This Is My Rifle: The Night I Saw a UFO Posted by Jason James on 07/11/12 | Filed under Features, Opinion, This Is My Rifle

On Monday, July 9th 2012 I saw something that has changed my life forever.

At approximately 1:20am, as I sat on my balcony during a hot summer night, I looked to the sky and watched as the clouds slowly lit up like giant spotlights were being turned on and directed down towards the Earth from space. At first I thought that maybe it was a weird effect caused by a reflection off of the moon but the illumination continued to intensify until I could see every detail and outline of the clouds. Then suddenly 5 glowing fluorescent orange balls emerged from the overcast and hung in the air, completely still as if they were caught in suspended animation.

As I analyzed the scene that was taking place before me, I was convinced that what I was witnessing was some type of electro-magnetic occurrence, an aurora of some sort caused by a mixture of chemicals and temperatures colliding within the clouds. But moments later the balls of light began to move, dancing above the horizon and circling each other in strange patterns. As a man who has been no stranger to psychedelic drugs during the earlier years of my life, I thought that perhaps I was experiencing a flashback; a tiny pocket of LSD stored somewhere in my brain and activating all these years later. As the lights began to flicker and pulsate, dimming and then building back up until they were brighter than the sun, I strained my eyes and struggled to focus on reality. Anxiety swept over me and I stood up in an effort to gather my wits. It was then that I realized that I was definitely still attached to the real world and something extraordinary was happening.

I then ran inside and woke up my girlfriend. If this was not a hallucination or the beginning of a total mental breakdown I would need somebody to verify that we were beholden to something strange. I also grabbed my cel phone in hopes of recording this event as proof that I was indeed not losing my mind completely. When we walked back out onto my balcony only 3 lights remained. They were now aligned in the form of a triangle and they looked like giant burning spheres. As they maneuvered around the black backdrop they appeared to be flaring up in turn, first one, then another, and they were brighter than anything I'd ever seen before. The smell of electricity filled the air as bursts of what looked like molten lead shot across the night sky. Dumbfounded and shaking, I pointed my phone towards the phenomena and hit the record button. This is what I caught:


(Center screen, the object appears at the very beginning of the video, then again around the 1:00 mark)

Nothing spectacular, I know. Because of the lack of adequate lighting and the distance of the objects the camera on my phone could only pick up the brightest of the 3 and it looks faint at best. But if you listen to both mine and my girlfriend's voices you can tell that we are watching something odd come to pass. By this point my mind was scrambling to rationalize the sequence of events that were unfolding in front of me. Surely, if these were not UFO's then something really bad was about to happen. For the first time in my adult life I felt the chills of fear run down my spine. In my attempt to logically dismiss the possibility that I was witness to a visit by an alien life form, I could only conclude that one of two things was transpiring:

1) Somebody was dropping bombs on us, or
2) Asteroids were headed directly for the planet and were making their way through Earth's atmosphere

Immediately my fascination turned into panic. While my girlfriend was still standing on the balcony in awe, I paced my living room thinking to myself, "Is this really the end? Is tonight the night we go extinct?". As much as I no longer wanted to see the fantastic display of luminescence falling down from the heavens towards my very existence, I couldn't help it. I would pace and then look out the window- they're getting closer. Pace some more and then look again- even closer. Pace frantically and look outside- they're gone.

For the next 4 hours the wind blew viciously and the sky raged with blinding flashes of color. Orange, blue and red bolts raced across the darkness in all directions. I sat in my living room, still in shock and unable to sleep, trying to process everything that had taken place during those early morning hours. I fought back anxiety attacks and forced myself to accept that some things in life just cannot be explained. Whatever it was, I'm sure I will never have that experience ever again. This was a once in a lifetime occurrence.

I've never been one to try and discredit things that I don't know to be absolute fact. Is it possible that there are extraterrestrial civilizations on other planets floating around in the infinite reaches of space? Of course. I've always thought it was a ludicrous idea that we could be the only life forms to exist among billions of other galaxies and solar systems. Until yesterday, I was 90% sure that alien beings had visited our planet on many occasions. Evidence strongly suggests that we have interacted with them for tens of thousands of years and there are structures across the globe that could not have been built without a vastly superior technology. The theory that we are connected to a much larger universal family is far more plausible than the notion that we are the only beings significant enough to have developed a conscious mind. The latter is an extremely self-centered idea- not to mention a fucking lonely one at that.

And now, as of today, I am 100% positive that we are not alone. I know what I saw that night and it was not natural. The fiery objects that appeared in the southeastern sky over Vancouver, British Columbia were guided by some kind of intelligence. They were flying in formation and were precise in doing so. I know all of you reading this must think that I’ve flipped my lid but that is not the case. I am just one of thousands, maybe even millions, of people who have experienced the same thing and I will never forget it. I don’t know how long they’ve been visiting us or why they’re here but I’m eager to find out. Something big is developing and it seems like we have a starring role in it.

I just hope we get to finally figure out the purpose of it all before modern day humanity inevitably scares them off.

(Jason James is an artist, freelance columnist and writer for RefinedHype.com. You can listen/download his most recent album, "Marvelous World Of Color", here and you can contact him here and here.)