The night it began
In a small town outside of Boston, Massachusetts in the early 1970s the unimaginable happened. At just six years old, Denise was asleep in her room, sharing a room with two sisters, when she woke up to a bizarre and terrifying sight- an alien was standing right next to her. She tried to move but found her body paralyzed. To her right was a gray being with big black eyes. It was inches from her face, speaking directly to her mind, telepathically. She told her mother the next morning, who said she was just dreaming. But, Denise knew she was not dreaming. The aliens told her not to tell anyone, or that they would come back. She kept thinking “why me?” Of both her sisters in that room, and of anyone in the world, why did these beings choose her? And are they going to come back? Throughout her childhood she found herself looking up at the sky, wondering if one day she would wake up to these scary beings up to her face. While telling me this story, Denise reminds me “I’m not here to make anyone a believer,” she continues, “it's just something I can never explain.” These things happened to her years before any big alien movies, or before pictures of aliens were available. She truly did not understand what she was seeing, she was still young.
A book brings the past back to life
For years, she lived in fear, dreading the night the alien might return. As time passed, she grew up, got married, had children, and moved away. But one day, she was walking past a bookstore when a cover stopped her cold. In the window display was a book titled Communion—and on its front was what she saw that night as a child. A gray alien, with big eyes and a slender body. She bought the book and read it, discovering the author had experienced a very similar encounter to her.
History repeats itself
One day, her four year old son told her that he saw a “ghost” by her bed. When she asked him about how the “ghost” communicated, he said it spoke to him through his head. Shocked, she decided to reach out to Raymond Fowler, a well-known author of books on UFO encounters. Fowler suggested she give him drawing utensils and asked him to draw what he saw. She was shocked when his drawing perfectly matched what she had seen as a child. She had never told her son about her alien experience, yet his description mirrored what she had seen as a child. Also at that time, depictions of aliens weren’t as widespread as they are today.
UFO sightings
Though she tried to move on, within a year and a half, the unthinkable happened—she saw a UFO. While driving with two others, they spotted a long, cigar-shaped craft hovering in the sky. Determined to learn more, she went to a bookstore, and found a crowd gathered around the UFO section. Multiple people in the section claimed they had seen the same thing, or had alien encounters.
Military Helicopter Incident
Soon after the UFO sighting, a military helicopter appeared, flying unusually low over her house. The chopper hovered so close that her mother was able to wave to the pilot. The entire house shook with the force of its rotors. And then—she blacked out. To this day, she has no memory of what happened that night. Denise also claims people on her street had very similar alien experiences to her, and that people who grew up in her area have shared stories.
Massachusetts connections
New England, especially Massachusetts, has a long history of strange encounters with UFOs and aliens. The first documented UFO sighting in America dates back to 1639, when Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Winthrop recorded unidentified lights in the sky over Boston. In 1967, Betty Andreasson of South Ashburnham reported being abducted by gray aliens with large eyes, an experience that became one of the region’s most famous abduction cases. Two years later, on September 1, 1969, over 250 people in Berkshire County allegedly witnessed a UFO in an event now recognized as a historic incident. To this day, Massachusetts continues to be a popular place for unexplained activity, with nearly 2,000 UFO sightings on record.
These encounters with the unexplained leave a lingering question: Do you believe in aliens?
Go to my tiktok @jenzproductions to watch the video of Denise’s story.
