Spaceships, ghosts, and Soviets

I like to solve mysteries. I will never solve this one.

Every life should contain an unexplained event or two.

In fact, I think experiencing the unexplained can make us happier over time.

Some of the most depressed people I’ve known were ones whose world lacked mystery and who thought they had this life figured out.

There’s a reason many of us get a sad vibe from Neil deGrasse Tyson, no matter how smart and successful he is (and I’m not saying this with any disdain, and it is not a criticism, before some loud jerk gets in my face about it). I respect his opinion when he says the universe is blind and indifferent to us, but I also look at other scientists, like Freeman Dyson, who pondered the questions of God, and good, and evil, and I think that maybe their lives have been easier, or at least fuller. It’s a feeling I have.

Anyway, here’s a story about something that I’ve never been able to explain:

It begins, like many of my stories, in the ancient city of Kyiv.

When I was a very small child, probably four or five at the time, I was sometimes left in the care of my great-grandmother Tosia. Despite her advanced age, Tosia wore her hair long, in a thick, gray braid. She taught me how to make deruny (our version of latkes, yes, we’re a very mixed family), insisting loudly that “no one is too young for the kitchen,” and to read tarot cards. She had a dirty sense of humor that skipped a generation, but that both me and my father ended up inheriting. She was a strange and exciting and slyly magical woman

There was no sense of magic, though, on the night she and I saw strange lights in the sky while I was perched on the windowsill in my grandma’s plushly carpeted bedroom. There was just a vague sense of fear. The white lights moved in bizarre geometric patterns, too fast to be an airplane. Even I knew that.

I don’t remember why we were staring out of the window that evening, but I imagine it had something to do with watching the street down below, waiting for either my grandma or grandpa or parents to come back from work. I remember the sky was pink, so it must’ve been twilight. I remember how unnerving the behavior of the lights was.

I had a sense of recognition when I read about the West Michigan UFO sightings of 1994. It *was* like seeing a string of moving Christmas lights in the sky, in an age before drones became a thing. There was definitely a hum, but with a regional airport not far away, we didn’t think it was unusual at first.

There’s a reason those declassified Navy UFO videos left me feeling very weird in recent years. OK.

Tosia had survived the Nazi occupation while hiding her identity as a Red Army officer’s wife with Jewish relatives, fiercely protecting herself and her children. The family was punished for this later, as my great-grandfather had his military career derailed by having had his wife and kids on occupied territory (the Soviets sucked, what can I say). She mistrusted the government. She mistrusted the church. She mistrusted most institutions.

So after the lights disappeared, Tosia convinced me to keep my mouth shut. I don’t know how she did it. I’ve always been chatty, especially as a small kid. But I didn’t speak a word to anyone.

In hindsight, Tosia was probably worried that her daughter and my parents would decide she was cuckoo and refuse to leave me in her care. I remember that we liked our time together. I don’t think she wanted to risk that, and it gives me a warm feeling in my chest when I think about it today.

And that might’ve been it, just an odd memory of something in the sky, and a great-grandmother’s love, except for something that happened a little over a decade later:

When I was a teenager living in North Carolina, my father and I really liked to spend time as a duo. Mostly it involved sneaking off to a fast food restaurant strictly forbidden to us by my mother, but sometimes we tried to be health-conscious and grilled together when mom and my brother were out of the house. Dad had many specialities, and one of them was salmon steaks (there’s a reason they feature in A Ranger Comes To Town, a short story that remains very close to my heart).

I remember that it was salmon that we were grilling that pink evening, surrounded by yet another twilight. I remember that we brought one of my mother’s candles out on the deck. It was one of those big scented ones, that she’d been using for a while (this detail will become important in a minute).

Our backyard in Charlotte was and is one of the most beautiful and happy places I have ever known. Not because it was particularly fancy — we never did much with it besides mowing it and installing a little bench downhill and letting our dog run around there and leave piles of crap — but because it felt like I place I belonged, it spoke to me. There was a thin copse of trees beyond the fence, and occasionally poison ivy creeped in, and then we battled it. Owls hung out back there, and squirrels who taunted the dog, as well as skunks that the dog thankfully knew to stay the hell away from. I remember that scrap of land with its red Carolina clay underneath the grass vividly. The memories continues to echo throughout my life, no matter where I find myself.

It was late spring or early summer on that particular night, the Carolina air was not soup yet, but it was on its way there. Dad and I got onto the subject of the bizarre and unexplained somehow, though it was not the kind of conversation we had often, which is why it was so exciting when dad decided to tell me things from his past. On that particular night, he told me about a crazy-ass experience involving a diving exercise he participated in the Black Sea that deserves its own essay.

Listening to my dad talk brought back memories. I was suddenly back in Kyiv on that windowsill, in another twilight.

“I’d never told you this before, but…” And then I proceeded to tell my dad the story. The lights in the sky. How Tosia managed to swear me to secrecy somehow. And how I’d encountered the Michigan incident while doing research in the school library years later, and how familiar it seemed.

“The problem is,” I said after I finished, “Tosia’s not here to vouch for me.”

And that was when the other weird thing happened. Remember my mom’s scented candle? The one we’d definitely used before?

It was sitting between my father and I on the patio table, burning quietly, as there was no wind. The second I spoke the words about Tosia vouching for me, a big plume of flame shot upward from the candle. I mean, it was big enough that we instinctively leaned away, so big I remember the heat on my face. It was as if someone had poured lighter fluid on it, except no one had.

It burned like that for a few seconds, and then the candle completely went out. Again, there was no wind. It just died, and smoke rose from the wick.

I leaned back in to say something, and just as I did, the flame shot out of the candle again. Even bigger this time. Scorching hot. I jumped back and so did my dad. I don’t remember if we said anything then. It was just so odd.

Keeping a little distance away, I tried to speak again, and the candle promptly died again. I had no words, I was just staring at it. The wick looked dead. It was black. It was very quiet.

And then it was lit again, as if by an invisible hand, and continued to burn normally and peacefully.

I decided to not open my mouth, as I felt the candle was reacting to me.

In the ensuing silence, my father sighed deeply and said, “Looks like your great-grandma just vouched for you, kid.”

We sat there and looked at each other. And then we laughed. And the fireflies began to wink in the yard.

I was so taken aback by this incident that I even asked cautious questions of my mother about her candle. Did it ever behave strangely? No, it was just a normal scented candle you can get at any department store. Did my mother believe in ghosts? Here she gave me a long look and said maybe.

I will never have an explanation for the lights in the sky or for the candle. It could all be just a big coincidence, and yet the longer I live, the less I believe that coincidences are just that.

I think the world does speak to us from time to time. I think that physical death is probably not the end. I look for strange lights in the sky sometimes, but they don’t come back to me. I think there might be intelligent life out there, beyond this world, but I’m not so sure about little green men. Something does tug at my subconscious though, the suggestion that when we look up, the stars are looking back at us.

These events came back to me recently, since moving to Colorado. Some bad, suppressed memories have rushed in, but so have these kaleidoscopic mysterious moments that feel like finding old treasure in the bottom of a family chest. You hold it up to the light, and you’re not sure what to make of it, but it makes you feel gratitude anyway.

I’m grateful that I have stumbled into pockets of oddity along my path. They humble me, and we all need a little humbling. The glorious Normie Restoration cannot win if we’re constantly full of themselves.

Thank you for reading and please share this newsletter and recommend it to friends, I would be most grateful. As always, I am also grateful for your paid subscriptions which keep this project churning!

If you have any strange stories to share, drop them in the comments below! Tis the season 🧡