The Road to Strange: UFOs, Aliens and High Strangeness

This book is an edited compilation of reports, mostly first-hand and mainly from the USA, pertaining to UFOs, encounters with alien entities, and suchlike. Each account is followed by commentary from Rosemary Ellen Guiley, who’s been writing about strange phenomena for years and is well-acquainted with the field.On p. xviii, Guiley explains that nearly all of the accounts bear the name of the respective narrator, but that in several instances the person concerned had requested anonymity or a pseudonym. Unfortunately, though, we’re not told which of the names are pseudonymous.In the main, the stories are quite short, and they tend to give relatively little information about the witnesses. For example, the first account, by someone referred to as Anita Sowles, describes an occasion when she and members of her family saw UFOs in Los Molinos, California, in 1966. It seems that she was relatively young then, but she doesn’t specify her actual age at the time, or the month of the event.At points, the text is illustrated with drawings, but there’s only one photograph (on p. 131). There’s no index or bibliography, although some websites are mentioned in the acknowledgements section at the beginning of the book.On pp. 177-181, a woman referred to as Jaquelin Smith claims that she’s an alien-human hybrid. She states that she’s from an ‘etheric collective’ and that eggs taken from her have created some 40 hybrid children, who are living on spacecraft and elsewhere. But in the absence of hard evidence, sceptics will no doubt dismiss such claims as fantasy or delusion. In her commentary, Rosemary Guiley notes that although some people claim to carry ‘star DNA’, testing hasn’t been conducted to establish that (p. 183).Wiltshire, England, features in some reports in the book, contributed by crop circle researcher Ron Russell. I’ll outline two of them, starting with a strange experience that he had there in August 1994 (pp. 195-200). Flying over the Avebury area in a small plane, he and the pilot spotted a crop formation that hadn’t been there the day before. Around 11 p.m., Russell and an American friend, John, entered the crop formation on foot. After taking some photographs, Russell decided to return to their car to get some more film. But he seemed to get lost. After what felt like 30 minutes or so, he saw small bonfires, heard voices, and could smell meat cooking; and he saw a cluster of small, primitive thatched cottages. He heard the voices of children and the sound of dogs, and the air was ‘thick’. He inferred that he was witnessing a scene from centuries earlier. He decided to go back for John. After what felt like maybe another 25-30 minutes (he wasn’t wearing a watch), he got back to the crop formation and apologized for having been away so long. However, John said that they’d been there only 10 minutes! They set off for the ‘village’, using the same path that Russell had taken before. But within about three minutes, they were back at their car. They returned to the field at 6.30 a.m. the next day, but there was no sign of the mysterious village. (Unfortunately, Russell doesn’t indicate whether John had been wearing a watch the night before, or whether they’d been able to determine, in some other way, how much time had really passed.)Russell’s experience at Avebury might be described as a ‘time-slip’. Arguably, though, it’s unlikely that he literally went back to a previous century. It’s more probable, in my view, that he experienced a hallucination and a degree of memory distortion, orchestrated by some sort of intelligence. At any rate, as Rosemary Guiley notes (p. 201), there are other accounts of people experiencing anomalous phenomena in relation to crop formations.Russell (pp. 200-201) recounts a strange incident that supposedly occurred at a stone circle at Avebury. It allegedly involved a friend of his, who was one of a group of about 20. A female member of the group stood in the centre of the circle while the others, holding hands, moved counter-clockwise around the outside of it, chanting and so forth, with the intention of blessing and healing her. But she suddenly vanished. After 30 minutes, someone suggested that they repeat the ritual, but rotate in the opposite direction. When they did that, the missing person instantaneously reappeared in the middle of the circle! During the time she was missing, she’d reportedly found herself trapped in a transparent cylinder. She’d hammered on it and screamed at her companions, whom she could see, although they couldn’t see her. However, I don’t know how much credence to give this dramatic tale. The details are sketchy – Russell doesn’t name his friend or any of the other participants, and he gives no date for the incident. The story reminds me of a tale – probably apocryphal – about a group of hippies who supposedly disappeared in strange circumstances at Stonehenge in August 1971.Ron Russell (p. 199) states that he’s heard a rumour about the British military fencing off areas around ‘sacred sites’ where people are alleged to have vanished and never returned. However, without further details, it would perhaps be naïve to take this seriously.On pp. 59-60, Rosemary Guiley refers to the so-called Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, in the USA. She mentions ‘Hunt for the Skinwalker’, a book about the case by Colm Kelleher and George Knapp. She states that the ranch has seen more than 50 years of phenomena, including UFOs, mutilated cattle, ‘super-wolves’ that are immune to bullets, poltergeist activity, strange creatures, flying orbs and odd magnetic activity. However, although Kelleher and Knapp’s book portrays the ranch as having been a long-running hot spot, it doesn’t specifically claim that all of these phenomena go back over five decades. Furthermore, the authors’ account of the history of the ranch has been questioned (see, for example, Chapter 8 of the 2010 edition of ‘The Utah UFO Display’, a book by the late Frank Salisbury).

Good factual information the stories given are many that I have never heard of before they certainly live up to the title of the book.

For a Part 2 after the preceding, similarly titled first work, this is definitely the better half.Most of the contributing articles were easily read, and very few left me with questions regarding the report given. Many of the contributors also happened to be “credentialed” in some way, or had some other relation to the field to keep it grounded in reason.Overall, the work touches on a number of fascinating oddities with quite a number of sinister episodes added for bedtime worries. Whether you’re interested in the Mantis-class of beings, or portals nearly trapping one in the 15th century, or missing time and even hybrids, you’ll be well served here. For the queasy types, you will face the poking and prodding of the most horrific kind; and if you happen to live alone in a cabin in the woods, as one contributor did, you may regret what you are about to read.For whatever is out there, this book is a good one to take it all in.

If you are brand new to this topic, this book would be a good introductory fit. I bought this book because the title (UFO, alien, high strangeness) and have been reading in this broad area for a number of years now, I was very disappointed in this book, because the stories are really only about people that had visual sightings of UFO craft. Boring. I accepted that fact years ago.

A good reference book of experiences and events that makes the possibility of UFO vists from another time or space being realistic. I kept thinking I should move back to the country where i might perchance see one of those unidentifiable flying objects or have an encounter myself. I put 4 stars instead of 5 because it does not have a continuation story like a novel, where you don't want to put it down unless you are doing research.