Close Encounters

By Vince Basehart

June 27 -- "It was late at night. I awoke with a strong and sudden desire to get out of bed. A small light appeared in the corner of my bedroom and grew very quickly. It took on a humanoid shape.”

That is Ed Sherwood describing a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, which occurred in 1975.

“I was absolutely terrified, frozen with fear, speechless. All the while my brother remained asleep in our bunk bed.

“In my mind I heard a distinct, 'Do not be afraid,' and immediately all fear drained out of me. I remember then being asked, again in my mind, 'Do you remember?' and images flooded through me, overwhelming me.

"After the event I would not be able to remember how it all ended. I would realize later that I had experienced 'missing time' which is often associated with contact with extraterrestrials."

Mr. Sherwood was nine years old then, growing up in Norfolk, the thumb-like land mass which sticks out from England into the North Sea. That bedroom visit changed him forever.

He is now a UFO and crop circle researcher, having been based in Santa Monica for the past 13 years.

Over his life he has logged 200 different sightings and other contacts with extraterrestrial beings or their craft, a number of them in the skies of our fair city. Most have had one or more corroborating witnesses.

The Lens was granted a telephone interview with Mr. Sherwood. The soft-spoken man with the East Anglia accent on the other end does not come off as a crackpot. He does not talk about government cover-ups, Area 51 or aliens having abducted Elvis to the Planet Zentar.

Instead he talks more like a spiritualist, referring to humans as "universal beings," having psychic abilities with which they can reach out and invite contact from other “universal intelligence” nearly at will.

From talking to him, it sounds like the sky is thick with UFOs as easy to hail as a cab.

"You can do it alone, or more powerfully, in groups. You start with a visualization of healing for the planet," he instructs. "Then, you begin a simple, earnest meditation asking only benevolent forms of universal intelligence to come and visit you. Grant them a sign. Be open."

Practitioners of this method of galactic invitation, who go about it with sincerity, persistence and respect, Mr. Sherwood contends, can often be granted a visitation in the sky, "within minutes, which may show in the sky within about a ¼ mile or closer. They may stay there for a few minutes or as long as 30 minutes."

Most of the UFOs Mr. Sherwood has witnessed have come from this “interactive method.” Others were a matter of “being at the right place at the right time.”

He has captured photographs or film of many of these sightings which you can find on his website, www.cropcircleanswers.com.

UFOs can be broken generally into three camps: "There are ‘technical UFOs,’ craft or devices such as metallic spheres, discs, cigar shapes, pellet shapes. Some look like long worm-like objects.”

There are balls of light or “plasma” either by themselves or flying in formation. These are among the most common sightings throughout the world.

Mr. Sherwood and his wife have also witnessed one of the third, and extremely rare, kind, a UFH, or unidentified flying humanoid, in 2004, in Santa Monica. The only other known documented case of a UFH occurred almost a year earlier in Mexico City.

In his pictures one can make out a vaguely man-shaped, dark blob zipping above Santa Monica’s palm trees and telephone wires.

The Lens finds the flying discs and barrels and plasma balls all fascinating. The UFH, on the other hand, is simply terrifying. In the event I found one of these things soaring abve the 3rd Street Promenade, I would be more likely to try to shoot it down than film it.

But this is clearly not the way to go about interacting with our extraterrestrial visitors.

“They seem to want us to look at ourselves rather than fixate on them. They hold a mirror up to the witness,” Mr. Sherwood explains. “We are all universal beings, and I am open to all forms of benevolent universal intelligence."