So, continuing from last week, in a discussion of flyers. First, we have a story from Fortean Times. The link is: http://www.forteantimes.com/happened/ebbls.shtml
"This is about the EBBLS. I call them EBBLS (pronounced Ebb-alls) because one of the first few times I saw one, this is what it said to me, although I could have heard wrong. I was maybe six and spending the night in the house of a woman I barely remember now, but I beleive she was a distant cousin of my father's. She had five older sons, all in the military, who would rush up and down the stairs but never spoke.
"It was in her house when it all started. I was sleeping on the couch in her living room. My father was on the floor and I was awakened by a deep cough. I though it was my father and so I climbed off the couch to lay on the floor with him when a great rush of air swooshed passed me. I was on my knees when I felt something looking at me from the darkness. I looked towards the staircase that led to the second floor and, standing with one arm on the banister and one leg on the second step was a figure, with what looked like a cape bellowing behind it in some imaginary wind.
"From that day onward I saw them. First I would awaken in the night, unable to open my eyes, with a paralysis slowly taking over my body. I would always sense something standing nearby and then, slowly, I could move and open my eyes and when I did, I always saw a figure standing in the doorway, or at the foot of my bed, with cape billowing.
"I don't know how to explain it to you other than to say that the EBBLS are tall, muscular, always gleaming, as the light hits them, and when I first started seeing them they came one by one until they became groups who spoke to me in mumble-jumble so that when I awoke the next day I could only recall a few indistinguishable words. It was the one who resembles SHAZAAM who said something to the effect of "...EBBLS!" What it means I do not know. What it all means I do not know. But it didn't end there.
"But no matter what, the EBBLS kept coming. All I can tell you is that they appeared to me before I ever knew comic books existed and yet when my mother took me to see a shrink, his first assumption was that I had seen too many Superfriends commercials.
"When I was sixteen I saw one in broad daylight. She was dressed like a normal person but even passers-by sensed she wasn't quite right because everyone stopped and stared at her. Some didn't even know they were staring. She was wearing a trenchcoat. She followed me from my house, to school, to the library and back. And that night, as I was riding in my mother's car, with my aunt at the wheel, an EBBL flew in front of us and as the car hit it I knew that this was the first physical contact with one. The car was dented, but we could find no injured person. I told my mother who started to freak out because she believed I was going loco.
"Some people have told me that maybe the things I am seeing are no different than Spring-heeled Jack or the Mothman. All I know is that I have seen real superheroes and when the events of September 11th occurred, I was waiting for them to show themselves so I could say 'I told you so' to all those who laughed at me and thought I was wacko, but they never showed. They never helped and I began to believe I was in fact crazy.
"But just last tuesday, I saw one. Female, over six feet, beneath the street lamp, across from my house. She had on a one piece outfit with a hood, almost like Cat Womans, but a shiny purple under the light. She had her hands on her hips and a huge sword jutting out from her right hip. I ignored her and fell asleep trembling and wishing I were dead because noone is ever going to believe me or help me or explain to me why I see them. I hope that someone will read this and have something to say. Hopefully I am not alone. Thank you for your time."
This story sounds, by turns, like a case of lucid dreaming or hallucination, except that wouldn't explain the car dent. The sleep paralysis, and the part in the bookstore, leads me to wonder if there is some kind of barrier that has been broken between this world and another one, but the car dent makes me wonder if perhaps we are just not permitted to see such beings for some reason.
In addition, here's an associated story, from someone else, from the Fortean bbs at: http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7870&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=45
" Now, my Uncle is still part of the service to this day and he was a Police officer for twenty years and he will tell you a story straight, with no exaggeration. He doesn't beleive in ghosts, UFO's, nothing-and yet he was freaked out so bad that he backed up against the farthest wall because he said a strange sensation overcame him that if he didn't brace himself or sit down, he was going to collapse.
As he flattened himself against the wall a whirlwind came rolling down the hall as the dark figure walked right into it and disappeared.
Of course, when my grandparents got home a few days later, he relayed the story to my grandfather who cursed at him for being a woosy, because basically my uncle ran outof the house after that incident and my grandfathers only concern was that my uncle left the house unsupervised...(PARENTS!!!)
So, a few days later, my mother (who was about four at the time), got up to use the bathroom and was confronted by a woman she could only begin to describe sometime later while watching the show-WONDER WOMAN!
The woman told her something but to this day my mother says it was more like MUMBLING-is this what the person who posted this topic meant by EBBLS? Because they cannot be understood?
Other things occurred that have been related through the years but they are minor compared to my youngest uncles experience in the early eighties.
The TV in the kitchen was scrambling so my grandfather sent my uncle outside to see if something was on the antenna. My uncle went out to the front yard and pulled back until his back was at the gate because the house is so huge and high that you have to step back aways to see the tip of the antenna.
When he did this, he saw something that to this day he swears his life on. A man as big as an ox, with powerful arms and legs, whose features where shadowed because the moon was directly behind him, illuminating his back. This man had his hands on his hips and he seemed to be looking down at my uncle and oddest of all, behind the man a cape billowed in the fair summer breeze.
My family has been discussing these events for years. My grandfather is gone now, but according to that same uncle who experienced the whirlwind (or portal?), my grandfather had an experience with something in the basement that he never told anyone. My uncle just remembers my grandfather running up the cellar stairs, his face pale, he vomited on the carpet, but he never said what happened.
Personally, I have a theory that some visitors tried to contact my family. Not visitors from space, but perhaps an alternate reality, where these entities, these superheros- do exist.
To this day, I am fascinated and deep down I beleive the Superhero phenomena was inspired by some actual event, with actual characters. But, when I read this post, I just had to tell these stories because the comparisons are too oddly similar.
Maybe the person who posted this story was chosen. Maybe he/she is not crazy, but just not as blind as most of us.
I think something odd but true is happening here.
My experience is still a puzzle to me to this day, and it did not happen at my grandparents house.
I was away at college...my second year, but prior to leaving, my sick grandfather told me that I would be alright because he had friends watching over me.
I never thought twice about this. I thought he was being religious and referring to God or angels.
So, I was walking with two friends, back to the campus from another friends apartment. We took a detour through a quiet street. THe lights were out in all the houses and it was pretty late so we talked in hushed voices. Just then, a man in boxers and a plaid jacket came out of a corner and called after my friend.
He cursed at us when we ignore him and took chase after us. We ran as fast as we could. When we rounded the corner I ran head first into a large man who smelled oddly of an old cellar mixed with water (that is the best I can describe it). I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of calm. The man grabbed me and pulled me aside and I watched as he walked toward our pursurer, who in seeing the big man, turned and ran the other way. My friends kept running and never saw the big man. But I did and I swaer this is true. He was almost seven feet tall. He had some kind of emblem on his chest and when I looked for my friends and didn't see them, I turned toward him, but he was gone.
Who ever he was, he was like noone I had ever encountered before. And I like to beleive he was one of the 'friends' my grandfather spoke about.

One last thing. I almost forgot to add that the man I saw that night resembled SHAZAM, just like this person described. I swear this is all true, and yes I know exactly what SHAZAM looks like!
My uncle V related his experience to a friend he made in Hawaii, while living there with his new wife and the friend told him a story about his father who went to sit on the beach to watch the sunset (this was sometime around the early 60's) and was struck by an odd feeling that he was being watched. He turned to look over his shoulder and noticed a woman standing there. It was hard to see the color of her complexion or to even make out her features since the sky was getting dark but she did have long hair that blew in the wind, and get this, a tail that was wagging behind her. He didn't think nothing of her until he noticed the tail. He rose to his feet and asked her who she was and she came closer until she was no more than a few feet in front of him. She opened her mouth to speak and made a kind of squeaky sound and then closed her mouth as if she was going to say something but thought better of it.
She raised an arm into the air and made a fist and then, right in front of him, she rose from the ground and took off, into the air. He felt a wave of nausea overcome him, he puked and then stumbled home.
one of the temps and I got to talking about Superheros and whether or not we thought they were real, or whatever, and he told me about how his uncle saw Superman in Guatemala!

I told him about my families history with similar beings like the EBBLS story and he began to pour out a stream of stories. So here they are. Only three and not verbatim.

1) His Uncle saw Superman in Guatemala.

One day, mid afternoon, his Uncle Javier was walking home from work. He was a construction worker...or helping someone build a house(?). He was about 28 and the year was 1972.
He used to walk on the rocks over a beach because at the end of the rock cliff was a dense patch of trees that belonged to a walkway right up to his parents house. So he was on this rocky cliff and right in his line of sight someone swooped down in front of him to the beach below!
He fell back and blessed himself because he thought it was the devil.
After a few minutes he gathered the courage to look over the edge to see if the thing was still there and it swooped up before him and hung in the air.
He said it was a man wearing a unitard, with a cape and boots. He had close cropped hair and appeared tan, but since the sun was going down, it was hard to tell. He believed the man was caucasian. There was an insignia on his chest that resembled an eight or the symbol for infinity. The man floated there looking at him and then punched one arm in the air and flew up and up until he was a dot and then gone! His uncle later said the man looked like SUPERMAN!

2) When his grandmother went to New York to see some family, she got ditched at the Port Authority (not sure about the circumstances), and walked from Times Square to Greenwich at around 10pm-midnight (?). She took a shortcut through an alleyway and when she got to the other end she heard rustling in the trash. She turned to see a humanoid leap from one fire escape, across the alley, to the other. Some twenty feet or so!
This is all he told me about this one.

and finally:

3) He and his brother were reading old X-men comics on the roof of their apartment building one night, a few years ago and his cousin saw a glowing orb in the sky, to the east. They thought it was a UFO and they screamed to the people on the street below to check it out, but as it got closer, they noticed that the glowing orb was an orange-yellow bubble with a man inside, walking! He said as the man walked the bubble rotated and it just floated in the sky. He said the man had a beaklike face and huge oval eyes and may have been wearing a red one piece suit. They were both so scared they ran downstairs and relayed the siting to his mother.
He also said there was an insignia on the side of the bubble that looked almost like a swastika!"
I also should mention a conversation with a man where I work, a man who is very grounded in this world, who doesn't put any stock in weird things. This man is very trustworthy. He told me of a time a couple of decades ago, when he and a friend were driving through rural Kentucky at night. They drove upon a man that they saw, who was running, away from them, into the woods. The man was running on air; both the man I talked to and his friend saw it.
I would also like to point out John Keel's theory on this and like matters. From: http://www.weird-wi.com/brayroad/gadara.htm
Keel posits that different paranormal beings seen throughout time are really manifestations from the same source. These entities appear to us in accordance with different belief systems. To some, these figures are trickster figures; to others, devils; to others, fairies or aliens or leprechauns. Or gods. Or robots or Men In Black or many other multifarious and sometimes malignant manifestations. They are legion, literally. He calls them Ultraterrestrials.
Ultraterrestrails are beings from the superspectrum, from dimensions or frequencies or energy levels beyond that we can perceive with our limited human perceptions. They exist beyond the three dimensions with which we are familiar.
These entities have the ability to cruise up and down the spectrum, to change their very vibration or wave frequencies, and become manifest to our human senses. As they move through the spectrum, they suddenly materialize into the visible spectrum, and thus we see them. As they continue moving through, they dematerialize out of our spectrum, and we no longer see them. Able to control their frequency, they seemingly wink into existence, or out. Along with their ability to change energy or frequency, they have the ability to take whatever form or appearance they desire.
So. What are these entities? Spirits? Fairies? ET's? Or metas? According to Keel, we only see them the way they want us to see them. A cape billowing where there is no breeze; looking into another reality? Nausea; an effect of a warping in the membrane of reality? If these things are real, by what mechanism do they cross over?
Are the beings from last week's entry of a similar nature? Are they creatures crossing over to our reality, or becoming visible to our part of the spectrum?
Are ALL of these beings just becoming UNCLOAKED for a few moments, finally visible to our eyes?
Bottom line is that be careful as you go about your day. Not three feet in front of you, completely invisible to you, either in or out of this reality, may be a meta or some other entity. Watching. You better be good....