It’s a Saturday afternoon, and I find myself looking for the perfect episode of Unsolved Mysteries to watch while I eat my leftover cake. But wait, an episode titled “Something in the Sky” has a description that reads, “Over 300 residents of western Michigan report seeing unearthly lights on the night of March 8th, 1994. Decades later, the event remains unexplained.” Western Michigan?! How have I heard nothing about this until now?

   The episode of Unsolved Mysteries includes a story from Holland resident Holly Graves. Graves describes seeing lights that lit up her entire family room like a “spotlight.” The lights looked like a giant string of Christmas lights that were slowly spinning around in a circle. If this doesn’t scream alien spaceship, then I don’t know what does. A police officer came to the scene and he claimed he had never seen anything like it before. As quickly as the lights came, they left with great speed. This is terrifying, but even more terrifying that it happened just a couple miles away from my home. This episode of Unsolved Mysteries brought to mind a recent experience I had with the unexplained.

   A couple of weeks back while driving home from musical rehearsal, I saw something strange in the sky above Riley Street by Harbor Lights Middle School. It was staying in one place and had four strange red and green blinking lights on it. I do not think it was a plane because when my friend tried to take a picture of it, her phone camera would not work. I was trying to drive slow so my friend could get a picture, but her phone camera never loaded in time. Even after we drove away we could still see the strange UFO in the rearview mirror. I’m not one to usually believe in aliens, but after this happened, my opinions are starting to change. 

   Jr. Tyler Berens had a similar experience, with one important difference. The UFO moved. “I was in the hot tub with some friends when I saw a somewhat bright red light that flashed across the sky and curved downwards. There was no noise, and it moved way too fast and was far away,” Berens said. Surely, no plane would do that. Could it have been a drone? Possibly, but are the lights on drones that bright? 

   Instructor Ken Strobel shares his UFO story from 1999 when he was driving with his sons in the car. “We saw a light in the sky and all three wondered what we were seeing; it was different, it wasn’t anything I’ve ever seen before. We wounded up pulling into Our Lady of the Lake’s parking lot and got out; the light was still there. I don’t know, it was not high, it was fairly low. Then, it moved off and we didn’t hear it. If it was a helicopter, it seems almost surely we would hear it. In the end I assume it was a helicopter. It was hovering so it couldn’t have been an airplane and drones weren’t even around, it was a big light,” Strobel said. There seems to be no way that was just a helicopter; Helicopters are normally extremely loud. Also, you’d especially be able to hear the helicopter if it was that low.

   Jr. Grace Cronkright shares a story from her uncle with a crazy UFO experience. Cronkright’s uncle was on a camping retreat a little outside of LA with his friends who were all packed into a van. They saw a white looking disk in the distance and at the same time the radio in the car turned to static.    

   “When the van stopped, the static was more consistent and they all stood there looking at this white orb of light inching closer and closer in the sky above, it got closer and closer to the ground. The light became more vibrant, until it was directly above their van. The static stopped and it was pure silence. All they could see around them was white light. The white light was cast down and reflecting off of everything it touched it seemed,” Cronkright said.

   There seems to be a bright light theme to many of these UFO stories. Could the light be some kind of warning sign? “The disk above them had blue hues of color surrounding the white, from what could actually be seen of it and it had this eerie repetitive bass noise coming from it. It may have only been two minutes but it felt like hours went by; my uncle just closed his eyes and put his arms over his head, the static came back on the radio and this unknown language could be heard in bits and pieces through the static, it sounded like a woman speaking,” Cronkright said. This story is truly terrifying. Bright light, a loud bass noise, and a woman speaking? After hearing this, I’m almost fully convinced aliens are real. 

   We all know UFO’s from the movies and TV shows that scarily portray them. But, more people need to start giving more attention to UFO’s, we never know what could become of them. The mystery still lays behind them, where are these UFOs coming from and what are they trying to tell us?