Alternate Perceptions Magazine, June 2025
My Flying Saucer Experience
By Peter Dean Nordquist
My bike, the 24-inch wheel red Schwinn, was parked just outside the front door on the 10 foot cement walk from our front step that led to the pedestrian sidewalk on Knight St. in Glens Falls, NY near Feeder Dam and Haviland's Cove, a beach on the Hudson River one hour north of Albany.
But I digress. I did jump on my bike and road it east up Knight St. to the intersection of Staple St., Haviland Ave, and Knight St. where there was a two-story building, the first floor of which was a small store named Durkee's. RIght at the curb in front of the store was a USPS blue mailbox into which I planned to deposit my letter to my pen pal in India.
It was summer and the leaves of the trees were fully formed. A huge oak tree grew on my side of the street halfway to the store in front of the Cronin's and the LaRock's houses. The leaves of this old oak tree obscured the view of the top of the store.
As I rode on my bike past the tree and could see the two-story building clearly, there it was! The flying saucer was slowly descending with its landing gear down and was about ten feet from the top of the store. It was about forty feet in diameter, with the disk part of it dark, silhouetted against the lighter horizon. The tripod landing gear at the bottom consisted of spokes, each with a large globe at the end glowing red light. Out of the top center of the disk was another spoke with a larger globe glowing white light.
I instantly realized that if I didn't get someone to see this with me that nobody was going to believe me. So, I shouted in the street for the neighbors to get up, still on my bike, but stopped just in front of the Cronin's house. Nobody got up. Nobody drove by. Then I jumped off my bike and put the kickstand down and ran and knocked on the doors of three of the houses, two on one side of the street and one on the other, but nobody responded at all.
I got back on my bike and rode up to the store. By this time the flying saucer had retracted its landing gear and was now hovering above a tall elm tree at the beginning of Bush St. moving slowly toward the river, still without a sound. The disk was now glowing soft white light. I thought that if it goes straight down the road to Haviland's Cove that I would follow it, but in fact it veered off to the right over the field, which later has been completely developed with houses down to the Feeder Canal. Finally, the saucer continued slowly over the trees on the horizon by the Hudson River and out of sight.
I don't actually remember mailing my letter to my pen pal in India, but I'm sure I did. I rode my bike back home but first knocked on the bedroom window of my friend across the street and told him that I had just seen a flying saucer over Durkee's store. He looked out the window and growled at me that it was 1 AM and to tell him in the morning.
My father had locked the front door, which he shortly opened after I knocked a few times. Before entering, I looked up at him straight in the eye and said, "Dad, guess what?! I just saw a flying saucer! It was coming down on top of the corner store and it had a big white light coming out of the top and three big red lights coming out of the bottom!"
His eyes first dilated, and he opened his mouth wide with surprise. Then I guess it was too much for him to handle and he suddenly slapped his knee really hard and laughed, "That was the best practical joke you ever told."
But in fact, I was not in the habit of playing practical jokes. He didn't believe me, but next morning when I told my mother, she did. My father's reaction was to finally always say that I had seen a plane off in the distance.
Since that time of course I have always believed in flying saucers, having been that close to one myself. Perhaps it was about 150 feet away at my closest point. Also, I noticed that whenever they (the flying saucers) were in my area that they would come and visit me in my dreams. One time when I was about 20, I was exploring out in space in a flying saucer with a little gray alien and the one who was guarding my body suddenly burst into the craft saying that I needed to return immediately, which I did, and saw that my body was having trouble staying upright. I pictured it as a submarine that was having trouble staying upright. Then I woke up and realized that I had a fever which I attended to.
Another time in my dream, I asked for a one person flying saucer of my own and was shortly in one that I controlled with a lever.
The letter to India might have foreshadowed what I look at as my India connection. I had saved some postage stamps from India that I wanted to bring to school one time, but then they suddenly were not there on the shelf where I had left them, so my teacher didn't believe that I had ever had them.
Then my mother taught yoga and brought eastern philosophy books into the house, which I eagerly read as well. In college I learned a kind of raja yoga meditation. In the 1990's when I began to look at the internet, I happened to notice a string of letters from Mohenjo Daro that remained undeciphered. I printed it out and thought about it. That night I dreamed that it said, "All Holy Men, meet at the public bath at dusk."
However, strangely again, the actual print out of the letters was not to be found thereafter and I simply have been unable to find it online again. Thinking that it might offer a clue to scholars in that area, I did look one up and relate the story, thinking that this person might know the string of letters in question, perhaps near the famous public bath of Mohenjo Daro. The person politely thanked me for my possible contribution to the deciphering.
These days I occasionally have flying saucer dreams while looking up in the night sky - in my dreams.
This picture from Google Maps shows the location of my flying saucer sighting. The orange arrow points at the corner store that used to be Durkee's and then was Cavanaugh's. My Cavanaugh expanded the store with an addition built on the back and a parking lot. The huge oak tree in front of 51 Knight St. eventually was cut down and a smaller tree is there now. Another house was built on the corner of Staple and Knight where formerly there was just a field with a path that we always used on the way to Big Cross St. elementary school. I lived at 57 Knight St.
