I’m old enough to say I totally geeked out over the X-Files television show back in the 90’s. In fact, I would put myself right up there with Spooky Mulder in saying, “I want to Believe!”. I grew up in the countryside outside of the tiny hamlet of Blanchard, Louisiana and my night skies were brilliant and clear. There were many nights I would take an old blanket out and place it on the ground, recline and just watch the stars go by. Many times, I would see meteorites falling to the Earth streaking across the sky in brief brilliance. I watched as satellites blinked and slowly made their way across the darkness. One night, in coordination with a broadcast on network television, I watched one of the Gemini spacecraft soar across the heavens, a tiny blinking white dot against the cosmos.

I yearned, I longed, I even prayed to see a UFO. Just once, I wanted a flying saucer to land on my front lawn. Back then, aliens were not quite as hostile in their fictional depiction. It was the age of Progress, a time enlightened by the success of the American space program. Our hope was the stars. Our future lay beyond the solar system. Star Trek promised a future Utopian society where racism, sexism, disease, hunger, and strife were a thing of the past. If we could only get out there! And, in our unyielding optimism, we knew that friendly, highly educated aliens were just waiting for us to mature to a level that could withstand the truth of their existence.

On the far, southern horizon of my 62 acres of pasture and woodland, I would watch lights wheel and turn thinking they were alien spacecraft. My brother popped that bubble. They were just airplanes landing at the nearby Barksdale Air Force Base. In all of my “travels” through my imaginary landscape of aliens superimposed on those empty woods and pasture, I never saw a UFO. I never saw an alien spacecraft.

BUT, I spent a portion of my allowance every week on UFO magazines. A dozen or so of these magazines appeared on the bookshelves every month. On their covers were eerie, blurred photographs of REAL alien spacecraft. They carried stories of alien abduction and encounters with extraterrestrials. And, of course, the very government that had given us this incredible space program was covering up the existence of these spacecraft. After all, we weren’t ready as a race to accept aliens.

WHAT? Of course we were ready! Decades of science fiction novels, comic books, and movies not to mention the most incredible array of science fiction television had primed every civilized American to be ready for aliens to land in their back yard! There had to be another reason these encounters were being covered up. For, I refused to accept that such encounters did no happen! I wanted my faster than life space drive. I wanted my transporter. I wanted my phaser and ray gun.

After years of watching our once awesome space program fall prey to the oil embargo and apathy, I realized I would never get to walk the sloping hallways of the awesome space station from 2001: A Space Odyssey. And, to make matters worse, I became a Christian apologist and began to read some of the objective analysis of our universe from Dr. Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe. Seems that most of modern astrophysicists now recognize that the conditions that allowed life to exist on our planet are so improbable, essentially impossible that in spite of finding hundreds of planets circling distant stars, we are most likely the only planet in the universe with life! What? Surely not! But, the science is very compelling.

And yet, there are a number of these UFO sitings that cannot be explained away as natural phenomena or stealth aircraft. About 6% of UFO sitings defy explanation and are called rUFOs or “residual” UFOs. What is causing these UFOs if there aren’t any alien lifeforms anywhere else in the universe?

So, here’s the deal. For the next few weeks, I will be writing a blog post on this phenomena as I lead up to the release of my next fiction book. I’ll talk about the state of the search for extraterrestrial life. I’ll discuss the difficulty of writing science fiction for a Christian author. I’ll look at the UFO sub-culture that will certainly resurge when X-Files returns in January, 2016. So, in anticipation of my next book, “The 10th Demon: Children of the Bloodstone” I’ll let you read this small excerpt from the book. This scene takes place in the past, in 1947 when a scientist is working with a demonic presence to locate a connection with a distant alien world. Enjoy:

Excerpt from “The 10th Demon: Children of the Bloodstone”

June 24, 1947

Mt. Rainier, Washington

A long, long time ago, Tyhee Sahale became angry with the people and ordered a medicine man to take his bow and arrow and shoot into the cloud which hung low over Takhoma. The medicine man shot the arrow, and it stuck fast in the cloud. Then he shot another into the lower end of the first. He shot arrows until he had made a chain which reached from the cloud to the earth. The medicine man told his children to climb up the arrow trail. Then he told the good animals to climb up the arrow trail. Then the medicine man climbed up himself.

Just as he was climbing into the cloud, he looked back. A long line of bad animals and snakes were also climbing up the arrow trail. Therefore the medicine man broke the chain of arrows. Thus the snakes and bad animals fell down on the mountain side. Then at once it began to rain. It rained until all the land was flooded. Water reached even to the snow line of Takhoma. When all the bad animals and snakes were drowned, it stopped raining.

A Cowlitz Indian Legend

Kay Ball folded the document in half and stowed it in her backpack. Night waned outside her tent and the wind had died down. She had been unable to sleep with anticipation of reaching the cave in the early morning hours. If the legend were true, then the cave might ultimately yield the Portal. Could this medicine man have passed through the Portal centuries before? It was the best lead she had found in years.

The presence within her quivered with anticipation and excitement. In the years since she had finished her secret work during World War II, she had researched the legends of North American Indians. After centuries of failure to find the Portal in other lands, Kay Ball had decided to turn her attention to North America.

The flaps on her tent moved and a dark face appeared against the pale dawn. “Madam, we have found the cave!” Sam, her Cowlitz Indian guide, had found the marks left in the mysterious earth by moonlight. Ball smiled and shrugged into her heavy coat.

“Let’s see it!”

Sam led her and the other three members of the expedition up a long crevice in the upper stretches of the glacier and into the early morning sunlight. In the past two days, four members of her team had perished on the treacherous ice, but Ball had not relented. She had searched for the Portal for years and she was not about to give up. Sam gestured to a huge crack in the side of the mountain.

“The Mouth of God.” He smiled. He had lost all of his teeth and his face was a mass of dark wrinkles beneath gray, stringy hair. “It is here the medicine man saw the cloud.”

The opening in the mountain was huge, spreading from right to left for over one hundred yards. It was turned down slightly at the ends as if God was indeed frowning. Ball gestured to one of the other men.

“Mercer, go get the package.”

Mercer, a small, wiry man was lucky to be alive. He had survived years of harsh work on the Manhattan Project as a lowly lab assistant and his appetite for money was immense. Ball had paid him dearly for the package. His incessant coughing had troubled her at first. But, the man most likely was suffering from radiation poison. He would never live to spend his money.

Sam led them into the interior of the cave. The roof stretched far above them and the walls were dark, crenulated rock. It had been decades since the last eruption but the cave was a huge lava tube. And, if her information was correct, at the back of the cave would be the fissure. Science had established much in the twentieth century and most scientists she had met during her stent with the Manhattan Project had balked at the supernatural. But, during the hours of flying them back and forth between their desert prison and their Washington meetings, Kay Ball had pried much information from them. Here, in this cave, was a strong source of radioactivity of unknown source. And, the lava just beneath the surface would supply enormous power. Here, the magnetic field of the earth and the geothermal power of the volcano and the presence of radioactivity might approach the combination that could be responsible for the Portal. She could only hope.

Mercer trudged up the icy path behind her pulling the sled behind him. The package was about the size of a large suitcase and encased in bright aluminum. Ball nodded to Sam. “Take us to the fissure.”

It took almost an hour to make their way into the depths of the cave over broken rims of lava and shattered shards of rock until they found the fissure. It stretched from the floor twenty feet into the air. Steam hissed from the insides of the fissure and Ball could see a faint, reddish glow. She pulled her magnetometer out of her backpack and studied the glowing dials. The magnetic field here was off the scale and oscillating wildly.

“This is it!” She shouted. “Place the package at the base of the fissure. Hurry!”

Mercer glared at her and pulled the sled across the broken rock. The two other men helped him wedge it into the base of the fissure. Ball pointed over her shoulder. “Sam, get them all back to the opening where you will be safe.”

“What about you?” His dark eyes flashed in the glow of the fissure.

“I’ll be fine.” She whispered. Her inner power would protect her. If this worked and the fissure opened then she would have to hurry through the portal.

Mercer rushed past her as she dug the remote control out of her backpack. It was big and bulky with an antenna three feet long. She extended the antenna and waited until the men were out of the cave. It didn’t take that long to run back to the opening when you weren’t dragging a suitcase containing a small atomic bomb!

Kay Ball concentrated and felt the dimensions shift around her. She reached out and opened a doorway into the heavenly dimensions. While profound and deep, they did not afford her inner power a passageway off this world. But, it would protect the woman from the blast. She regretted that the men would die. But, that was the price they would pay for believing her lies.

She closed her eyes and pressed the button on the remote. Light brighter than the creation event flooded around her, deflected by the extra-dimensional shield she had erected. Her supernatural tinkering with the bomb had insured that the blast would be mostly high energetic particles and not concussive. The energy would not collapse the cave but it would kill the men instantly. Already, she could feel her body glowing with the wispy edges of energy that were leaking through the shield. But, she would survive long enough.

The light died and in front of her, the fissure shivered and shimmered with mirror energy. Suddenly, the thing came through the mirrored surface. It was huge and a flat, silver circle of metal gleaming like a new moon. Flashing metal and lights, it came at her and turned horizontal at the last minute and barely missed decapitating her. Behind it, eight circular smaller objects came through the portal. The last scooped down and something grabbed her. She was jerked from the floor of the cave by an invisible force that snugged her up against the floor of the last object. She was glued to the bottom of the craft, her face aimed toward the floor of the cave. It rolled past quickly and she saw the ashy remains of Sam, Mercer, and her two assistants. They never knew what hit them.