I remember the lights very well. Orange, green and yellow. They descended from the sky one evening in the spring of 1992. I was with two friends and we were enjoying some good LSD together. We were walking along a pathway that flanked Speed river in Guelph/ON. The area was sparsely inhabited and there were no homes in the vicinity of the park that surrounded the portion of the river that flowed through the town. It was approximately 3 or 4 in the morning. As we walked along the path that ran adjacent to the river's edge we became aware of an illumination above us that seemed to encompass the entire sky. We all looked skyward in tandem and attempted to determine the nature of the light source. I remember looking upward and feeling confused but not frightened or alarmed. The light appeared as a descending shroud of pale luminescence. I remember thinking that I saw the source of the emission far above, the lights seeming to originate from a single source high above. The shroud approached gradually, seeming to spread like a gas. As the blanket of light neared, I looked at my friends incredulously, not sure of what to make of the phenomenon. My one friend looked back at me perplexed and we began laughing nervously. When I looked to the other party, he had dropped to his knees and was fervently praying to whatever god he believed in. This action raised my anxiety level somewhat, but I still remember remaining relatively calm while the light enveloped us from above. The last memory I retain from that evening was the light descending far enough that I was almost able to reach up in the air and touch the luminescent blanket of color. All memories leading up to that point in the evening are still etched quite dramatically on my brain. After the lights reached us, the entire process occurring within 10 minutes, my memory goes blank and I cannot recall anything whatsoever. The lack of memory concerning these events was not gradual; I remember waking up in bed the next day unsure whether the entire experience was not a dream. I called my friend as soon as I awoke and asked him what had happened to us. He insisted that the phenomenon was simply the northern lights making their spectacular appearance. I wasn't so sure, as I didn't think the aurora borealis came down so close to the ground. As we were under the influence of psychedelic intoxicants at the time of the experience, I rationalized away the accounting for missing time not being able to remember the journey home after the lights were encountered.
Years later, I began questioning my one friend about his memories of the experience and we disagreed about the origin of the lights, he still thinking they were nothing other then the northern lights. I was starting to think otherwise, that the lights had emanated from a definite source. The literature I had been reading had led me to speculate that the lights were perhaps a tractor beam , as such, and that we had been abducted by extraterrestrials that evening. This would explain the occurrence of the lights and the clear lack of memory of any events after the lights had landed, so to speak. My friend maintained that the lights were natural phenomenon. Unable to resolve our conflicting opinions of the memory, I asked my friend how to reach the other party that was present in order that I might ask him what he recalled about the evening we saw the lights from above. My friend seemed surprised that he had not told me that the other person present had died a while back from melanoma. Shocked, I didn't know what to make of it. The way I knew the other gentleman, he was not a sun worshiper nor a day creature at all, for that matter. I mourned the loss of the other man who had witnessed the event we now discussed and wondered if his death was somehow connected to the event in contention. My remaining friend has maintained that the lights were the aurora borealis up until recently when a material change in circumstance invited his perspective to alter and he began to consider my mad ramblings about custodial aliens more tenable. You see, he has just recently been diagnosed with acute leukemia. As my mind begins to wander upon this speculation, I consider that two of the three parties present the night the lights came down have developed rare forms of cancer that could conceivably have been initiated by a large dose of radiation. The source of that radiation could have been solar or cosmic. Then again, the radiating lights could have a far different source. That of the custodians. The keepers of time. The overseers of secularized existence. The harbingers of the apocalypse.
