My Peculiar Alien/UFO Connection
By James Donahue
When I opened my eyes they were standing but a few inches from my face. They were exactly as everyone said they would look; two Greys, one appearing about four feet in height, the other slightly taller. Both had thin almost emaciated bodies but sporting large oval heads. Their black beady eyes were staring directly into mine. While their appearance surprised me I do not remember feeling frightened or even shocked. It was not my first alien contact or my last, but for sure it was my most personal one. The moment they realized that I could see them, the two Greys just disappeared, not to be observed again.
Before My Eyes:
It happened one morning while I was driving from Bad Axe to Sebewaing, Michigan where I was working as an assistant editor for a weekly newspaper. I was in a line of traffic all headed toward Sebewaing when right ahead of me there appeared a large silvery oval ship that seemed to be dropping out of the sky right in front of us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It appeared to be a very large ship, it had the classic “saucer” shape of a UFO as drawn by other observers, and windows could clearly be seen. The ship dropped behind a cluster of trees to the left side of the road ahead of me and it was obvious that it had landed in a farm field. I could hardly wait for the traffic to move so I could get another look beyond the trees. When I got there, however, there was nothing to be seen of it.
What I found odd about that sighting was that none of the other drivers that morning seemed to be aware of that large bright silvery ship. There were no brake lights going on, no heads turning to stare, no vehicles stopping so drivers could get a better look. It was as if I was the only one to see it.
There were no calls that morning to the police or our newspaper by anyone reporting a UFO sighting. So was it my imagination running away with me?
The Goodwillie Sighting
The Goodwillie family was one of the most influential and respected in the community of South Haven, Michigan where I worked as a bureau reporter for about six years. Judge Donald Goodwillie’s parents owned a mansion on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. It was through my friendship with Dorothea Logan that I was introduced to the Goodwillie family. When he sought and won the District Court judicial position, Judge Goodwillie and I got to know one another well. As a judge, I found him to be both wise and fair in his deliberations.
That is why it was a significant news event the day Judge Goodwillie called me to say that he had just seen a UFO fly over his house. That was a time when there had been a lot of sightings of unexplained lights in the skies over Michigan and reports were making their way into the newspapers everywhere. It was in 1966 that sightings in Washtenaw County, in the Southeastern part of the state, became the infamous “swamp gas” case after Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a well-known UFO investigator wrote off the sightings during an investigation for the Air Force Project Blue Book. Hynek later recanted his story.
On the night of his sighting Judge Goodwillie asked me to come to his home. I think he wanted me to help confirm what he was watching. When I got there I found him in an excited state. He said he worried that people were going to think he was crazy, but thought he should tell somebody what he saw. He said he was out in his yard and observed a long, very large tube-shaped object, with bright colored lights glowing from end-to-end, glide slowly and silently over his house. He said there was absolutely no sound. The thing just floated over him like a giant balloon then flew off into the horizon. I scanned the sky that night but failed to see anything unusual.
Goodwillie said he also called the Michigan State Police and at least one trooper arrived in time to observe the object. Without that police report to back him up I doubt if Goodwillie would have told anyone this story. That was the way people reacted to sightings like that. What was significant was that two skilled and professional observers, a District Judge and long-time practicing lawyer, and a Michigan State trooper, both said they saw this cigar-shaped object with flashing lights in the sky over South Haven that night.
After my story appeared, people all over town gathered, often along the shoreline, to gaze for hours into the skies in the chance that they, too, would see what Judge Goodwillie saw. Whatever it was, the cigar-shaped night flier never returned.
The Sedona Sighting
After I retired from the Times Herald and my wife and I embarked on our Arizona adventure, we lived briefly in Sedona. While there, several people in the town told of seeing a large alien ship hovering directly over the gully that passed directly next to the downtown area. What was odd about this event was some people said they clearly saw this ship, while others said they could not see it. One woman said she saw it and her husband, who was with her at the time, could not see it. She said it was so low in the gully it was level with where she was standing. She said it was very large and she could see that it had windows. Doris and I were disappointed that we did not have an opportunity to be in the area to see it.
Other Sightings:
Later, after taking a job with the White Mountain Independent in Show Low, I had the privilege of doing a personal interview with Travis Walton, the man who claimed he was abducted by a UFO in 1975. Walton was working on a lumber crew in the forests in and around Arizona when he claimed that he attempted to investigate a strange light, walked off alone into the trees and disappeared. He showed up days later stumbling alone and in a chaotic condition. He told a story of being captured by aliens and held against his will in a strange ship hoovering in the skies. The movie Fire in the Sky was based on Walton’s experience.
Later, while working on a bureau for the same newspaper in Springerville, my wife Doris was walking from her night job at the hospital to our apartment and observed a large orange ball in the morning sky north of the town. She said it was massive in size. At about the time she reached the apartment, I was getting prepared to go to my newspaper job and the telephone was ringing. It was our daughter, Jennifer, calling from her apartment in Show Low, some sixty miles away. She was all excited because she was watching the same glowing orange ball in the sky. When I heard the story, I ran outside to look and could see nothing through the buildings and the trees. I got in our car and drove out of town, my eyes scanning the sky. I never saw the orange glowing ball.
Strange Childhood Events:
When I was a teenager living on the family farm I discovered that the dormer window next to my bed easily opened to give me easy access to a gentle-sloping roof over the side entrance way to the house. From there I could climb up on the peak of the roof of our two-story brick house. It was great to sit there on a warm summer night, feeling the soft breeze against my face and listening to the songs of the frogs, crickets and other creatures of the night. It was a great place to meditate and tune in with nature. It also was exciting knowing that I was getting away with something I was sure my parents would not have approved of.
In later years something strange began to happen. I started having vivid dreams about sitting on that roof and watching a large orange glowing ball of light rise up from behind the barn. Even today, writing about those dreams, makes my heart pound. I have wondered if the dream was a recollection of a real event and that I may have been one of the many people in the world who experienced abduction by aliens. If it happened I have no other memory of it. For years I was swept by a spooky sense of dread when I envision that giant orange ball of light rising up in the darkness from behind our barn.
During my childhood, when growing up in our house in Harbor Beach, I remember a strange sensation of flying during that time between awake and asleep. It was a pleasant sensation that occurred just as I was dozing off. It happened for weeks, if not months, every evening after getting tucked into my bed. It was a distinct feeling of physically flying through the air, into and above the clouds. It never frightened me. In fact I enjoyed the sensation so much I looked forward to going to bed in the evening. I remember asking my mother about it. She had no explicable answer other than to suggest they were “fever dreams.” I was a healthy little boy and it seemed odd that I would be experiencing fevers every night. The dreams stopped at about the time I reached puberty.
In later years I overheard our son, Aaron, telling someone about experiencing this same sensation when he was a young boy. When we compared notes, we began to wonder if we weren’t both “abducted” as young boys for some odd experiment involving our family. My father was still living then and the next time I saw him I made it a point to ask him if he had ever experienced this same sensation as a young boy. At first he said he could not remember it. Later, however, he said he had been thinking about it and did remember “flying” when he was dozing off at night.
In The Oil Field:
During my college days I took some time off to work for a season for an oil well service company. I was on a crew that cleaned paraffin from wells. It was hard tedious work. One hot summer day, while my partner and I were trading off at “spudding” a steel brush through a thick coat of paraffin, I took my break and dropped down on my back in some nearby grass. As I was lying there, looking up into a pure blue cloudless late afternoon sky, I noticed what appeared to be a star directly overhead. I thought it odd that a star would be so bright that it could be so clearly seen in the daytime. As I was watching that object it suddenly flew off toward the horizon at what had to have been an incredible speed. I realized that I had been looking at a UFO. When I told my partner what I had just seen he laughed. He did not believe me.
The Babcock Sightings
Not long after Doris and I were married, her brother George had what was, for him, a frightening experience one night while driving on the main highway just outside of Caro, Michigan. As he was passing the state mental hospital located there, he said a bright green lighted object appeared directly over his car. He said it hovered over him for several anxious seconds, moving along with the car, before disappearing again.
Doris’s other brother, Frank, was with a hunting party in Indiana when everyone in the party observed a UFO in the sky over their camp. It was so close they succeeded in snapping a picture of it. They reported the sighting to some agency that investigated UFO sightings. After conducting interviews with the members of that hunting group, and getting each man to draw the ship was they remembered it, it was determined that it probably was a valid sighting.
By James Donahue
When I opened my eyes they were standing but a few inches from my face. They were exactly as everyone said they would look; two Greys, one appearing about four feet in height, the other slightly taller. Both had thin almost emaciated bodies but sporting large oval heads. Their black beady eyes were staring directly into mine. While their appearance surprised me I do not remember feeling frightened or even shocked. It was not my first alien contact or my last, but for sure it was my most personal one. The moment they realized that I could see them, the two Greys just disappeared, not to be observed again.
Before My Eyes:
It happened one morning while I was driving from Bad Axe to Sebewaing, Michigan where I was working as an assistant editor for a weekly newspaper. I was in a line of traffic all headed toward Sebewaing when right ahead of me there appeared a large silvery oval ship that seemed to be dropping out of the sky right in front of us. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It appeared to be a very large ship, it had the classic “saucer” shape of a UFO as drawn by other observers, and windows could clearly be seen. The ship dropped behind a cluster of trees to the left side of the road ahead of me and it was obvious that it had landed in a farm field. I could hardly wait for the traffic to move so I could get another look beyond the trees. When I got there, however, there was nothing to be seen of it.
What I found odd about that sighting was that none of the other drivers that morning seemed to be aware of that large bright silvery ship. There were no brake lights going on, no heads turning to stare, no vehicles stopping so drivers could get a better look. It was as if I was the only one to see it.
There were no calls that morning to the police or our newspaper by anyone reporting a UFO sighting. So was it my imagination running away with me?
The Goodwillie Sighting
The Goodwillie family was one of the most influential and respected in the community of South Haven, Michigan where I worked as a bureau reporter for about six years. Judge Donald Goodwillie’s parents owned a mansion on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. It was through my friendship with Dorothea Logan that I was introduced to the Goodwillie family. When he sought and won the District Court judicial position, Judge Goodwillie and I got to know one another well. As a judge, I found him to be both wise and fair in his deliberations.
That is why it was a significant news event the day Judge Goodwillie called me to say that he had just seen a UFO fly over his house. That was a time when there had been a lot of sightings of unexplained lights in the skies over Michigan and reports were making their way into the newspapers everywhere. It was in 1966 that sightings in Washtenaw County, in the Southeastern part of the state, became the infamous “swamp gas” case after Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a well-known UFO investigator wrote off the sightings during an investigation for the Air Force Project Blue Book. Hynek later recanted his story.
On the night of his sighting Judge Goodwillie asked me to come to his home. I think he wanted me to help confirm what he was watching. When I got there I found him in an excited state. He said he worried that people were going to think he was crazy, but thought he should tell somebody what he saw. He said he was out in his yard and observed a long, very large tube-shaped object, with bright colored lights glowing from end-to-end, glide slowly and silently over his house. He said there was absolutely no sound. The thing just floated over him like a giant balloon then flew off into the horizon. I scanned the sky that night but failed to see anything unusual.
Goodwillie said he also called the Michigan State Police and at least one trooper arrived in time to observe the object. Without that police report to back him up I doubt if Goodwillie would have told anyone this story. That was the way people reacted to sightings like that. What was significant was that two skilled and professional observers, a District Judge and long-time practicing lawyer, and a Michigan State trooper, both said they saw this cigar-shaped object with flashing lights in the sky over South Haven that night.
After my story appeared, people all over town gathered, often along the shoreline, to gaze for hours into the skies in the chance that they, too, would see what Judge Goodwillie saw. Whatever it was, the cigar-shaped night flier never returned.
The Sedona Sighting
After I retired from the Times Herald and my wife and I embarked on our Arizona adventure, we lived briefly in Sedona. While there, several people in the town told of seeing a large alien ship hovering directly over the gully that passed directly next to the downtown area. What was odd about this event was some people said they clearly saw this ship, while others said they could not see it. One woman said she saw it and her husband, who was with her at the time, could not see it. She said it was so low in the gully it was level with where she was standing. She said it was very large and she could see that it had windows. Doris and I were disappointed that we did not have an opportunity to be in the area to see it.
Other Sightings:
Later, after taking a job with the White Mountain Independent in Show Low, I had the privilege of doing a personal interview with Travis Walton, the man who claimed he was abducted by a UFO in 1975. Walton was working on a lumber crew in the forests in and around Arizona when he claimed that he attempted to investigate a strange light, walked off alone into the trees and disappeared. He showed up days later stumbling alone and in a chaotic condition. He told a story of being captured by aliens and held against his will in a strange ship hoovering in the skies. The movie Fire in the Sky was based on Walton’s experience.
Later, while working on a bureau for the same newspaper in Springerville, my wife Doris was walking from her night job at the hospital to our apartment and observed a large orange ball in the morning sky north of the town. She said it was massive in size. At about the time she reached the apartment, I was getting prepared to go to my newspaper job and the telephone was ringing. It was our daughter, Jennifer, calling from her apartment in Show Low, some sixty miles away. She was all excited because she was watching the same glowing orange ball in the sky. When I heard the story, I ran outside to look and could see nothing through the buildings and the trees. I got in our car and drove out of town, my eyes scanning the sky. I never saw the orange glowing ball.
Strange Childhood Events:
When I was a teenager living on the family farm I discovered that the dormer window next to my bed easily opened to give me easy access to a gentle-sloping roof over the side entrance way to the house. From there I could climb up on the peak of the roof of our two-story brick house. It was great to sit there on a warm summer night, feeling the soft breeze against my face and listening to the songs of the frogs, crickets and other creatures of the night. It was a great place to meditate and tune in with nature. It also was exciting knowing that I was getting away with something I was sure my parents would not have approved of.
In later years something strange began to happen. I started having vivid dreams about sitting on that roof and watching a large orange glowing ball of light rise up from behind the barn. Even today, writing about those dreams, makes my heart pound. I have wondered if the dream was a recollection of a real event and that I may have been one of the many people in the world who experienced abduction by aliens. If it happened I have no other memory of it. For years I was swept by a spooky sense of dread when I envision that giant orange ball of light rising up in the darkness from behind our barn.
During my childhood, when growing up in our house in Harbor Beach, I remember a strange sensation of flying during that time between awake and asleep. It was a pleasant sensation that occurred just as I was dozing off. It happened for weeks, if not months, every evening after getting tucked into my bed. It was a distinct feeling of physically flying through the air, into and above the clouds. It never frightened me. In fact I enjoyed the sensation so much I looked forward to going to bed in the evening. I remember asking my mother about it. She had no explicable answer other than to suggest they were “fever dreams.” I was a healthy little boy and it seemed odd that I would be experiencing fevers every night. The dreams stopped at about the time I reached puberty.
In later years I overheard our son, Aaron, telling someone about experiencing this same sensation when he was a young boy. When we compared notes, we began to wonder if we weren’t both “abducted” as young boys for some odd experiment involving our family. My father was still living then and the next time I saw him I made it a point to ask him if he had ever experienced this same sensation as a young boy. At first he said he could not remember it. Later, however, he said he had been thinking about it and did remember “flying” when he was dozing off at night.
In The Oil Field:
During my college days I took some time off to work for a season for an oil well service company. I was on a crew that cleaned paraffin from wells. It was hard tedious work. One hot summer day, while my partner and I were trading off at “spudding” a steel brush through a thick coat of paraffin, I took my break and dropped down on my back in some nearby grass. As I was lying there, looking up into a pure blue cloudless late afternoon sky, I noticed what appeared to be a star directly overhead. I thought it odd that a star would be so bright that it could be so clearly seen in the daytime. As I was watching that object it suddenly flew off toward the horizon at what had to have been an incredible speed. I realized that I had been looking at a UFO. When I told my partner what I had just seen he laughed. He did not believe me.
The Babcock Sightings
Not long after Doris and I were married, her brother George had what was, for him, a frightening experience one night while driving on the main highway just outside of Caro, Michigan. As he was passing the state mental hospital located there, he said a bright green lighted object appeared directly over his car. He said it hovered over him for several anxious seconds, moving along with the car, before disappearing again.
Doris’s other brother, Frank, was with a hunting party in Indiana when everyone in the party observed a UFO in the sky over their camp. It was so close they succeeded in snapping a picture of it. They reported the sighting to some agency that investigated UFO sightings. After conducting interviews with the members of that hunting group, and getting each man to draw the ship was they remembered it, it was determined that it probably was a valid sighting.