UFOs

Stephen King once said that the impetus for The Mist came from a trip to grocery with his son and wondering what it would be like if there were prehistoric insects in it. From there, he no doubt wondered what they’d be like, how they got there, and what it would be like. King, being King, imagined a worst case scenario involving monsters, people losing their shit, and no end of mist covering the land.

It was kind of like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, only with more monsters and less hope. And, of course, it predated The Road by almost three decades.

This is how it is to be a writer. It’s all imagination. It’s like the games we used to play as kids, pretending all manner of adventures with talking rabbits, dogs with machine eyes, and Farmington’s vast wasteland behind my house that became any number of terrifying things. Are those flashing lights in the sky satellites, planes, or something more sinister? What if that noise you heard in the night wasn’t just the cat knocking things off the counter because she’s bored?

In other words, what if it was real?

Not real, but for a moment, before you saw the pole, you had a spark of belief, didn’t you?

We recently took a trip up to Edwards, CO – a small town close to Vail, but without the associated snobbery. The road took us up through Alamosa, CO, and onto a long, empty stretch of highway that cut through the Colorado plains like a knife. Just north of the Colorado Gators Reptile Park (yes, it’s real. You can go see live gators living in the natural, snowy habitat) lies the UFO Watchtower.

The UFO Watchtower is an out-of-the-way place dedicated to, among other things, documenting UFO activity in the area. You can stop and visit for only $2 a person or $5 a carload. It’s not a big place and in the bright sun it’s not much to look at. But remember, this isn’t about what it is, it’s about what it could be.

There’s something eminently creepy about this.

At night, you’d be able to see for twenty or thirty miles in every direction in a place where light pollution simply doesn’t exist. In the pitch black, standing on the roof of the watchtower, you’re likely to see all manner of amazing things.

That’s neither here nor there, though. UFO watching is an American pastime and there are more spots dedicated to watching the skies than you can shake a stick at. What made the UFO watchtower interesting wasn’t what was happening in the skies, it was what was happening on the ground.

You see, according to the woman who was running the place that day, there are numerous energy vortexes in the area where you can talk to the spirits or even, I suspect, travel to other places. To a casual observer, it looks like people have dropped off rubbish, bits of things, and the odd bra, and it was all left in situ to create some monumental bit of performance art – a modernist ode to the disposable American spirit, if you will.

It looks like a field of trash, but look a little closer.

That, however, is not the case. The ground is dedicated to small plats where people have left offerings to the spirits, hoping for a little goodwill or help with terrestrial problems. There’s a certain organized chaos to the place, like this wasn’t the ramblings of a diseased mind so much as one that had seen something beyond the pale.

Of course, that could all be marketing and a lot of available free time.

The point is, there’s mystery there. It’s something odd and unique. It may or may not be real, but what if it was? What a story that would make! The UFO part can be interesting on its own if it’s handled well (the X-Files did a marvelous job with it), but the addition spirits and energy vortexes adds a whole new dimension.

All the detritus out there is something that was important to someone, something they felt was worthy of handing off as an offering in exchange for some help. It may look like trash from the distance of Internet and time, but in the heat of the moment, that might have been a powerful experience for someone.

Now take that feeling, and turn it into a story. Then take it a step further and ask yourself what if it was real. Or, at the very least, start wondering. If you want to write, you need to look at things not as they are, but as they could be. And don’t be afraid to be amazed at things.

I had a fun childhood. I grew up looking for UFOs and buried treasure. Our school library had all manner of kick-ass books on UFOs and ghosts and MiBs. I got my first copy of Who Goes There? from a school book drive when I was 11. For those of you not in the know, Who Goes There? would later become a little movie called The Thing. These were the heady days when Star Trek and Space:1999 reruns could be found from time to time and movies like Hanger 18 were out there. My childhood also include V, that crazy series about spacefaring lizard people and the rebellion that fights them on Earth. The end result was I spent a lot of time thinking about aliens and UFOs and MiBs and all the other fun stuff that makes up a healthy childhood.

Space, you might say, was injected into my blood from a very early age. Maybe not injected. Maybe an IV drip would be a more apt description. At any rate, space is there.

Any time you start talking about UFOs and aliens, it’s only a matter of time before conspiracies start getting bandied about. That’s total X-Files territory. One of the things that always fascinated me about the totality of the UFO-MiB-Government Conspiracy mythology was the individual. Who would work for an organization that was hell-bent on covering it all up and why? Men In Black touched on this, but it was far too lighthearted a take on a group of people who silenced those who knew too much.

In saunters Val Tobin’s The Experiencers (The Valiant Chronicles) (Volume 1) and shows us the story of alien abduction and silencing those who know too much from the points of view of an abductee, a guy working to silence people, and the head of an organization working with the aliens. Tobin also manages to weave in other paranormal aspects through her psychic lead character.

Tobin (not the author of the Spirit Guide, BTW) doesn’t pull punches with her action or allow her characters to stray too far off into the woods. By adding the psychic element to the classical UFO tale, The Experiencers has a dimension most alien abduction stories lack. The story is tightly paced and full of enough wonder to keep everyone entertained. Amazingly, considering the subject matter, The Experiencers manages to feel grounded and grittily (if that wasn’t a word, it is now) realistic.

All in all, a unique mixture of UFO conspiracies and psychic theory wrapped in a bow and adorned with believable characters. An excellent read.

Michael Valiant, Agency black ops assassin, deals death without question. He knows it’s all in the name of duty and the fight against terror, particularly at a time when the earth is as close as it’s ever been to self-destructing. But when his orders include silencing members of a UFO group who look less like terrorists and more like housewives and UFO buffs, he decides to do some digging.

His curiosity arouses the ire of his boss and his partner, who warn Michael that his actions are putting him in danger. When Michael’s wife dies in what appears to be a traffic accident, Michael, with his partner’s help and support, pushes aside his doubts and immerses himself in the jobs he needs to complete.

Carolyn Fairchild, Psychic medium and believer in angels, lives happy and contented in a nice home in Newmarket, Ontario, with her husband and daughter. All Carolyn wants is to live in peaceful obscurity. When Carolyn loses her husband under suspicious circumstances, and other members of her group die or disappear, Carolyn grows desperate to uncover the truth and save herself and her daughter.

Ordered to kidnap Carolyn and turn her over to the Agency, Michael confronts Carolyn in her home, ready to complete his assignment. But when Carolyn connects to Michael’s dead wife and reveals to him the truth about her death, Carolyn forces him to choose between saving himself and doing what’s right.

Unaware that they are repeating a pattern enacted over many lifetimes, Michael and Carolyn must find a way to break the cycle, or continue playing it out over lifetimes to come.

A New Age Sci-Fi thriller that delves into existing UFO and doomsday weaponry conspiracy theories,The Experiencers keeps readers riveted with non-stop action while the characters struggle to control destinies that may have been predetermined lifetimes ago.