Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, January 2022
UFOs, Orbs, the Underworld, and those Ladies in White
by: Brent Raynes
“The pink light shining towards me actually made me believe it was a type of ladder or possibly steps,” he recalled. “I experienced a good feeling from this light. After it left I felt really depressed about not going to it. My feeling of being safe if I had gone with it or them was I knew they meant no harm to me and they would always protect me.”
Years later, when he was 18 ½ years old, married with a newborn son, he and his family had just moved in a new home. Before retiring that night he prayed for “higher power to bliss this home.” After about 10 minutes of climbing into bed he became aware of a “very hot sensation” over his entire body. Though initially scared within a few seconds he suddenly somehow just knew that this was caused by “a good spirit.”
“This probably lasted 3 or 4 minutes,” he explained. “i sensed this spirit was telling me to open my eyes but I would not. The light, the heat, the smell was so wonderful. When I finally would open my eyes I saw a beautiful lady. She was dressed in a white robe with long hair. She was in a sitting position with the robe covering her entire body from neck down.”
“She was smiling. This lasted for maybe 15 to 30 seconds. She floated above the bottom end of our bed. Almost like she was sitting on our feet. When she left she became smaller, like backing away, never taking her eyes off me. She blinked a few times.”
Then she was simply gone. He added how she had “a beautiful pink color surrounding her with sparkles like maybe stars, small stars fluttering around her entire body. I remember the sparkles were shaped to an oval ring surrounding her. She was real.”
Again when touching upon the childhood UFO incident, the man noted, “At first, I was scared but became calm and felt this sensation which I did experience once more at the age of 18 ½. I could have actually crawled through my bedroom window and touched this object. I really do believe now that I should have gone where I know I would be safe for the rest of my life.”
In later questioning, this individual added that from around age 5 to 10 he had had other experiences where a “high intensity gleaming light” shined into his bedroom window, awakening him from his slumber. “My grandmother was always sleeping in the same bedroom and she would never wake up,” he added. He claimed he would get up and stare out the window for what seemed like hours and would see a strange light flying around.
He claimed numerous other unusual paranormal experiences over his lifetime. He fit well into the experiencer profile of those who seem encounter prone. There are many other accounts throughout the world of mysterious beautiful women clothed in white who often appear to the encounter prone [though not always], as well as showing up in areas that seem prone to frequent unexplained phenomena of various kinds. Such areas were referred to as “window” areas by Keel. In this column, in the May 2021 issue, I described a number of such cases.
In Anthony Peake’s The Hidden Universe {2019} he delves into one of our most familiar “lady in white” archetypal figures, the Blessed Virgin Mary. One of the cases he details is the famous series of events that took place at a cave just outside of the small mountain settlement of Lourdes, France, back in 1858. This site was an extraordinary paranormal hotspot.
It was then that a young girl of 14 named Bernadette Soubivous became the center of the BVM’s activity. “Her story has many parallels with UFO abductions and encounters with the Fay,” Peake wrote. “The cave is on the left bank of the river Gave, a short walk from the town. This had long been identified as the haunt of the Feen (fairies) popularly known as The Fairy Cave.”
Caves and grottoes, Peake pointed out, figured into “many ancient encounters with Egregorials.” Prior to young Bernadette’s encounters with the Marian figure others had previously described strange experiences at this location. Some events had gained the reputation of being “satanic.” During the 1858 BVM activity that was going on with Bernadette, a young local man claimed that he was passing the grotto before dawn one morning and right after he had made the Sign of the Cross he suddenly found himself surrounded by mysterious globes of light. Again, he crossed himself, whereupon he claimed that the balls of light loudly exploded. He was then able to continue on with his journey, though he added that from within the grotto he heard “maniacal laughter and blasphemies.”
“It has long been noted that what I term the Egregorials seem to reflect the cultural, religious, scientific or philosophical beliefs of the society in which they manifest,” Peake noted. “Examples include the way in which the goddess entities of pre-Christian times became Blessed Virgin Mary visions, and the way in which UFO pilots changed from being humanoid to being bug-eyed monsters and latterly ‘greys.’ The entities perceived fulfill the expectations of the observers. This suggests that in some very real sense they are both created by, and influence, the receiving/creating consciousness. There seems to be some kind of feedback loop here.”
Keel called it the “reflective factor.” It almost seems like something is capable of reading us, and in turn may be capable of conforming to our beliefs and expectations. And after that part of us may in turn personify and unconsciously project qualities that we desire upon it. It’s certainly and potentially a very complex, convoluted and challenging enigma. More and more researchers seem to gradually be waking up to the fact that a deep and penetrating look into the consciousness and physics of it all – which is where science likely needs to be most discerningly directed – is where we need to sharpen our focus. Too many seem myopic in this regard and to be wandering down blind alleys that lead nowhere helpful. There’s certainly a great deal to unpack here – a lot of dots to connect - and questions to ask that many don’t bother to ask or even know how to ask because they’ve been unable to grasp the full scope of this mind-boggling situation. As an exasperated John Keel once exclaimed: to hell with the answer, again what’s the question?
All of this, whatever it is, began way, way back before 1947. We mustn’t be so arrogant as to assume we have all the answers. We’re rather like the tale of the blind men and the elephant. Too many are examining separate parts rather than examining the whole. We must become a bit like the anthropologist, or the folklorist, and commit ourselves to beginning with unstructured interviews of our “witnesses,” and allow their stories to be told by them in their own words without us interrupting, pressuring, or redirecting their testimony in any way to suit our own psychological needs rather than theirs. I hate to say it but I’ve been on one too many investigations where a fellow ‘ufologist’ would amateurishly – even before the witness (or witnesses) could share their story and begin telling them about their findings – even talking in one case about contactees and MIB before the witnesses had a chance to tell their account. Fortunately, those witnesses in that particular case only wanted to tell us about a strange object they saw moving through the sky.
