This is the question that the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) are trying to find out. MUFON investigate sightings of UFOs and reports of alien abductions and encounters soon after they occur. The investigators of MUFON use the tools of science, psychology and law to try and find the truth.
In January 2007, MUFON received a report from Chris Bledsoe about a UFO sighting which had occurred on 8th January 2007. Rich Lang, the Chief Investigator at MUFON for North Carolina and Virginia, USA went to Fayetteville following Chris Bledsoe’s report and recorded Bledsoe’s statement of events on camera. When Lang interviewed Chris Bledsoe, he described lights in the sky at 3 separate locations on the night of the incident.
Chris Bledsoe told Lang what he recalled from the night of the incident. The story begins on the bank of the Cape Fear River, where Bledsoe and three friends met up for some evening fishing. The four men were seated by the riverside fishing, when Chris Bledsoe left and walked up the road away from the river when he had his first sighting. He was standing next to a hut in a field when he saw two huge, motionless orange balls in the sky. He describes that the two balls were side by side, and said “But what alerted me was that a third one came, in the blink of an eye”. At that point, Bledsoe says he turned around and began walking back to his friends at a good pace to tell them what he had just seen.
UFO Sighting Over the River
When he gets to his friends, they all look up to the sky to see the three lights descending very quickly and then slowing on the other side of the river, until they disappeared behind the tree line. The balls of light were very close to the men, being described as just 150 yards away on the other side of the river. At that moment, all four of the guys dropped everything and ran towards their truck. The guys raced in their truck to the end of the road when they stopped and looked up to see a strange object floating in the sky. And that’s not the end of it...
Chris Bledsoe then went home and while inside he hears his dogs barking outside so he goes out to see what is upsetting them, which is when things got even weirder.
MUFON Investigators and Chris Bledsoe
After the initial interview with Bledsoe, Lang called another MUFON investigator, James Carrion, along to look further into the mystery of the Fayetteville Incident when he revealed more detail about his story on camera. The investigators took Bledsoe down to the river for an account of the events of that night in January 2007. The investigators knew that Chris Bledsoe was a very respected member of the community who was a commercial pilot and a successful builder, he had a loving family, and seemed like a credible witness.
Chris Bledsoe went over the events again with Lang and Carrion and told them that when the lights slowed down on the other side of the river, they were about 500-600 feet above the ground, but prior to them slowing down they were descending at an unbelievable speed. Chris said, “It looked like a star from a million miles away, and then it just, boom. It didn’t stop but it looked like a cushion or something caught it, and then they come down about this speed gently” [gesturing slowly with hands].
Chris then said that was the end of it until he got home, when it started again at the house. He described how the events unfolded after his dogs had alerted him and he had gone out to see what was happening.
He said that when he got outside, one of the dogs took off into the woods and he ran around the dog to stop it, when he saw an ‘entity’ stood between 3 and 5 feet away from him. He said, “If I put my hand out and leaned over, I could touch it”. He described it as three feet tall and said, “It didn’t move, it didn’t blink, it had red eyes, but it was glowing”. “It looked like if you dipped a person in glass and it moulded to their body, and you could see through the glass inside - that’s what it looked like. And it looked proportionately like a child. A little person.”
“For a second I was frightened and I stood here and I said, OK, I’m a big guy if you want me you got me. You got me cornered. I had nowhere to go.” “I wasn’t moving a bit. I was frozen. I was looking at it, and it was looking at me, and... I was thinking real fast it’s gonna get me, it’s gonna get me. And I just kind of calmed down and relaxed, and you know... I felt at peace at that moment.”
The investigators probed further and asked where the dog was at this point, when Chris answered “When the dog got to about there [signalled next to where the being was stood], the whole thing just disappeared.”
After Lang, Carrion and two other investigators had heard Chris’s story, they chatted among themselves and all agreed that he seemed genuine, and that the story was pretty amazing. They also agreed that his story had been consistent with his original statements when he reported the incident, and during his first interview with Lang. They also felt that it was less likely to be a hoax because he had not used the typical description that people have used in other reported alien encounters. The MUFON investigators knew that in order to check the credibility of Chris Bledsoe’s story, they would need to find the other three witnesses who had been with him that night to see if they would corroborate his story.
Witnesses of the Fayetteville Incident UFO Sightings
Lang and Carrion, the MUFON investigators, started out by interviewing Bledsoe’s son, Chris Bledsoe Junior. It turned out that while his father was experiencing the UFO sighting down at the river, Chris Jr was having his own encounter back at the house. When they asked Chris Jr what happened that night, he told them that he had seen two ‘orbs’ of light about waist high from the ground moving along the road next to his home. He said that the orbs disappeared and he then witnessed small creatures coming out of the woods. Carrion stated that the investigators were not sure if Chris Jr was simply making up a story to corroborate his father’s sightings.
MUFON managed to track down the other three witnesses from that night and interviewed them all separately about the incident. Donny Ackerman, the first witness, confirmed the sighting of the three balls of light on the other side of the river. He described how they looked and moved almost exactly the same as Chris Bledsoe had. The next witness, Gene Robinson also confirmed the story and gave a similar description. The third and final witness, David McDonald like the others gave the same description. All of the witnesses agreed that they knew it was something very strange and made them feel unsettled. They all said that there was no noise, from the lights or from anything else – no animals noises, nothing at all.
Possible Alien Abduction at Fayetteville
After speaking to the witnesses it also became apparent that there had been some ‘missing time’. Chris Bledsoe thought he had been gone from the river only around 20-30 minutes at the time of his first sighting when he ran back to the river to tell his friends what he had seen. However, the three witnesses said he had been gone for hours and they had in fact gone out searching for him. When the investigators asked Chris about this, he couldn’t explain it. The three friends said that when it got dark, they wondered where Chris had gone and so they got in the truck and drove up the hill (to where Chris describes that he had been when he saw the balls of light) but couldn’t see him anywhere. Chris says he knows that the guys had definitely been out to look for him because the truck had moved when he got back to the river. This is all very strange, as the guys in the truck would have had to drive past where Chris was standing when he saw the balls of light in the sky, yet he had not seen them and they had not seen him. This coupled with the fact that Chris believed that he’d been gone for only 20-30 minutes and his friends saying it was more like 3-4 hours suggests that something sinister happened that night.
Chris says that when he tries to remember and to think about what happened that could explain this ‘missing time’, he gets severe headaches and wants to know what happened. So Lang and Carrion decided to use a method of hypnosis to try and help Chris to remember.
Regression Hypnosis: The Truth About The Fayetteville Incident
The psychologist who did the regression hypnosis on Chris Bledsoe was Dr Michael O’Connell who trained at Harvard University and had at the time 15 years experience. The following dialogue is from that hypnosis session:
Bledsoe: “Where are we goin’?”. “I tried to hide. But couldn’t. They’re lookin’ at me. There’s four of ‘em. They’re so tall. Skinny.”
O’Connell: “How tall are they?”
Bledsoe: “Real tall. 7 foot or better. They’re not human, they’re not human.”
O’Connell: “Four of them?”
Bledsoe: “Ahuh... [more distressed] I just wanna go home. Let me go. I wanna see my son. What do you want?”
O’Connell: “What does the room look like?”
Bledsoe: “It’s round. It’s dark. And there is, well there’s... I can see con... lights. Controls. I can feel no movement. None. “
O’Connell: “Are they telling you why you were chosen?”
Bledsoe: “Ahuh [nods].”
O’Connell: “What reason was that?”
Bledsoe: “They’re my guardians.”
O’Connell: “Looking after you?”
Bledsoe: “Ahuh.”
O’Connell: Your wellbeing?”
Bledsoe: “Ahuh. Every time I get sad, they’re here. I know I’ve been sad. Is that why you come? Ahuh.”
O’Connell: “Are they the same ones that you saw in your back yard later?”
Bledsoe: “That’s their children.”
O’Connell: “Their children?”
Bledsoe: “Ahuh. They let ‘em out to play.”
O’Connell: “In your back yard?”
Bledsoe: “...”
O’Connell: “Have they been inside your home?”
Bledsoe: “Yeah.”
Lang watched the session and stated that his belief was that the regression answered some of the questions that the investigators had wanted to know, and that what had come out in the regression hypnotherapy accounted for the missing time and explained why when his friends had gone looking for him, he wasn’t in the spot that he said he had been.
So what do you think? Do you believe that Chris Bledsoe really was abducted that night, and that he is unable to remember what took him or where he went? The facts certainly seem to stack up, but I guess we’ll never know what really happened in the Fayetteville incident.
Why not take a look at my other articles, including my content on famous Mexican UFO sightings.
Jenna Caruana - Jenna Caruana Writer
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