The following anomalous event occurred one summer in the early 1970s in rural Prince Edward County, south-central Virginia. It remains unexplained.
This weird incident happened about five or six years after my family and I experienced an unidentified flying ship over the fields and woods behind our farmhouse. Those two experiences may have nothing to do with each other except both were strange and were dismissed, ridiculed, or explained away by our American Government.
Our paranoid Cold War fears intensified after the anomaly occurred this particular hot and sweaty summer evening. I was a young teenager back then. A group of us kids played outside in a grassy cow pasture between my house and the neighbors’. Joe, my younger brother, was running around with us, too. Our parents were out and about in their respective yards. The fireflies were already out, winking on and off along the edge of the woods bordering the field even though there was still plenty of light left. We called ‘em lightnin’ bugs. We jerked alert as we found ourselves and everything around us bathed in glowing light. It happened fast. BOOM without sound.
“Whoa, look!” shouted one friend in awe. “Look at the sky!”
“Oh, wow!”
“What the hell is that?”
“I sure don’t think its Jesus comin’ back. Don’t hear no trumpets.”
“Maybe the Russians are bombin’ us.”
“Or aliens from Outer Space!”
“Whoa, look at that! Hey, over there, too. Shit, the sky’s on fire!”