Going Under

Good Thursday morning Campfire Friends!
    For a couple days I have been pondering on which story to tell everyone. I do have many, and want to share them all, but being a momma and a busy woman, I have to narrow it down to one at a time. However choosing that one, is not so easy.
    I have always had visitors enter my dreams, (as I said in my welcome blog). Old friends, family, and even family of those I know. It has been sometime though that this has happened. Being exhausted from my days, has led my sleep to either be restless, or comatose, no room for dreams.
    On Tuesday, I had to go in for a small procedure. Nerve root injections were placed in my lower back. Something I go through about every six months or so. It was pretty routine, nothing unexpected was to take place. So I thought! Normally, once they get me in the surgery room, and give me the sleepy time medicine, I am out, with no dreams, and no disturbances. Except for this time.
   While I was under I had a visit from three very important people in my life. Both of my grandfathers, and a dear friend I lost in a motorcycle accident about 4 years ago. I was so thrilled to see these three men, especially my Grandpa Coppes or "Papa" as I called him. I do not remember everything that was said, but I do remember some.
   Both of my grandparents were sitting in wooden chairs, and I was sitting in one as well between the both of them, facing them. My dear friend stood behind my grandpas. Papa told me how happy he was to see where I am in life. That where I am at, is where I am meant to be. He told me he was glad to see I was happy. My other grandpa, told me he wished he would of spent more time with me as I grew. (I lost contact with that side of the family at a very young age. And reunited with them some 12 years later.) My friend did say something, but to remember it verbatim, I can not! I do know that he has watched over me during troubling times in my life. I know that now, and I thank him for that. The last thing I remember papa saying was, "Don't give up on your dreams!"
   As a child, my papa always cupped my face with his large rough hands. At the end of our visit, he did just that and I awoke. Begging the nurse for a pen and paper. I wanted to write everything I could fresh while I remembered it. But that did not happen, instead I choked back tears. Waited until they got me to David, in which case I cried tears of joy. Telling him about my visit, and how happy it made me.
   Yesterday, after thinking about what to tell at the campfire, I knew I had to share this story with everyone. It touched my heart to know all three of them still check in on me. I am also so very happy that my papa is content with where I am. As I told David about this event, I began to laugh saying "Well I knew Papa would like you!" I just wish they could have met in person. :( But at least I know now I am on the right track.
   What bothers me is that one of them told me about something to happen in my future. Something good, positive, and it was to up lift my spirits ( about something I am doing, will be doing, or did,) but I can't remember what it was, or who said it, and it is driving me crazy! I guess I will find out when the time comes, then I will know what it was I was told.

Campfire is warm and toasty....
Misty
  
 

The Dwarf - my Father's Story

The Dwarf: an Unusual Encounter from the 1940s

N. Reiter

My father grew up an only child.  He was born and raised on a farm about 4 miles northeast of the town of Tiffin, Ohio.  The trip from the Reiter house to Tiffin was a fairly straight drive, along Ohio route 101.  One fall night, when my dad was maybe 6 or 7 (which would have made it around 1942) he saw something very odd.  My dad and my grandma and grandpa were driving from Tiffin toward home.  The time was somewhere past 11:00, perhaps closer to midnight.  Dad was awake in the backseat, looking out the front windshield, past his parents.

As the car went around the large bend about a mile from their home, at the end of a long gravel driveway and illuminated in the car’s headlights, dad saw a weird person or being standing.  It was a short man – like a dwarf.  The dwarf had a wide brimmed low hat on that was light tan in color.  He was wearing a strange – almost frightening looking – coat similar to a light colored trench coat but one that flared out stiffly like a triangle or cone.  Around the dwarf’s waist – but not interfering with the triangular shape of the coat - was a wide black belt with a large buckle.  The coat appeared to be about the same color as the dwarf’s hat.

Dad has told me that he remembered hearing grandma scream, “Oh my God, what is that!?”  Grandpa gunned the car’s engine to rush past.  Then, grandma said, “should we call Pat Corthell and have him lock his doors?” (Pat Corthell was the single gentleman farmer whose lane the dwarf was standing at the end of…)

Dad next remembered grandpa saying something in reply that puzzled him for years after.  Grandpa said resolutely, “No, something like that can walk through a locked door anyway.”  They drove the rest of the way home, and spoke nothing more about it.  Dad felt deeply afraid until he was safe in his house, assured their own doors were locked.  Dad never mentioned it or asked his parents about it ever again; nor did either of them bring it up.  By the time my father told me of the matter a few years ago, both my grandparents had passed away.

Dad related that it was something that he would remember occasionally over the decades, but then forget about it again.  It was my writing about UFOs and aliens that brought it back to the forefront in his mind, and that prompted him to tell me.

The UFO and the Minotaur

The UFO and the Minotaur – an Infernal Encounter at Alexandria, Ohio

N.Reiter

27 September, 2012

In 2005, an astonishing story was related to me by a woman from Newark, Ohio, concerning a most unusual (and terrifying) UFO encounter involving her and a group of friends, from the late autumn of 1985.  Some weeks after my talk with “Rhonda”, I also had the opportunity to interview another member of the group from that long ago night, “Dwight”.  Despite the passage of twenty years, I found that both of their accounts matched closely, and their memories of the night were poignant and clear.

Rhonda and a small group of friends, all in their late 30s, had made a frequent ritual of travelling certain county roads late at night, in the rural areas west of Newark, for the purpose of UFO sky-watching.  Rhonda’s son, “Mark” a young teen at the time, accompanied them on most occasions.  During the great UFO flap of 1975, central Ohio had been a hot-spot of UFO activity, and while the decade that followed seemed to be much more subdued in most areas of the country, in that region, the reputation of sky-lights and strangeness had lived on.

One county road, between the villages of Alexandria and Pataskala, Watkins Road, became a favorite destination.  It seemed as if on most late nights there, the clear open skies overhead yielded many unusual non-airplane lights, sometimes performing bizarre maneuvers.  It was on Watkins Road that the strange became bizarre, one evening at about midnight.

Rhonda and Mark, along with Dwight and at least two other friends, had parked along Watkins Road, and were searching the skies for lights.  Three unnaturally white bright lights appeared to be playing a hide and seek game among the stars.  Another of the group, a young woman named Char, had the idea of using a spotlight in the car, to try signaling the lights.  Char flashed the spotlight off and on several times in the direction of one of the white distant orbs.

Rhonda and Dwight remembered that the sky light Char had signaled rapidly responded, by zig-zagging in from the east, growing larger and brighter.  The light resolved itself into an oblong or oval shape.  The group began to feel a deep dread, wondering if they had stepped too far…

The large white oval glided in silently, dodging to the north, and finally coming to a rest on the road behind the group’s car.  The craft dimmed to a dull orange outline, and appeared to be about a quarter mile away.  Dwight recalls that he saw what he took to be legs or a tripod feature under the dimly lit form.

Rhonda, Dwight, and Char began to walk up the road toward the light.  Mark and the others stayed behind at the car.

After a short distance, both Rhonda and Dwight recounted that an intense smell began to fill the air, as if travelling down the road or across the field, like a wave.  It was nauseating – an intense perfume or incense aroma, but also sharply chemical and pungent.  A sweet “ether” smell to make one gag.

Suddenly, all hell broke loose.  A tall bobbing shadow figure appeared to be striding or lurching up the road toward the trio.  When the figure approached to within perhaps a hundred feet, no force on earth could hold the terrified adventurers from shrieking and running at top speed back the way they came.

Rhonda remembered the form of the creature most vividly.  It was very tall, maybe twelve feet high.  Black, with red eyes.  But most bizarrely, the figure was horned like a bull, and strode on oversized backward bending hoofed legs.  As Rhonda put it, “It was like something out of Greek mythology – a minotaur!”

The next twenty minutes or so were a blur.  The trio reached the car, all dove in, and Dwight tore off south at full speed.  Nobody was certain where the creature striding up the road had stopped, or if it had simply vanished.  They were alive, and that was all that mattered.  In Dwight’s words, during my talk with him, “it was huge and evil, like nothing you could imagine!”

The group congratulated themselves on their escape as they tore through the night back to Newark, however their relief was short-lived.  As they approached the area on the fringes of the town where Rhonda lived, Char observed that a white light in the sky appeared to have followed the car.  Upon reaching Rhonda’s house, the group all dodged inside and locked the doors.  They huddled in the living room, not anticipating any hope of sleep until dawn had come.

What happened next was remembered by Rhonda, but not by Dwight.  After being indoors for about a half hour, Dwight suddenly lurched to his feet, went to the front door, and exited.  He did not appear to be responsive to the pleas or grasps of the rest.  With horror, those inside watched as Dwight went to the middle of the yard, looked up, and froze.

According to Dwight, the others had told him in the morning that he had stood frozen, looking up, mouth agape for some fifteen or twenty minutes.  He then appeared to be “cut loose” and collapsed in a heap.  The group inside was still too afraid to go out to help him.  For some unknown time, maybe an hour, Dwight lay in the yard, before rousing, and crawling back to the door.  At that time, Rhonda and her son hurriedly opened the door and dragged him in.  Rhonda felt Dwight’s skin, and found it to be burning hot.  He reeked of the cloying incense smell.  Eventually, Dwight awoke, made his way to a bed, and collapsed again until later in the morning.  For several days, he sported a large red rash around his neck and back of the head.

Dwight indicated to me that he remembered nothing from the moments before he got up to go outside, until he woke up in the late morning.  And he added that to this day, he didn’t want to.

According to Rhonda, “we decided that day, then and there, to never go sky watching again!”  The group also swore to not speak of it, either to others or to each other.  This oath held up for twenty years.  Rhonda was the party to break the silence, but Dwight held no grudge against her for it, and seemed eager to add his story to hers.

In this era, we have been conditioned to associate UFOs with grey aliens or reptilian humanoids.  I have long believed that this is a cloak, a sham.  The occupants of the UFOs share the form they wish to share.  Or do they?  In all my years of research, this account remains singular.  I have never come across another “Minotaur”.  Was this also a cloaking image?  Or was it perhaps instead a resonant symbol or archetypal form?  If so, the mystique behind the resonance was of an utterly diabolical nature.

And what of Dwight, during his “freeze” in the yard?  I do not think we will ever know about that either.  All in all, this is the sort of case that speaks loudest through the events that took place, rather than interpretation after the fact.

Rhonda, Dwight, and the others went on to live their lives in a reasonably undisturbed fashion.  At least for Rhonda and Dwight’s sake, neither of them ever experienced anything as horrifying and strange ever again, for which they were quite grateful.

I have visited Watkins Road, but it was on a chilly November morning, with a bright sun overhead, and birds singing and darting among dry cornstalks of the nearby fields.  While it now has been twenty seven years since the Minotaur came charging up the road, I myself have no wish to be there at night, under even the brightest of stars.

 

Watkins Road, at the location where Rhonda’s group had parked in 1985.  The view is to the north, looking toward the direction from which the “Minotaur” had come charging.