Mysterious Sedona July 2020

Alternate Perceptions Magazine, July 2020

Mysterious Sedona

by: Tom Dongo

I have the habit of going to a coffee shop around 10:00 a.m. and drinking a couple of quality cups of coffee and reading a newspaper cover to cover. I’m kind of well-known for that around here. And Sedona does have excellent coffee shops with excellent coffee now. As I’ve said over the years I am not easy to find and one of the ways people have tracked me down in the past is to ask around at the coffee shops. I used to do this coffee ritual every day religiously but now I do 10:00 a.m. coffee only about twice a week. I stopped by a west Sedona bakery this morning for coffee and was told that a man from Iceland had been looking for me since 7:30 a.m. I thought it must be important if someone is going to that much trouble to find me. This sort of thing has happened many times. It was a nice sunny day so I was sitting outside under an umbrella table drinking my coffee and met the fellow. His name was Gadar. He was a very young looking guy of thirty-eight with his tall, slim and pretty blond wife with startling ice blue eyes whose name was Signa. Signa seemed to be about ten years younger than Gadar. She didn’t speak English very well but he was fluent.

I’m always waiting to hear some story that would blow my socks off. It’s happened a couple of times. So when Gadar said he had an experience in Secret Canyon my interest really perked up.

Before I tell you what he told me, I need to mention that I have heard the same manner of story he was about to tell me a thousand times in the past in different versions. But he and his wife were obviously exceptionally bright and successful people and they had taken valuable time from their holiday to locate me. So to him – and me – it was an exceedingly important story.

It seems that, in 1991, on an earlier trip to Sedona, Gadar had been traveling with a group of people from New Jersey and Iceland. One day eight of the group had hiked into Secret Canyon. They had gone quite a ways into Secret Canyon and finding a comfortable spot, they lay down for awhile to rest. Gadar remarked that not long after he felt some sort of presence and opened his eyes. He said that hovering above the slumbering group was a flying saucer – a UFO. As he watched, he said a beam came from the craft. The beam hit Gadar on the top of his head and penetrated down through all of his chakras and stopped at this base chakra. He was told by a voice in his head that “they” were doing work on his chakra system as a gift to him. So at this point I asked the inevitable question I always ask: “Was the ship physical and did the rest of the group also see the ship?” Gadar replied that, no, the ship was not physical. He seemed to be the only one to see it. But, he pointed out, the others in the group felt an unmistakable presence close by and told him so.

Gadar returned to the same general area the next night by himself and had another, near identical experience as the day before with the UFO. He also had some strange alien like visions in the following several days.

So here is my point in bringing this up. Like I said, I have heard this story told by hundreds of people in a thousand different ways. So what’s up? The majority of these people having these experiences are college educated, highly intelligent, successful and most of them are well-grounded, common sense people. Most told their story with difficulty as if they really didn’t want to talk about it but had to. I am also well-known far and wide, as a good listener. I never ridicule anyone or make light of their story, no matter what the content may be.

These people cannot all be hallucinating and/or making up these kinds of stories. There are just too many people, probably in the millions, ultimately. So we are left with the evidence that something awesome is going on. But what the direction and ultimate meaning of it all is, I for one, do not have a simple or clear answer. [Editor’s Note: The above first appeared in Tom Dongo’s book Mysterious Sedona (2000), used here with his permission. Before posting this feature I thought I’d see if Tom could add anything to this. He replied simply: “Those kinds of occurrences are very common here. I hear them all the time. I couldn’t really add to it. They are what they are. Very common. That sort of thing has been part of the picture for as long as I have been doing research here. Not really anything hyper unusual.""