Alternate Perceptions Magazine, January 2025
The Kid Who Saw Lightning
by: Nomar Slevik
It was the middle of a winter night in 1982 or ’83. I was around five years old, and my mom had put me to bed a few hours earlier. A loud bang had woken me up and my eyes darted for an explanation. I then heard faint tapping sounds coming from my window. Rain, I realized, and then I saw the sky light up, a thunderstorm had rolled in. I assumed the bang had been thunder.
I knelt up on my bed with my elbows on the windowsill to watch. We lived in Fort Kent, Maine, right along the Saint John River. Canada was just on the other side; it was so close you could throw a rock and hit it. It was actually faster to cross the river and deal with customs for a haircut than to drive to the barbershop in town.
As the river raged below, streaks of lightning carved through the sky above me. Then, a lightning bolt, different and disturbing than the rest, appeared. Even at five years old, I knew they were just a quick flash and were gone. But this one stayed in the sky. It was stuck in a cloud, like the gods had thrown an ethereal dart with the sky their playing board. It’s how my young mind saw it, and it’s how my adult mind remembers it. Electricity crackled around it, thunder boomed, and a faint halo surrounded the cloud. I’m not sure what happened after this, but I must have fallen back asleep.
The next morning, I was surprised to see that the lightning bolt was still there. It was stuck in the white, overcast sky. I ran downstairs, excitedly shouting for my dad to come see. I led him up to my room, but when we got there, it was gone.
I tried explaining the storm and the strange lightning bolt, but my dad could only smile and nod his head. I must have been pretty worked up because he eventually knelt down, placed his hands on my shoulders, and said, “Hey buddy, it didn’t even rain last night.” I was stunned. I was so sure I’d seen it. But after a few hours, the next shiny thing caught my attention, and I forgot all about it.
A couple of weeks later, I was woken up in the middle of the night again, but this time by my dad. He brought me downstairs where I saw mom bundling up my sister into her winter jacket and mittens and then she did the same for me. My dad then scooped me up, and we all went outside.
I remember how cold it was, and I buried my face in his chest to stay warm. He kept saying, “You gotta look up, buddy. You gotta look up.” I finally did and saw gorgeous ribbons of green and red light flowing across the sky like an upturned river. It was the northern lights, and it’s the only time I’ve ever seen them. When they made their numerous appearances in 2024, I kept missing them due to the cloud cover in my area.
With those two experiences happening so close together, and with me being at such a young age, I think a core memory was created. It told me that strange things happen in the sky, and I should pay attention. So, I have been ever since. As I got older, I began collecting all sorts of paranormal stories. My mom told me a whole host of haunting encounters from her childhood home, and I even experienced one there myself.
I was around seven or eight years old, and we were at Mimi’s house. My dad was mowing the lawn, and my mom was inside having tea. My sister and I played on the wraparound porch when I got the urge to go to the bathroom. I ran inside and up the stairs, but as soon as I reached the top, I noticed that something was off. The atmosphere had changed and everything had this strange blue hue, or maybe it was more of a haze.
As I got to the top of the stairs, I had the distinct feeling there was a presence in the bedroom to my right. Fortunately, the bathroom was to the left so, I ran in, shut the door, and tried to forget about what had just happened. When I was done, I cracked open the door just enough to peek out. The blue haze was still there but worse, it felt like the presence had moved to the hallway.
I wasn’t sure what to do so, I just threw open the door and ran. I made it downstairs as fast as I could, where my mom and Mimi gave me a strange look. I didn’t stick around long enough to explain. I flew outside and picked up where I left off, playing on the porch like nothing had happened. Despite my fear, I coveted the experience, well, after some time had passed.
Along with asking friends and family about their otherworldly sightings and experiences, I also liked to check the local police beat for unusual encounters. One that I like occurred in Acadia National Park. It stated:
“Rangers Encounter UFO A UFO sighting here had park rangers wondering about the possibility of extraterrestrial tourists last week. At approximately 9 p.m. a week ago Tuesday, Ranger [name excluded], who was on duty near the Tarn on Route 3, noticed a strange circular cloud drifting in a northeasterly direction over Dorr and Cadillac Mountains. What was particularly odd, [he says], is that the ‘cloud’ was tipped up on its rim, had a dark center, and was a glowing luminous green.”
When I was seventeen, my friends and I spent most evenings cruising the streets of Bar Harbor. We drove around the four major roads of our town doing what we called, “laps.” As silly as it sounds, we enjoyed ourselves and often looked forward to it. We would talk with each other via CB radio, as this was before cellphones, and we would smoke cigarettes, smoke weed, talk to girls, and avoid the police.
One night while doing laps (it was February of 1994, I cannot remember the exact date), my friend and I noticed some odd lights floating down the Mount Desert Narrows, heading toward the town pier. I followed the lights down West Street, but there were numerous homes and businesses obstructing our view. So, I pulled onto Main Street, and passed Geddy’s on the right then Sherman’s Book Shop and Ben & Bill’s on the left. As we passed Cool As A Moose, I flicked on my blinker to indicate my turn down, Albert Meadow. As we pulled into the parking lot of Grant Park, the lights on the water had just come into view, and we walked to the water’s edge for a better look.
We marveled at the sight as this giant, silent “thing” that floated by us. We could see at least ten rows of white lights from top to bottom. The last row touched the water, and we just could not figure out what this object was. It moved quite slowly; I would estimate 20 to 25 mph. We thought it could possibly be some sort of cruise ship, but with it being winter, it didn’t make sense. I suggested that it could be a UFO which my friend thought was a bit far-fetched. We watched until it floated out of sight and finally called it a night.
When I got home, I wrote the entire experience down. Numerous sightings were reported around the state that year, from Belfast to Sebago Lake, but none fit the description of what we observed. About six months later, my dad shared with me a newspaper article about a UFO sighting.
It was a late Saturday morning in 1994. My dad had been reading the Saturday edition of the Bangor Daily News and told me about the UFO article. I just about bowled over when I saw that it started with an encounter from Southwest Harbor, a town less than 30 minutes away from my incident months prior. The following is an excerpt from the September 24 article:
“UFO Network Collects Sightings of Alien Spacecraft: Last January, during a power outage in Southwest Harbor, a couple woke up at 3 a.m. and witnessed a bright beam of light shining down on a patch of woods across a bay. Red, green, and blue lights were coming from the top of the beam, but clouds obscured their view further. There was no rational explanation for what they saw.”
I recall asking my mom if she heard about the encounter, she had worked in Southwest Harbor during that time. She hadn’t. In asking my friends about the sighting, none saw anything related to that article, but a friend did tell me about a sighting they had in the summer of 1995; they happened to be living in Southwest Harbor at the time.
They told me they had been eating breakfast on the balcony of their home that overlooked the harbor. A splash was heard and, when they looked up, they saw a column of falling water. They followed it up and saw a silver ball hovering atop, about 100 feet in the air. The water was streaming off of it. A moment later, the object shot off at incredible speed and disappeared. They estimated the circumference of the sphere to have been twenty feet around.
Also, during this time, a couple attending the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor encountered an unbelievable entity on a desolate dirt road. They were headed to a bonfire in the woods, a thing we did in the 90s, but were having trouble finding the turnoff. An email sent to the Phantoms and Monsters website stated in part:
“As they crested the top of a hill, the full moon broke above the tree line and illuminated the road in front of them. They were taking one final pass on this stretch of road when they saw something come out of the trees ahead of them. It was a human shape, but it was a crab walking upside down across the road. …it was darting like an actual crab. It was pale. When it got to the middle of the road, it got down closer to the road and then stretched out and broke upwards. It stood in front of them for a second. It had yellow eyes and just a body. It didn’t have any sort of genitals or anything. It was just a sort of human body. And then it ran the rest of the way across the road.”
It’s these types of stories that I’m fascinated by and feel the need to document. The passion that lightning bolt accidentally sparked inside of me all those years ago has never faded. It’s only grown stronger. It’s caused me to stay curious, and to never stop wondering about the strange and extraordinary. I think documenting these stories is my way of honoring that spark, of preserving these moments not just for myself, but for everyone who’s ever felt the pull towards the unknown. I may never know exactly what I saw that night but I do know one thing, it set me on a path that I wouldn’t trade for anything.
Sources:
Sassaman, Richard. (1994). Bar Harbor Police Beat: True Stories from the Police Files of Mount Desert Island, Maine. Yardbird Books.
Slevik, Nomar, 2024. UFOs Over Maine: 10th Anniversary Edition. Bionic Bigfoot.
Strickler, Lon, 17 July 2022. “Pale Humanoid ‘Crab-Walking’ on Mount Desert Island Maine Road.” Phantoms and Monsters. https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2022/07/palehumanoid -crab-walking-on-mount.html?m=1
“UFO Network Collects Sightings of Alien Spacecrafts, 24 Sept. 1994” Bangor Daily News.
