Creed, Colorado is one of my favorite places to visit. Quaint and ruggedly beautiful. The other day I was there sipping a cuppa Earl Grey at the coffee shop/bakery in town, and the owner lady struck up a conversation with me. I told her I was a writer. She said, “I bet you write romance.”
I said, “Actually, I write science fiction with a little romance.”
She said, “You? You don’t look like a science fiction writer.”
Now, I’m not sure what creates a science-fiction-writer look, and I’m hoping they bottle the stuff, but I thought with new readers, I might need to explain once again why science fiction is my main love.
A Back Story and One Reason
Few people would put my husband and me together as a couple. Just ask our high school classmates. (Hey, Cleburne High Exes, you out there?) Yes, we went to high school together, but were not high school sweethearts. We didn’t hang with the same group of friends. Him—a member of the astute In Crowd. Me—not even on the radar.
After high school we married other people, got divorces, and met up again fifteen years after graduation as teachers in the same school. We married three months later. Some thirty plus years have skated by and we still say we are madly in love. (Madly being the discerning adverb here.)
Opposites attract? Sure, maybe.
He was an offensive line and strength football coach. I hate football. His favorite show on TV is The Voice. Mine are The 100 and Vampire Diaries (of course Ian Somerhalder may have something to do with that) or any other series having to do with science fiction, aliens, ghosts, vampires, werewolves…
Him—Captain America. Conservative. By the book. Break no rules type of guy. Me—conspiracy theorist, alien hunter, ghost hunter, free-thinker type of girl. Peace out, man.
So imagine my surprise when Captain America came home one evening after a trip to Durango and announced he’d seen a UFO.
A Rare Day
On that rare day back in October of 2014, Raquel Villanueva, KUSA reported:
Multiple people have called in to report the objects floating in the sky. The Summit County Sheriff’s Office is also investigating. 9 NEWS reporter Matt Renoux said he doesn’t believe the objects were drones or weather balloons, because the objects appeared stationary for as long as 15 minutes at times.”They would just sit there… without moving an inch on our viewscreen in the camera,” he said during a 5 p.m. live report. After about 15 minutes, a flash of light would appear and the “objects would take off across the mountain ridge,” Renoux said.
A Utah television station reported a similar incident happening in the Salt Lake City area. Here is the link to the National UFO Reporting Center confirming the sighting.
If you are only interested in UFO sightings, stop here. But if you are interested in why I write science fiction. Keep reading.
Why iSciFi
I lecture every fall and spring semester at Texas Tech University. Dr. Crews’ assignment to his students is to ask me at least three questions. One question I am sure to be asked: Why do you write science fiction?
Cattle Mutilations.
One of my scariest science fiction freak-outs came when I was in junior high. We raised registered Angus cattle. My parents found my Grand Champion heifer, Babe, mutilated. I had put Babe in a completely fenced-in pasture the night before, because she was due to calf. The next morning we found her surgically sliced opened and organs placed neatly to the side in the same pattern in which they would have been removed. But there was no womb, no placenta, no calf and no blood. My parents called the vet and the sheriff.
I remember watching the vet’s in-the-field autopsy. I remember his whispers to my parents. “The incision is precise. Better than a scalpel. Like a laser or something.” He scratched his head. “Some kind of damn devil worshippers or something. Or maybe…” He threw down the butt of his cigarette and smothered it with the toe of his cowboy boot. “That was a damn fine heifer your girl won with. Maybe someone wanted that calf so bad they killed the mother to get it. Damndest thing.” He shook his head as if not convinced even though those were his own words he’d just uttered. “But they’d have to had some kind of medical training. Damndest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Which got me thinking. I later went back out to the pasture to investigate. There was no ground disturbance. No human tracks. Just scratches in the dry dirt like the claws of a giant predatory bird. And there was a large, disc-shaped indentation in the dry Johnson grass ten-feet away.
The sheriff’s report noted devil worshippers as his prime suspects. We lived in a small, rural town near Fort Worth and trust me when I say in the twenty plus years I lived there, I never once heard of any devil worshippers living in Godley, Texas.
Later
For the weeks that followed, I explored the pasture. It was small, so I was able to walk the fence line pulling in closer to the center with each completion of the square. I gave up after a while. I found nothing, until six months later, early on a Saturday morning, I heard a calf bellowing for its mother.
So the calf, how did it get there? And from where did it come?
It was well past calving season and all our other heifers had successfully given birth to healthy offspring. Our closest neighbors, who lived miles from us, swore they weren’t missing a calf.
I raised it on a bottle, named it ET, and won Grand Champion two years in a row at the county fair.
Which leads me to think—some of Them come in peace. But maybe not all.
Science Fiction. Aliens. Star Travelers. UFOs. Yes, I believe and I search for answers, though I am never sure I’m asking the right questions.
That is why I write Science Fiction. So freaks, why do like Science Fiction? And I mean “freaks” in the most complimentary of ways—from one freak to another.
The Probe’s Mission Statement
The Probe is a blog devoted to the exploration of the unexplainable, to finding the truth in occurrences that resemble science fiction, and to researching and reporting on topics that could be flung upon the wall of weird. New posts are featured every week.
Over a year ago I paid a company a lot of money to convert my blog over to WordPress. They did a terrible job as far as formatting. So over the next couple months I will bring forward old posts that are still relevant, update, reformat, and repost them.
(I now use Tech Surgeons for my blog and Jay is awesome. If you have any computer stuff that you need help with, contact Jay. If you want the name of the robber dogs who did a bad job and charged me a bunch, email me, and I’ll disclose that information to you privately.)
I live in an isolated, rural community in southern Colorado—conservative and rather closed minded. Though I love the area, it’s not a great fit for someone who believes in space travelers and thinks she is host to a Walk-In. The few friends I have are not fans of science fiction. They prefer romance books or reality TV. I would enjoy talking to other science fiction lovers or ghost hunters.
Join me here for more close encounters of the alien kind and please share your own. Science Fiction or Fact? Doesn’t matter to me. I just like a story that gives me the chills.
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4 replies on “I’m Not Saying It Was Aliens…”
Love this story. XO
Very interesting!!! Hopefully I’ll be better in following your stories!!!
I have read many of your posts. I guess I missed this one. It is awesome. Since I believe in UFO’s anyway, to my mind, your experience proves that they exist.
You just put a big smile on my face for the day. Thank you, Ike. Yes, my past experiences have definitely led me down the path I now travel. My first hand encounters with the unexplainable—UFOs and the paranormal—make it easy for me to be a believer. From one believer to another: we’re both just searching for answers. Best of luck on your journey.