We recently asked members of the BuzzFeed Community, “Have you ever had an extraterrestrial experience?” Here are the creepiest, weirdest responses.
1. My Grandparents, the Abductees
"My grandma and grandpa got divorced when my dad was a kid and never spoke to each other. Both claimed to have been abducted by aliens when they were in their twenties. The story they told was always exactly the same in every detail. They were once driving through Nevada at precisely 9 pm, and BAM, it's 6 in the morning, just like that. It was like the world stood still while they just traveled through time. They both say it was the strangest, most unexplainable experience, and could never figure out what really happened. The craziest thing is when I was younger, my grandma was always saying she was going to get abducted and she was always too afraid to be alone. She also used to say that the aliens did something to her and that she was going to die. I always assumed she lost her mind. But, she died last year with no explanation."
2. Making Contact
"I was passing a window on an overcast night. I noticed a star and became curious because I realized this was the only star in this overcast night sky. I watched and called my roommate over to observe this with me. The light was completely still so we concluded that it wasn't a plane. Then the light started to become very bright, then it would dim. It did this for a few minutes. Then it shifted from its position in the sky. Left, then to the right, then to the left again. It did this so quickly and effortlessly. My roommate started to freak out and grabbed her phone, which had a flashing lite-brite feature on it. She flashed at the light for a second, then stopped. The light became 3D as it continued to change its luminosity. As it moved closer to us, my roommate took away her phone and ran from the window. I continued to watch and observed it shift again in the sky. Finally it became dim again, then it ZOOMED away, like something in a cartoon. I didn't sleep that night."
—Devin Crutchfield (Facebook)
3. The Face
"I have been absolutely terrified of aliens (specifically greys) since I was about four years old. I was never exposed to any sort of media or stories that included those types of aliens, so I have no idea where the fear came from. My family had several stories that featured UFOs, but I wasn't told those until I was in my early teens. When my mother was a child, she and the rest of her family were followed by a bright light on the highway that, after several miles of following them, shot straight into the sky and disappeared. My grandfather actually got it on video. I have had one encounter, and I don't talk about it often, but when I was about seven, I went downstairs in the middle of the night to grab a book. I happened to glance at our sliding glass door, and saw what appeared to be a large, white face with the typical huge, vacant black eyes, peering through the curtains, about six feet off the ground. Needless to say, I ran upstairs and jumped in bed with my parents. 25 years later I consider myself a skeptic, but I have no explanation for what I saw. But I certainly don't want to experience it again!"
—Emily Stallings (Facebook)
4. I Know What I Saw
"About seven years ago I went to Las Vegas for my brother's wedding. I was flying in by myself and was lucky enough to have a window seat. I was looking out the window as we got closer. We had just gotten to the edge of the strip when I saw a small aircraft fly underneath us. It had a dark blue half-moon shape on the front and the back kind of reminded me of a torpedo. I craned my neck to see it, as it was underneath us, and the half-moon part of it spiraled and closed around the torpedo part. It was pretty small, smaller than a car, I would guess. I realize that there are a lot of military exercises that go on in the desert, but not right in the airspace of commercial airplanes. When I got to the hotel I told my parents right away and they asked me if I had a few drinks on the plane. No one ever takes me seriously when I tell them the story but I know what I saw!"
—Chelsea Cloud (Facebook)
5. Was It All Just a Dream?
"When I was pregnant with my son, my husband went out of town for work one night. Our bedroom had one very high, small, round window on the wall above our bed. This experience was very brief, but I had an extremely vivid 'dream' (I hope) of being on a type of obstetrician's table, with my feet in the stirrups and an insanely bright light shining right on me. There was darkness all around me. I woke up, actually screaming, as though I had been awoken by a bright spotlight from the window. I felt I'd been somewhere else.
Crazy pregnancy dream? I don't know. I never had any others close to being as real as that. It was two-plus years ago and the memory of it is still crystal clear."
6. Touch of Gray
"Extraterrestrial beings are out there. I haven't told anyone this, not even my closest friends who know everything about me, but I truly believe they contacted me through my sleep. It happened earlier this school year. It was sometime in the early morning, around 2 or 3 am, when I got this strange sense that I was being watched, and just like from a movie it seemed like I was looking at myself sleeping. That's when I noticed the two 'beings' on the side of my bed. I felt my hand raise and start going towards them and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Right before I touched them I woke up in a heavy sweat and hard breathing. I thought it was all in my head, until I noticed my cup of pens on the floor and my blinds swaying as if someone had just moved them."
7. The Field
"When I was 5 or 6, [on] a warm night in Southern California, I was staring out the window as I was trying to fall asleep. At this age, Murrieta was not the highly populated area it is today; it was filled with open fields of chaparral. Any chance of falling asleep vanished when I saw a flying saucer flying above the large, open field in front of my house. I immediately jumped out of bed and crouched at the window. I still kick myself to this day for not alerting my parents, but I was awake far past my bedtime and I was afraid of getting in trouble. To my horror, over the course of a couple of minutes, the flying saucer lowered itself out of view to the chaparral ground. After that, I saw no more of the UFO. I laid in bed for hours, scared, before I was able to fall asleep.
An interesting fact I would like to note is that Murrieta is near the far end of Camp Pendleton, a marine base. This either means it was a military craft or the military HAD to have known about this UFO via radar. There is just no way it would be undetected that close to a military base."
8. The Owl People
"There's this couple who lives in Reno; they're like my grandparents. The lady is very esoteric. So one time we were in their house and I was bored, so I decided to explore the house. I found one room filled with drawings of weird owl people (similar to the Close Encounters of the Third Kind type). Then the lady found me in that room and told me all about how she spoke to aliens in the woods near her house. I couldn´t sleep for the whole time we were there."
—Susy Rubio (Facebook)
9. The Dance
"I started noticing a bright light in the sky that had a red tint to it near my parents' house. It was in a different spot each night, and much closer than a star or planet would be. A few days later, two objects came out of nowhere and met each other in the sky. Then another came. And another. They were making motions only military planes would be able to achieve. They danced around for what seemed an hour. I called other people in the neighborhood to go outside and look — they all witnessed it. At the end, the aircrafts sped off in opposite directions. It was later confirmed that no military planes were in the area.
10. The Disc
"It was 12/21/10, about 9:30 pm, and me and my friend Necole were driving around stalling, waiting for my other friends to go sledding. We went to drive around the reservoir in New Britain (which is just creepy in itself). There are no lights, curvy roads, and trees everywhere. When we got on the road, the reservoir was to our left, and just above the tree line was a huge light moving along with us as we kept going forward. The road makes a whole circle, so as we are turning the corner I opened up my sunroof to look because we had thought it was a helicopter looking for someone or something. The light moved above us, and when we looked up, it was a chunky black disc with red lights all over it. The weirdest part is that there was absolutely no sound whatsoever. Needless to say I practically shit my pants and have never driven so fast around that reservoir in my life! I now refuse to drive there if it is dark out!"
11. It Lit Up the Night Sky
"About 10 years ago, my dad was driving us home to Alberta from Manitoba. We were somewhere in Saskatchewan (the flattest of land you can find) and it was about 2 or 3 am, when all of a sudden, a huge bright white light zipped right beside us, and as fast as we saw it, it was gone. It lit up the whole night sky as if it were the afternoon. We swore it must have been a meteorite, but we searched for stories about it & nothing ever came up. And for how fast and bright it was, I'm sure it would have left a massive crater SOMEWHERE in Western Canada. So now I truly believe it was a UFO, either beaming lights down, or zipping past us across Saskatchewan. Eeeeerie."
12. They Called Us Crazy
"This was in the middle of nowhere, Washington. I'm lying in a large field with eight friends, stargazing and just hanging out after a long day of work. We're all seeing the average occasional shooting star and enjoying ourselves. Randomly, one of my friends and I sat bolt upright (for no apparent reason), facing towards a thick wooded area. Above the tree line, a large bright green light appeared suddenly. We watched it for about 15 seconds, then it "exploded" even brighter, shot away from us, and dove toward the ground at an insane speed. It left a trail, and as it dropped we saw a ring appear around it. We tried to get the others to look, but once they did, there was nothing there. We tried to convince them of what we had seen, but they called us crazy and brushed us off. Why no one else noticed the brightness of the light or the flash, I don't know. But my friend and are still amazed, confused, and slightly freaked out about what we saw."
13. And a bonus: one non-extraterrestrial but thoroughly amazing encounter.
"When I was in the second grade, back in the late '90s, I was having a sleepover with my best friend (who still is my best friend and can vouch for this story). We were in the living room that faced the backside of my house, which was set nearly in the middle of nowhere atop a small, heavily wooded mountain in upstate NY.
In the middle of watching some movie on a VHS, one of us spots a giant glowing orb about the size of a small house, hovering above the tree line. So, being a freaked out little 7-year-old, I run into the other living room where my parents were watching TV and told them there was something crazy going on with the moon and they had to see it. They brushed us off and told us to go back to watching the movie. We tried, but the glowing orb was just too big and too weird to ignore, so we ran back to my parents and told them they HAD to go look at it. Finally my mom convinced my dad to go take a look, and when they did, my mom got this very confused look on her face and said to my dad, "Bill, go get your coat on, I think that's a UFO and you have to go check it out."
So my dad geared up and went outside while my mom bundled us all up to follow. Good idea, right? Take a couple 7-year-olds out to potentially be abducted? Anyway, my dad disappears into the woods on a path that leads to a large, Tuscany-style mansion about half a mile away where our cool neighbor lived by himself at the time. My dad comes back (thank God!) a few minutes later and tells us to come along to see what was going on. Long story short, DMX was filming a music video at my neighbor's mansion, and the giant glowing house-sized orb was what they used on set to make it look like it was daytime. We hung out for a bit, had some of DMX's food, and saw him run through the woods with a bunch of dogs. Don't ask me what video it was, because I can't seem to find it anywhere. But, basically, what we thought were aliens was really DMX."