Over on UFO Digest Chris Holly presents a story someone she knew shared with her about a strange encounter they'd had in 1995, while out in the woods. She describes it as "one of the biggest and most important sighting encounters I have ever heard" and it does certainly certainly cast an interesting light on aspects of the UFO phenomena. The informant and a number of friends were going off into the Long Island woods for a spot of hunting and on their way through the woods they saw lights of nearby houses fading and brightening:

We hoped they would not blackout, as we would then be joined with a bunch of electric company guys out in the woods, as there was a large transformer station out there. We knew if they showed up we would have to leave.

...

We packed up the rest of our gear and took off down the right of way along the side of the high-voltage electric wire towers.

We were about half way to our destiny out in the woods when we approached a intersection ahead of us of the transformer big electric company towers, a huge radio station tower and a high cell tower all in one group.

As we approached this area my buddy that worked for the telephone company pointed up towards the top branches of the trees ahead and said – what the heck is that? We all looked and saw what looked like a pencil thin laser blue like light shinning along the tree line. At first we thought it was from the poles, tress, or maybe the wires or transformer. I told my buddies that must be what is going on with the flickering lights back there by the houses.

...

Ahead of us over the group of towers, we could see the laser light was coming straight down from the sky. We followed the light up and could clearly see a huge black round saucer shaped craft hovering silently over the towers. The thin light attached to the wires and pole. There was no sound no movement just this light drinking or doing something with the towers and wires. The thing was huge as when you looked up at it the entire sky was blocked out but for the massive shape of the craft. Around the borders of the craft you could see the night with all its stars and moonshine, however this massive black ship blocked out an enormous area while it sucked from the wires with its long thin light.

So thy quietly backed away and disappeared into the woods (I know I'd have turned and run):

As we packed up our gear to leave we saw a huge glow and at once the houses and streetlights were back to full power. We knew the thing had finished its meal or whatever it was doing!

So what explanations do we have? Well the most obvious is that a flying saucer stopped off to top up on some extra juice that we foolishly leave lying around for anyone to grab, anyone with the stones to pull of "electrical syphoning" that is. However, Holly spoke to three geniuses (technically two geniuses and the smartest guy she knew, which is as good as three geniuses in my book) she happens to have in her phone book (I'm not sure I have one). They all told her the same thing:

I was fascinated and stunned to be told by all three the same thing! None of the men thought this craft was feeding at all. In fact they all felt that this craft was putting IN data- not taking anything out! All of them also added in a matter of fact way that “of course they were also taking all the data that was being transmitted out through the lines as well”.

I dunno. I might not be a genius or anything* but that seems a big leap, and they must know each other to come up with such a similar idea.** It also strikes me that there is a flaw in the idea - if they wanted to put data in and/or monitor the data then they could do so in a much more discrete way - buried underground, hacking into networks or satellites. So is there another explanation?

Well I'm glad you asked. We have looked at the possibility some UFOs are plasmas (including their presence at other sites with a lot of power like the Stanford linear particle accelerator, one of the largest around) and Albert Budden has examined this angle in a couple of books (which also examine how this might explains other Fortean phenomena) and, earlier, Paul Devereux was examining Earthlights. It would seem possible that what was seen was connected to or even generated by the transformer. Presumably, as this doesn't happen often, the atmospheric conditions must have been conducive to this occurrence. So what we could be looking at is some kind of.. plasma or charged cloud or "ball lightning" (even if I am not convinced they are actually lightning and they might not always appear as balls, but otherwise it is a useful term) either formed by the high voltages or trapped by them.

Whatever, the interpretation it may indeed by a significant report as it does show a link between UFOs and electricity, which could help us eventually get a clearer idea of what is going on.

Source

Hat tip

*don't worry Empaholics that is only because I am beyond your Earth measures of such things, I'd make the genuisometer melt with the application of my mental might.

**the moral of this story might be that you need independent genius or they are all going to give the same answers (and claim the others copied off them).