Belief in aliens, much like ghosts, is generally regarded as something we shed along with baby teeth and fear of closet monsters. However, much more than supernatural believers, those claiming extraterrestrials are real and walk (or fly?) among us are a very fervent bunch. (And with the recent, seemingly legit discovery of an alien planet, we might all soon join the camp of believers.) Surely you've known someone in your life who, if given the opportunity, will wax hard and authentically on the existence of aliens. A recent thread on Reddit unearthed supposedly real experiences with aliens, both firsthand and secondhand accounts. The things people had to say were...fairly creepy.
Conspiracy theories aside, the idea that aliens exist seems fairly probable, right? Not sure about the idea of them chillin' on Planet Earth a la Men In Black really holds up in a court of skeptics, but that one line from Contact comes to mind: "The universe is a pretty big place. It's bigger than anything anyone has ever dreamed of before. So if it's just us...seems like an awful waste of space, right?" Right. Although folklore, urban legend, and more casual anecdotes about interactions or sightings of an alien presence on our planet have surfaced for eons with no real stop in sight. Let's scope some of the "serious" stories from the nightmare-inducing Reddit thread of first- and secondhand tales of alien experiences:
Teenage nightmare
vintagequeen explains a mysterious orthodontia disappearance:
When I was 14 years old, I was jolted awake after a nightmare of being abducted. When I woke up the braces on the entire bottom half of my mouth were off. When I went to the dentist he had no idea how I was able to get them off while I slept. I not saying it was aliens but I'm not saying that it couldn't have been either.
Apparently, this person woke to find their braces—with brackets still attached—laying neatly on their pillow when waking. NO THANK YOU.
A less-than-romantic night sky
Pugshaver had a fellow witness to a strange, airborne light:
About 15 years ago I was driving along with my then girlfriend at night when we saw an orange light in the sky. Normally we'd ignore it but a friend had been mentioning a while ago there had been a lot of unusual sulphur-orange lights in the sky lately. I pulled over and we got out to look.
The light was a looooong way off in the distance, way up in the sky, and it just looked wrong. Hard to explain really. We were both really interested in it. It seemed to hover around randomly for about a minute - considering the distance it seemed to be and the random movements it was making, it wasn't moving like a plane or helicopter. Then the freaky shit happened.
It paused, basically frozen in place for about 2 or 3 seconds, then did a hyperspace kind of jump diagonally up and left. Best way to describe it is that it was exactly like the Enterprise from Star Trek. That absolutely blew our minds. If I'd been alone I could have chalked it up to imagination or something, but my girlfriend saw exactly the same thing I did.
edit: This was in South East Queensland, Australia.
True, I imagine it would be a major relief, having the ability to write off some freaky visions as random or some personal lapse in vision or judgement. But if you had another presumably sane human with you who saw the same thing? Guuuh. That does get a little hard to explain away.
Southern inhospitality:
meatloaf details a very scary secondhand story that took place about 40 years ago in the deep South:
I was raised by a Vietnam era marine. He was stationed at a base in Mississippi, Pascagoula I think, in the early 70s. Two local workers came into the hospital there one night incoherent, babbling and crying, saying they'd been abducted while fishing. They were taken to the military base to be looked at after they told this story. A guy from my dad's unit had a wife that was working at the base hospital as a nurse and she told them that these guys had registered off the charts with radiation that they couldn't have gotten from anywhere near where they were and the officials at the base were treating it as the real thing. Everyone who saw them was sufficiently freaked out!
Radiation?? This tale actually made my stomach flip.
Wildlife gone EXTRA wild
SoAwkward_ saw something far from normal running alongside the night road in the Northeast:
I'm not sure if it was actually extra terrestrial, but it sure did freak me out and was completely out of the ordinary.
I live in upstste NY. It was pronably around 8pm, I was probably about 17-18 at the time, driving home from my girlfriends house cruising at about 60mph listening to music. All of a sudden I saw something from the corner of my eye, running from one side of the road, and jump across the entire road and into the woods on the other side. It was moving so damn fast it all just looked like a blur. I know it wasn't a deer because it almost looked like it was running on two HUGE legs and it was going so fast that there's no way it could have been a deer. I've never told anyone about it because they'd think I'm crazy. But this actually happened and I wish I knew what it was. Or had a dash cam or something.
Some other Redditors argued the legitimacy of this one, asserting that deer walk on hind legs at random. I found a video of a deer rising up almost vertical to reach some leaves—but it doesn't look like it could or would run like that. I deem the hunch legit—that was no normal deer.
Baby daddy drama
I do not want skeletormessiah's mother's story to be true:
My mother claims that right before she was pregnant with me she was lying on her sofa and a grey alien came in through the window sat on her stomach and gave her an orgasm. She is totally serious. I might be part alien. I love my mother but I don't believe her.
Although, I'm not opposed to the existence of orgasm-inducing beings (human or not), I'm not crazy about the prospect of being impregnated by one...
First-born abduction
I'm guessing willymo is happy to not be the oldest child:
My mom claims that one night aliens abducted my older brother when he was a baby and they paralyzed her so she couldn't get up or scream. Then they returned him later that night and she was able to move again. She says it's all incredibly vivid like it actually happened but she also thinks what really happened was simply a "night terror" because she was super stressed about her first kid and wasn't sleeping well.
To be fair, this definitely sounds like sleep paralysis, since it employs creepy dream elements (like aliens). Still, pretty nerve-racking.
Not enough nightmare material for you? Check out the entire thread on Reddit. Aliens: possibly very real. Sweet dreams tonight, y'all.
Images: Chris Ford/Flickr; Giphy (6)
