A South Carolina man recalls a UFO sighting and subsequent abduction by several small child-like beings that he experienced while camping with his girlfriend in Croft State Park.
The following account was forwarded to me by Cam & Kyle at Expanded Perspectives:
"My experience is a bit hard to talk about. It literally has changed my entire life and has had a huge impact on almost everything in my life in one way or another, since the event. This wasn’t recent, so let me take you back to when this all took place.
My name is Lewis and I’m from a small town in South Carolina called Whitmire. I was born in 1957, so I’m currently 64 years old. I was part of the baby boomer generation, in a small rural area in the deep south. I had the typical childhood from anyone growing up in that era. I was a country boy, so I did the stereotypical things country boys did. I played a lot of baseball, football, did some hunting, and a whole lot of fishing. I love to fish, still do. My home was a Christian one, with me and my folks almost never missing a Sunday service. I was raised with a less than open-minded pair of parents. I never, ever heard anyone talk about the paranormal, no ghost stories, or any creepy crawlers, and definitely no stories about aliens or UFOs. But, one of my friends when I was around 10 or 11, had some comic books called UFO: Flying Saucers. I remember looking at the cool cover art and reading the interesting stories inside, never once thinking that one day I would experience something I would have trouble talking or even thinking about. So it was then that I became really interested in UFOs, Aliens, and thinking about the real possibility of otherworldly beings traveling the expanses of space and time to visit us here on earth.
Well, as time went by and I grew up, I thought less and less about the subject altogether. I stopped reading comics and magazines and started chasing girls. Just after finishing high school, I met the love of my life, Jackie. We dated for a while and eventually got married and raised a beautiful family. But, my encounter happened before we were married. We had been together around 2 years when the summer was approaching and we had wanted to do some camping and fishing together. You see, I lucked out because Jackie loved fishing too. So she was a welcome companion on many fishing trips. So we started looking at some good places to camp and fish for a few days, just the two of us. We did some asking around and everyone told us that we needed to check out Croft State Park, just outside of Spartanburg, SC. So that’s where we decided to go.
We packed up the car and headed to Croft State Park to camp and fish for 5-7 days, we weren’t really sure. The place was great, the surroundings were beautiful, and Lake Craig looked promising. We had a small aluminum John boat with us that we could do some fishing out of and we were really excited. We selected a campsite, set up our stuff, and made ourselves a few sandwiches to eat and take it all in. The spot we selected was far from anyone else. We hardly saw anyone at the park at all, so we were in heaven. After dinner, we climbed into our tent and went to sleep. We awoke early the next morning and had a fantastic day of fishing. It was the perfect day! Again, as the Sun was setting, we cooked some ham and eggs in a skillet and ate dinner. By the time we were finishing up, it was pretty dark outside and Jackie was commenting on all of the beautiful stars in the sky when we both noticed something strange.
She saw it first and said “Lewis, do you see that orange-looking star? ….Lewis,....Lewis!” The reason I wasn’t answering is that I did see it, and I knew that it wasn’t a star. I don’t know how, but I did. Instantly all of those magazines and comic books from my youth came flooding back into my mind! I knew first that it wasn’t a star because the thing was moving around. Zig zagging, holding completely still, and then moving again. I told Jackie “That’s not a star babe.” And she said “Then what is it? A plane perhaps?” I told her that I didn’t know. Of course, I didn’t want to tell her that secretly I thought it might be a flying saucer. I really liked this girl and I didn’t want to ruin things by making her think I was crazy. We watched it for about 15-20 minutes and then it just disappeared. After that, we talked about other stuff for the next 2 to 3 hours and turned in for the night. The next day came and we did some hiking on some of the local trails. Again, it was a great day and I and Jackie were having just the best time. As the day wound down, we made dinner a fire and did some more stargazing.
All of a sudden we saw the same orange orb we saw the previous night. Jackie excitedly said “Lewis, look! There it is again! What is that?” I saw it again too, and again I told her that I didn’t know. All of sudden the object stopped moving around and started to grow in size or at least that’s what we originally thought. After watching it for a minute or so, I realized it wasn’t growing in size, it was approaching us and our campsite. It was coming towards us. This thing descended over Lake Craig and hovered over the surface of the water about 100 feet or so. I have no way of actually knowing the altitude but there was an old water tower near my house at home which stands at 116ft and this looked close to that height. It was about 4 to 5 football fields in length away from us and it just sat there, no sound. Nothing. It was completely quiet, no crickets or cicadas or anything. Suddenly, Jackie said “Lewis! Is that a flying saucer?” and I said “Maybe. I don’t know.” Well it sat there for about 2 minutes and then shot off into the air very quickly, making absolutely no sound. That was it, it was gone. Surprisingly, Jackie didn’t seem frightened by it, just excited. We talked about it for a while and went to sleep.
Around 3:00 am I woke up in our tent and I saw a small glow coming from outside. I thought that maybe our campfire had flamed up again. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep. I could hear something outside of the tent moving around, stepping sounds, scurrying sounds, it’s hard to describe but I could tell something was IN our campsite. I thought maybe Jackie or me left some food out and the raccoons were getting into our supplies and I needed to get my flashlight, put my shoes on and shooed them all away. So, I first found my shoes, put them on, and tied them. Then, I felt around the dark tent trying to find my flashlight. I eventually found it after looking for a minute or 2. I tried to turn it on but nothing happened. I was confused, I had just put new batteries in it before we left to come out here. I had used the flashlight earlier that evening with no problem. This was one of those old metal flashlights from the ’70s that kind of look like a lightsaber.
So I banged on it a few times, took the batteries out, and put them back in, but nothing. As I was doing this I could still hear multiple things moving around in our camp, only light faint sounds, but I could hear it. By this time Jackie woke up and said “Lewis, what in the hell are you doing?” I told her that some raccoons were in our campsite and that I was trying to get the flashlight to work so I could scare them off, but that I couldn’t get it to work and that she should just go back to bed. She reminded me that on one tree by the firepit there is a Coleman kerosene lantern. I was like yeah, I’ll just use that. So, just like that, not really concerned about what was happening, I unzipped the tent and stuck my head out.
What I saw forever changed me! The orange glow I saw from inside of the tent that I assumed was our campfire just flaring back up, was not our fire at all. It was the large Orange Orb from earlier! IT WAS BACK AND THIS TIME MUCH MUCH CLOSER! This time, it was only 50 yards from the tent and only about 15 feet from the ground. Again it was completely silent and was spinning in a counterclockwise motion but very slowly. The colors were swirling too, they were all various shades of orange but they were moving. It kind of looked like videos of the sun’s surface, but there was no heat. At this point, I was in shock. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. I just sat there in awe. That’s when something was moving to my left towards the picnic table with our food and supplies. What I thought were raccoons were something completely different. What I saw were 4 to 5 small, thin, children with no hair, only slits for mouths, and large black, almond-shaped eyes. They appeared to be rummaging through our belongings, but I couldn’t understand why these odd-looking kids were out here in the middle of the night, in a remote camping spot, going through our gear. But before I could try and compute what I was seeing, one of them, noticed me noticing them. It stopped and produced a wand of some kind, a small thin stick, like a baton that a conductor of an orchestra would use, that’s the only way I can describe it. This being move to me very quickly and put this wand to my forehead and that’s was it. White! Like a really bright camera flash! Everything went white!
The next thing I remember, Jackie was waking me up on a trail. I was lying in some tall grass and the sun was hot and warm. It was like 1:15 in the afternoon and Jackie was screaming at me to wake up! "Wake up!" I was coming around and I felt like I was still drunk or hungover. Jackie was there with two park rangers and they were offering me some water. I was confused, I was trying to make sense of what was happening. Jackie was visibly shaken and was happy to see me as well as being really pissed off at me! She just kept yelling at me. “Lewis, where the hell did you go? Where did you go? Why did you leave me all alone in the tent?” I was like “What are you talking about? I didn’t leave. Where am I? What's going on?”
She said, "Lewis, you woke me up in the middle of the night and told me that some raccoons were messing with our stuff and that you were trying to get the flashlight to work but couldn’t, I then told you about the kerosene lantern and you told me to go back to bed, which I did. But you never came back! I woke up and 6:30 or so and the tent was wide open and unzipped and you were nowhere to be found. I got up, got dressed, and started screaming your name. I thought maybe you went fishing without me but all of your stuff was still at camp. The lantern was still hanging on the tree by the campfire, the flashlight was still in the tent. I looked for you all around the camp for 3 hours, yelling your name but we couldn’t find you. So I didn’t know what to do, but I was getting worried. So I went to the Park Ranger station and told them that you were missing. They told me not to worry and they began helping me by asking exactly what happened and where we were and stuff like that."
As she was telling me all of this the two park rangers were shaking their head with agreement with her story! They told me that they found me off of this trail roughly a mile, mile and half from our campsite, facedown in the tall grass. That I didn’t have any shoes on and that my shirt was inside out and on backwards! They wanted to know what kind of drugs did I take and I told them, I didn’t take anything. I was just trying to scare away some raccoons and the next thing I know, I’m here on the trail talking to you guys.
Needless to say, we were both freaked out and I didn’t tell Jackie about the giant orange orb and the odd-looking children for about 10 months. I was different once we got back home, not depressed but different. After a while, Jackie asked me what was going on with me? Was there something that I wanted to get off of my chest, was there something bothering me. I told her, yes, and I told her everything. She just listened, I don’t think she believed me, I don’t think she ever did. She just listened, never judged me but told me that she thinks I must have had a bad dream and sleepwalked to where they found me in the tall grass. I don’t know if she truly believed that or it freaked her out to consider the possibility that I was taken by some strange extra-terrestrial visitors. I’ve tried to speak with her about it a few times over the years but she always tells me to stop!! My children have tried to talk me into seeing a clinical hypnotherapist to try and recall what happened during my missing time, but I’m too scared to find out.
I’ve lived more than 40 years since my strange encounter and I don’t want to bring up old memories. Jackie and I are still married, we still live in South Carolina, in Charleston now. We still fish from time to time, mostly with grandchildren. And I can tell you I still think about that night almost every time. I don’t know what to think about the whole thing? Was I a victim? Or was I lucky because I was chosen? I don’t know, but I know that we are not alone." Lewis
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