Wondrous
25 True UFO Encounters
Preston Dennett
Contents
Introduction…4
Chapter One: “It Walked Upright”…7
Chapter Two: Aliens Took Our Baby…15
Chapter Three: They Looked Like Insects…24
Chapter Four: Symbols on the Skin…30
Chapter Five: Visited by Humanoids…38
Chapter Six: Healed by Aliens…47
Chapter Seven: My Blue Guys…55
Chapter Eight: The Cat People…62
Chapter Nine: Only My Wife Knows…71
Chapter Ten: “We Are on a Mission”…73
Chapter Eleven: The Friendly Flying Saucer….76
Chapter Twelve: An Alien Craft…80
Chapter Thirteen: Abducted by Aliens, Almost…82
Chapter Fourteen: A Near Landing…86
Chapter Fifteen: A UFO Landing…88
Chapter Sixteen: A Curious USO…91
Chapter Seventeen: The Whistleblower…97
Chapter Eighteen: Government Insider…99
Chapter Nineteen: Malmstrom: A Witness Speaks…106
Chapter Twenty: The Giant Grasshopper Dream…114
Chapter Twenty-One: Don’t Look Up!...117
Chapter Twenty-Two: “Nothing Can Stop Us”…122
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Ancient Ones…128
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Alien Implant…140
Chapter Twenty-Five: A Conversation with Sen…156
Conclusions…183
About the Author…204
Books by Preston Dennett…205
Introduction
I have investigated UFOs for thirty-five years. This is the twentieth book I’ve written about UFOs. In my many years in this field, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people about their encounters. Some people see simple unexplained lights, while others experience profound and extensive contact. Each case provides more answers to the many questions surrounding UFOs.
Many of the UFO books being published today are re-tellings of already known cases. The cases in this book, however, are all new, true, never-before-published accounts of people who have been contacted by UFOs. Like my previous books, Inside UFOs and Onboard UFO Encounters, (both Amazon UFO bestsellers) Wondrous: 25 True UFO Encounters presents exclusively original and unpublished cases from my own investigations.
This is not just another book about UFO abductions. Instead, a wide variety of cases are presented: onboard encounters, face-to-face meetings, missing-time events, UFO landings, bedroom visitations, healings, close-up sighting cases with telepathic communication, a unique USO account, and even a few firsthand UFO whistleblower accounts revealing secrets the government doesn’t want you to know. This book provides a broad spectrum of the various types of UFO contact.
I think people will be surprised at how unusual many of these cases are, and how bizarre the UFO phenomenon can be. High-strangeness is a consistent feature of UFO encounters, and the cases in this book don’t disappoint. Some are short, some are long, but all of them offer, I think, profound insights into the nature of this phenomenon. Some provide startling confirmation of known information, while others reveal unique elements I’ve never seen before.
There are, of course, a wide variety of extraterrestrials being seen, including grays, praying mantis, human-looking ETs, and other strange humanoids, some very strange.
UFOs display no prejudice and have contacted all kinds of people from all walks of life. The twenty-five cases in this book are evenly divided between men and women, young and old, from across the United States. The only truly normal thing about this book are the witnesses themselves: a teacher, a writer, a dental assistant, a therapist, a nurse, a few office workers, a few students, an artist, a bus-driver, a homoeopathic healer, a businessman, a jewelry maker, a full-time mother…the list goes on.
The stories in this book are completely true. All conversations, events, and other details are taken directly from firsthand interviews with the witnesses. Much of the book is told in the witnesses’ own words. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. Other witnesses have courageously allowed their real names to be used.
UFO experiences are powerful events, and can best be understood in the context of the witnesses’ own lives. They are not isolated experiences. As important as the encounter itself are the events before and afterward, and of course, how the witness was affected, how they felt about the encounter and what it means to them.
It's difficult to overstate the profound impact a UFO encounter can have on a person’s life. Many describe it as a superlative experience, challenging them physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. For some witnesses, it becomes something they think about every day of their lives. Transformative, deeply memorable, powerful, life-changing, awe-inspiring…these are the words people use when describing their encounters. Without exception, witnesses say that their encounters gave them a sense of wonder which left them forever changed.
This alone can be transformative. But then UFO witnesses not only have to deal with the encounter and its powerful after-effects, but with a world that still remains largely skeptical and unaccepting of the phenomenon. If someone kidnaps you from your home, you can call the police or FBI and they will investigate. But the moment you tell them it was aliens, and that they took you inside a UFO -- sorry, you’re on your own!
While there are UFO organizations, support groups, a network of researchers, and lots of information in all forms of media, there has been a glaring lack of official recognition that UFOs are real, no open investigations, really nothing at all. Recent Pentagon and military disclosures show a promising beginning to perhaps a new government policy, but by all accounts, the government cover-up of UFOs is still firmly in place. Until we see the alien craft and the bodies, until the subject is taught in schools, there will be a good portion of the population who remain skeptical.
Despite this, belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials continues to grow. The subject remains popular with movies, TV, radio, videogames, and the internet. Statistics from UFO reporting centers like MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) and NUFORC (National UFO reporting Center) show a steady escalation of reported cases.
Society appears to be trending toward open official disclosure and the end of the UFO cover-up. It certainly can’t last forever. Similarly, the escalation of UFO activity and our growing acceptance of it is a reminder that open official contact with extraterrestrials remains a very real possibility. According to some whistleblower accounts, this has already happened within military settings.
The time has come to accept the validity of the UFO phenomenon, to face it directly, and to learn all we can about these visitors to our planet.
That has been the main impetus for writing this book. Millions of people have experienced UFO contact. The truth can no longer be denied. UFOs are real. Extraterrestrials are here. We are not alone. We have never been alone. And as the stories in this book show, the future of humanity will be filled with many wondrous changes.
Chapter One
“It Walked Upright”
At 4:30 a.m., in mid-November 2006, Eleanor (pseudonym) was ready for her morning run. She lived in a rural area of O’Fallon, Illinois, in a small neighborhood subdivision intermingled with cornfields and swaths of forest. It was a pretty location, with lots of greenery. About ten miles to the southeast was Scott Air Force Base. Eleanor was a school teacher and daycare worker, in her mid-thirties, with five children. To keep fit, she often took early morning jogs along with her dog. It was a routine she had come to enjoy.
On this particular morning, events began as normal. She and her dog left her home, jogged down a few streets, turned onto Illini Drive and headed north. She was passing Fulton Junior High on her left. On her right side was a cornfield that had been recently plowed over. Illini Drive ended just ahead of her at a T-intersection onto Kyle Road. Eleanor was about 200 feet from the T-intersection, which was illuminated by street lights on either side.
“Suddenly,” says Eleanor, “my dog became alert. She slowed her pace, lifted her head and ears and locked her sight onto something ahead. I casually looked up expecting to see an animal. It was normal to come across deer, coyote, foxes or occasionally other pedestrians.
“In the road ahead, was something I couldn’t make sense of. I slowly came to a stop as I tried to figure out what I was looking at. It was walking adjacent to the streetlight. It was almost as tall as the streetlight and moving to the right. It was very dark gray and walked upright. My first thought was that someone was in costume doing some kind of acrobatics on stilts, with extenders on their arms. As I watched, I could tell that it moved with ease and intention and that no one could make stilts bend at the knees and elbows.
“It was long, thin and had what looked like points for hands. I was thinking grasshopper at first, because of the jointed legs and the tips of the appendages, and it appeared to have a kind of exo-skeleton. The creature was very dark gray, not quite black, and it seemed to be all one color. I decided later that it was more praying mantis-like. Its incredibly long legs were taking massive strides as its arms were held up forward and bent at the elbows with the forearms and ‘hands’ moving up and down in a pumping motion. The profile of the head seemed almost rectangular, but wider at the top and narrowing where it connected to the body. And its gaze swept from side to side almost like it was looking for something on the ground.
“Each stride was approximately six or seven feet. It covered a lot of ground in only a few steps. It seemed unhurried and focused. It did not seem to be worried about being spotted.
“I did not see any clothing. It looked exactly like an upright walking praying mantis, with more insect-quality to it than human. So, I stopped where I was and watched what I was seeing. It was just walking down the road, and I realized it was a real and solid creature, living. As it walked, its legs lifted up and would reach and stretch in very long strides. It was long, dark, and skinny, and as it was striding, its arms were moving in a pumping motion above its head.”
Eleanor had never seen a UFO, and aliens were the farthest thing from her mind. Now, seeing this figure, she struggled to orient herself. “My mind was whirling with trying to decide what to do. I really thought about turning back and racing for home, but for some reason, I was more compelled to get a closer look. It had not seemed to be aware of me, and was continuing its movement down the road, heading closer to the wooded and darkened section.
“I slowly started running forward and never took my eyes off the creature. My dog was very alert and also watching, but she did not pull on the leash or bark. By the time I got to the corner, it moved far enough into the darkness, and I could no longer see it. I knew better than to follow it into the darkness, and I turned leftonto my normal route. I kept my eyes wide open for the rest of my run, and every run after that. I’ve never seen it again.”
While the experience didn’t really scare her, Eleanor admits that it did leave her with a lot of questions. “I went back to that area later in the day during daylight,” she says. “I stood under the streetlight. I am 5’5’’, and the streetlight was at least three times my height, so I know that the being was close to fifteen feet tall. I have never given much thought to aliens until this time, and it still has taken me years to conclude that it was likely some kind of interdimensional being. I compulsively wonder why I saw this. Why would it let me see it? Was it a mistake? What am I supposed to do about it? Sometimes I wish I never saw it, but at the same time, I now have an awareness that there is something more.”
She told her husband and her five children, her sister and a few close friends, all of who believed and supported her.
She still went jogging the next morning, keeping a sharp eye out for anything unusual. Although she looked for it, Eleanor never saw the creature again.
Eleanor later learned that only a few weeks before she saw the praying mantis figure, there had been another dramatic encounter about 325 miles away, at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Could there be a connection? She wasn’t sure.
She was also surprised to see such a creature so close to Scott Air Force Base. “The proximity to the base is highly suspect,” she says. Could the sighting be connected to the military? Only six years earlier, police officers in the adjacent cities of Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt and Dupo tracked a UFO as it skirted the base. Officials at Scott denied any knowledge of the event.
As a result of her encounter, Eleanor began to research the UFO subject, and she was shocked to read about experiences that sounded strikingly familiar to some weird events which had happened in her childhood.
Starting when she was about four years old, Eleanor would wake up in the middle of the night to see “black, hooded, cloaked figures” standing in the hallway outside her room. The first few times it happened, she screamed for her parents.
On each occasion, her parents rushed into her room and tried to comfort her. They did not see any strange creatures and told her that she must have had a nightmare. Still, it kept happening, and finally Eleanor’s father forbade her from waking them up anymore.
Eleanor never remembered the figures entering into her room. However, around that time she had a bizarre experience which she always thought was just a nightmare.
“In the nightmare,” Eleanor says, “I awoke on a metal bed with a sheet pulled over my face. I could hear what I thought were doctors discussing a very serious medical procedure. I could see shadowy figures moving around through the sheet, but I could not move. I felt nervous, but was wondering who was getting an operation and what might be going on. As I lay there, someone began to lift the sheet off of me…there were doctors standing around my body with trays of metallic surgical tools. The doctors seemed to be wearing something like surgical gowns. I could not see their faces. I was fully engulfed in the deepest terror knowing that they were going to fix me. I don’t know what happened next. I woke up and it was morning.”
The “nightmare” was incredibly vivid, and apparently as a result, Eleanor developed a crippling phobia of the sound of rushing water, something her mother found extremely irritating when trying to give Eleanor a bath.
Eleanor also developed a sudden fear of being alone. Thankfully, both phobias eventually faded away. The strange hooded figures stopped coming, and Eleanor had no further nightmares.
However, there were some other strange experiences. In 1986, she was a senior at a high school in Elk Grove, California. One morning, she was going to attend a school field trip. A friend was driving, Eleanor was in the front passenger seat and a young pre-school-age child sat in the back.
Eleanor was gazing out the passenger window when she heard the child sitting behind her gasp. At that moment a car was pulling up next to them. Eleanor looked at the driver of the car, and also gasped. The driver did not appear to be human.
“I was pretty shocked to see the profile of an elongated oval-shaped head,” Eleanor says. “It was smooth, with minimal profile features. The color was extremely pale and had a corpse-like look to it. There were just a few spriggles of hair coming from its head. As suddenly as I could take this in, his head slowly turned and made eye contact with me. The eyes were dark, sunken pools of black. I jerked my head away and said nothing.”
The strange encounter left her shaken, particularly because of the way the “man” turned to look at her. At the time she wondered if it might be some kind of demon.
Strange experiences like this continued to plague her throughout her life. In 2011, About five years after sighting the praying mantis on Kyle Road, Eleanor had another strange encounter in nearly the exact same area.
Again, she was taking a very early morning jog with her dog. Her other dog who had seen the ET with her had since died, and this was a different dog.
As she did each morning, she jogged north up Illini Drive, then turned left onto Kyle Road. The Fulton Junior High School was still on her left. On her right was a field that was being dug up to construct a massive water tower.
Again, it was her dog who first noticed something strange. “My dog became excited about something ahead as we passed this construction area,” Eleanor says. “Again, assuming it was a critter, or another person, I looked up. About twenty-five feet or so ahead, there was something ‘crawling’ from the field with the hole, and beginning to cross the road. It was not unusual for fog to accumulate in the field, so I was used to seeing mysterious-looking streams of fog streaming into the road. This was a concentrated ball of illuminated mist. It was distinctly round and compacted, and seemed to be illuminated somehow. It was about three feet tall and had tendrils of mist that looked like octopus legs rotating up and over from behind the ball, and moving itself forward in a rolling motion. My dog was excitedly pulling me forward, and even though it was insanely weird, I did not feel scared of it and hurried to get closer. As it moved up to the grassy area of the schoolyard, it began to slowly fade and had vanished by the time I had gotten close.”
The weird experiences continued. One year later, in the summer of 2012, Eleanor went outside to enjoy the fireflies dancing in the twilight. Instead, she saw something strange hovering over her neighbor’s deck. “I looked over to see a basketball-sized illuminated ball swirling with rainbow colors,” Eleanor says.
The object reminded her of an outdoor solar gazing ball, but there was something strange. “I could not spot anything holding it in place. It did not move up or down or side-to-side, and no light emanated out of it. I was pretty mesmerized trying to figure it out, and I moved around my yard to look from different angles.”
Convinced it was unusual, she called out to her daughter. “What do you see?” she asked.
“A colored ball,” her daughter replied.
Both of them were mystified and watched it for about twenty minutes. They wondered if it was some new type of light her neighbor had purchased. Finally, they went back inside. Eleanor decided to ask her neighbor the next time she saw her.
The next night, the glowing ball of light was gone. Eleanor never saw it again. A few days later, her neighbor called by coincidence, and Eleanor asked her about the strange orb of light. “After I described it,” Eleanor says, “she started to get a little freaked out, since she hadn’t been home that night, and in no possible way owned anything that resembled it. She went outside while we were on the phone and looked everywhere in her yard, and couldn’t find a thing.”
In 2014, Eleanor had another encounter with a strange entity, very much like what she saw almost thirty years earlier as a senior in high school. On this occasion, it was early morning and she was waiting for the local Sam’s Club store to open. Ahead of her in line, she was surprised to see a strange-looking woman. “Her head was oblong, pale and mottled with veins,” Eleanor says. “She had a few spriggles of hair. I wasn’t really thinking, but as she slowly turned around, she made eye contact with me, and she had dark pools of blackness for eyes. I jerked my head away, as I felt ashamed for inadvertently staring. The store doors opened, and I looked back just a moment after the eye contact, and she wasn’t there. It seemed that she had vanished.”
Eleanor was again left shaken. Was it a demonic spirit? Could it have been extraterrestrial? She isn’t sure. “I really don’t know what to think about it,” she says.
In 2015, Eleanor moved away from O’Fallon. Shortly before moving, they invited their neighbors, an elderly retired couple, over for dinner. The husband was a retired Air Force officer who had worked at nearby Scott Air Force Base.
Normally, Eleanor doesn’t talk publicly about her 2006 sighting of a fifteen-foot-tall praying mantis. To her own surprise, she found herself describing not only her praying mantis sighting, but also the fog-like creature.
The retired Air Force officer and his wife seemed to hesitate. “They sat in quiet silence, as I regretted my mistake,” Eleanor says. “When I finished, they were quiet. After a few moments, he told me he didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. Seemingly hesitant, he proceeded to tell me that he had worked with a guy at Scott that lived somewhere along Kyle Road who told him that weird things happen over on Kyle Road. I knew he didn’t mean weird stuff like cops and robbers sort of things, by the way he said it. I asked if he could tell me exactly what, and he said no.”
Today, Eleanor is happy with her “weird life” and accepts her unusual experiences with an attitude of curiosity.
Of all the experiences, it was the encounter with the praying mantis which affected her most. As she says, “It was a fifteen-foot-tall praying mantis man striding down the street early one morning while I was out for my run. It has definitely changed my life and my perception about what exists here and in other places.”
Wondrous
25 True UFO Encounters
Preston Dennett
Contents
Introduction…4
Chapter One: “It Walked Upright”…7
Chapter Two: Aliens Took Our Baby…15
Chapter Three: They Looked Like Insects…24
Chapter Four: Symbols on the Skin…30
Chapter Five: Visited by Humanoids…38
Chapter Six: Healed by Aliens…47
Chapter Seven: My Blue Guys…55
Chapter Eight: The Cat People…62
Chapter Nine: Only My Wife Knows…71
Chapter Ten: “We Are on a Mission”…73
Chapter Eleven: The Friendly Flying Saucer….76
Chapter Twelve: An Alien Craft…80
Chapter Thirteen: Abducted by Aliens, Almost…82
Chapter Fourteen: A Near Landing…86
Chapter Fifteen: A UFO Landing…88
Chapter Sixteen: A Curious USO…91
Chapter Seventeen: The Whistleblower…97
Chapter Eighteen: Government Insider…99
Chapter Nineteen: Malmstrom: A Witness Speaks…106
Chapter Twenty: The Giant Grasshopper Dream…114
Chapter Twenty-One: Don’t Look Up!...117
Chapter Twenty-Two: “Nothing Can Stop Us”…122
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Ancient Ones…128
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Alien Implant…140
Chapter Twenty-Five: A Conversation with Sen…156
Conclusions…183
About the Author…204
Books by Preston Dennett…205
Introduction
I have investigated UFOs for thirty-five years. This is the twentieth book I’ve written about UFOs. In my many years in this field, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people about their encounters. Some people see simple unexplained lights, while others experience profound and extensive contact. Each case provides more answers to the many questions surrounding UFOs.
Many of the UFO books being published today are re-tellings of already known cases. The cases in this book, however, are all new, true, never-before-published accounts of people who have been contacted by UFOs. Like my previous books, Inside UFOs and Onboard UFO Encounters, (both Amazon UFO bestsellers) Wondrous: 25 True UFO Encounters presents exclusively original and unpublished cases from my own investigations.
This is not just another book about UFO abductions. Instead, a wide variety of cases are presented: onboard encounters, face-to-face meetings, missing-time events, UFO landings, bedroom visitations, healings, close-up sighting cases with telepathic communication, a unique USO account, and even a few firsthand UFO whistleblower accounts revealing secrets the government doesn’t want you to know. This book provides a broad spectrum of the various types of UFO contact.
I think people will be surprised at how unusual many of these cases are, and how bizarre the UFO phenomenon can be. High-strangeness is a consistent feature of UFO encounters, and the cases in this book don’t disappoint. Some are short, some are long, but all of them offer, I think, profound insights into the nature of this phenomenon. Some provide startling confirmation of known information, while others reveal unique elements I’ve never seen before.
There are, of course, a wide variety of extraterrestrials being seen, including grays, praying mantis, human-looking ETs, and other strange humanoids, some very strange.
UFOs display no prejudice and have contacted all kinds of people from all walks of life. The twenty-five cases in this book are evenly divided between men and women, young and old, from across the United States. The only truly normal thing about this book are the witnesses themselves: a teacher, a writer, a dental assistant, a therapist, a nurse, a few office workers, a few students, an artist, a bus-driver, a homoeopathic healer, a businessman, a jewelry maker, a full-time mother…the list goes on.
The stories in this book are completely true. All conversations, events, and other details are taken directly from firsthand interviews with the witnesses. Much of the book is told in the witnesses’ own words. Some of the names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved. Other witnesses have courageously allowed their real names to be used.
UFO experiences are powerful events, and can best be understood in the context of the witnesses’ own lives. They are not isolated experiences. As important as the encounter itself are the events before and afterward, and of course, how the witness was affected, how they felt about the encounter and what it means to them.
It's difficult to overstate the profound impact a UFO encounter can have on a person’s life. Many describe it as a superlative experience, challenging them physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. For some witnesses, it becomes something they think about every day of their lives. Transformative, deeply memorable, powerful, life-changing, awe-inspiring…these are the words people use when describing their encounters. Without exception, witnesses say that their encounters gave them a sense of wonder which left them forever changed.
This alone can be transformative. But then UFO witnesses not only have to deal with the encounter and its powerful after-effects, but with a world that still remains largely skeptical and unaccepting of the phenomenon. If someone kidnaps you from your home, you can call the police or FBI and they will investigate. But the moment you tell them it was aliens, and that they took you inside a UFO -- sorry, you’re on your own!
While there are UFO organizations, support groups, a network of researchers, and lots of information in all forms of media, there has been a glaring lack of official recognition that UFOs are real, no open investigations, really nothing at all. Recent Pentagon and military disclosures show a promising beginning to perhaps a new government policy, but by all accounts, the government cover-up of UFOs is still firmly in place. Until we see the alien craft and the bodies, until the subject is taught in schools, there will be a good portion of the population who remain skeptical.
Despite this, belief in UFOs and extraterrestrials continues to grow. The subject remains popular with movies, TV, radio, videogames, and the internet. Statistics from UFO reporting centers like MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) and NUFORC (National UFO reporting Center) show a steady escalation of reported cases.
Society appears to be trending toward open official disclosure and the end of the UFO cover-up. It certainly can’t last forever. Similarly, the escalation of UFO activity and our growing acceptance of it is a reminder that open official contact with extraterrestrials remains a very real possibility. According to some whistleblower accounts, this has already happened within military settings.
The time has come to accept the validity of the UFO phenomenon, to face it directly, and to learn all we can about these visitors to our planet.
That has been the main impetus for writing this book. Millions of people have experienced UFO contact. The truth can no longer be denied. UFOs are real. Extraterrestrials are here. We are not alone. We have never been alone. And as the stories in this book show, the future of humanity will be filled with many wondrous changes.
Chapter One
“It Walked Upright”
At 4:30 a.m., in mid-November 2006, Eleanor (pseudonym) was ready for her morning run. She lived in a rural area of O’Fallon, Illinois, in a small neighborhood subdivision intermingled with cornfields and swaths of forest. It was a pretty location, with lots of greenery. About ten miles to the southeast was Scott Air Force Base. Eleanor was a school teacher and daycare worker, in her mid-thirties, with five children. To keep fit, she often took early morning jogs along with her dog. It was a routine she had come to enjoy.
On this particular morning, events began as normal. She and her dog left her home, jogged down a few streets, turned onto Illini Drive and headed north. She was passing Fulton Junior High on her left. On her right side was a cornfield that had been recently plowed over. Illini Drive ended just ahead of her at a T-intersection onto Kyle Road. Eleanor was about 200 feet from the T-intersection, which was illuminated by street lights on either side.
“Suddenly,” says Eleanor, “my dog became alert. She slowed her pace, lifted her head and ears and locked her sight onto something ahead. I casually looked up expecting to see an animal. It was normal to come across deer, coyote, foxes or occasionally other pedestrians.
“In the road ahead, was something I couldn’t make sense of. I slowly came to a stop as I tried to figure out what I was looking at. It was walking adjacent to the streetlight. It was almost as tall as the streetlight and moving to the right. It was very dark gray and walked upright. My first thought was that someone was in costume doing some kind of acrobatics on stilts, with extenders on their arms. As I watched, I could tell that it moved with ease and intention and that no one could make stilts bend at the knees and elbows.
“It was long, thin and had what looked like points for hands. I was thinking grasshopper at first, because of the jointed legs and the tips of the appendages, and it appeared to have a kind of exo-skeleton. The creature was very dark gray, not quite black, and it seemed to be all one color. I decided later that it was more praying mantis-like. Its incredibly long legs were taking massive strides as its arms were held up forward and bent at the elbows with the forearms and ‘hands’ moving up and down in a pumping motion. The profile of the head seemed almost rectangular, but wider at the top and narrowing where it connected to the body. And its gaze swept from side to side almost like it was looking for something on the ground.
“Each stride was approximately six or seven feet. It covered a lot of ground in only a few steps. It seemed unhurried and focused. It did not seem to be worried about being spotted.
“I did not see any clothing. It looked exactly like an upright walking praying mantis, with more insect-quality to it than human. So, I stopped where I was and watched what I was seeing. It was just walking down the road, and I realized it was a real and solid creature, living. As it walked, its legs lifted up and would reach and stretch in very long strides. It was long, dark, and skinny, and as it was striding, its arms were moving in a pumping motion above its head.”
Eleanor had never seen a UFO, and aliens were the farthest thing from her mind. Now, seeing this figure, she struggled to orient herself. “My mind was whirling with trying to decide what to do. I really thought about turning back and racing for home, but for some reason, I was more compelled to get a closer look. It had not seemed to be aware of me, and was continuing its movement down the road, heading closer to the wooded and darkened section.
“I slowly started running forward and never took my eyes off the creature. My dog was very alert and also watching, but she did not pull on the leash or bark. By the time I got to the corner, it moved far enough into the darkness, and I could no longer see it. I knew better than to follow it into the darkness, and I turned leftonto my normal route. I kept my eyes wide open for the rest of my run, and every run after that. I’ve never seen it again.”
While the experience didn’t really scare her, Eleanor admits that it did leave her with a lot of questions. “I went back to that area later in the day during daylight,” she says. “I stood under the streetlight. I am 5’5’’, and the streetlight was at least three times my height, so I know that the being was close to fifteen feet tall. I have never given much thought to aliens until this time, and it still has taken me years to conclude that it was likely some kind of interdimensional being. I compulsively wonder why I saw this. Why would it let me see it? Was it a mistake? What am I supposed to do about it? Sometimes I wish I never saw it, but at the same time, I now have an awareness that there is something more.”
She told her husband and her five children, her sister and a few close friends, all of who believed and supported her.
She still went jogging the next morning, keeping a sharp eye out for anything unusual. Although she looked for it, Eleanor never saw the creature again.
Eleanor later learned that only a few weeks before she saw the praying mantis figure, there had been another dramatic encounter about 325 miles away, at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Could there be a connection? She wasn’t sure.
She was also surprised to see such a creature so close to Scott Air Force Base. “The proximity to the base is highly suspect,” she says. Could the sighting be connected to the military? Only six years earlier, police officers in the adjacent cities of Lebanon, Shiloh, Millstadt and Dupo tracked a UFO as it skirted the base. Officials at Scott denied any knowledge of the event.
As a result of her encounter, Eleanor began to research the UFO subject, and she was shocked to read about experiences that sounded strikingly familiar to some weird events which had happened in her childhood.
Starting when she was about four years old, Eleanor would wake up in the middle of the night to see “black, hooded, cloaked figures” standing in the hallway outside her room. The first few times it happened, she screamed for her parents.
On each occasion, her parents rushed into her room and tried to comfort her. They did not see any strange creatures and told her that she must have had a nightmare. Still, it kept happening, and finally Eleanor’s father forbade her from waking them up anymore.
Eleanor never remembered the figures entering into her room. However, around that time she had a bizarre experience which she always thought was just a nightmare.
“In the nightmare,” Eleanor says, “I awoke on a metal bed with a sheet pulled over my face. I could hear what I thought were doctors discussing a very serious medical procedure. I could see shadowy figures moving around through the sheet, but I could not move. I felt nervous, but was wondering who was getting an operation and what might be going on. As I lay there, someone began to lift the sheet off of me…there were doctors standing around my body with trays of metallic surgical tools. The doctors seemed to be wearing something like surgical gowns. I could not see their faces. I was fully engulfed in the deepest terror knowing that they were going to fix me. I don’t know what happened next. I woke up and it was morning.”
The “nightmare” was incredibly vivid, and apparently as a result, Eleanor developed a crippling phobia of the sound of rushing water, something her mother found extremely irritating when trying to give Eleanor a bath.
Eleanor also developed a sudden fear of being alone. Thankfully, both phobias eventually faded away. The strange hooded figures stopped coming, and Eleanor had no further nightmares.
However, there were some other strange experiences. In 1986, she was a senior at a high school in Elk Grove, California. One morning, she was going to attend a school field trip. A friend was driving, Eleanor was in the front passenger seat and a young pre-school-age child sat in the back.
Eleanor was gazing out the passenger window when she heard the child sitting behind her gasp. At that moment a car was pulling up next to them. Eleanor looked at the driver of the car, and also gasped. The driver did not appear to be human.
“I was pretty shocked to see the profile of an elongated oval-shaped head,” Eleanor says. “It was smooth, with minimal profile features. The color was extremely pale and had a corpse-like look to it. There were just a few spriggles of hair coming from its head. As suddenly as I could take this in, his head slowly turned and made eye contact with me. The eyes were dark, sunken pools of black. I jerked my head away and said nothing.”
The strange encounter left her shaken, particularly because of the way the “man” turned to look at her. At the time she wondered if it might be some kind of demon.
Strange experiences like this continued to plague her throughout her life. In 2011, About five years after sighting the praying mantis on Kyle Road, Eleanor had another strange encounter in nearly the exact same area.
Again, she was taking a very early morning jog with her dog. Her other dog who had seen the ET with her had since died, and this was a different dog.
As she did each morning, she jogged north up Illini Drive, then turned left onto Kyle Road. The Fulton Junior High School was still on her left. On her right was a field that was being dug up to construct a massive water tower.
Again, it was her dog who first noticed something strange. “My dog became excited about something ahead as we passed this construction area,” Eleanor says. “Again, assuming it was a critter, or another person, I looked up. About twenty-five feet or so ahead, there was something ‘crawling’ from the field with the hole, and beginning to cross the road. It was not unusual for fog to accumulate in the field, so I was used to seeing mysterious-looking streams of fog streaming into the road. This was a concentrated ball of illuminated mist. It was distinctly round and compacted, and seemed to be illuminated somehow. It was about three feet tall and had tendrils of mist that looked like octopus legs rotating up and over from behind the ball, and moving itself forward in a rolling motion. My dog was excitedly pulling me forward, and even though it was insanely weird, I did not feel scared of it and hurried to get closer. As it moved up to the grassy area of the schoolyard, it began to slowly fade and had vanished by the time I had gotten close.”
The weird experiences continued. One year later, in the summer of 2012, Eleanor went outside to enjoy the fireflies dancing in the twilight. Instead, she saw something strange hovering over her neighbor’s deck. “I looked over to see a basketball-sized illuminated ball swirling with rainbow colors,” Eleanor says.
The object reminded her of an outdoor solar gazing ball, but there was something strange. “I could not spot anything holding it in place. It did not move up or down or side-to-side, and no light emanated out of it. I was pretty mesmerized trying to figure it out, and I moved around my yard to look from different angles.”
Convinced it was unusual, she called out to her daughter. “What do you see?” she asked.
“A colored ball,” her daughter replied.
Both of them were mystified and watched it for about twenty minutes. They wondered if it was some new type of light her neighbor had purchased. Finally, they went back inside. Eleanor decided to ask her neighbor the next time she saw her.
The next night, the glowing ball of light was gone. Eleanor never saw it again. A few days later, her neighbor called by coincidence, and Eleanor asked her about the strange orb of light. “After I described it,” Eleanor says, “she started to get a little freaked out, since she hadn’t been home that night, and in no possible way owned anything that resembled it. She went outside while we were on the phone and looked everywhere in her yard, and couldn’t find a thing.”
In 2014, Eleanor had another encounter with a strange entity, very much like what she saw almost thirty years earlier as a senior in high school. On this occasion, it was early morning and she was waiting for the local Sam’s Club store to open. Ahead of her in line, she was surprised to see a strange-looking woman. “Her head was oblong, pale and mottled with veins,” Eleanor says. “She had a few spriggles of hair. I wasn’t really thinking, but as she slowly turned around, she made eye contact with me, and she had dark pools of blackness for eyes. I jerked my head away, as I felt ashamed for inadvertently staring. The store doors opened, and I looked back just a moment after the eye contact, and she wasn’t there. It seemed that she had vanished.”
Eleanor was again left shaken. Was it a demonic spirit? Could it have been extraterrestrial? She isn’t sure. “I really don’t know what to think about it,” she says.
In 2015, Eleanor moved away from O’Fallon. Shortly before moving, they invited their neighbors, an elderly retired couple, over for dinner. The husband was a retired Air Force officer who had worked at nearby Scott Air Force Base.
Normally, Eleanor doesn’t talk publicly about her 2006 sighting of a fifteen-foot-tall praying mantis. To her own surprise, she found herself describing not only her praying mantis sighting, but also the fog-like creature.
The retired Air Force officer and his wife seemed to hesitate. “They sat in quiet silence, as I regretted my mistake,” Eleanor says. “When I finished, they were quiet. After a few moments, he told me he didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. Seemingly hesitant, he proceeded to tell me that he had worked with a guy at Scott that lived somewhere along Kyle Road who told him that weird things happen over on Kyle Road. I knew he didn’t mean weird stuff like cops and robbers sort of things, by the way he said it. I asked if he could tell me exactly what, and he said no.”
Today, Eleanor is happy with her “weird life” and accepts her unusual experiences with an attitude of curiosity.
Of all the experiences, it was the encounter with the praying mantis which affected her most. As she says, “It was a fifteen-foot-tall praying mantis man striding down the street early one morning while I was out for my run. It has definitely changed my life and my perception about what exists here and in other places.”
