Northern Close Encounters

The account of Scottish experiencer, abductee and inventor Garry McDonald

"Time operates on the principle that you stop time around you and in front of you, as you move forward time starts behind you and stops in front of you, you move inside time" Garry McDonald, January, 2003

© Brian Allan 2004

Introduction

*Authors note* Pseudonyms have been used at the request of those involved.

This account of one mans experiences with the paranormal gives a valuable insight into the strange, unearthly and often enlightening events surrounding encounters with allegedly extraterrestrial craft and their occupants. Atypically, Aberdeenshire born Garry McDonalds experiences encouraged him to embark on an ongoing learning process beginning with the study, research and build a series of fuel cells based on the electrolytic conversion of water into hydrogen and oxygen. The subsequent interviews revealed reports of a history of psychic encounters, contact with possible extraterrestrials, missing time and finally, implants and alien abduction. The following article is based on a series of interviews I conducted with Garry between the 24th and 25th of January 2003.

Garry McDonald's encounters began when he was approximately eleven years old and living in a small house in the Aberdeenshire hills where over the years at night he regularly saw lights in the night sky. The 'lights' did not appear to be stars and would dance and flit around in the heavens apparently obeying his mental instructions. While the bulk of his sightings and encounters have occurred during the late 1980's and throughout the 1990's, his early sightings are still highly significant to him. One early encounter happened during one November evening when he was attending to a chore in a cattle shed on his parents' farm. He noticed a bright, orange light like a flame in the southern sky, he describes it as shaped like a fish. He mentioned the sighting to his mother who told him not to be concerned although it was clear she did not believe him. Fortunately, by way of corroboration, the following morning a local radio station carried a report of a light in the sky in a news bulletin. While there are other more obvious explanations apart from UFOs, e.g. a meteorite burning up as it entered the atmosphere, a satellite etc. nevertheless, this first encounter appears to have sensitised him to unusual aerial phenomena.

The next incident occurred at around 2 am on a Sunday morning in October or November 1984. Garry, who does not drink, was driving home from a local dance and had dropped off one of his friends prior to setting off for his home. As he drove along the country road he noticed a large, bright, light in the sky; he describes it as blue/white in colour. He slowed down slightly to observe the light as it moved from west to east in front of him, he felt that the light was shining directly at him and he discounts the possibility that it was a helicopter. He then vividly recalls still looking at the light, but by now he was standing outside the vehicle and the door was open, significantly, he has no memory of stopping the car and getting out. The light slowly faded and he re-entered the car and drove home. The following morning he told one of his friends from the previous evening about the events and although having to take George's words at face value, his friend accepted his version of events.

There is another incident worth mentioning from around this period; once again while driving home alone in the early hours of Sunday morning, Garry recalls that it was around 2 am. He was not travelling particularly fast, perhaps fifty miles per hour, when he heard a voice coming from the rear seat of his car. The voice was both male and insistent, "Go to the other side of the road" it commanded. Understandably surprised, he glanced in his rear view mirror but there was no one to be seen so he carried on as before. The voice spoke again, this time louder and with a sense of greater urgency, "Go to the other side of the road". For some reason he felt compelled obey and allowed the drivers side wheels of the car to drift over the centre line of the road, fortunately due to the time the road was deserted. As he rounded a bend, to his surprise and horror he saw a car emerge rapidly from a farm track directly on to the main road. Fortunately, given his new position on the road he was able to avoid a certain collision. As he drove past the now stationary vehicle he glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the other driver staring after him, shocked at the near accident, the entire incident only took seven or eight seconds from start to finish. Garry cannot account for what happened that night, he did not recognise the voice and nothing like this has happened since, nevertheless it did happen and whatever it was, it probably saved his life.

During the series of interviews Garry revealed that shortly after moving from the farm to a cottage a few miles away, he woke one night to find two small (grey) aliens standing at the foot of his bed. He was not afraid, but instead he sent a telepathic message to them saying that he was 'not ready'. By this he assumed that at that time he was not prepared for an encounter of this kind. They reassured him, replying that it was OK, they were only there to conduct a few tests and he should not worry. He also noticed that when they initially appeared there was a large, bright aura around them, which changed into a smaller, more compact glow the longer they remained. It was immediately after this encounter that looking from his bedroom window, he noticed a series of lights moving around in the sky. He explained that at least five nights per week they would be there, moving around in the darkened heavens. He also became aware that they would respond to his mental commands as if a bond had been established and move around at his request.

As the sightings continued, he noticed while showering that there were black marks on his body one on either side. I pressed him on this and he described them as round bruises on his skin. The mark on the left, although the same size as the one on the right, it was not so well defined, it was lighter in colour. At first he thought they were the result of some accident, but he discounted this. He also noticed that as time passed they moved slowly up his body always one on each side. They did not last long however, always disappearing in twenty-four hours. Although he continued to attribute the marks to some accidental bruising he eventually came to believe that they were not naturally occurring, but were attributable to 'them', a situation that he accepted. However, he began to wonder why people like these with such an advanced technology should be interested in him rather than other, more qualified people. One possibility that springs to mind is this; although Garry is always at pains to point out that his education was nothing special, perhaps above average intelligence or education may not necessarily be what any 'visitors' require. Perhaps a brain already 'programmed' with other people's ideas and concepts is counterproductive for them. Once again using Garry's ideas as a model, perhaps their interest lies in the suitability or structure of a particular type of brain. It was around this time that he also experienced what are best described as 'implants'. During one of the times when he was employed driving combine harvesters on farms around England, he described a series of unpleasant incidents involving possible implants. He recalls waking one morning to find that the pillow was covered in a pink slime. Naturally he was taken aback and gingerly explored his scalp with his fingers. He quickly found a small, wet, indentation in the top of his skull; it was oozing pink fluid. He knows two things, for certain, he did not injure himself during the night and he did not have the depression the previous day, however, eventually, after around two weeks the small lesion healed over and he forget about it. Interestingly, an identical lesion formed overnight approximately four years later with the same results. Since then, in the light of his other experiences he now wonders if this was an attempt to insert some form of monitoring implant in his head.

First Contact

While returning to Scotland from a visit to England, just north of York Garry stopped for a meal and experienced his first contact. For some reason he felt drawn to a particular restaurant in the countryside outside the city. As he stood at the crowded bar he had the feeling he was being watched. He glanced around, he saw that he was being observed by two people, a man and a woman who were sitting against the far wall; they were smiling at him. He had the bizarre impression that this was contact and was it happening now. As it transpired, this was the first of at least three encounters with these two people. Reasoning that they might be telepathic, Garry sent out a mental request. He concentrated on transmitting the thought that the woman would rise from her seat, visit the toilet and smile at him as she passed, return, then the man should do the same. The couple looked at one another and smiled, then the man got up, approached him and said something humorous, not using speech but telepathically, he then 'said' 'Are you OK'? He then passed him by, went through a door and returned a few moments later and again made some similar, humorous, telepathic comment and returned to his seat, the woman then rose and did exactly as Garry had originally requested.

As the interview progressed, Garry explained that his second meeting with the same two people occurred while visiting the beautifully preserved, Neolithic, 'East Aquhorthies Stone Circle' close to his home. This local landmark is just off the A96 close to Inverurie and comprises a beautifully preserved circle of some ten or twelve standing stones set off by what is clearly an alter stone flanked by smaller, narrower standing stones. While visiting with his friend, Ann Wilson (who helped corroborate this incident,) out of curiosity he was pacing out the distance between the upright monoliths to see if they were the same distance apart when he became aware of a male voice; 'They're not the same are they'? Raising his head, Garry replied 'No, they're not'. He glanced over in the direction of the voice and to his surprise he saw the same two people he had met in the restaurant.. They looked at him and smiled enigmatically then turned and walked down the path leading away from the circle. Garry watched in bemusement as they walked away and a sense of unreality began to creep over him, but for some reason he did not follow, however the next time they met was under truly extraordinary circumstances. At this point of the interview Garry was at some pains to point out that at each meeting the 'entities' were always in control, so much so that it was always around a week before he could actually focus on the event. In view of what occurred at their next meeting, perhaps this was a type of safety measure designed to prevent him being traumatised because their next encounter was aboard a spacecraft. Interestingly, while we were at the stone circle, I took a magnetometer reading using a TriField meter, this indicated a steady, low, regular pulsing magnetic field around the perimeter of the stones, there was no obvious source for this anomaly.

The Fuel Cells

It was shortly after his meeting at the stone circle that he experienced his first of several visits to the space craft, he is adamant that there is no sense of forcible abduction here, he falls asleep, then with no sense of transition he is on board the craft. He is also quite clear that these entities are friends and teachers rather than aggressive or intrusive 'invaders', he is also clear that anyone he has met aboard these craft are entirely human in appearance. Another aspect of his recollections is the sense that he only allowed to remember what his 'friends' allow him to remember, he feels that this is to prevent any danger of traumatisation through 'information overload'. Shortly after his recollection of visiting the spacecraft, Garry began to experience the desire to construct 'clean energy' devices, in this case hydrogen fuel cells. During the interview we were permitted to see the devices that he had built functioning and witness a demonstration of their operation when he used one of the cells to run a two-stroke engine. Significantly, Garry is aware that the electrolysis of water is not a new technology, nor is the concept of hydrogen, his impression is that the work he does is part of a learning curve and the fuel cells are only the beginning of this process. It was shortly after this that Garry began to experience insights to the nature of time.

The Time Principle

During the interview, Garry revealed that he considered that he had been given insights into the true nature of time and how it operates, he considers that this is crucial to understanding how his 'friends' visit our continuum. He told us that in 1994 he returned from a concert in Aberdeen at around 2.30 in the morning, when abruptly he had the powerful impression that he was being shown a sheet of paper with a few lines of text on it, the text read; "Time operates on the principle that you stop time around you and in front of you, as you move forward time starts behind you and stops in front of you, everything stops, you move inside time". The vision stayed with him for months and at last he visited the physics department at Aberdeen University where he asked a lecturer what this meant. The lecturer was visibly taken aback and directed him to a book called 'The Philosophy of Time'. He spent a year and a half trying to read it and it was tough going, but one of the contributors had actually written what had been shown to him. Then in late 2002, he was in England ploughing when more information came into his mind, not as a page, but in the form of spoken words, "You need frequency, you need electromagnetism and you need gravity," it was another part of his instruction into the nature of time.

The Close Encounter

His only close up sighting of one of the spacecraft occurred one Saturday night at the beginning of 1999 when he was asked to take a barmaid home for a local bar. As Garry made his way to the bar he saw the light flitting around the sky and decided to borrow a camcorder from the bar owner and tape the lights. As it transpired the camcorder was not available and the bar was almost empty, so he asked if the manageress and her assistant would like to watch the 'lights' in the sky. They went outside to the car park but the one of the women dismissed the lights as just stars and sent back inside. The other woman stayed to watched it and soon it began to move around in an irregular manner. Abruptly the 'light' swooped out of the sky and stopped dead in a hover above a nearby farm, Garry estimated it was just less than half-mile across, he could see a couple of little lights underneath it, nothing much, dim lights, they looked like a reddish white. He described the object as a cross between a disc and a cigar, it was smooth and had a slight sheen, he also remembers there was a faint humming sound, like the noise from a power transformer. Abruptly the object departed and returned to its position in the sky, there was no sense of transition, it was gone in the blink of an eye. The woman who remained in the car park recalls the incident slightly differently; after the craft swooped down over the farm it moved the few hundred yards to the bar and from her perspective it stopped directly overhead, she said it covered the entire village. She saw a shaft of blue light come for the bottom of the craft and illuminate the ground to her right hand side, then she heard Garry tell her not be afraid because he was with her. At this point the craft made its instantaneous transit back into the sky. Although she willingly corroborated what they had seen immediately after the craft had gone, regrettably she refused to discuss the incident the following day or at any time since.

Conclusions

Although at first sight this account may seem to verge on the unlikely, if not the impossible, my evaluation has established several lasting impressions. The first of these is that Garry is utterly convincing and believable in what he says and There is his take on the nature of time; which tugs at the fringes of memory like some half forgotten fact that somehow it feels right and squares nicely with other, more scholarly descriptions on the physics of time. Like many other accounts, this case raises all sorts of issues about the human condition, mind, reality and consciousness. It also focuses on the fact that many witnesses to 'alien' visits are frequently gifted with apparent psychic abilities undeveloped in the rest of us. While there may never be a final answer to this enigma, nevertheless, reports of encounters like those of Garry McDonald and others may help fill in vital gaps in our ultimate understanding of the cosmos.