony will shake those spirits out of you. “Ben, you’ll never by the same after connecting to the Great Spirit.”
The three of us returned to the hotel to relax until nightfall. Daniel assured me that the sweat lodge experience would be well worth my time. Therapeutically cathartic, he promised. We skipped lunch and dinner. “Better to fast before a sweat lodge experience,” he explained.
As the sun was setting, we returned to the reservation, but a different part where a large fire was already ablaze in front of a domed hut. Just under a dozen people were there, Indian and White. We stripped down to our underwear, and draped our clothes over a log laid in the grass. One by one, we entered the lodge in the center of which was a pit loaded with hot stones pulled from the fire outside. The flap over the door was lowered and we were immersed in darkness. An elder poured water from a ladle onto the stones and steam shot into the air. Soon, it was extremely hot. Prayers and chants began. I wasn’t sure how long I could hold out. About five minutes in, I panicked and ran out into the cool evening air. Daniel came after me, sweat dripping from his face.
“You are
experiencing repressed trauma, Ben. Everything is going to be okay. Just take deep breaths.”
Mike fetched a blanket, and Daniel wrapped me in it. “Your reaction is a normal response for someone who had been abducted.” Mike retrieved our clothes while Daniel stood with me as I caught my breath. I felt better. Daniel’s voice and encouragement were invaluable. Soon, we were on the road back to the hotel.
“I’m embarrassed,” I said, looking out the window into the darkness.
“You shouldn’t be, Ben,” Daniel said, looking back at me, “this experience tonight is part of your transformation. You’re on the mend now and working with me at the Foundation is good for you. We have a lot of work to do together.”
“Thank you, Daniel. I just need to get some rest.”
“Of course,” Daniel said, “knock on my door if you need me.”
That night, curled up in bed, I cried like a baby.
19: The Device
Chester my “roommate” appeared at the doorway of my pod late Friday afternoon. He was wearing a sweatshirt and an old pair of jeans with a black backpack slung over his shoulder and a small olive drab satchel in one hand. I said hello as he stared at me suspiciously with his deep-set eyes with dark bags under them. He dropped his bags on the empty bunk.
“All of the other pods are full. Nadine said I was to stay here,” he said glumly.
I was in my bunk and working on my article.
“Okay,” I said, clearly feeling the territorial threat he was experiencing. “I understand that you’ve been making some progress on a special device. I’m excited to see this thing in action.”
He unzipped his satchel and began removing his belongings. “We’ve got to keep what we have a secret or the government will be all over us and shut us down.”
“Don’t worry, Chester, I signed a non-disclosure agreement, and Daniel invited me to go to Dr. Petulli’s with you this weekend.”
His eyes were still on me. “Just don’t touch anything.”
The Goldilocks Zone Page 14