SEPTEMBER 7, 2019

While camping in the San Luis Valley (near San Acacio, CO) on a friend’s private land this summer, I had a strange experience. The event took place on September 7th. while myself and 2 friends were camping. It was around 15 minutes before 7 pm so there was still plenty of sunlight remaining. One friend was sleeping in the tent as he was recovering from a long night of work the night before. His brother and I were attempting to get a fire started but were having a little trouble because there were very strong winds. Suddenly I heard a very rhythmic drumming sound coming from the opposite side of a hill we were camping on. The area is extremely isolated with no homes for as far as the eye can see. The only way I can accurately describe the sound is a steady drumming that reminded me of the Native American drums that I’ve heard during ritual recreations at festivals. The sound was a single drum though. It went on for about 10 minutes with both myself and my friend hearing it. We were mystified. It was so strange that I was questioning as to whether or not I was really hearing it. I believe the sound was confirmed to me after around 5 minutes as coyotes began to howl in the same direction the drumming was coming from.

I wanted so badly to walk the 1500 feet or so to hill, climb to the top, and see if anything was on the other side. The only thing that stopped my curious walk to that hill was the sheer amount of extremely thick quilled cactus needles (which had been piercing the soles of my shoes throughout the day) between myself and that hill. After around 12 or so minutes of hearing the drumming sound, I was staring in the direction the sound was coming from and in the sky I saw something that I can’t explain. It was what appeared to be a hovering sphere roughly 3 times larger than any star I’ve ever seen. It was in the distance but not extremely far away. I saw the sphere in the southern sky and it was extremely illuminated. It never moved or twinkled. It just hovered about 45 – 55 degrees above the horizon. I yelled out for my friend to look and he saw it as well. We watched it together for just over a minute. Suddenly I yelled out that I was going to take a video with my phone. As I said that, he looked away too to grab a set of binoculars I brought on the trip. As I opened the camera app on my phone I pulled the phone up to sky to locate the light in the view finder it was gone. I pulled the phone down to look at the sky and sure enough it was no where to be seen. I asked my friend if he was able to get a look through the binoculars. He said once he looked away to get the binoculars and pulled them up to his eyes, he was not able to locate the object. It was gone. The drumming continued for another 5 minutes or so and then disappeared as well.

Submitted by D. Gresham