Kiss My Close Encounter!

Just wanted to mention that my new case -- only my fourth -- is a genuine Close Encounter of the First Kind. And as we all know, First is Best.

A CE1K involves the sighting of an Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) within 500 feet. That's the key: the 500 feet part. If you see a UFO that's 500'1" away from you, you might as well not even report it.

The thing about being within 500 feet of a UFO is... it's scarier than shit. You can hit the thing with a bb gun! Of course, nobody in his right mind would shoot a bb gun at a UFO, because you could start an interstellar war and get disintegrated in the bargain. The only good thing about that is that once you're disintegrated no one will ever know that you started the interstellar war, which would be a hard thing to have to explain.

The other scary thing about being within 500 feet of a UFO, as I learned this morning when interviewing the first witness on the phone, is that you start to worry that the creatures on board the UFO will teleport you into their craft and away from your family.

Being teleported onto a UFO looks fun in the movies, but in reality it's anything but fun.

Because why else would aliens be hovering 20 feet over your back yard, unless they wanted to harvest you? The mere fact that I just had a serious conversation with a person who told me, very matter-of-factly, that she was scared to death that either she or her daughter was about to be teleported onto a UFO and that they would never see each other again is pretty mind-bending... We're getting out into the extreme edges of human experience her. And I want more.

Here's what I also want: I want to know if any other greenhorn tenderfoot Certified UFO Field Investigator like me has ever been handed a flipping Close Encounter on only his fourth flipping time out! I rather doubt it.