The UFO sighting
"A night where the internal oddness caused by the drugs seemed to be mirrored by the events in the real world around them."
So in my early twenties I was living in Worcester, mostly on benefits. A lot of my time was spent quite aimlessly, punctuating large bouts of loafing around with making music (sporadic), skateboarding (inconsistent) and reading, something I managed to be way ahead in compared to my contemporaries.
Weekend festivities would mostly consist of hustling together whatever intoxicants we could find and then hoofing the lot. This particular time we were in the small village of Colwall, on of those places with little more than a shop, a pub, some industrial units and a small train station, on the far side of the Malvern hills. We were partying in a flat belonging to an old speed head known as Daddy P who would standardly down 4 cans of Special Brew and a gram of amphetamine for breakfast, all the while talking to you completely rationally.
I know there was 7 of us that night, and only one of us wasn't tripping. I can't be sure of all the drugs bring used that night but I know that MDMA and magic mushrooms featured heavily alongside the usual background static of cannabis and booze. I think I was probably the one who picked the mushrooms, meaning that our story takes place in October/November (I've never managed to pick enough to save for the summer).
We set off on a mission in the very early hours of the morning. In those days, that was the thing, take the drugs and then blow off some steam by walking miles in the middle of the night, armed with skateboards and spliffs. That night I have strong memories of riding someone's longboard, an extended version of a normal skateboard, built for comfort and speed. I can remember zooming down one of Malvern's foothills in a state of near perfect bliss, thinking I would trade everything else in my life for the chance to do this forever.
We were in the middle of nowhere when we saw the UFO, surrounded by fields, woods and lanes, not a house in site. A triangle of lights rose steadily from behind a hill, slow enough for us to all catch on. Then we watched it dart around the sky in a manner none of us had ever seen for several minutes, then shoot away into the distance at incredible speed. The whole incident took maybe 4 or 5 minutes, which was more than long enough for us to comment to each other on what was happening. It was clear we were all seeing pretty much the same thing.
Buzzing with crazy theories, we headed back to the flat, oddness still following us. A little later, 3 of us went out to smoke a comically large spliff. I left the other 2 on a bench outside a newsagents and zoomed off down the hill on the longboard. When I climbed back up the hill, a police car was parked with lights shining directly at where I had left my friends. My first thought was that they must be in the back of the police car but I kept walking toward it, wondering if there was anything I could say that would make a difference to the police and get them out of this mess. But when I got close, I could see my 2 friends sat opposite, still smoking the massive joint. I think they hadn't realised it was a police car. We sat there smoking for a few minutes, wondering what to do. And then the police car left without confronting us.
In the morning we all woke up to a strange smell and to find that many things in the apartment were singed. Apparently a fire had broken out in the night and this kid Gwilliam had woken up and put it out, all by himself, saving us all from being burnt to death. Nice one, Gwilliam.
In the coming months, I did some research into what we saw, budding geek that I am. It turned out what we had seen fitted into a pre existing category of UFO called a "flying triangle", usually sighted around military bases. We were fairly near a military base that night and I'm pretty sure what we saw was of human military origin - had we seen it a decade later, we would of called it "drone technology", but such a thing didn’t exist back then (or at least, didn’t exist publicly) . You might want to call the fire and police car coincidences but what I think the story does demonstrate is that taking psychedelics can seemingly cause crazy shit to happen, because your new, weirdo headspace will turn you into a magnet for all strange goings on. I’m pretty sure every serious psychedelics user has at least 1 story like this, a night where the internal oddness caused by the drugs seemed to be mirrored by the events in the real world around them.
Of course, the added irony is anyone can dismiss your story merely by pointing out that you were high. It’s just the risk we take………….