What is a memory? How does the mind organize its experiences to create a cohesive narrative of what it experiences? There are, no doubt, entire sub-fields of neuroscience and psychology devoted to this question, and if you think I’m going to spend hours online tracking down the literature, you’re nuts. I mean, you’re nuts, anyway. How do I know? Because being at least a little insane is a necessary component of the human condition. How do I know that? I don’t, but we both know I’m right.
So when I tell you I have a memory of witnessing a UFO but I can’t say for certain that I actually witnessed a UFO, it’s because I don’t trust myself enough to give you a definitive answer as to whether or not it happened. Because, like you, I’m at least a little bit crazy.
What complicates this memory is that I was not the only one present. There were two other people with me at the time. This event took place (if it took place) towards the tail end of my senior year of high school. I don’t remember the month, but it must have been either shortly before or slightly after graduation. I had recently started dating a girl on whom I’d had a long-standing crush. I’ll call her “Angela” because that is her name. One night, we decided to go to with the movies with my best friend, Bradley.
We lived in a small town in New Jersey, about halfway between New York and Philadelphia. Until recently, the town had been primarily agricultural, and there were still stretches of farmland and woods that hadn’t been developed. We were driving through one of those woodsy stretches after the movie when we saw something.
The best word I have to describe the object is “fireball.” When I say “fireball,” what I mean is that it gave the appearance of something bright red-orange and luminous, about a hundred feet above the tree line, traveling from right to left from our perspective. I don’t remember who saw it first The thing was slow-moving and soundless. Undoubtedly, we had some kind of conversation about it along the lines of, “What the hell is that thing?” Our best theory in the moment was either meteor or small aircraft on fire. We decided to follow it the best we could, but those windy wooded roads prevented us from tracking it for much more than a few minutes, and we soon lost the object.
My next memory about the experience comes from the following morning when I eagerly checked the local newspaper, The Courier News, to see if a plane had gone down in the area. There was nothing in the newspaper.
So here’s where, to my mind, it gets weird. I mean, strange sky fireball is weird but explicable, yeah? Glowing fireball could be a lot of things, but what doesn’t make sense to me about the memory is that none of us talked about it ever again. That’s weird, right? Three people see something very strange, attempt to follow the object, fail, and then never talk about it again? It’s not like we had a ton of important matters at hand that we needed to get through first. We were teenagers. We didn’t have anything to talk about. So why didn’t we talk about this? Why didn’t we have the natural follow-up conversation? I don’t know.
(It looked kind of like this, which is from a video taken by a guy named Alex Sandel, who believes he witnessed a meteor. Here’s a link to his story.)
Maybe we can just chalk it up to cognitive dissonance, the discomfort that comes from witnessing something you don’t understand and so your brain just puts in an off-limits file cabinet. This seems to be the case with a lot of witnesses. For example, I was talking about this experience with a friend of mine who had a similar encounter while on a walk with a UFO researcher. The researcher, well-known, had never actually seen a UFO himself until this moment. The two of them saw some kind of object they could not identify or explain. The researcher who literally makes films about UFOs did not record the incident because, he said at the time, nobody would believe him. It’s like a kind of apathy that happens to people when they have these experiences; something shuts off. That same friend told me that this phenomena is called, in UFO circles, “emotional dampening.”
Was I dampened? If so, gross.
I puzzled over the incident for decades until I was talking about UFOs with my own children and I told them I had had this experience and that I had been with two other people but that I suspected that neither of them would remember it at all. That’s weird, too, right? Why did I think they wouldn’t remember? As it happens, I’m still in intermittent touch with Angela, so I decided to text her.
Here's a portion of that conversation:
Michael Ian Black:
Hey, I have a weird question for you
Angela:
Hi, what’s up?
Michael Ian Black:
Ok, I have no idea if you remember this but I have a very distinct memory of being with you and Brad one night coming home from the movies. We were driving and saw what looked like a fireball in the sky. Red. We thought maybe a small plane was crashing and tried to follow its path but couldn’t because it went behind trees and we couldn’t drive in that direction.
It disappeared and that was that.
The next day I remember looking at the Courier News to see if a plane had crashed and didn’t see anything.
Angela:
Hmmm… I honestly do not remember that. I feel like I would absolutely remember that bc I it would have freaked me out. Are you sure I was there? I can’t imagine not remembering something like that.
Michael Ian Black:
It’s so weird - my memory of it is that we never talked about it afterwards. It was just like a weird thing that happened and then we didn’t talk about it. It’s also possible that it never happened and I somehow invented this memory.
But why would I just invent such a specific memory, with the addition of looking in the paper the next day?
Angela:
My thoughts exactly! Maybe I forgot? Again though, that seems unlikely too.
Michael Ian Black:
Right?!?
Either way it’s weird. My daughter and i were talking about UFOs and I told her my memory and I said I didn’t think you’d remember
But why would I think you wouldn’t remember?
Unless I just made it up?
But in that case, wouldn’t I know I made it up?
Either way it’s weird.
Angela:
Wow, I absolutely wish I did remember! UFO s are definitely a real thing as far as I’m concerned. And yes, to have such a specific memory doesn’t seem made up. Weird indeed!
Which brings me back to the question, “What is a memory?” People misremember things all the time but do they just invent memories out of nothing? I have no other memories like this. Was it a dream? As a matter of fact, I did have a recurring dream when I was a kid (although the dream only happened twice) that a UFO landed in my backyard and there may have been creatures or not. It’s been so long that I don’t remember much more about the specifics, but what was always clear to me was that it was a dream. I’ve never mistaken any other dream for an actual event from my life so why would this be only one? And if it’s a real memory, why would Angela not also remember it?
(I would ask Bradley, but I haven’t spoken with him in years and this seems like a weird way to get reacquainted.)
Anyway, I’d be curious to know if any of you have had similar experiences, either with UFOs or odd memories or both. It’s bothered me for years. It still bothers me. By the way, if you’re interested in UFOs but don’t know where to start, I highly recommend the UFO Rabbit Hole Podcast.
I wonder if when we experience something that feels surreal or out of the ordinary in our lives, we subconsciously log it in our brains as something associated with a dream because of how strange it was. And maybe as time progresses this experience fades or gets pushed out of our memory bank along with the real dreams that we can't recall anymore.
Firstly, thanks for sharing Michael. Such a weird and interesting story. Would love for you to follow up with Bradley! Also I’m a huge fan.
Many years ago, I saw a UFO with another friend while driving my friend home around midnight. We were admittedly a little stoned, as one or two friends may find themselves.
First an extremely bright amber light or two appeared behind some distant clouds near the horizon. As I drove around some trees to get a better look, suddenly a small black triangular craft was (impossibly?) right above our heads (unsure about distance).
The craft had four lights - one near each vertex, and then one in the center. It floated above us without making any noise. If this craft was the source of the initial bright lights that we saw in the distance, then it had just traveled what I estimate to be a few miles in just 12-15 seconds without making a sound!
My friend annoyingly spent time afterwards diminishing the significance of what we saw, arguing that it could have been a helicopter or plane (when it clearly wasn’t due to its appearance and lack of sound). Perhaps this was his version of emotional dampening? I never understood why he downplayed it or wasn’t as fascinated as I was - as we had such a clear view of this UFO.
Truly a once in a lifetime experience that I’ll never forget, and thankfully my friend will at least confirm that we saw something unusual that night (and that it wasn’t a dream).