Sharing My Two Anomalous Experiences

My turn to share my experiences.

Before I do, I want to say how much I appreciate the kindness, support, and openness that this community shows. I had the fortune of sharing both of my experiences with people who could corroborate what happened. I know many of you are not as lucky, and I admire and respect those of you so much who have had to deal with these types of experiences alone while questioning your own memories and perceptions. My heart goes out to you all.

My first experience happened when I was 20 years old, back in 2008. I was camping with my then-boyfriend in the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington. It was dark and we had set up camp and got a fire going. There were no other campers around us and we felt very secluded. We sat on a bench with the fire and tent in front of us and my white Camry parked behind us.

As we sat around the fire, we started to hear strange noises coming from the forest behind us. Deep, guttural, almost pained-sounding moaning coming from some kind of large animal. It lasted several minutes and was starting to spook us.

At one point, we turned and shined our flashlight behind us to look. As we heard another noise, we saw a very tall, thin being appear out of the darkness of the forest, take one long stride in front of my white car, and disappear again into the woods. The being looked white, although I wonder if that is only because it appeared to be somewhat camouflaged and happened to pick up the white of my car as it strode in front of it. We could not see it against the dark of the forest once it was no longer in front of the white car and in the flashlight beam. We also could not see its head as it was much taller than my car. But I will never forget the shape of its lanky body as it took that one long stride across the front of my car.

(Side note: some of you have mentioned a deep recognition or fear at seeing the greys' faces in the movie Disclosure Day. I had the same type of reaction just at seeing their bodies and the way they walked.)

My boyfriend and I freaked out and hid in our tent. I don't remember anything else after that, but I assume I fell asleep. Although it has always baffled me how I would have been able to sleep so easily after such a terrifying experience, as someone who has always struggled with insomnia. The next day we woke up and talked about what we saw. We each described it the exact same way.

My next experience happened just a month ago, in May 2026. My partner and I were on vacation in Palm Springs, CA. It was dark and we were going for a walk in a quiet neighborhood. We came across a park with a large open grass patch and decided to lay down and look up at the stars.

At that point I had been obsessively interested in UFOs for about a year. I knew the desert had a reputation for sightings, so I remember feeling hopeful that I might see something unusual, but I wasn't actually expecting to. My partner is open-minded but much more skeptical and scientifically minded than I am.

So as we were lying in the grass looking up at the lightly cloudy sky, I saw what I would describe as a cigar-shaped object silently gliding diagonally across the sky above us. I gasped and pointed it out to my partner, who then saw it too. It was either fairly large or flying low, hard to say. We watched it complete its path across the sky and disappear behind the trees.

What struck me most was that it appeared to have some kind of cloaking effect similar to the other being I previously saw. It looked like a perfectly rounded, elongated rectangle made of fog. There were no lights on it. The only reason we could see it at all was because the stars and thin clouds behind it seemed to warp around its edges as it moved. It was as though the object itself wasn't visible, but its outline distorted whatever was behind it.

Both of us were shocked, especially my partner. We described seeing the same thing. I asked him what possible explanation he might have for what it was, and he truly had none. There is nothing in our material world we could use to compare it to.

Like I said, I am so grateful that I had someone to share both of these experiences with because if I had been the only one who saw them, I imagine I would have spent the rest of my life second-guessing myself and wondering if I were crazy.

I think one of the great failings of our culture is that when we witness something with our own eyes, our first instinct is not to ask what we experienced, but whether that experience fits within the accepted framework of reality we've been given. We wonder if we're even allowed to trust our own perceptions. My hope is that this period of transition we're living through will move us toward remembering that our direct experience matters. That we don't need to look to science or government to tell us what is real. We can trust ourselves to know.

Thank you all for reading. Wishing you lovely souls all the best on your journeys.