Close Encounters of the First Kind
I have often been asked about UFOs, but I’ve never really commented publicly on it before. As a researcher of ghosts, in the beginning I felt skeptical about all things paranormal, whether it be ghosts, UFOs, or extraterrestrials. Like Dr. J. Allen Hynek, I was kind of thrust into this other paradigm, and my skepticism (for all things paranormal) was echoed by Hynek’s words in the forward that he wrote for Jacques Vallée’s book, Challenge to Science – UFO Enigma:
“As an astronomer, I probably would never have approached the subject had I not been officially asked to do so. Over the past eighteen years I have acted as a scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force on the subject of unidentified flying objects-UFO’s. As a consequence of my work on the voluminous air force files and, to a greater extent, of personal investigation of many puzzling cases and interviews with witnesses of good repute, I have long been aware that the subject of UFO’s could not be dismissed as mere nonsense. Nonsense is present, to be sure, and misidentification of otherwise familiar objects that many sincere people report as UFO’s. But is there not a “signal” in the “noise,” a needle in the haystack? Is it not precisely our role to try to isolate the valid from the nonsensical?” https://www.amazon.com/Challenge-Science-Enigma-Jacques-Vallee/dp/034527086X (Oct. 1977)
Dr. J. Allen Hynek & Dr. Jacques Vallée
By the way, in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Dr. Jacques Vallée was the inspiration for the French UFO researcher. Dr. J. Allen Hynek was hired as a consultant for the film, and he even made a cameo. What many do not know is that the film was based on a real “close encounter of a third kind” (an esoteric term coined by Hynek himself), which occurred not at Devil’s Tower but at an actual Air Force Base out west. At the time, Hynek was working as an investigator for the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, and through his investigations became known as the “father of ufology”.
It took a photograph (taken by another woman right in front of me) to shake my skepticism about ghosts, and just a couple of years later I would take a photograph in Colonial Williamsburg that convinced me that UFOs are a real, albeit unexplained phenomena. I was at the Custis Tenement, on Duke of Gloucester Street almost across from the Bruton Parish Church. I was there attempting to photograph ghosts; instead I captured a bright green apparition over the house that had a classic saucer shape attributed to UFOs. It was stationary–hovering if you will–and it was impossible to ascertain how big it was because you could not tell how high (or far away) it was:
A bright green, saucer-shaped UFO hovers above the Custis Tenement in Colonial Williamsburg:
My second encounter was a bit more profound, as I was about 35,000 feet in the air somewhere over America in the window seat of a Southwest airline jet. I took my cell phone out to photograph a colorful sunset and I took three photos. In the very first photo I took, a bright white disk showed up, and again–it was difficult to determine its size or just how close it was. But it was close enough to elicit quite a bit of discomfort when you are that high up and you know just how fragile these jets are (Have you ever seen what a collision with a bird or birds does to the fuselage?). Accompanying the large, bright white disk was a group of smaller orbs–one bright white and the others very opaque. In a different circumstance, one might consider the orbs ghosts rather than UFOs. The phenomena disappeared in the second and third photographs and I was left with a colorful sunset from about five miles up in the atmosphere–suddenly inconsequential in comparison to the first photo. I kept quiet about this second encounter because my specialty was photographing ghosts, and I wanted to continue to focus on that, but I could not help but think that the disk was following our jet. Perhaps a bit ironic, coincidental, or serendipitous is that while I’m writing this, in the background a show on the Travel Channel is on called UFOs: Uncovering the Truth. This particular episode is called NAZI UFO Secrets, and it is mainly talking about the “Foo Fighters”, a name given to the UFOs that pursued Allied warplanes over Europe (I know, you thought I was talking about the rock group. Now you know where they got their name!) The word “foo” likely came from the French word “feu”, meaning fire, because these UFOs resembled balls or disks of light more than they resembled any kind of metallic human-made machine for flight. The “Foo Fighters” would chase and sometimes envelope Allied warplanes, in some cases making their instruments go awry, as well as fly at incredible speeds and make impossible turns. Did I photograph a Foo Fighter?
While photographing a colorful sunset from my window seat on a Southwest airline jet, I captured what appears to be a UFO at the right wing! Notice the presence of other much smaller orbs:
That same year I photographed a stable in the back of the original 18th century Taliaferro/Cole House in Colonial Williamsburg. This stable was used (back in the 1780s) for several years as the First African-American Church, before they were able to build their own church. That photo yielded an apparition in the far left window that appears to be alien to the earth, and that photo is in my second book, Breakthrough Ghost Photography of Haunted Historic Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia Part 2: https://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Photography-Historic-Colonial-Williamsburg/dp/0764355724/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Tim+Scullion&qid=1615866974&sr=8-3
This past summer (2020) I took thousands of photos in Williamsburg and did not have time to comb through them until this winter. In this crop of photos I found several that just might take me out of the paradigm of ghosts and right back into the realm of UFOs and extraterrestrials. It was right down the sidewalk from the Bruton Parish Church, right in front of the Bowden/Armstead House, and the apparition (or whatever label you would like to give it) appears to be what many in the UFO world call a “gray” (alien). In comparison to its surroundings it appeared very small, I would estimate under four feet, and was on the very edge of the photo. There is possibly another larger face right next to it that is cut off by the edge of the photograph, so I can’t be sure. I’m going to show you the whole photo first, then a completely untouched, cropped version, which by the way I would submit to any photographic forensic analyst to prove its veracity.
The Whole Photo, showing the Bruton Parish Church (the next photo is a crop from an apparition on the sidewalk from the far left of this photo):
A completely untouched photo of a possible “gray” alien on the sidewalk in Colonial Williamsburg, untouched:
Another photo taken at the Shield’s Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg leaves me with the question is this really a ghost? Some UFO researchers have spoken of the multi-dimensional abilities of some extra-terrestrials, leaving me with the conundrum of what am I really looking at? It reminds me of the humanoid skeletons that have been found in South America with elongated skulls:
This next photo, taken at Shield’s Tavern in Colonial Williamsburg, begs the question, “Ghost . . . or alien?”
Like you, I have more questions than answers. But the photos do not lie, and they suggest beings with a vastly superior technological intelligence are present here on earth, and have been for quite some time. Don’t think so? Take a look at these photos of Medieval paintings:
Medieval paintings showing flying UFOs:
So I’m not changing my focus away from ghosts, but in the process of capturing apparitions that do not fit into that paradigm, I can’t just ignore them. I also can’t ignore the feeling of apprehension (when flying almost 7 miles over terra firma) that a UFO is right at our wingtip and possibly shadowing the jet I am riding in. I also know that our government hides their knowledge of the UFO presence and is so quick to go in and clean up a crash site. Why? It’s quite simple: they want the technology. Reverse engineering alien technology would no doubt yield a treasure trove of advances that would give the US military superiority over other nations, so it should come as no shock that they would keep it secret. I can only hope that they would, however, share the technology that would benefit us.
Continuing with the sighting of UFOs, and a possible coverup: a couple of years ago, while giving a ghost tour, the whole group along with me witnessed a large, bright green object streaking parallel to the horizon. We were all amazed at what we just saw, and someone in the group sent me a news report the following day claiming that it was a meteor that fell harmlessly into the Atlantic–seen from multiple states. I couldn’t help but call into question the validity of that report, because what we saw did not have a downward trajectory, but seemed to be moving parallel to the visible horizon. For me, it was a reminder of what Dr. J. Allen Hynek experienced as an investigator for Project Blue Book: the government did not want to acknowledge the existence of UFOs, they just wanted a credible authority to furnish a rational explanation for what it could have been. The problem is that these rationales do not always match up to what was seen, heard, or even photographed . . .
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Check out other ghost photo blogs including the following: the ghost of a small child and others attracted to what is familiar to them, the ghosts in the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA; the ghosts in Julep’s Restaurant in Richmond, Va; ghosts in a Las Vegas casino; dark hooded apparitions in Colonial Williamsburg, the ghosts of Merchant Square, Williamsburg, the ghosts of Jerome, AZ P1, Jerome, AZ P2, the ghosts of Relics Restaurant, Sedona, AZ, the ghosts of the Red Garter, Williams, AZ P1, the ghosts of the Red Garter, Williams, AZ, P2, ghosts in the Barnes & Noble Bookstore that featured my book, Williamsburg’s most haunted: the Peyton Randolph House, the ghosts of Antelope Canyon in Page, AZ, one of America’s most haunted roads: Crawford Road, near Yorktown, VA, Civil War ghosts in my house, Civil War ghosts at Edgewood Plantation, photographic proof that ghosts are attracted to children, the story of how one of my ghost photos was positively identified by a group of friends, and other paranormal posts.
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After 2 years of research, a lot of experimentation, and over 10,000 photographs, check out the world’s first groundbreaking photographic study of ghosts: Haunted, Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia with Breakthrough Ghost Photography (Part 1) available at both Schiffer Publishing and at Amazon, nominated for consideration in the nonfiction category for the 19th annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards:
Part 2 of this book features the largest number of ghosts ever captured in a single camera shot, as well as several photos of apparitions that look alien to our world: Breakthrough Ghost Photography of Haunted Historic Colonial Williamsburg Virginia. Here is the link to Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Photography-Historic-Colonial-Williamsburg/dp/0764355724/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=Tim+Scullion&qid=1606440844&sr=8-3
The third book in this series takes you to some of the most haunted sites throughout the state of Virginia, and it features the homes of the Virginia-born presidents! Breakthrough Ghost Photography of Haunted Historic Virginia, Featuring Homes of the Virginia Presidents: https://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Photography-Haunted-Historic-Virginia/dp/0764361929/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=Tim+Scullion&qid=1606440844&sr=8-4
Tim Scullion is a published author, photographer, and musician. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree Cum Laude. In addition to the book mentioned above, Tim has written a novel, a series of instruction books on the guitar, a children’s book, and has a photo-essay published by the University of Virginia in the book Troubled Times Companion, Vol. III.
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