Message posted by chris s. on June 09, 2005 at 22:25:38 PST:
I am sorry if this post is somewhat lengthy but I am trying to figure out what I saw out there that night.
I had planned to attend the UFO conference in Rachel but my daughter ended up flying to Las Vegas for two days so I got to Rachel at the tail end of the last meeting. I had hoped to find other people who might be going camping near Area 51 and was very disappointed to hear that a group had spent two nights there. I bought one of the 35 cent maps and got some further information from one of that group, probably the pony-tailed guy mentioned in some of the posts, and headed to Freedom Ridge by myself.
I drove up to the end of the road, to the boundary signs and saw the truck sitting on the hill to the right. I turned around and parked up near the campground and shortly also saw another truck drive up, then disappear and appear again a short time later on the hill to the left (I assumed that was the Freedom Ridge?) Two men were standing next to the truck and one in a sand-colored uniform was gesturing down towards the campground. I got good closeup pictures with my Magpix binocular-camera (but made a mistake later in Las Vegas; fearing that the batteries were going to die I quickly removed them and put in fresh ones as I thought the directions indicated but that actually erased everything on the camera, I won't make that mistake again!)
With all that active surveillance activity I was a little bit relieved that there were other people camped in a trailer - the next morning I found out it was a lady who had camped out with the rest of the group the previous 2 nights and was the only one to stay over. If I was going to disappear or something at least I would not be alone.
I fell asleep with my ipod on and woke up somewhere around midnight or later. The ferocious wind was still trying to tear my tent apart (the lady said that had happened to her and that's why she came back in a trailer this time). I decided to look outside and see if there was any activity in the sky; unlikely given that it was sunday night / memorial day morning. I went to open the flap when I noticed that there was a light shining on the roof of my tent, covering the whole side facing towards the boundary. I had not REALLY believed the stories of beams of light from UFO's but this was a little freaky. At first I thought it must be somebody shining a flashlight from the road but the beam was not that concentrated.
I opened the door and was looking into a bright light source which did come from the direction of where the road descends down towards the boundary. With just one bright light I did not have any depth perception so I could not tell how far it was but after about a minute the light dimmed, in the space about 2 seconds or so, to where it was just a faint circle and that gave me enough depth perception to see that it had to be much farther than than the road. As soon as it had dimmed it shifted, or another light came on, and now pointed at the trailer. There was no searching and no wavering so it did not look like somebody holding a flashlight, and coming from that far it had to be something much more powerful. The light was diffused enough that it basically illuminated all the end of the trailer that was facing that way. The source had to be at about our ground level because I could see it illuminating a swath of ground maybe 6 feet wide, not very brightly but enough to see details like plant life on the ground. At no point did the light settle on my car which was sitting approximately halfway between the two of us. And during all this time the light remained completely still so it had to be on a fixed setting somewhere.
After about the same period of time, maybe 45 to 60 seconds, that beam died and one focused on my tent again. And this went on for 10 or 15 minutes, back and forth, and then no more light. The next time I looked out the very pale moon had come up so all this had taken place sometime before moonrise. I also believe that the lights took place when the wind was still blowing because I remember looking around and holding on to my hat so it had to be before 3 am. When I spoke to the lady in the morning she said that she had not seen anything but had looked out at 3am and at that time the wind had stopped. (She asked if I had seen or heard anything because she had kind of sensed that something had happened and that's why she looked out. The spooky thing is that at one point later I was looking out again and thought that I saw a quick reddish glow from the other side of my car, as if someone had looked into my vehicle. That was my first impression but I have no way of proving it and it could have easily been just my eyes playing a trick on me in the faint star light.)
While the light had been fixed on my location I noted that it came from a spot about 10 inches to the left and a foot or two above ground level of a particular Joshua tree about 50 feet from my tent and in the morning I attempted to triangulate the direction of the beam to my tent and the trailer and it was clear that it could not have come from the road or anywhere on the camp ground plateau. Instead I fixed the place about halfway up the opposite hill somewhere behind the boundary signs. I was going to take accurate angles and measure the distance between the tent and the trailer and calculate the distance to the light source but I think that I was still just a little spooked by the light and the ongoing surveillance in the morning that I let it go, but I imagine it could be in the neighborhood of 700-1000 feet. The baffling thing is that we could not detect any roads in that hillside and none of the small white surveillance towers were located in that area.
What was that light and why? To intimidate or let us know they were there? They couldn't have known that someone would look out in that 15 minute period. Or to see what we were doing? Same problem, plus they must have pretty good night vision equipment. Was it just to provide us a reassuring night light so we wouldn't be afraid in the dark? If so, thanks guys (I imagine you monitor sites like this!)
I would love to know what it was, this is going to drive me crazy! And be assured that there was no drugs or alcohol involved so this was all for real!
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