The UFO Box
A life long experience with UFOs and what I’ll call loosely paranormal events has found me endlessly curious about what I call my Orange Orb encounter. I have assumed all these years that what I saw that night was a UFO. To be technical, it was a UFO: unidentified, flying -- or at least, moving through -- the sky, and it was an object of some kind. But was this “UFO” from outer space? Another planet? Was the orb inhabited, or operated by, some sort of non-human entity? As in, aliens? I have no idea. Being mainly immersed in the UFO category of anomalous events, I have always put this sighting into the UFO box. This box included the aliens or ETs, as well as human manipulated episodes; MILABS, for example.
I’ve discussed my orange orb sighting many times via blog postings, articles and podcast interviews, but to very briefly recap: Riding on the back of a motorcycle. at night on Lorane Highway in Lane County, Oregon. Saw a lit from within orange orb in the night sky, a large object. It was stationary, as soon as I looked at it and thought “What the hell is that?!” it “zoomed” from its position (I guessed it was about a mile away, above the KVAL TV station at the top of the hill) to right across the road. I had the distinct feeling it was laughing at me, or, with me. Playing with me. It followed us to the intersection where we turned the corner to our home. The orb stopped once again in the sky above a neighbor’s house, then dropped down into their backyard. (There was also missing time involved with this sighting. My husband saw the object only briefly.)
While I’ve always referred to this as an orb, due to its shape (round, sphere, circular) I never meant orb as in something nebulous. Not a spirit orb. Again, still in the UFO box, and, a somewhat nuts and bolts UFO box. After all, it was an object, a craft, a lit from within round thing. A machine with a light inside.
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| Orange Orb Above Lorane Highway, pastel drawing, Regan Lee |
Through the years I searched for similar sightings. Nothing on orange orbs for a long time. Now of course orange orb sightings, as well as red, green and blue, are plentiful. People have captured these colored lights in the skies on video. But they rarely seemed to match up with what I saw that night decades ago. Usually these orange and other colored “orbs” are much smaller, sometimes don’t exhibit any kind of intelligence, and don’t behave quite the same way. Due to their shape, we call them orbs, but that often seems to be the only similarity.
There is the category of spirit orbs, ghosts, that are smaller than my orange orb sighting, and don’t fit the category. Or so I’ve always thought. I am no stranger to ghostly encounters and have captured an orb or two myself but have never put that into the UFO box. Completely unconnected. Again, size differs greatly: spirit orbs are small. They do appear in different colors, including orange. But their connection to UFOs? Apples and oranges. But now I’m wondering if, at times, there are cross overs between UFOs and the more ephemeral types of orbs.
Orbs as Luminosities
In the book Beyond Photography: with Orbs, Angels and Mysterious Light Forms, by Katie Hall and John Pickering, they talk about “luminosiites” -- their word for lights and orbs that appear in the sky.
This photograph from their book is very similar to what I saw years ago. While what I saw appeared larger, it’s appearance as well as its behavior is close to my experience:
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| Photo source: Beyond Photography, Kati Hall and John Pickering |
Missing Time
I mentioned that my orange orb sighting included missing time. This missing time is not at all unusual in UFO cases. Is the missing memory an amnesia implanted by aliens? If we stay in the UFO Box the answer would seem to be yes.
But if the UFO is also a luminosity in some cases maybe it’s a part of being in the “zone” -- that area in the Oz Factor that researcher Jenny Randles wrote about. Why is it that most spectacular of UFOs can appear, complete with alien beings and all kinds of phenomena (including missing time) and only one or two witnesses will experience those things? Others close by don’t see a thing. They remain unaware that anything strange happened at all. This zone of weirdness, this "Oz Factor" is present in so many UFO encounters. Randles Oz Factor can also be found in many other anomalous events, which seems to support a cross over effect, or, a single source manifesting as many things.
Randles theory makes sense in terms of many a UFO encounter, and it also makes sense in other types of encounters. I’ve had that same strange “cone of Oz-ness” in other supernatural situations, but not UFO related, in an episode where we were discussing Bigfoot. (Although, the discussion did include a Bigfoot-UFO witness...) If the source of all this is a single source, that could explain cross over cases. Again, this is not to say there aren’t literally aliens (I believe there are, in fact) and UFOs from space, but that, in many cases, what appears to be a UFO and or alien isn’t. Also, UFOs/aliens and luminosities or “spirit orbs” interact with each other.
Sentient Orange Orbs
I had said that my orange orb seemed to be intelligent -- either controlled from within, or remotely by an intelligent, sentient being. The orb responded to me; I had the strong feeling it was waiting for me, could read my thoughts, and was playing with me. It was as aware of me as I was of it.
Hall and PIckering write of this same type of communication in their book. Relating the experiences of UFO researcher Tony Dodd and his orange orb encounter:
“...Dodd...affirms that many of his own encounters with mysterious balls of lights left him in little doubt that they were intelligent, or intelligently controlled. . . on the Yorkshire moors at night, ... a large orange coloured ball of light glided about 30m feet above his head. As it passed, he tried to send out his thoughts to it; asking it to acknowledge his presence. Whereupon it immediately stopped in mid air, blinked out for about 3 seconds, and the reappeared. Taking this as a response, Tony then thought the question: “Who are you?” (Beyond Photography, Hall and Pickering, p 93.)To which the orb replied, telepathically, “I am the father of fathers and you are the sons of sons.” Typical trickster type behavior! (This also mirrors Marian apparitions; there is a hint of the religious here -- the authors have a section on Fatima and orb consciousness.) We also get this silly kind of response from many a UFO connected entity.
In writing about orbs, or “luminosiites” the authors of Beyond Photography mention the intelligence behind these orbs. Often, the orbs seemed to respond to human thought; mind reading orbs, one could say. Another case reported by Hall and Pickering:
Friends of the authors had an encounter with orange orbs in 1997. Two orange orbs, one the size of “a grapefruit” flew at their car at night while they were traveling on an isolated highway. Shortly after the first orb, another orange orb appeared, flying alongside their car. Their friends told them that “...in retrospect they both felt as thought the orange balls were checking them out for some unknown reason.” (Beyond Photography, p 94)
Plasmas, Ball Lighting and Consciousness
For decades “ball lighting” has been a throw away explanation for these balls of light. As if giving them a label resolves the phenomena. Hall and Pickering have no argument about the fact these orbs are often plasmas, and or "ball lightening" but that is not all there is to these intelligent, interactive orbs.
While a physical reason may exist for the existence of these orbs, it does not explain their intelligence, their intentional movements, synchronicity, and their responses to human thought. Hall and PIckering write, of plasma and the intelligent behavior of orbs: “We now have two possibilities; plasma energy and luminosities with consciousness.” (Beyond Photography, p 96)
The Oz Factor implies that the UFO close encounter has a visionary component. You might interpret that as meaning it is all in the imagination, but it really means that there is a direct feed, if you like, from the source of the encounter to the consciousness of the witness. (Jenny Randles, The Oz Factor)
This idea of sentience, of a non-human intelligence that is UFO related interacting with us is nothing new. Jacque Vallee suggested this decades ago with his ultra terrestrial hypothesis. But it seems that, even with this history from many researchers of exploring such a connection, the UFO community is still missing this huge piece of the puzzle.
Entities, ET, Djinn, Angels, and, Oh My
Hall and Pikcering do not discount the reality of UFOs and aliens from other planets. For the purposes of their book, they are mainly concerned with so-called spirit orbs (as well as beams of light, humanoid type light figures, etc) captured on film. Are these lights earth spirits, fairies, etc.? Are there sometimes cross over interactions between what we call aliens -- meaning, ET entities -- and more elemental beings? Spirit energy? What some of us call Djinn?
I still have no idea what it was I saw that night, why it happened, or what it meant. I do know it was very important, and not a mere case of ball lighting, or some mistaken sighting of, say, a helicopter.
It’s possible that on that night so long ago I did not see a UFO in the classic sense, but had an interaction, not with an ET from another planet, but something else involving an earth based consciousness. Which makes this not any less fantastic, nor does it negate any of the other UFO experiences I’ve had.
It could be that these things -- UFOs, entities,ETs, missing time, synchronicities, games, telepathy -- are connected. Aspects of the various and often seemingly separate phenomena join in a performance, one where we’re surprised to find we’re witness to.
“Something makes them pay attention by tuning out the normal sensory flow and looking up to watch the show. Where that show is being projected from remains the subject of great fascination. And it certainly does not eliminate another intelligence as running this show. To me the Oz Factor is a vital key to the UFO mystery, and may help us to resolve what is happening. We should not be afraid of its implications, just because they seem to suggest a fuzziness to the phenomenon. In truth we should embrace these cases.” (Jenny Randles, The Oz Factor)Link:
The Oz Factor
