This is my own experience that happened to me 50 years ago, back in June of 1975, while in Camp Verde, Arizona. I was there with one of my best friends, and my cousin, and were staying at my friend’s mom and stepdad’s place just off of the Verde River. That’s the main reason why we were up here, was to fish.

   After spending all afternoon and into the night, we ran out of beer, so we packed up and headed back to my friend’s mom and stepdad’s place to have a nightcap at about 3 a.m., before retiring for the night. So, while standing out in the front yard, drinking our beer and star gazing, we decided to end the night on a high and smoke a good night bowl of weed. I was holding the pipe as my friend was packing it, and my cousin was star gazing while we were busy and started telling us over and over to look up in the sky behind us, where he was looking. We ignored him, because we were almost done packing the pipe, when he grabbed me by the shoulders from behind and spun me around to see what he thought was so important and I about shit my pants. Streaking out of the sky from the north, was a fireball and it stopped dead in the air over the top of the Mingus Mountain range that towers above Camp Verde on the south side and sat there as a big glowing white orb that pulsed from blue to red. As we watched in disbelief, confirming to each other that this was really happening, it zipped sideways to the east about 10 miles in a blink of an eye, and sat there pulsing blue and red for about 10 seconds, and zipped straight back to the west about 20 miles, and did the same. Then it zipped back and sat over Mingus Mountain again and glowed white for about 10 seconds and then shot straight up into space in a flash and disappeared. We stood there still befuddled at what we saw, discussing it, and went inside where my friend’s mom and stepdad were still up drinking beer and told them about it. They had an old radio tuned in to the local radio station for background music while they were talking, and we heard the DJ talking about getting phone calls about something strange that just happened in the sky, from several different people around the Verde Basin area that witnessed what we did. After that, we knew what we saw was real.

    I had hunted deer back in 1969, way back up in the Mingus Mountain range and the man, Jerry, who invited me lived in Camp Verde, and was familiar with those mountains. Well, early on a Saturday morning, we drove his old Ford pickup to the base of Mingus Mountain and he parked it, and we trekked for an hour up some rugged ridge and when we got to the top it leveled out somewhat and was absolutely gorgeous. After hunting nearly all day and getting skunked, we decided to take a different route back to his truck at the bottom of the mountain. As we came up and over the peak, we stumbled on a hidden canyon, and there along one side were the remains of an old Native American adobe-looking structure built into the side of the mountain. The remnants of a civilization that thrived here long ago. Jerry told me he had never seen this old structure before, because it was so well hidden. We didn’t explore it or anything, we just stood in amazement and took it all in, because there were stories around the Basin area, whether true or not, about past sightings and things going on up high on top of the mountain that made people who lived around there superstitious. So, we let it be, and hiked back to the truck.

    After seeing what we saw in 1975, I always wondered if there was a psychic connection between the Native Americans and the Sky People… just saying…