Welcome to The Yeti's Peak, an online spot soon to be full of essays, musings and late night drunken ramblings about all things paranormal from the sometimes keen eye of an unrepentant skeptic. I believe a brief introduction is in order first, my name is Pete, and I'm a college graduate currently living in a larger suburb south of Denver, Colorado. I've been interested in the paranormal since I was about twelve years old and have been involved in field research since 2007. Over the years I've either become cynical or less gullible, either way as I mentioned before I am a skeptic. So why persist dealing with something I clearly have no belief in? Why waste my precious time writing online articles that are sure to be read by maybe two or three people? To quote George Mallory, the famed mountaineer, when asked why he climbed Mount Everest, “[b]ecause it's there.”. The paranormal, the arcane, the sensational, and the like are always going to be with us, and it is important not to study it as if it were real phenomena which is happening and meant to frighten us, but as being part of our folklore. Folklore can tell you a lot about a particular region (ie, military bases, nuclear installations always have UFO sightings around them, old Western towns, mineral mines, old houses, etc... have their ghost stories, and who can ignore wooded and foliage choked areas with Bigfoot sightings or deep ancient lakes and the monsters that supposedly dwell within?) or a particular people. Native Americans have stories of Skinwalkers (shape-shifters, or shamen) and Catholics have their demons to exorcise (I suppose this could be taken any number of ways, but let us stick to folklore for now). So, besides the paranormal simply being there for me to laugh at, ridicule and write about, it is also an important anthropological essence in the human experience.
Now that that can of worms has been opened and not fully realized it's time to move on to something odd and worthy of discussion. I am an avid hiker and frequent a local spot here about fifteen minutes away from my house in Littleton for a weekly trail run. This trail is short and sweet and traverses most of the northern edge of a small town called Morrison, home of the famed and natural Red Rocks Amphitheater. When I was a kid my parents used to take my sister and I to the dinosaur tracks near this trail and the Mother Cabrini Shrine nearby and told us once of a story of a Virgin Mary sighting there. Of course this terrified me as a child, although looking back at it, there are far worse things to see than the Holy Mother, but when you're a kid, life and fears don't always make sense. In my late teens and early twenties I attended many concerts at the amphitheater, and have been to countless bars and restaurants in the area so I guess I could say that I know the area well. When preparing this article I wanted to have a “hometown haunt” or sighting to throw in to emphasize the folklore point. I had a UFO sighting in Reseda, California all ready to go (our webmaster lived in Reseda this previous summer and I was born in Northridge, CA not far from Reseda) but alas the account on the MUFON site was less than interesting. So, strapped for a new story to pique reader's interest, I looked for something in Colorado. Boy did I find a whopper! I'm not entirely sure if this report counts as a ghost story or a Close Encounter of the Third-ish kind, but regardless it's interesting and it ties together with my reminiscing about Morrison.
The story begins with an individual and her dog sitting house for her parents who live on a modest expanse of land in Morrison, CO (see, I told you it tied together) and late one evening the witness reports seeing several blue flashes out of the corner of her eye. She thinks nothing of it and continues cleaning up in the kitchen. Less than a minute later she sees the blue flashes again but this time in full view. The witness and her dog are both very aware of the blue flashes coming from the land behind the house at which point the witness hears a loud bang from an upstairs bedroom. Terrified, the witness grabs a gun and proceeds to call the police, positive now that what was seen in the backyard were flashlights and the bang an intruder. The police arrive in a timely manner (something they're not really known for in Denver) and proceed to ask questions about the event. But, and to paraphrase the witness, this is where this ordeal gets unusual. The police doing the questioning are more concerned about the blue lights seen than the possibility of an intruder (none was found obviously), when pressed as to their interest in such matters the police tell the witness that not only have they received numerous calls throughout the year regarding these lights, another officer has seen them recently too (ufostalker.com).
This is hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck kind of stuff for sure, but is it paranormal? This is the question I will be asking throughout every post of this kind I write. Consider for a moment that Colorado's northern neighbor, Wyoming, has no law banning fireworks, ones which emit all kinds of flashes, sparks, etc... and plenty that boom and bang too. Now, I'm not saying that this sighting of whatever it was is merely someone goofing around with fireworks, but isn't this a more logical solution than assuming that space aliens or ghosts are stalking around in Morrison residents' yards and breaking and entering? This would explain the numerous sightings, and the police interest in the matter (fireworks are generally frowned upon severely in the foothills and mountains here). So while I have no answer (neither does MUFON for that matter) on this particular sighting, I do have a theory that doesn't involve ET. And why bother with throwing my hat in a ring covered already by law enforcement and MUFON? Because it's there. And because folklore needs an appropriate outlet, which is what I will attempt to create with this forum.
- Pete Tognetti, 01/19-20/11
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