Paranoia

A lot of UFO researchers have weird tales to tell about things that happened to them that are probably not UFO related. Mostly these stories are told half-jokingly, probably because no one really believes them anyway. Seen in the context of UFO paranoia, random events like a chance meeting with a creepy person or a series of hang-up phone calls can seem ominous and threatening. Although the UFO literature is full of stuff like this, usually connected with shadowy "men in black" trying to suppress UFO information, few UFO investigators really take them seriously. Those that do, often get very involved in a "conspiracy" that seems (to me) partly delusional. I know of one writer who nearly flew to pieces when he realized that someone was going in to his car at night and emptying his ash tray- he believed government agents were threatening him.

The above paragraph is meant to serve as a sort of disclaimer for what follows. I don't believe that the government knows the truth about UFOs, and I don't imagine that there are agents trying to halt those who investigate sighting reports. But since 1993, when I got involved in the UFO subject, some things have happened to me that I honestly don't know what to make of. The reason I am writing about them now, years after the events, is that I think that they make a good story. And that's it. So here goes.

Back in the early 90's, when I started buying books and subscribing to magazines and all the things that one does when obsessed with UFOs, there was a lot of talk about the "Black Helicopters". These unmarked, military-type helicopters were implicated in all sorts of UFO activity, from abductions to cattle mutilations, especially in the American West. I sent out my application to join the Mutual UFO Network in September, 1993. And my first near-paranoia inducing experience happened at the same time. I was only 13 years old then, and a lot more naive. And I came home from school one day, and there were two huge, unmarked, military style helicopters flying at extremely low altitudes right over our neighborhood! One of them seemed to be checking out my street in particular. It was circling around at near treetop level. And this thing was LOUD! The booming noise of the rotors brought all the neighborhood kids out into the street. Of course, my mind was reeling. This must be some kind of government organization, spying on me because I was asking questions about UFOs! At one point, when the helicopter seemed to be hovering over the apartments across the street, a flash of light appeared for an instant from the side of the copter facing me. Were these spies taking pictures of me? Keep in mind, I was barely a teenager at the time. And in fact, maybe I would have forgotten about the whole thing, if it wasn't for the front page article in the Milford Daily News (my local newspaper) the very next day, the article I still have. It reads:

Pot Hunt?

FRANKLIN- Why two helicopters were hovering over the Route 495, Pond and Forge Hill Road areas in Franklin for almost three hours yesterday, remains a mystery today.

The two choppers hovered and circled very low over the area from about 1 to 4 p.m. yesterday, causing residents to look skyward to determine what the helicopters were doing in the area for such a long period of time.

When contacted, local, state, and MBTA police could not provide a reason for the choppers to be in the area for such an extended time period.

State police recently have been aiding local police in chopper searches for those cultivating marijuana plants, but this was not the case yesterday, Franklin and Medway police said.

Franklin Town Administrator Wolfgang Bauer, a colonel in the Army Reserves, said he was not aware of any military maneuvers being scheduled over the Franklin area yesterday.

So, there it is. The helicopters were real; they were over my neighborhood; they were mysterious. I don't really believe that these helicopters had anything to do with me, or my UFO interest. But at the time, it seemed really strange and spooky. Not long after that, some of the UFO documents in my filing cabinet (my MUFON membership application and some others) went missing. When I found them again weeks later, it seemed that they had been replaced by photocopies! Must have been my imagination getting the best of me. After all, I had just turned 14. The well-known UFO author John Keel has written that he believes that it is very important that teenagers do not get involved in UFO study, for it can be very dangerous.

But those incidents (or non-incidents) pale in comparison to something that happened to me in 1999, something that I have never forgotten. Let me start off by saying that however you want to evaluate these facts, everything that follows is 100 percent true. I wrote about it the day it happened, and I remember it vividly. And I can't explain it.

I spent the summer of 1999 in Hamburg, Germany. I started thinking about the trip around the beginning of that year, but at that time I didn't know if I would wind up going or not. I hadn't told many people that I was planning this trip- only my girlfriend Jen, and a few friends. Jen lived in an apartment in North Attleboro, MA, where I stayed a lot. She worked at a store in the Wrentham Village Premium Outlets mall. She was the manager there, and every couple of months or so a fire department inspector would come by and make sure that nothing in the store was violating town fire codes regarding fire extinguishers, emergency exits, etc.

The strange incident that happened to Jen at her store, the thing that I have always wondered about, happened on Tuesday, January 27, 1999. Jen was working in the store that afternoon all by herself. At one point, she went in to the back room just for a moment, and when she came back in to the store, the first thing she noticed was the volume of the radio- it seemed louder than it had been when she had gone in to the back. Four people had just entered the store- three Wrentham police officers, and a fireman. Jen assumed that they were there to do the fire inspection, but later realized that that was unusual. Usually the inspection was performed by only a single fireman, with no police. Also, it was customary for store managers to be notified in advance of these inspections, and  Jen had received no such notification.

The fireman engaged Jen in conversation while the police officers looked around the store. They inspected the whole store, including the back room. The fireman gave Jen paperwork to fill out- forms asking about her personal information, things such as her home address and phone number, to be used, said the fireman, "in case there is a fire at the store." According to Jen, these forms were not part of the normal inspections. She felt they were unnecessary- when Jen became a manager at the store, she had been required to provide this information to the fire department, for just that reason. She had been told that the fire department had that information on file for every store at the mall- why did she have to fill out those forms again?

When Jen had completed the forms, the fireman, who had been standing at the counter, informed her of the violations that were found in her store. He told her that she would not be written up, but that she had to move an object that was blocking a fire extinguisher, and that the door to the switch box had been left open. Later, after the man had gone, she realized that it should have been impossible for the man to know that detail about the switch box. After all, he had not gone into the back, and the policemen with him had not spoken a word at any time! After the fireman told Jen about these violations, the police officers left, leaving him alone with my girlfriend. Jen did not recognize this man. She didn't know any Wrentham police or fire department people, and neither did I- we both grew up in Franklin. Neither of us even lived in Wrentham, ever. Anyway, this man started talking to Jen about the Beanie Babies on sale at that store. He mentioned one of those toys, a valuable one only available in Germany. And then he said, "You will have to tell your boyfriend to get the Germany Bear when he goes to Germany." Jen was shocked that this fireman, who she had never talked to or even seen, knew this personal information. After all, I had hardly told anyone I was thinking about the trip, and of course Jen would not have had any reason to tell anyone. She asked the man how he knew this detail. He simply laughed, and left the store.

Now, that by itself is not very mysterious. Perhaps the fire department had changed its procedures. Perhaps the fireman had found out about my trip by some arcane means. Still, the visit seemed strange, especially the part about the switch box. Jen called me, asking if I knew any firemen. I didn't, and I was curious about the incident. So I asked her to bring home the surveillance tape that was recorded by the store's closed circuit TV system as part of normal security procedure. Jen was astonished to open the VCR and find the tape missing! She called her friend Anne, an employee who had told Jen that she had put a new tape in the machine. Anne was adamant that she had replaced the tape. And no tape was anywhere to be found. Then Jen thought of the radio volume, controlled by a knob on the stereo right near the VCR behind the counter. It had been so loud when the men had arrived...  What was going on?

Jen called the stores in the mall on either side of her store. Neither had received the fire inspection. That was strange- usually the whole mall was inspected on the same day. Jen's next phone call was to the mall's administrative office. They told her that the office would have been notified of any fire inspections that day, and they had not been. Puzzled, Jen finally called the Wrentham Fire Department. The person there told her that there had definitely NOT been ANY fire inspections done that day. Jen was horrified- it now seemed that the enigmatic fireman had, in fact, not been a fireman at all.

So if the fireman was not a fireman, who was he? How did he know personal information about Jen's boyfriend (me) and my plans? And who were the three men, the "police officers" who searched the store, and were seemingly able to communicate with the "fireman" without talking? Nobody- not Jen, not me, nobody- has ever been able to answer those questions. And for a while, that bothered me. Anyone who has ever watched "The X-Files" or read about shadowy Men in Black knows the kind of conspiratorial ideas that spring to mind when confronted by such an incident. Was our phone being tapped? Were secret agents from some hidden government organization searching for me in the guise of local law enforcement? I don't think I'll ever know what that was, that happened to me in January of 1999. As a person goes through life, they experience many unusual happenings. Some people have more unusual things than others. And a lot of the things that happen to people they keep to themselves because they are so far out. For the past couple of years, I mostly kept that incident to myself. It really spooked me. But I'm not worried about it anymore. So there it is.