The X-Files: I Want To Believe Poster

Don't we all want to believe? Okay, yes, we want to believe in many things that fail us of course, but what we want to believe here, in particular, are UFOs.

This is the official image of the poster that adorned Special Agent Fox Mulder's office in The X-Files first episode, Pilot. Fox is a believer. Having that kind of faith is indeed a powerful thing.

With regard to the UFOs, I've had a couple of people in my family who swear they have had the definitive first kind of encounter - a mere sighting, odd lights, an object inexplicable to known human technology.

My brother, who was very young, was travelling from the north along some rural country roads with my father, who never scared easily mind you. The two saw a giant, bright object. But they were not alone. Cars were pulled off on the side of the road as passers by pointed to the sky in amazement. My brother explained to me he was probably nine years old. He said he was so utterly shaken by it he hid behind the back seat and told my father they should stop somewhere and get some "American chop suey." It unnerved them both enough they actually decided to stop off at a country diner just to get off the road. My brother swears it was a UFO to this day. He said my father sat with him at dinner just stunned a bit by the whole thing. That story always intrigued me. It's something right out of the movies. Sadly, of course, I actually missed that trip, just one of the many trips north we took when were young, and thus did not experience the sighting. So details are sketchy for me. It's all second hand and my father has since passed away.

My grandmother, now 94, assures me she and my sister-in-law both spotted something they had never seen before regarding a red, totem-like light formation. Those lights hung above the tree line near our home back in the mid-1990s. Once again, I was not there, but their description as they peered through the windows was indeed vivid and certainly strange. I wanted to believe them.

Those lights literally disappeared from view. It was as if a switch had been turned off. My gram was certain she saw something unidentifiable and was puzzled by their instant blip from view. A voracious reader and an intelligent lady she didn't miss much. How could her story be wrong? A short time later that evening, on the nightly news, captured video footage of those lights was discussed by the news anchor. My gram listened intently to discover the story they were reporting was from the Midwest, only the lights she described were exactly the same ones she spotted with her own eyes beyond her windows here in the Northeast. The events that happened simultaneously on that same evening were many states apart. How could this be fiction? How could it be explained? Obviously, strange stuff, but I wanted to believe their stories. My Gram never let me down or got it wrong as far as I could ever remember.

Myself, I've never had any kind of UFO-related experience. I've not seen anything remotely supernatural that I can recall. Yep, my life is pretty ordinary. It's all very mundane here. Listen, I'm open to the possibilities. I keep my eyes peeled. In the meantime, I have my science fiction to fire the imagination. I have The X-Files. I read the stories of others who live their extraordinary lives of contact and then record them to tell us about their probing experiences. Yes, we have all of that. Me, I have the street lights and the occasional visit to the dentist chair. That's pretty scary. Trust me though, I want to believe. I do. A first encounter would be nice.