A Dichotomy of Johns
The reason I’m taking the time to talk about John Edmonds and, now, John Womack is due to their remarkable similarities. Womack doesn’t kill aliens, Edmonds isn’t ever brought aboard a ship, in fact, there’s almost no real shared story beats between the two besides the fact that they both encountered something extraterrestrial and generally unexplainable.
The common ground between the two is the same common ground that most alien encounters share: a general air of unbelievability. In the case of these two stories, however, that unbelievability is pushed to the extreme. It’s obvious, I think, in both of these cases that there’s something more going on. Neither are quite “run of the mill” when it comes to these types of encounters. Both stories seem to suggest that there’s something going on mentally in both experiencers. It leads one to wonder the true mechanism behind alien abduction and alien contact cases: is it really something that happens to someone or does a certain series of inputs trigger an internal experience beyond the norm? If this is the brain’s response to something, can we mimic those inputs? Can we force ourselves to undergo the same experiences?
That’s something I’d very much like to find out.
***
John Womack, in the spring of 1975, was driving down a back road near Ryan, Alabama when he saw something unlike anything he’d ever encountered before. A ball of fire dropped from the sky, through the trees that lined that road, and landed right in front of his truck in the center of the road. The ball rested there for a moment before beginning to slowly roll down the road (in the direction that Womack had been driving) as if it wanted him to follow it. So he did.
It rolled down the road, down across a hill, took a turn at an intersection, crossed a bridge, and eventually made its way to a nearby field (1). John drove to the edge of the field and got out of his truck. He watched as the ball of fire moved around for a moment, began to make a loud, whooshing kind of noise, and the shot up into the air. The ball seemingly rejoined with and illuminated (as it made contact) a massive silver-y disc. He estimated the craft was probably at least 200 feet in diameter and was surrounded by a glowing yellow aura that extended even further out from the sides of the disc.
Suddenly, the craft began to descend and, very aware of his vulnerability, John quickly decided to make a break for his truck to leave. He’d heard a story or two and didn’t really want to be on the receiving end of an alien encounter. Before he could reach the truck, he was suddenly bathed in a beam of red light. Seconds after the light struck him he passed out. The next thing he remembers is waking up on the ship. He awoke to find himself strapped into a padded chair with a metal helmet strapped to his head. Wires leading from the helmet connected to a bank of machinery in front of him. He found himself strangely calm given the situation and looked around, taking in his new surroundings.
He found himself in the midst of veritable menagerie of humanoid aliens. Closest to him were two entities that he dubbed “the leaders”. These two were the most human-like of the bunch (excepting the fact that they didn’t have noses). They spoke to each other in a language that, to him, resembled the sounds of local tree frogs. Nearest to him, standing on either side of him, were two apparent giants (a third stood in the back of the room). They were hairy with “brutal” faces. John thought they looked something like those depictions of very early, primitive humans he had seen in text books. Scattered throughout the room were six other aliens - these were the most bizarre. This last type of creature had human-like heads (they were always grinning), large antennae, beards, six arms (each ending in a crab like claw), and seal-like flippers for feet. They seemed to struggle to move and maneuver themselves around the craft.
Womack’s depiction of the creatures and machinery aboard the craft that abducted him. These are all featured in his pamphlet, discussed briefly later.
As he drank in his surroundings, beginning to think that he was never going to be allowed to go home after seeing all this, one of the leaders approached the machinery. He took in his hand a small box connected by the same type of wiring that John’s helmet was to this bank of machines. The leader croaked into it and, through the helmet, John listened as it was translated into something he could understand.
“We are peaceful. We will not harm you. We are beings with feelings just like you. You are not a prisoner. You are a guest.” This particular leader then approached him and stuck his arm to shake John’s hand.
The other leader, apparently glad that John had accepted their offer of friendship, approached with a token of his own: an outstretched hand upon which laid two white pills. The leader took one in his other hand, swallowed it, and motioned for John to do the same. Believing he wasn’t in any danger, he did just that. John took the pill and, very quickly, found himself feeling better than he ever had. He was happy. His mind was filled with joyful thoughts. Suddenly, it even felt good to have that metal helmet strapped so harshly onto his head.
The leader with the box in his hand began to speak again, explaining that the device that they were using to communicate was created by one of the more advanced civilizations in the galaxy and that it was, therefore, so advanced that he wasn’t going to try to explain how it functioned to John because he would never understand. Instead, he offered the John the opportunity to learn more about his people and the situation that John currently found himself in.
As he was talking, John’s mind began to wander a bit. He looked further around the room and noticed a creature he hadn’t seen before: some sort of apparent mix between plant and animal. It looked something like a tree with tentacles sprouting out of it. As the crab-men milled about the ship, the thing would reach out to try to touch them.
The leader pulled up a large screen just to John’s right and began to explain how they got him on the ship. He told him that the red beam of light rendered his brain temporarily inactive. They then simply landed the ship, opened the door, and John walked right on board. He went to describe how, just in case, they’d decided to give him an injection of something like a tranquilizer as, “… someone with a bad heart could have died from the shock of your present situation.”
The leader went on to speak about how the pill that John was given worked. He explained that John was, in this very moment, experiencing life as it was supposed to be experience. That this moment of sheer and utter joy was the very first time that John had experienced a demon-free life. Demons, the leader went on, are a plague upon the universe. They cause grief, fear, anger, misery, sadness, jealousy and just about every other negative emotion you could imagine. This pill, then, was their greatest invention: an anti-demon pill that successfully drove all demonic presences and influences from a persons body. Now John and anyone else who was given the pill would experience life as it was meant to be.
Sensing John’s “primitive” understanding of how medicine functioned, the leader exasperatedly began to explain that it wasn’t altering his mind. In fact, he said, demons are real beings that exist on different levels of reality. We have pictures of them on very advanced cameras and can prove that these pills physically exorcise them from your body.
Suddenly, the leader broke off, changed topics, and began to apologize for using the ball of fire to trick John into approaching them. John asked how the ball of fire worked and the leader simply shook his head, refusing to elaborate. John asked about life on their planet and the leader launched into a slideshow of sorts, describing the mass appeal and use of the anti-demon pill. The leader told him that all the creatures on board the ship were the last living members of their respective races. That he and the other leader had saved them all from the destruction of their home planets through the use of the anti-demon pill. Basically, they’d been given the pills and separated themselves from their respective societies which, one by one, were lost due to infighting and, most notably, nuclear disaster. It was explained to John that, unless humanity could create their own anti-demon pill that could effectively deliver to the entire population of the Earth the same was going to happen to us.
John asked if the leaders could just give us anti-demon pills like they had him and they shook their heads again.
Eventually, John was literally dumped off the ship (he describes being taken to a cone in the floor that he fell through) and he passed out while he fell. He awoke near his truck, leaned against a tree. He sat there wondering whether any of it was real or if he had just blacked out and had some strange sort of dream when, as he looked up, the ship briefly re-illuminated itself and flew away.
As a surprisingly large amount of contactees and abductees did around this time, John wrote a pamphlet about his experience and distributed it free of charge to anyone who wanted it (his was an 18 page long piece entitled ‘I was picked up a by a UFO’). In his pamphlet, John questioned not only the reality of his experience but the reality of, well, reality. He would wonder for the the remainder of his life the implications that his encounter had on his overall experience of life and consciousness, eventually deciding that life was something more of an extended, dream-like state. This, he thought, was the only way it was possible that people like him could have such extreme and completely out there experiences.
He was certain, despite his initial questioning, that whatever had happened to him had, indeed, actually happened to him (at least as much as anything can happen to anybody). He would never doubt the reality of his experience again.
***
When I initially started writing this piece and the preceding one, what I initially intended to try to answer was that age old one that always gets thrown around whenever an encounter like these hits the media: are they crazy or are they on something? Obviously, I don’t think either is true. I think a lot, when I consider encounters like these, about Plato’s allegory of the cave. The gist of the allegory is that, to a person who’s lived their entire life in a cave seeing only the shadows of a true object cast upon the back wall of said cave, this person has no other field of reference and so assumes that these shadows are the true forms of those objects. It’s obvious to me that this is probably a pretty good representation of how reality actual functions.
We experience things from the viewpoint in which we can experience them. Our viewpoints cannot and will not change without some outside force acting upon them as to change them. Perhaps, then, given certain inputs and certain influences we’re capable of changing that viewpoint.
Maybe Edmonds and Womack, through some method incidental or otherwise, both got glimpses of some other entity that just doesn’t happen to cast a shadow upon the wall of our cave.
Call them crazy if you want, but they both experienced something. (2) (3)
Stay weird!
-Scott
(1) I believe I found the approximate location of the field where his encounter took place. Obviously, I won’t post the exact location here, but it’s always cool to know that these places are still out there and still discoverable if you care enough to go looking.
(2) I want to specify that I do not entirely trust John Edmond’s story. I have a lot of issues presenting his case because of the sheer absurdity of it. Even now, I’m not certain that how I wrote that particular blog post is very good simply due to the fact that I wasn’t really sure how to end it. I want to say that I do 100% believe that John was encountering something. Like all paranormal experiences, it isn’t in most ways verifiable. This doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. This also doesn’t mean that I believe that John killed aliens or that a UFO crushed his rescue dogs while they were still within their kennel. I’ve come to believe that Edmonds either already was or, as a result of what he was experiencing, became a very troubled individual. The fact of the matter is that, just as the leaders told Womack that not every person could withstand being abducted, not every contactee comes away enlightened and filled with awe as to the nature of their reality.
For every Womack out there who’s left wondering just what all there is to see and trying to help others experience what he did, there’s dozens of Edmonds’ who claim that they kill aliens, that their wife is bruised due to attempted abduction, and that the dogs were killed by a UFO. Perhaps then, with that in mind, our two Johns should be presented as a dichotomy of sorts. Two sides to a single coin. A stark reminder of what can happen when someone is pushed too far, too fast, and becomes far too enraptured by these sorts of things.
(3) Not really related to that last statement, just wanted to say that I’m going to be stepping away from alien and UFO stories for a bit. I feel like I’m writing way too much about all this right now. Sure, it’s my website, I can pick the topics, but I also don’t want to alienate anyone and I don’t want the website feeling like it leans too much towards one thing or another. I’ll be back next week with something completely different.