Appearance of the Blond Man (Autumn/Winter 1991)

Labor Day weekend of 1991, when I was all of 21 years old, I got on a plane and flew to Columbus, Ohio, where a young man (I’ve been calling Gerick in my blogs) who’d become a very close friend of mine (and more) was expecting me. We’d been corresponding via mailed letters and long phone calls for over a year at that point, and though it seemed foolish, it felt right to me. I wasn’t in love, but I was ready to try something different and get some on-hands support from someone going through the same craziness as I regarding aliens. Facing devastating personal shocks without any emotional support was just too hard for both of us. We came together in order to stand back to back.

There was a bit of culture shock to begin with, given that the Appalachian foothills are a very different sort of place than the Pacific Northwest. Yet there were similarities between our families. We were both from working class families, though his were salt-of-the-earth, nose-to-the-grindstone skilled workers and mine were frustrated college dropouts who filled my house with books, we understood some realities about how hard life can be, and tended to come at most issues with a similar grim yet practical mindset.

Gerick and I had discussed the likelihood that two abductees being together would mean twice the encounters and overall weirdness, and yet still we preferred to face more events if it meant not facing them alone.

I had grown up surrounded by strange events and the subsequent phobias and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that resulted from them, yet my parents, who also showed signs of trauma, had rarely taken me seriously and only ever sought to downplay the possibility that anything happening could be more than dreams or imagination. By the time I saw aliens while wide awake without any mental distortions (meaning alien-induced amnesia) at the age of 16, I had given up on ever broaching the subject with them. They would even watch a paranormal program on TV every now and again, but only treated the subject as a fascinating notion to ponder. It was odd to me, both my parents thought ghosts were possible, and reincarnation, and had even seen UFOs and thought aliens could very well be around, but they drew a line at the idea of them messing around with people. When those programs came up, my parents would change the channel! Subject avoidance… when people who are curious about strange unexplained things refuse to look at just ONE topic–! Well, it made me wonder, given how abductions tend to run in families and my few memories where my mother, at least, was involved.

Gerick’s parents were skeptical, too, but they had come a lot further along. Mainly because Gerick had contacted Budd Hopkins, of Missing Time and Intruders fame, saving up money to travel to New York two summers in a row, get hypnosis, attend support groups, and befriend several abductees. His father and he got into screaming matches over it, but Gerick was determined and after a couple of years, his parents begrudgingly agreed at least that something strange was going on. They even started to report odd events they noticed to their son.

For instance, one day around the time I moved in, they reported hearing what sounded like a dozen kids running really fast around the house, in footfalls too light and soft to be adult people. They knew what that probably meant, but they discussed it openly with Gerick and myself, saying that when Gerick’s dad got up to check, they found us fast asleep.

Yes, I flew across the country to move in with Gerick and his parents! We were hoping to move out on our own within a few months (and we did) but to begin with, I had a small twin bed and space I could use in a spare room. Most nights I stayed with Gerick in his room. He had a large, blue, L-shaped pull-out sofa. The mattresses on those things are terrible, and I really couldn’t sleep on it given my pain issues, so we often ended up sleeping on two sides of the sofa– it was certainly long enough to accommodate us!

It was on one of those nights early on when I awoke in the middle of the night for a few seconds, hearing what sounded like Gerick begging someone for something, “Please! Come on!” However, I couldn’t seem to shake the lethargy that was gripping me. The next morning, Gerick told me a blond man, well-built and muscular, had come for a visit. They had shared some close bond, and when it was ‘time’ for the guy to make Gerick forget the visit, Gerick threw himself on the man’s legs and begged him to not take away his memory! Evidently, the begging worked, because my boyfriend was able to remember the entire event. Mostly just talking, and some of it talking about ME being there and why. I was not happy, as I had not been able to fight the sleepiness. Normally, I am a very light and nervous sleeper, which makes sense!– and so it was obvious to me that the man had used some sort of mechanism or power to induce deep sleep on me, something I’d seen them do to other people and knew them to have done to me.

It made me scratch my head, as I had never seen alien “Blonds” before– at least not that I remembered! Gerick had started seeing human-looking people in association with his abductions off and on his whole life, as well as Greys. I had only ever recalled Greys and obvious mixed hybrids of Greys and humans. Encounters with the human-looking beings (were they abductees themselves? more human hybrids?) seemed to have a different, more humane, tone than the all-business Greys. Still, I was assured they were far less frightening than Greys, and so I was more curious than frightened.

Sometime in December, just after the tree was put up and trimmed, I got to have my first visual confirmation of the Blonds’ existence.

It was cold and dark out, and I was cozied up on the sofa in the front parlor (old-fashioned, turn of the century, narrow lot house) with Gerick’s dog, Peanut, watching TV. A shadow was cast from the porch light on the covered porch, and then I heard the storm door creaking open. Gerick was from a large family with 7 other siblings and their families, so I was used to unannounced visitors at all times of the day and evening. I thought nothing of it, expecting a knock or doorbell sound any moment.

But none came.

I was caught up in the program I was watching, and so didn’t pay it much mind, but then I noticed that Peanut was watching the front door with wide, alert eyes. She was a dachshund mix, and older and well-behaved, but– like many pets of abductees– leery of certain things. It occurred to me looking at her that no one had knocked, and I realized it had been a couple of minutes already!

So, shaking my head in confusion, I got up to check things out…

… and a shadow (cast by the porch light into the dim living room) moved and I then heard the storm door creaking shut. By the time I disentangled my legs from the blanket I was under and got to the front door, I could only see the retreating back of a tall, blond man. I called out to Gerick, because something wasn’t right. Someone had come to the door and opened the storm door and then just stared into the house for a couple of minutes before leaving again!

I opened the front door and called out, “Hello? Can I help you?” Gerick was in the bathroom, and I called to him, saying there was a man and to come out. He called back and I could hear him moving around.

Meanwhile, the retreating man didn’t turn around, didn’t look back. Gerick had a couple of blond brothers, but they were medium height and very slender. The guy I watched retreat was built almost like a body builder. Very solid! His clothes were dark and nothing stood out that grabbed my attention. At the time I was coming out to the front porch to follow him a ways, I didn’t think about it being a “Blond”. I thought maybe it was someone lost. Or maybe it was a peeping tom and I needed to see his face to report him to police. I tried to make note of his looks in the dark for that purpose. He had sort of a pageboy type haircut, only more casual, However, I could make out no further details of his face, as he steadfastly refused to look back.

I was in bare feet, and at the edge of the wooden porch, I realized it would be painful to follow on foot any further. Gerick finally was coming out of the bathroom, hurrying to me. I noticed how there was no traffic, even on the main road. Everything was sort of extra still, and eerie. It wasn’t that late at night and we were only a block from a very main thoroughfare. That bizarre, otherworldly feeling was evident, but I didn’t get why. I still thought it was just some creep walking away from the house down the sidewalk.

When Gerick opened the front door and came out to join me, I turned to look at him, and then turned to look back, and the blond man, who had been rapidly retreating, was gone. I guessed that he turned up an alley, but I wasn’t certain. I quickly told Gerick what happened as I went back inside the house, and he shook his head. He pointed out that my description matched the guy who had been in his bedroom only a month or so prior!

(There is much more that happened in that house without me being around, but that is Gerick’s story to tell, and so I will leave what I’ve heard on that account for him to share, or not!– someday as he chooses.)

It was just the beginning of a very active period that would change entirely the way I viewed the aliens and our future forever At Spiral’s End: What’s Left After the Paradigm Shatters is the personal paranormal blog of a woman that follows not only current odd events in her life, but recounts incidents from her past, including lifelong alien abductions, encounters with ghosts and other spiritual beings, and premonitions from either waking visions or dreams. She reacts and speculates about the deeper meaning behind these incidents and wonders– what is the ultimate reality or intelligence behind it all?