A listener writes “I moved to a fairly rural part of New York, when I was 21 years old, in 2011. You’ve interviewed a couple of people on past episodes who lived not far from me at all. One was in Wellsville, NY a somewhat zany gentleman and his sons who had an experience and another was a man who had a run-in while driving near the Kinzua Dam area.
I grew up loving the outdoors and was involved in Scouts from elementary school through high school. I was very fortunate to spend a lot of time camping, hiking, and backpacking all over the country, with many of my longer treks taking place in New Mexico and Colorado. Before moving to Cattaraugus County, I lived about 900 miles south/southeast in a very large, densely populated city. I had visited this area growing up to see family, and it always felt like a good place to slow down and escape the constant hustle and bustle so eventually, I made the move.
I found a job and a place to stay, and beyond that, my time was largely my own. I spent a lot of it exploring the 115 acres of land my grandmother owned. This region’s landscape was shaped by glaciers long ago and is part of the Allegheny Plateau. It’s very different from where I grew up and unlike anywhere else I’d seriously explored. The terrain has an odd, almost random waviness to it steep ravines, hills rising 600 feet or more, and endless nooks and crannies. It can be surprisingly disorienting.
For the first three years or so, I lived in a small town and spent most of my time alone, much of it wandering those woods. During that period, there were maybe four occasions when, completely out of nowhere, I’d get this overwhelming feeling that I needed to leave immediately. It felt like I was being watched hair standing up on the back of my neck, a deep gut instinct telling me to get out now. I’d always stop and scan my surroundings, trying to find something anything that might explain the feeling, but I never saw anything. Still, I trusted that instinct every time. I’d put my head down, keep quiet, and quickly make my way back to my truck.
I’ve encountered black bears, bear cubs, deer exploding out of the brush, and grouse flushing at my feet all of which definitely get your heart racing. But none of those experiences came close to that sudden, unprovoked need to GTFO that seemed to come from nowhere.
Fast forward to May 2025. I now have a wonderful wife and beautiful young kids. I haven’t spent much time in those woods in the last couple of years, but I still live only about two miles away as the crow flies and have been in the area for roughly ten years. Just two to three miles down the road is about 4,200 acres of state forest. The terrain makes deer hunting a real pain since motor vehicles aren’t allowed, so it doesn’t see as much traffic as other public hunting lands I’ve been on.
As often happens with young kids, they end up in the bed with their mom in the middle of the night, which usually means I get booted to the couch in the living room. From there, there’s a large picture window overlooking the valley we live in. Around 4:00 a.m., I woke up because a bright light was illuminating the paneled wall to the right of me. We live outside of town very little traffic, no streetlights and the house sits elevated above the road, so it couldn’t have been headlights. It was unusual enough to fully wake me.
I stood up and looked out the bay window across the valley at least 300 yards away, if I had to guess and saw a bright white, round light hovering off the ground. Four beams extended upward and outward from it. I stood there for several seconds, trying to make sure I was actually awake and not imagining things.
I grabbed my phone to record, but I was too freaked out to go outside onto the porch. Instead, I rested the phone against the windowpane to steady it. The moment I hit the red record button, the outward beams instantly disappeared, leaving just the light itself, which now looked more like an orb. I recorded it through the glass, which I’m sure hurt the quality, but I had this strong feeling that I didn’t want whatever it was to see me or hear me or even know I was there. I was genuinely shaken.
I watched and recorded it for a while, and it just stayed there. That made me even more uneasy, so I did what felt safest in the moment: I went back to bed, like a scared puppy, and tried to convince myself it had been some kind of sleepwalking or half-dream state. But when I woke up in the morning, the videos were still on my phone so here we are.
You know more about reports of orbs than I do, but I can’t help noticing some similarities. I’m not great with computers, but I’m trying to attach a few videos so everything is documented. There should be three clips, approximately 0:45, 3:18, and 0:26 in length. I also have photos, including some with reference sketches drawn over them.
I don’t really know what to make of it all, but that woman’s story along with many others has me wondering.”
