My First UFO Sighting

(Top and middle drawing are mine and my daughter's is below)

I have waited patiently for decades hoping to catch a glimpse of one of those extraordinary flying things called UFO's.  I have watched all those cable network documentaries and YouTube videos with seemingly realistic (albeit fuzzy-grained) photos of all kinds of bizarre flying contraptions.  I've listened to all of the government conspiracy and coverup theories, Area 51 pilgrimmages ending at the military perimeters, theories of hidden underground aircraft hangers, technology acquired through cooperative or dead aliens. 

I have spoken to a few people who claim to have actually seen UFOs in the sky and were permanently struck by what they saw because it was so unusual.  I met Travis Walton, the logger featured in the movie "Fire in the Sky," who claims to have actually been inside a UFO and dealt with living aliens.  I have been approached by others who have told me bizarre stories of alien encounters. The stories are always so utterly fantastic that you have no choice but to severely question their sanity.  Some people might find this ironic, but while I have no problem believing in the reality of ghosts, I have never felt I had sufficient evidence (and absolutely no personal experience) to justify a similar belief in UFO's or aliens.

This month, on June 19th, my 18-year-old daughter and I went to the movies.  We went to our local movie theatre in Parsippany, New Jersey, only 5 minutes from home.  When the movie ended, we walked out into the parking lot toward my car.  It was 11:45 pm on a Sunday night and the entire parking lot was empty.  There were no people anywhere.  My daughter suddenly got very excited and told me to look up in the sky toward the eastern horizon.  The night was a very, very black, velvety night with a cloud cover midway in the sky making it appear even darker.  The moon was no where to be seen.

I saw a strange collection of yellow, orange and red lights hovering somewhere between 500-1,000 feet up in the air roughly a half a mile away.  We had a very clear view because we were in a large empty parking lot in a low, flat mall.  At first, the object appeared rather murky.  The lights seemed to reflect in a hazy way off the clouds.  However, the lights created a stationery, massive boomerang shape (not your typical straight-edged flying disk or cigar-shaped object) that appeared, to my best guess, taking into account cloud reflectivity, to be about the size of a baseball field.   It was significantly bigger than any airplane I have ever seen in my life.  It did not move.  There was no noise.  It appeared to hover over one spot.  Now, since I live about 20 minutes from a small airfield, I am accustomed to seeing airplanes which sometimes appear to "hover" as an optical illusion because they are on a trajectory coming straight towards me or straight away from me.  However, we watched this object for just about one minute and the size did not change at all.  There were no blue or greenish lights which would have suggested a regular aircraft.  The wing-like boomerang edges were clearly hunched downward unlike any ordinary plane wings (in fact, the newest airplanes manufactured by the airplane manufacturer where my husband is employed have wing tips that flip upwards toward the end - not downwards).

There emerged out of this hazy, boomerang-shaped object, an exceptionally well-defined,very clear, white, about 10 feet in diameter, that appeared on the right side of this object.  The orb stood still, then moved toward the center.  Then the orb seemed to move around the front center of the stationery boomerang, then disappeared momentarily behind it, then reappeared on the right side.  If this had merely been the reflection of some "headlight" at some point it would have appeared as a long, beam of light and not a perfectly round white orb.  It stayed perfectly circular no matter how it moved.  This was totally bizarre.  What was also strange was that the orb was perfectly defined while the larger boomerang object remained hazy in the clouds. 

After about one minute of watching this object (seemed quite long at the time), and realizing it wasn't moving and wasn't a typical aircraft or even a reflection of lights coming from a radio tower or from the ground, my daughter said, "Look its disappearing!"  Sure enough, it began to disappear - but not in the way that an object moving away from you in the sky normally disappears by getting smaller as it travels away.  This lit object remained exactly the same size and the "wings" of the boomerang shape simply disappeared, as if the object were a telescope closing up, until the outer edges were swallowed up and it imploded until the center finally blipped out into total darkness within 2-3 seconds.  It didn't get smaller, it simply disappeared!

I asked my daughter to make a drawing of what she saw and I also made a drawing.  I wanted to compare what we both saw.  Our drawings appear above.  Mine shows the relative size and distance of the object from our parking lot.  I drew the white orb and with dotted lines, showed where it moved.  I tried to show the haziness of the outline of the boomerang object.  My daughter's drawing is a close-up view of the object.  It is virtually identical to mine.  She drew arrows to show how the white orb moved around the object. 

We called the local police department that night to see if anyone else had seen anything "unusual" in the sky, but alas, no one did.  So, I now feel I have been inducted into the growing elite club of people who have seen a UFO with their own eyes.  But I am just as confused as I was before I saw it - except now I know it's not impossible.

Wicked Weather on Steroids!

Our recent violent weather seems to be like regular weather on steroids!  You do not have to be a genius to notice that the global weather patterns are changing dramatically before our very eyes.  It's not our imagination.  It's real.  It seems like everyone living in the United States is experiencing something unusual in terms of weather for their region.  The Northwestern states have experienced extraordinary precipitation (300 percent of the normal precipitation) and cold temperatures resulting in 20 foot high banks of snow and unusual flooding of the Missouri River in Montana and the Dakotas - and the snow melts haven't even started yet!  It was the 10th snowiest April on record in the U.S.  It was the wettest April in the Northeastern states in 117 years!  There has been seemingly continuous flooding in Northeastern states like New Jersey and New York.  Further South, the Mississippi River Basin had its highest flood crest seen since 1937.  And yet, in the Southwestern region of the country, the states have been experiencing record dry and hot temperatures.  Nine states in the South and East ranked in the top 10 warmest Aprils on record.  There has been extreme drought due to the lack of precipitation in places like Arizona, California, New Mexico, Nevada, and Texas.

This has also been a year of terrifying and violent tornadoes - 1,425 tornadoes a record amount already this year.  Not only have we had more tornadoes than ever, but they are also more violent.  There have been five "EF-5" tornadoes already this year (the most violent classification) and the second highest number ever on record!  Moreover, the tornadoes have been popping up further east and in heavily populated urban areas as never before.  They are no longer contained to Kanas fields and Tornado Alley.  Four violent tornadoes swept through Springfield, Massachusetts!  Other tornadoes tore a path of destruction and left many dead in places like Joplin, Missouri, Smithville, Mississippi, Hackleburg, Alabama, and in Oklahoma.  Clearly, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto!

Not only that, but hurricanes have become more numerous and also stronger than in the past.  The past decade, from 2000-2009, has seen the most Category 5 (the most violent classification with winds 155+ mph) hurricanes in all of recorded history.

Mother Earth herself has seemed to rise up in fury.  The countries bordering the Pacific Ocean in the so-called "Ring of Fire" known for experiencing more earthquakes than anywhere else on earth due to the shifting tectonic plates under the ocean, have also recently experienced what seems like abnormally violent earthquakes and related tsunamis and tidal waves.  Japan's multiple catastrophic earthquakes and tsunami this spring are the obvious example.  But there have also been large earthquakes in Chile, Haiti, and Greenland.  Not to mention, lots of volcanic activity.  Last spring, the enormous Icelandic volcano erupted and temporary disrupted all European air traffic and flights.  There was another smaller eruption this spring.  Just yesterday, the Puyehue volcanic mountain range in Chile erupted, spewing ash high into the atmosphere and causing the evacuation of 3,500 local inhabitants.

Are we experiencing the Biblical End of Times?  Are these the global scourges warned about?  Are we on the brink of global destruction and worldwide famine and starvation?  Is the violent weather a clear sign that the Mayan Calendar predicting the end of the world in 2012 is correct?

Before we get too theatrical about the whole thing, let's consider this:  We are very, very, very tiny creatures in this universe.  Our planet works on much larger cycles.  Weather is cyclical.  Climate change is cyclical.  We can only see this from within our very little, short-lived perspective as human beings.  Almost all of the weather patterns are driven by temperature changes in our oceans.  The two biggest producers of weather patterns are El Nino and La Nina.  El Nino occurs when surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean rise, and La Nina occurs when temperatures drop.  We are currently in a very active La Nina phase.  These cycles alternate roughly every five years.  So why is it so extreme recently?  Very simple: natural (normal cyclical) and manmade (abnormal and non-cyclical) global warming have both caused 1) higher sea temperatures due to trapped heat and 2) our polar ice caps to melt at an alarmingly fast rate causing cooler temperatures closer to the poles.  As a result, warm and cold air masses are colliding and creating thunderstorms, abnormal rainfall, snow due to colder air, flooding as a result of precipitation, drought and heat due to warming tends, tornadoes, and hurricanes.  The jet stream, more active than usual, has pushed all this crazy air further eastward into states unaccustomed to such violent weather. 

Want to change the future?  Want to stop most of the violence within this natural weather cycle?  Don't raise up your arms and cry out that this is the End of the World and God's Will!  Change the course of human history.  Make it your personal responsibility to reuse old things, refuse to buy things that guzzle natural energy and encourage the rest of us to make a living off your greed.  Don't buy things with excessive plastic and packaging.  Don't give in to the "Keeping Up With the Jones" and buy things for show.  Realize that only we, as tiny individual human beings, are our own salvation on this planet.

What is the Future?

The world is kind of crazy.  Obama kills Osama.  There's irony in that - if you subscribe to the fringe Republican point of view that Obama is a secret Muslim.  It is also ironic, of course, Osama Bin Laden was once one of "our guys".  The CIA trained and funded him.  We created him!  We used him to front our war against the Soviets, since he fought with the Afghan Arabs in their rebel fight against the Soviet-backed Marxist government in Afghanistan. 

Anyway, we manage to kill Osama Bin Laden just days after NATO airstrikes targeting Libyan dictator Colonel Muammer Gaddafi fail, and kill his son and three grandchildren instead. 

Obviously, it's kind of dangerous to be part of the family of a U.S.-targeted bad guy.  There was an unidentified woman supposedly used as a human shield who was also killed along with Al-Qaeda terrorist leader Osama Bin Laden in the surprise attack yesterday on his million dollar home in northern Pakistan.  Then again, back in 1986, when the U.S launched a surprise air attack on one of Gaddafi's residences, they killed his daughter instead.

But it all gets so strangely intertwined. In 1998, Gaddafi issued the first international interpol arrest warrant for - you guessed it - Osama Bin Laden!  Gaddafi warned the U.S. and the rest of the world that Bin Laden was a dangerous extremist terrorist.  We didn't listen.  We thought he was trying to make himself look like a good guy by comparison. 

Bin Laden was a thorn in Gaddafi's side.  According to some reports, Osama Bin Laden actually lived for a time, undercover, in the city of Benghazi.  Sound familiar?  Yes, Benghazi is the rebel stronghold for those fighting against Gaddafi and seeking his ouster.  In fact, they want him dead.  The Libyan rebels are complaining to the U.S.: If you can kill Osama Bin Laden, why can't you kill Gaddafi? 

And so the world goes round.  Who are the good guys?  Who are the bad guys?  If politicians cannot predict, then psychics are surely at a disadvantage.

Is There a Reason for 2012 Panic?

I recently attended an all-day seminar on "Preparing for 2012."  We were bombarded with various theories like The Time-Wave Theory, the Hopi Indian Theory of the Entrance into the Age of Illumination, the Edgar Cayce Theory of Entrance into the Fourth Dimension, the Ascension Theory into the Fifth Dimension, Reunion of the Self at "Zero Point", the Grand Experiment of highly evolved insect beings, the creation of a New Grid of energy and consciousness, and so on and so forth.  We were presented with a 5-foot long map of the world showing significant portions of each continent newly submerged under water, as well as another global map showing honeycomb-shaped matrices purporting to be energy vortices.  Blah, blah, blah.

What did I learn?  Well, I learned that I currently reside in a vital energy "hub" located in the NYC tristate area, most of which will be under water in a couple of years.  I also learned my current residential property stands a good chance of becoming prime seaside property by 2012.  Only certain individuals will survive the 2012 catastrophe, including the Indigo Children, Blue Ray Children and perhaps those with Rose-Violet Rays.  I said to myself, I will obviously not be surviving this event because no one has identified my "ray" composition and besides, the Blue Rays have dilated pupils and like the color mauve.  I detest the color mauve.  Then I suddenly realized I was wearing a mauve-colored shirt.  But was that going to be enough to save me?

After feeling exceptionally irritated at the whole presentation, probably due to its lack of logical coherence and my hidden anxiety around the subject, I found myself talking to another woman who had also attended the event.  I had noticed her during the seminar.  She had long hair which she had dyed into all the different shades of the rainbow, twisted into tiny, long braids with multi-colored ribbons, an enormous hat, rather like the Cat in the Hat, with appliqued daisies, and wore a long, Joseph-like multi-colored robe.  She had penetrating eyes and began asking me a series of direct questions about my feelings about 2012.  She asked me what no one has ever asked me, namely, if I didn't believe in all these 2012 theories, what exactly did I believe is in store for us?  Suddenly, without warning, my eyes teared up and I began to cry.  I realized I was crying about what I called the "inevitablility" of our future on earth.

"So what do you think we should be doing?" she asked.  "Did you agree with what the presenter said?"

No, I didn't.  I only agreed that we are moving toward what the presenter called a "Single Language," a form of telepathic communication.  However, for me, the 2012 "catastrophe" - while it may be precipitated by an enormous solar flare which knocks out all our satellites and electronics, or the sudden "flip" of the earth's magnetic field, or a cataclysmic wobble of the earth's axis, or Mother Nature's revenge in the form of rearranging the continents through plate tectonics - the important message is not natural destruction.  It is our own seemingly indestructable human nature; our insatiable greed, desire for more, lust to be at the top of the latest trend, and inability to control ourselves even when we see how toxic our species has become.  We are all guilty.

We like those hideous parasites that thrive off the host until they kill it.  Then they die.  Our host is the planet earth.  When I was born, there were 3 billion people on earth.  Today, I live with 6 billion.  By 2050, we will be 9 billion.  We are unsustainable.  We have raped and pillaged the earth and robbed our children of their future.  The Chinese might have alot of things wrong, but they sure had one thing right when they adopted the one-child law in 1979. However, as of this month, Beijing is considering rescinding the law to replace it with a two-child law because the country's 1.3 billion population is supposedly becoming "dangerously unbalanced" because of the increasing number of elderly, nonworking people. The human solution - accelerate the human population explosion!  If THAT isn't "dangerously unbalanced" then I don't know what is!  The die-hard Born Again Christians and Catholics who seem to feel the Bible dictates unlimited baby-making are just as much to blame as the science of IVF which sets up the genetic recipe for multiple births.  Is no one listening???  How obvious does this need to be?

We no longer have any leaders.  There is no one "in charge" of any country any more.  There is no committee in charge of the earth.  We are all narcissistic capitalists with short-term vision.  The only change, if it is to come at all in time to prevent a global catastrophe and the end of our species, must come from within ourselves.  The key - listen carefully - is to learn to treasure that which is "old."  But are we evolved enough to make this difficult choice? 

Rebirth and Overcoming Fear

I just returned from PA with my son, his best friend, and my husband Patrick for a delightful funfilled weekend at the Great Wolf Lodge, the largest indoor waterpark in Northern America.... think millions, no billions, of screaming little toddlers and prepubescent children in the wet bathingsuits with obese parents standing befuddled looking around at the skyscraper-high tubes of rafters and giant 2-ton water buckets suddenly spilling water down on all of them, as they run-walk-stroll in their bare fungal feet in puddles of indoor water.... yes, I was there.. I endured it by spending money. Way too much money. Two overpriced movies on the television set with the sticky remote controller and the wall sconce light that wouldn't turn on, and then TWO, yes, two, massages at the spa next to the video arcade, the last one was an aroma rub with body scrub and perfumed oils and loads of skin lotion even in my scalp. From there, Patrick insisted I had to try a water slide with him because it would be the last time in my life I would have this extraordinary opportunity. Buoyed by a rum and coke, I squeezed into my largest black bathing suit and marched proudly with him to the 5-story staircase where we waited in line for 45 minutes. Good thing I wasn't able to wear my glasses so I was fairly oblivious to the height (I am scared of heights). We then jumped into our double tube and were shoved down a dark sightless tube of rushing water. I was told to remember only one thing: "Do not let go of the handles.." "But but but" I protested as we were shoved into the tunnel. "I JUST WENT TO THE SPA AND I AM COVERED WITH CONDITIONER AND I AM AS SLIPPERY AS A FISH HOW THE HELL DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HOLD OOOOOOOONNNNNN WHOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And yes, Patrick had taken me down the equivalent of the Black Diamond Slope of Water Tunnels. We loopty-looped, we went upsidedown, we were tossed from one wall to another as we plunged into further darkness................. As I practiced my Lamaze breathing, all I could think of was that this was like birth delivery of sorts where really all you want to do is scream at the top of your lungs at the father of the child for getting you into this mess to begin with. And before you knew it, we had been expelled like a giant turd into the light of day, and I hobbled out of my slimy raft and glared at Patrick.


How was your day?

The Allison DuBois Meltdown

I recently caught the tail-end of the reality series "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" - not a show I normally watch - and thought maybe I had dreamt the outrageous witchy persona of well-known psychic medium Allison DuBois, whose life formed the inspiration for the popular TV series "Medium."  I was so shocked and horrified by her behavior, I actually watched the entire episode, aptly titled "A Dinner from Hell," when it was re-aired at a later date just to make sure I hadn't missed something.  I just wanted to check my own reality.  Could Allison DuBois have really sunk that low?

Yup.  She did.  I felt like I was watching a train wreck.  She was apparently quite drunk on boat-sized martini-looking drinks, puffing theatrically on her electronic cigarette, as she snarled visciously, bared her animalistic teeth, and threatened the other dinner guests with her unique psychic ability to see inside their minds and predict their deaths!  Was she working overtime trying to become a regular on this show?

Her most famous quote of the dinner:  "My dad said live life large and make no apologies for who you are. I don't give a shit what she says about me! She can fuck off. I can tell you when she will die, and what will happen to her family. I love that about me!"


Really?  DuBois has apparently fired back at the network stating the show was edited in such a way as to make her look bad.  But anyone who saw the show knows it would have been impossible to edit her seething, snarling facial expressions; her outrageous and vulgar language; her pseudo-Biblical-sounding pronouncements of "Know this-sssssss" followed by psychic threats to the other dinner guests; not to mention the attempts to judiciously blur out her obvious hand vulgarities of middle fingers and masterbatory motions.

I am glad she loves herself and her abilities.  Good for her.  However, for someone who has managed to achieve the level of fame and popularity that she has enjoyed, she fails to realize that she is an ambassador of psychics and that her failure to use proper decorum and elegance in the world of non-psychics, leaves all the rest of us holding the bag, so to speak.  We all look bad when someone as ostensibly talented and most certainly blessed with good fortune and good looks as Allison DuBois jumps off the deep end.  Even casual viewers have stated her face looked almost "demonic"!  Which leads me to another point.

When psychics begin to use their "powers" for evil, negative, narcissistic or underhanded purposes, the great irony of the universe is that they actually lose their powers!  This happened, for example, with a number of psychics including Uri Geller when they tried to use their predictive powers to benefit themselves in the stock market!  This is why it is so important for psychics to stay on the straight and narrow path of making sure they use their gifts for the greater good of humanity. 

Allison DuBois needs to take a large step back and re-evaluate her gifts.  If she continues to use them as a personal threat against others instead of a human service, they will soon evaporate.  Certainly, her followers will evaporate long before that happens.

Speaking with John Edward 20 Years Later

A little over 20 years ago, I went out to a seminar on Long Island to listen to a young, relatively unknown psychic medium named John Edward.  He was funny, engaging, personable and spoke about ways in which he got psychic information which were startlingly like my own - even though I was, at that time, a practicing attorney with no apparent psychic gifts.  I liked him immediately.  Intuitively, I felt he was the real deal - he came up with bizarre facts which were verified by flustered and amazed people in the audience.  At the end of the seminar, he sat down at a table and I was the only person who went up to talk to him afterwards.  I had just bought his new book and asked him to sign it.  Why?  I believed he was going to be famous and I wanted his autograph while I could still get it.

Fast forward 20 years, and John Edward is arguably one of the most famous psychic mediums in the world.  I have been an avid devotee of his various cable and network shows, and have been constantly amazed at his ability to come up with very precise "evidence" (as the Spiritualists would say) of the spirit world.  When you watch enough of his shows (the information he gets, how he gets it, the associations he makes in his own mind, and the shock or denials of the audience members), you stop worrying about whether he had hidden microphones or shills in the audience - it is quite obviously "real."

I had the opportunity to go to one of his "small group" sessions in East Rutherford, NJ, this week.  I had apparently bought ticket #1 and was there with an intimate group of approximately 400 or so people - all anxious to get a reading from him.  I have never felt compelled to get a reading from any medium, let alone John Edward, because I never wanted to steal the medium away from people who really desperately need a reading - those who have suffered the tragic loss of someone important in the lives.  But I decided to raise my hand during the question session and was lucky enough to be called up by him.

John asked me to stand up and I was handed a microphone.  Then he asked, "Is the man sitting to your left with you?"  I said yes.  It was my husband.  "Sir, would you please stand up also," asked John.  My husband Patrick, who is French, stood up next to me.  Before I could ask my question, John asked us, "Have you lost a baby girl in your family? With the name Corinne?"  Having watched hundreds of his shows, I knew that fetuses count as much as live babies in the psychic world of "family."  So I admitted to having two miscarriages in my life.  But I knew the question was meant for Patrick.  John had strangely asked Patrick to stand up and the name "Corinne" is clearly French.  However, Patrick - who is a concrete, literal and mostly skeptical type of person - could not think of anyone in his family who had lost a daughter or baby named Corinne, so he immediately said, "No." 

John did not and could not pursue his psychic "lead" and so I was allowed to ask my question.  I asked him what he felt about the large number of mediums, psychics and paranormal investigators who seem to feel automatically compelled to clear out or "cleanse" spirits and get rid of them from the location they are allegedly haunting.  Did he agree with this as a kind of knee-jerk automatic response to finding spirits?  One famous television medium supposedly announced with great pride one year that she had cleared Gettysburg of all 51,000 spirits of the men who had died there during the Civil War.  Of course, having taken many trips there since the alleged "cleansing," I know that claim was bogus.  At any rate, John gave a thoughtful and complete answer- saying that with all the new ghost hunting shows on television this seems to be what people think they can do - usually for a fee and with an overinflated ego.  He suggested that either spirits ought to be left alone to co-exist with the living or the person being "haunted" should deal with the ghost themselves.  He emphasized that people view spirits as the Hollywood version - scary and threatening - whereas spirits are generally in contact to express love.  I couldn't agree with him more.  It was good to hear him say it.

After the show was over, I said to Patrick, "Why didn't you tell him about the fact your mother always said she had miscarried a baby girl?" Patrick's shook his head and said his father never believed her story, and the fetus was never named Corinne.  Patrick comes from a family of three boys.  Here's the problem:  When responding to psychic information, you need to stop your logical mind from dictating what you think you know or don't know.  A "baby girl" can still be a fetus.  It is possible Patrick's father never knew the full circumstances.  It is possible that someone in Patrick's family could still verify that his mother had thought about naming her "Corinne" or something similar-sounding, even though the fetus was never named.  The point is that obtaining, delivering and responding to psychic information is like a dance and neither party is in control of all the facts.  Clearly, in my mind, John had a message to deliver to Patrick, but we will never know what it was because the unfolding of the psychic information was nipped at the bud by logic.