After it was all over, one man, David Leifer, went out to his barn to check on the horses. He found one of them unresponsive to sound as if the explosion had caused it to go deaf, and the other, according to the report, had been decapitated by some of the debris. And that right there would be enough for anyone to be afraid of. And yet, just a decade later, one woman experienced something that would change not

only her own life, but that of her entire family.

It was 1911, and the whispers of the airship sightings from 14 years earlier had sailed off over the horizon. Folks all across America had settled back into the more mundane aspects of life, although I'd have to assume they sometimes glanced up at the sky. People probably never will stop doing that. Adella was 36 at the time, living in Central Ohio. In mid-May of that year, she decided she wanted to go visit her grandmother who lived about 40 miles to the east. So she bought a ticket and boarded a train for the town of Broadway, heading out with a smile on her face, and the anticipation that comes with seeing loved ones that you miss. When she arrived at her grandmother's home later that day, though, something was wrong. Adella had left that good mood behind, and seemed to be a shell of her former self. She was in emotional distress, barely spoke, and was sullen and dark. And that was just on the inside. Her body also showed signs of some sort of immense physical trauma as if she had been in an accident. There were burn marks on her face, her tongue was badly swollen, and there was a strange indentation across the back of her lower leg, as if some enormous rope had bound her tightly, leaving a mark in the skin. Understandably, her family was concerned. Upon seeing the state Adella was in, her grandmother called for Adella's mother to come help. Her mother then called Adella's two brothers and one sister, and the family sort of converged on the house in Broadway to surround and support her. When it became clear that Adella wasn't going to recover anytime soon, one of her brothers caught a train home to make sure someone was there to take care of Adella's kids. The rest just sort of moved in, becoming full-time caretakers to a woman they had known and loved for years. But they weren't hopeful. Adella could barely manage life anymore, and while she would attempt small talk from time to time, whenever anyone asked her what had happened, she would immediately become so terrified that she was unable to speak. There were darker days ahead. Adella attempted to take her own life a number of times, once even throwing herself into a nearby river until her mother jumped in to save her. But the truth came out one night in the kitchen, as she stood over the sink with her mother and sister Elsie in the room. She told them how, on her journey to the house in May, they had come out of the sky and told her that they were going to destroy everything. Her kids, her family, and the rest of the world. She even sat up at night and wrote her experiences down, but according to Elsie, their mother burned the pages every time, out of shame for the fantastical lies that they assumed she was telling. By February of 1912, Adella had been sent to a mental health facility in Columbus, Ohio, and a few months after that she managed to sneak away from the caretakers there and end her own life. A very dark chapter had ended for her family, and on a tragic note, and from that day forward, no one spoke of it again. It was a mystery that the family would lock away and never tell another soul. But no secret can stay hidden forever. It took six decades, but eventually Elsie had to speak out, and the reason for that was because of something she read. You see, in 1972, a man named J. Allen Heineck had started an organization that published articles and research of a very particular kind. He had worked for years as a consultant to the U.S. Air Force, but he left after they made it clear that they weren't interested in his unusual ideas. And it was those ideas that Elsie read about in 1973, 61 years after her sister's mysterious encounter and tragic death. Reports of other events that sounded eerily similar to Adella's, reports of lost time, unexplainable injuries, and talk of someone or something, coming out of the sky. It helped Elsie finally put a name to the events that happened to her sister, and helped her better understand the physical and emotional damage she and her family were all witness to. It happened decades before the events at Roswell, New Mexico, but the comparisons were clear. J. Allen Heineck, the man who coined the term close encounter, had inadvertently helped her discover the truth. Adella hadn't suffered through an accident. She had been the victim of something darker. A

UFO encounter. Today, the skies above us are busy.