The Day that UFO's and Aliens Landed Behind Our House

It was a dark and stormy night. It really was! Every family has its stories, those memories or happenings that are brought out at family gatherings and retold and rehashed until the story has become the biggest tall tale ever! I suppose it's how tall tales and fairy tales began. Our family's favorite "tall tale" is the story of Mom and the Aliens. Yes, there are aliens involved in this story that occurred Halloween week of 1974.

It was a dark and story night and yes it really was. My husband, an electrical engineer, had been called into the electric utility where he worked to handle all the emergency power outages. I, seven months pregnant, was firmly cuddled on the family room couch, flashlight in hand, a bowl of popcorn being munched as I watched a UFO movie about people disappearing off of a plane. My children often ask me what was the name of the movie and I have to tell them I don't remember. The aliens wiped it from my memory, I suppose....

We still had power but it was storming fiercely all around our large two story Victorian farmhouse, set upon a hill in the country. Our nearest neighbor was about a mile down the road and I was alone in our old cozy creaking home, our beagle, Misty, nestled at my feet and our two cats asleep on the back of the sofa.

I was happily engaged in watching my movie, snug and safe in my warm comfy home, when suddenly, through the large French 6 feet high windows brilliant shifting streams of light beams bounced around the room. Overhead loud roars of some unknown sounds overwhelmed the sound from the TV and suddenly, the power went out!

The room was full of these light beams and the roar of the sound overhead was deafening. The dog woke up and was barking loudly and the cats ran to hide in my bedroom. I grabbed the flashlight, my heart pounding. I wanted to head toward the window to see what I could discern, but I felt trapped on the couch. Just as suddenly as the lights and noise had appeared, it began to fade and I ran toward our back kitchen window. I could see the huge streams of light going down and down and ...landing behind our barn. You could still see the light beams shooting up from the ground and the roar, muffled now by the distance from the house.

I ran to the back entry hall and reaching inside the closet I brought out my husband's shotgun. Now..I'm a pacifist who had never held a gun, let alone shoot something with it, but still the heft of it in my hands made me feel a bit safer. Truly frightened now, I found the phone on the kitchen wall and frantically dialed my husband's work number, with my eyes never leaving the kitchen window.

It was pitch black outside, the rain still falling in giant sheets. I couldn't see anything close to the house, the back lights were off due to the power but in the distance, right behind our old white barn, I could still see the beams of light reaching skyward.

The phone rang and rang and finally my husband's voice was on the other end. As he answered, I began babbling almost hysterically. "Honey, Help! There's lights, sounds I've never heard. They've landed behind the barn." My husband says I just kept repeating this phrase over and over..

You can imagine my husband's response. He sums up his thoughts at the time with this statement. " I thought she had lost her mind and wondered if this was yet another side effect of pregnancy."

I continued to cry.."You've got to come home. I've got the gun out, but ..the lights are everywhere! You see by this point, I had decided but couldn't bring myself to say it, that aliens had indeed landed in our barn yard.

I know, what leap of speculation that took. But hey, I was six months pregnant, alone in a dark and scary place (that just moments ago had been safe and comforting) and I had been watching an alien abduction movie. And then suddenly the lights and sounds of something unknown had attacked. As a War of the Worlds fan, it didn't take long for me to decide that aliens had finally arrived on Planet Earth on this scary Halloween eve night!

My husband, getting no sensical answers from me turned to his supervisor and related the story. His boss, a wise and gentle man, said, "Sounds like the little lady needs you, Dan. Go home." Dan left and began the 30 minutes drive down a major state highway to our home at the time in southern Indiana.

As he was in a hurry to rescue his pregnant wife and future son, he was driving a bit over the speed limit, when flashing lights came up behind him....and then rushed on pass him. It happened several times in the next 30 minutes..and suddenly his heart started pounding a bit too. Something was afoot.

As he neared the road to our house, he could see the big beams of light streaming up from the ground and all around police cars and emergency vehicles. What was going on? He didn't stop but picked up speed even more and headed down our road. He pulled in the driveway and I saw him running up the sidewalk to our back door, alarm on his face. I opened the door and collapsed sobbing in his arms, a complete hysterical mess.

After a brief moment of calming me down, he picked up the shotgun and told me to stay with Misty, our dog, who had stopped growling by now and was firmly planted by my side. He went out the backdoor toward the barn where now we could loud voices and lots of people talking. I watched from the back hall window, still afraid but somehow comforted by the arrival of my knight in shining armor.

What did he find behind the barn? Had aliens indeed landed in our own little barnyard, squashing Momma Pig and scaring away the chickens?

No..we didn't make the Enquirer News, instead he found two army troop helicopters that had been forced to make an emergency landing in the storm. We're talking huge here, with lots of lights and very loud engines that whirred and sounded like the world ending when they were on top of my house on the hill!

The news could have been, two army troop helicopters take off the top of old Victorian whorehouse turned historical home. That's a story for another day, the Victorian whorehouse one, that is.

The story did make the local newspaper the next day, but no mention of my feared alien abduction. It has since become known in the Malone family, as the day Mama met the aliens, because our oldest son has his own hypothesis. Something about wiping our memories clean and replacing them with the troop helicopter story. That could explain a lot about our oldest son, the one who I was pregnant with that Halloween Eve night.