(Kalee’s Stories: Part Two)
Here’s another dandy from my psychically blessed sister, Kalee, who has “ghost stories, shadow stories, alien stories for days”. She’s a beacon! She’s an empath! She sees dead people! (You know, like the kid in the movie?) This is a brief encounter, but one I considered bizarre and creepy enough to garner a place here.
This story takes place after Kalee graduated high school and was “dismissed” (or kicked out) from her boarding school, no longer being age-appropriate. She and two friends, a girl and her boyfriend, decided to do what the cool kids do, they planned a road trip to Area 51. Their intention was not to storm the irrationally secured government secret. There was no Facebook event planned, promoting fun, criminal activity for kids, assuring them, “they can’t stop us all!” Kalee and friends simply wanted to get to the gate for a photo-op and move on. Just to say they did it.
From Belen, New Mexico, the three adventurers began their almost 750-mile journey. I’ve personally never travelled the route they did, but I’ve seen enough pictures of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada to know it had to be a little lackluster to a group of teens, a picturesque landscape most likely lost on them. They couldn’t even stop to gamble in Vegas! Kalee describes much of the scenery as “desert and dunes for miles… huge ass tumbleweeds… like the size of a tire.”
Here’s where the cool part happens…
After they crossed over into Nevada, moving onward toward the town of Rachel, the closest civilization to Area 51, they had an encounter. There was “nothing for miles” Kalee stressed to me. “Flat land all around. You could see for miles and miles and miles.” They were still a good hour from their destination when they noticed a disheveled man shuffling along the shoulder of the road.
The man had nothing with him, no backpack, no food, no water. Kalee and her compassionate friends, surmising that no one could last out in that desert without nourishment, pulled off the road to at least offer the man a bottle of water. They had just driven past him when they stopped the car. The boyfriend grabbed a bottle and got out of the vehicle. For whatever reason, all three of them became suddenly nervous, second guessing their decision to stop.
“I yelled to him to leave the bottle on the side of the road,” Kalee said. “Something’s sketchy,” she told them.
The man gave no indication at all that he recognized their presence. The boyfriend held up the bottle of water, waving it in the air in attempt to let him know it was there for him. Still the man remained indifferent to the three, continuing his slow, solo progression down the road. The young man sat the bottle on the side of the road and ran back to the car.
They sped away, laughing off their uneasiness. They hadn’t gone too far when Kalee looked back to see if he had indeed picked up the water bottle. With nowhere to go and nothing to hide behind, the strange man had vanished. They stopped the car and all visually scanned the area. There was no sign of life, no indication that anyone had been there.
Thoroughly freaked out, they continued on their way, all wondering what had actually just happened. When they reached Rachel, Nevada, they pulled into a famous stop to get a bite to eat. Kalee doesn’t recall the name of the place (it was almost 20 years ago) but, based on her description and the type of food they ordered, I’m guessing it was Little A’Le’Inn, a burger-slinging joint that is a hot spot for Area 51 tourists. While they were eating, the three discussed the strange, unexplainable encounter they had witnessed. It was then that a woman overheard them talking and chimed in.
“Oh, you met the man on Route 375?” She asked. When they acknowledged positively, she then asked if he had “a native American pancho on” and if he was “grungy with long hair and a beard.” They confirmed that her description was accurate. She then told them, “we get reports of him on the road all the time around here. The cops get called and get involved to help him, but they never find him.”
It was now confirmed that this mirage of a man was a staple of the area. The three were sufficiently mystified. They finished their meal and drove out to the entrance to Area 51. I’ve never been, but I’ve heard reports from those who have, their descriptions of the experience ranging from “not much to see” or “not too thrilling, just a fence and some warning signs” to “there’s an eerie feeling out there… no one can be seen but you feel as if you’re always being watched”.
As for the latter report, you probably feel like you’re being watched because you most assuredly are. There are surveillance cameras of course, and people often talk about the ‘camo guys’ and the ‘white trucks’ parked up on the hill. If you actually cross the line into the forbidden zone, as one blogger unfortunately did, you will immediately be assured of the fact that eyes are all over you. In that particular instance, the guy was so innocently silly he saw the road ahead and just kept driving. He was detained and his car torn apart, all his belongings riffled through.
That wasn’t the experience that Kalee and friends had. According to her, they reached the entrance, danced in front of it, and… well, that’s pretty much what you do there. They had completed their mission. Cross another youthful, senseless activity off the list.
The sun had long ago set as they drove away from the mysterious Air Force base. The next thing that happened, many miles down the road, may or may not be related to the vanishing man, but it was another episode that traumatized the young travelers.
As they reversed their route, traveling the opposite direction on State Route 375, the headlights lit up the Extraterrestrial Highway. Suddenly, before the driver could even register it was a fine time to slam on the breaks, something huge flew across the road in front of them. In two bounding steps, what seemed to be a monster leapt across the pavement, disappearing into the black of the desert night.
As Kalee recalls it, this beast was gigantic, a massive wolf, large enough that she said it “must have been a Dire wolf or something like that” (which are extinct, you know). They were in a Honda car and in the brief glimpse she noticed that the beast’s head was “bigger than the driver’s window”. The thing was “light grey, whitish, shaggy… not a coyote,” she said.
Of course, it would be extremely hard to be certain, but they believe it was in the same vicinity, near the same mile-marker the man had been trudging down earlier in the day. This monstrous animal was, I’m sure, shocking to see in the Nevada desert. Animals don’t typically grow to gargantuan size out there, but are quite the opposite, diminutive creatures. The largest animal you could expect to see, claiming that terrain as their home, are coyotes, bighorn sheep and mule deer. Kalee was confident the beast they crossed paths with was not one of these.
She also was personally confident that this event did, in fact, take place in the exact area in which they had encountered the man earlier that day, and she had her own theory, as far-out as it may sound. Shapeshifter. That was the what came to her mind upon seeing this monstrosity, and that was how she prefaced this story when telling it to me. “Want to hear about the shapeshifter?” That was the conclusion she personally reached, the feeling she carried away from these encounters.
Why she reached this conclusion, I don’t know. A shapeshifter, of course, is someone with the ability to physically transform into something else. It’s folklore at its best. So, did the Indian turn in to a wolf, wait for them to return and rush in front of their car in a blur? I guess it could’ve happened that way. Let’s say that’s too weird a hypothesis. So, then… what was a lone, surely dehydrated Native American man doing wandering along the road, and why would a massive wolf be racing around the same area, dashing in front of vehicles?
Shapeshifter or not, the encounters are weird. You gotta admit that. I was hoping she was going to tell me the Indian morphed in front of her eyes but, alas, this writer is not so fortunate. Even so, if I was given a scoop like that, no one would believe it. There could even be pictures, a series of progressive shots showing the transformation and everyone would simultaneously scream “photoshop!”
The takeaway I get from this and the thousands of bizarre encounters that happen every year is this: What we know of the world is amazing. What we don’t know may be astounding. More than eighty percent of the world’s waters are as yet undiscovered. The Amazon rainforest is the number one most unexplored area in the world. And yet, we think we know everything and are certain of what is and what is not possible. I don’t really think we do. So, shapeshifter… Could be…
THANKS FOR READING! I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR YOUR STRANGE STORY, MY FRIEND. WE ALL HAVE ONE… AN ENCOUNTER WITH A GHOST, OBSERVING AN UNKNOWN CREATURE, BLINDED BY LIGHTS FROM THE SKY. WHATEVER IT MAY BE. SEND ME A MESSAGE AT: authorchickchapman@gmail.com
Chick