For probably the first issue ever, we don’t begin our series of stories in Utah but in Nevada, in an electronics store parking lot in Las Vegas. I’m returning a piece of equipment I bought to charge my camera battery. I’ve finally found the charger I need and I’m on my way. But what I’m about to witness can’t be caught on my Nikon 3300. Out of nowhere, a spinning, invisible vortex can clearly and loudly felt and heard but unseen. Then the air and view around me become distorted like a mirage, but this appears completely unnatural. I hear a whoooo, whoooo, whooo, whooooooosh along with a fierce gust of wind. For just 15 seconds something very large is flying by and it’s not a dust bunny. There are only blue skies and wisps of clouds. I look high and off in every direction… but I see nothing.

Besides myself, there are two other men in the parking lot. We look at each other, all of us completely dumbfounded. “What in the hell was that?” one man yells. We all shrug. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” We stand and look around for a few seconds: nothing… nothing. Our sense perceptions collectively fail us. We all look at each other again to verify that we are not all crazy. We get in our cars and drive away.

This incident went unreported. I probably would have eventually forgotten it. I haven’t even felt compelled to tell the story to friends, because it was completely inexplicable. But I felt compelled to recount it here because I’m almost certain readers have experienced similar encounters. After publishing our previous X-Files story, we had half a dozen people came forward at the farmers market and tell us their stories of close encounters with ships or beings most certainly from out of this world.

It’s clear there is much more to our existence than meets the eye. And even scientists say we are very likely sharing our universe with more intelligent life forms than ourselves.

But we live in a world obsessed with everything we can touch, feel and see. We can consume everything that is easy to get, well within reach, and we can do and go where we are told, believe what we are told to believe. For those of you who don’t mind traveling a dusty highway, or going off road, or finding odd places with odd people, read on. But for those of you who would prefer [not] to stay on the freeway, you can take the next exit now. I suggest you stop reading and just go on believing what every other news source says.

I thought I would revisit a place I attempted to visit four years ago and write about it: Dugway Proving Grounds. I was denied access four years ago. On June 21, 2015 I was denied again. About 500 Utah residents live in Dugway. I ask one man who was entering the gates from which I was barred, “Excuse me,” I have to ask: “What are they doing in there?”

“Bio and chem defense testing,” was his simple answer.

“But of course there is much more to it than that,” he adds. I then point out that I know about the massive Michael Army Airfield, large enough to land the space shuttle. “So what goes on there?”

“I really can’t say any more than what I’ve told you,” is his cryptic reply.

Then I meet Bonnie, the communications manager for Dugway. “You can probably get a tour for sometime in the future, but somebody needs to escort you, and there is nobody here who can do that today. But if you leave me your driver license number and DOB, I can see if we can get you cleared.”

I decide to ask Bonnie a few questions to see if she flinches. She doesn’t.

Bonnie says she used to joke with people that at 5 PM each night, the mountain opens up and all the alien spaceships fly out. According to those who have watched Dugway from afar, Bonnie’s description is not very far from the truth.