In the early 1970's, after returning home from a surgical procedure, I collapsed into my velvety couch and fell asleep. A few hours later, in that dreamy half-awake state that appears just before full consciousness sets in, I peered through partially-opened eyes at my surroundings. 

Still on my stomach with my head turned sideways, I looked across the living room to the kitchen where I saw – standing beside my kitchen counter – three half-human/half-bug-like creatures. Feeling that I must have been sent home on some extremely potent drugs, I gazed intently at the beings who were watching me.

I wasn't afraid, though – I was curious. 

They looked like tall skinny-legged and skinny-armed bugs with huge eyes and oddly shaped heads, not unlike preying mantises standing upright, and they appeared to be as curious about me as I was about them.

Around that time (I lived in that apartment for one year), a group of neighbors and I emerged suddenly on our combined porch in a mysterious procession that had never occurred before. There we were, residents on the second floor of a two-story, 32-apartment building that housed eight apartments on each side of each floor. None of us in our group of eight acknowledged each other, except perhaps with a nod, as we stared across our shared balcony into the southeastern sky. 

But we all saw the same thing – what appeared to be several discs hovering in the sky – UFOs.

We were mesmerized. None of us spoke words you might have expected to hear, such as, "Are those UFOs?" or "Do you see what I'm seeing?" We stared in silence. None of us ran into our apartments to grab cameras either. Though I wanted to take photos, I was afraid that when I returned to the balcony, the UFOs would be gone. I needn't have been concerned, however. They hovered for quite a while. 

Eventually, though my apartment neighbors and I seemed to be in some form of trance-like stupor throughout the event, we mumbled variations of, "Wow," and returned to our apartments to call our unbelieving friends and family members.

The next day, a small blurb in the local paper noted the mysterious formation, but recent attempts to find that newspaper article reveal nothing (with no date, news blurbs from several decades ago are almost impossible to find). 

On that day, even as I watched the discs hovering in the sky, I had already forgotten about the beings that stood in my kitchen, so it wasn't until years later that I wondered if the UFO visitors in my apartment were somehow related to the event I had witnessed that evening on the balcony. 

Was it possible that those three bug-like creatures sat inside one of the UFOs that hovered in the sky that evening?

After those mysterious occurrences, in casual UFO conversations, I occasionally related the UFO event I experienced in the early 1970s, but eventually both UFO encounters filtered into the back of my mind where they stayed until nearly a decade and a half later, when, in 1987, Whitley Strieber published a book entitled, Communion, A True Story*. 

The drawing on the cover aborted my movement down the book store aisle as I stared in disbelief (picture above) at the haunting image. The memory of the encounter in my kitchen surfaced in a shock of instant recognition. The picture on the cover of that UFO book, Communion, A True Story*, looked remarkably similar to the beings that stood in the kitchen of my apartment that long ago day shortly after my surgery. 

Since that time I have read about how abductees have been surgically probed and I wonder if the fact that I had just experienced a surgery might have been enough to interest my UFO visitors.  I never felt as if I had been abducted, though, and I don't remember having been probed in any way.

But the fact that they showed up shortly after a surgical procedure mystifies me. How did they know about the surgery? Was I merely dreaming that I had seen the aliens? If my alien UFO experience was only a dream, how was it that I chose to remember them as they appeared on the cover on Whitley Strieber's book?

And if that encounter was only a dream, had Whitley Strieber somehow stumbled into it, since he wrote the book fifteen or so years after my experiences?

One day I hope to connect with somebody who witnessed the event and who has proof of the UFO formation that took place in the early 1970's. 

If you or anybody you know experienced the UFO phenomenon I witnessed in Calumet City – in possibly 1971 or 1972 – feel free to contact me. Though I couldn't accurately assess the actual location of the UFO sighting, the UFO formation was reportedly hovering above River Oaks Mall. According to that (now lost) article, people exited their cars to watch the UFO formation. If the event did not occur in Calumet City, the UFO sighting may have appeared in the town just south of Calumet City in Lansing, Illinois. 

And if UFO activity interests you maybe you would be interested in reading FBI files on UFO encounters. Click this link for FBI.GOV – don't be surprised if not all parts appear when you click the links, however.

*While numerous books have been written on the subject of UFO phenomenon, especially since the exposé of Area 51 in Roswell, New Mexico (thanks in part to the 1993 television show, The X Files), Whitley Strieber's book, Communion, A True Story, is still available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.