UFO Counselor

I did not sign up to be a Certified UFO Field Investigator to counsel troubled teens, and yet... When I got home from my Thanksgiving travels I found my inbox filled with UFO correspondence, all of which I will be writing about in the coming days, but one letter in particular jumped out at me. It was from Sxxxxxx, the 16 year-old girl who's UFO sighting I had investigated last month, and it started out with a bang:

"Hey Mark,

This is Sxxxxxx again (she really said that). I think I spotted another UFO yesterday..I know what I saw. I just dismissed it as I feel crazy now for seeing more things like this. My dad and stepmom already make jokes about the previous UFO incident to me since it happened. Everytime I mention the word UFO my dad just shakes his head and laughs."

Oh man, what are you doing, dad? This is your daughter! When the dad called me last month to offer more information for my investigation, he seemed to be taking the whole thing seriously, and now he just shakes his head and laughs??? This is the kind of shit we're up against every day folks. The people who you know will ridicule UFO witnesses are bad enough, but dads who say they take their daughters' UFO sightings seriously and then shake their heads and laugh whenever their daughters mention UFOs are a blight upon the earth.

Sxxxxxx (right) and her mom showing me the site of their first UFO encounter. The object they spotted and then tracked  first appeared in the wooded area to the right. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to publish official photographs of an investigation in progress, but neither do I want to be accused of a coverup.

And apparently stepmoms are just as bad, because this latest sighting took place while Sxxxxxx was riding in the car with her stepmom, and she didn't dare point out the strange lights in the sky to said stepmom because she knew it would be a lost cause.

So instead she wrote to me, her friendly neighborhood Certified UFO Field Investigator.

After describing the sighting to me in detail, and sending me a link to a YouTube video that looks like the object she saw, she ended with this plaintive message: "Please tell me..Why do I feel like I am seeing them more now? Do they 'know'? Are they following me? Do they know I believe?"

Wow. Nothing in my Certified UFO Field Investigator prepared me for this. Ask me where babies come from, I can describe the miracle of life without blinking an eye. Ask me if UFOs are following you, I'm clueless.

But I couldn't let the girl down. She has no one else to talk to! So I sat down and wrote her this:

"I'm not surprised that you saw another strange object in the sky, and I think it means something that you found a video of something else just like it. Now that you're aware of what's up there, you're looking at the sky more and you're noticing when something doesn't fit in. I'm not willing to go so far as to say that you're being watched or followed, but I do think that in a way you're watching and following them, whatever they are. I told you that I see a lot of case reports come in from your area, so if there really is a UFO hotspot in that area and you're keeping your eyes open, it stands to reason that you'll see them again. I don't want you to feel disappointed by that, but I also don't want you to feel that you have something to be afraid of, because you don't! Just consider yourself lucky that you get to witness these strange things that keep appearing when you're around"

Did I send her the right message? Not sure, but I know what I wrote to her was a lot better than shaking my head and laughing.