SGT. SHELSKY: Okay, we’re recording right now.  Mike, please tell me about the initial thing that happened with you and John, out in the desert.

MIKE:  We were about fifteen years old and we had John’s Dad drop us off in the desert on a little camping trip.  He had done that several times before.  So, he dropped us off out in the desert of California, the southern desert of California.  We messed around all day doing hiking and you know, doing all that kind of good stuff.  At nighttime, we camped out in this dry riverbed.  As we were up, talking, we saw this bright light start descending from the sky.  It was very, very bright.  It lit up the desert like sunlight, like it was noontime or something.  It was that bright!  We watched it come down about I’d say a hundred yards away from us in the mesquite trees and the brush.  And I remember we were talking about going out and looking for it.  So the last thing I remember is that we decided to head out to look for it.  Then we woke up the next morning in our sleeping bags.  That was the initial incident.

SGT. SHELSKY: Then what happened after that point?

MIKE: (Hesitant) Well . . . nothing.  After that, we never talked about it.  We never talked about it again until 1986.

SGT. SHELSKY:  How many years later was that?

MIKE: Oh, Jeez, uh, about 1986, I think, 20 years later.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Why didn’t you talk about it the next morning?

MIKE: You know Bobby, I have no idea.  We just didn’t talk about it.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Well, give me some idea here.  Did you not want to talk about it, just didn’t think about it, or just didn’t remember it?

MIKE:  No, we just didn’t remember it.  It was like nothing ever happened.

SGT. SHELSKY:  So when you struck camp that next day, neither of you had any memory of the incident at all?

MIKE:  No.

SGT. SHELSKY:  So, would you say you had missing time, a period of time which neither of you could remember, or didn’t remember correctly?

MIKE: Yes.

SGT. SHELSKY: So, a lot of time passed and then, as you told me, you finally did talk about it.  What made you finally remember?

MIKE:  Well, I had this knot on my arm close to my elbow.  It had been there for years, and it never hurt, never bothered me.  You know, just a little lump or knot.  Then one day I was in the shower, bumped my arm up against the wall, and this thing started protruding from that knot.  It was about ½ to ¾ inches long.  Triangular shaped at one end, kind of flat at the other.  When I pulled it out there was very little blood, I mean very little blood at all.  And when I pulled it out, I kind of played with it for a while.  It was like some kind of plastic or silicon, or something.  I didn’t think much about it at the time.  I do a lot of dirt-biking and figured maybe I’d crashed one time and it had gotten embedded in my arm.  You know, I just never knew what it was and didn’t bother with it.

SGT. SHELSKY: Okay, Mike. You just explained that you had pulled a piece of plastic or something out of your arm.  What happened after that?

MIKE: Well, again, I played with it a little, bending it between my fingers and stuff, and then just threw it away.  I thought nothing more about it until one day, a while later, I was watching this show about a guy who had an implant.  Oh, gosh, I can’t remember whether it was an implant in his arm or leg.  But all of these memories started flooding my brain then.  I mean, I went back to that night in the desert with John and me.  So I called John up.  Now remember, I hadn’t talked to John for a long while, and not about this trip for about three years.  So, I asked John if he remembered a bright light.  He said yes, that he did.  So, I asked him: "Why didn’t we ever talk about that?  He said, "I don’t know"  And so I asked: "From what point do you remember?"

And he said pretty much what I just told you.  He remembered the light coming down, landing about 100 yards away, us going to look for it, and that we weren’t scared or anything, not back then, just sort of curious.  We couldn’t really remember if we did go looking for it or not, but I don’t see why we wouldn’t have, because again, we weren’t scared, or I don’t remember us being scared . . . I just remember us deciding we should go look for it.  Then the next thing he told me he remembered was just waking up the next morning, same as me.

SGT. SHELSKY: So what did you guys think about that after discussing it?

MIKE: Well . . . (Laughs), we had no idea what to think about it.  Of course, like I said, we discussed all the events . . . the strange thing was, you know, you would have thought we would have talked about it to our friends, especially at that age, at that time.  And John’s Dad just picked us up that next morning.  We never talked about it to anyone—period, which was really strange, not even to his dad that next morning.  And you would have thought we would have.

SGT. SHELSKY: You told me that shortly after this last discussion with John, he decided that he wanted to move to Las Vegas at that point, to be nearer to you, and to explore this matter further.  Is that about right?

MIKE: That’s correct, yes.  He wanted to know what happened that night.  He got more involved in it all more than I did at the time, wanted to know what the heck happened that night.  He moved from San Diego to near me in Las Vegas.  And well, we kind of discussed it on and off for a long, long time, you know, researched it, watched TV, and read and listened to radio programs about it.  I had talked to several people about it, people who are, oh . . . let’s say more familiar with the subject.

SGT. SHELSKY: Okay, so were there any other incidents after this one?

MIKE: Yes, there were two incidents after that.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Do you want to relate them to me?

MIKE:  Yeah, we were standing on his patio.  He had this nice house just outside of Las Vegas, in Henderson.  We were standing there on top of the hill with this nice balcony he had, good view, and we noticed these large white objects hovering over Las Vegas, and you could see what looked like military jets flying around these objects.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Did anyone else see these objects at all?  I mean, did anyone else report these lights?  Was anything on TV or the radio about it, maybe the newspaper?

MIKE:  Yes, other people around surrounding areas had seen them, but we had a friend who should have been right underneath them, lived in that area, which from our viewpoint should have been underneath them, and he never saw them. But later we realized it wasn’t what it appeared to be, location-wise.  We found out later it wasn’t where it appeared to be, that it was farther out of town.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay.

MIKE: It was actually much farther out than where my friend lived, so that’s probably why he didn’t see it.

SGT. SHELSKY:  And the third incident, what happened there?

MIKE:  We were out in the desert.  You know, just kicking around, sitting having a sandwich or something, looking at the night sky, at the top of this mountain, and this light came over from the left.  It was way up there.  I mean, it was really way up there.  It was like a star almost, it looked like, only a little bigger, but like out in space.  It came fast, moving overhead from left to right.  And all of a sudden, this other thing came after it.  And then this other thing, a bright light, a pulsating light, seemed to be chasing it.  And then this beam came out of it, struck the other one and it just blew up.  I mean, you could see bright pieces just exploding all over space.

SGT. SHELSKY: Okay, now let’s follow this through a little bit.  I mean, this has to have gotten you interested in this whole UFO thing.  You said you had missing time from the first incident, you had seen these sorts of objects a total of several times with John, at least.  Had you ever witnessed anything like this without John being present?

MIKE:  Never.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Well, that’s a little strange, isn’t it?

MIKE:  (Laughs) Yeah that is a little strange.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Did you ever go out intentionally looking for them?

MIKE:  Oh yeah, we went out looking for them, especially that night those things were over Las Vegas, in a jeep.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Oh no, what I meant was, were you ever on your own when you went looking for them?  When he wasn’t around, but didn’t see any?

MIKE:  Yes, I went a few times looking for them, but I never saw any of those things.  I did go out around Area 51 a couple of times, and saw some strange things there, but never like those other objects I saw.  I watched the skies, but I just haven’t seen anything like that since then.

SGT. SHELSKY:  All right, now what is your retrospective on all this, having seen all this, having gone through all this, what are your feelings—now I don’t want John’s feelings right now about it, but your own personal feelings?  What do you think about all this right now?

MIKE:  Uh, I just want to leave it alone, I guess, sort of forget about it.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Don’t you want to know what it’s all about?  I mean, does it bother you, nag at you at all?  Does it leave you in fear?

MIKE:  It doesn’t leave me in fear . . . uh . . . (Hesitates) there is something that bothered me for years afterwards . ..  it seemed obvious to me that uh, that one of those objects was fleeing and the other was chasing it and destroyed it.  So when I got back home the next day, I got the number of John Lear.  Of course you have heard of him—his father invented the Lear Jet, and he himself was a pilot, a pilot in Viet Nam, and he flew many sorties, and a pilot in civilian life and from what he had seen in his experiences of flying made him pretty much an authority on the subject.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay, what did you say to him when you called him?

MIKE:  I described to him what I had seen on the top of that mountain out in the desert.  And I asked him, "What do you think is going on here," meaning about that night.  And he asked me instead, "well what do you think?"

SGT. SHELSKY:  And what did you say?

MIKE:  Well, I told him that to me it looked like a war, somebody’s fighting over us.  And John said, "well, that’s a pretty good conclusion to come to.  And I said, "Why are they fighting?"  And he said, "well, let me ask you a question: "Do you think we are the top of the food chain?"  And then he said: "I’m going to leave you with that, and then we said goodbye and he hung up.

SGT. SHELSKY: That’s pretty compelling!

MIKE: Yeah!

SGT. SHELSKY: Okay, Mike, you were deeply involved in this, you and John, and then you felt you were maybe getting obsessed with trying to find answers, so you withdrew from it for a while . . . tell me right now:  What do you believe all this means?

MIKE:  Well, uh, I believe we’re being visited.

SGT. SHELSKY:  And you think they are aliens, or what?

MIKE:  Well, I don’t think they are terrestrial.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Do you have any opinion as to why they are visiting?

MIKE:  Uh . . . no, I don’t really know why they are here.  I don’t think they are here on our behalf though.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay, do you think they are here to do whatever it is they want to do and we just don’t matter to them?

MIKE:  Yes, yes, I think so.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Do you think they are interfering with our lives on a personal level?  You do have missing time, and even now, you have no recollection whatsoever of any abduction, but do you think it is a possibility under the circumstances?

MIKE:  Bobby, I wouldn’t rule it out.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Some things do seem to indicate that.  For instance, do you have any kind of one of those infamous "scoop" marks on you anywhere—don’t get too personal now.

MIKE:  (Laughs) On my shin, my right shin.

SGT. SHELSKY:  On your right shin, you have a scoop mark?

MIKE:  Yeah.  John also has one in the same place.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Same leg?

MIKE:  I believe so . . .

SGT. SHELSKY:  But regardless, he does have a scoop mark on the shin of one of his legs, right?

MIKE: Yes.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay, that’s new information for me!  Now, Mike, having experienced all this, what would you say to people, what would you advise people if they saw a glowing object in the sky?

MIKE:  Uh, I would advise them to stay away from it, definitely stay away.  And I’d advise them not to go searching for them.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Do you think they are dangerous?

MIKE:  I think potentially, yes.

SGT. SHELSKY:  To us as individuals, or to the human race?

MIKE: That I can’t say, but when one blows up another, they are obviously hostile.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Or they are capable of hostile acts.  Do you think that’s what you were watching that night on the mountaintop in the desert?  Are you sure it wasn’t something manmade?

MIKE:  Uh, the only other things I think it could possibly have been was some type of star wars test or something, some experiment.  Although, at the time, I don’t think we had anything at all like that!

SGT. SHELSKY:  And how long ago did that particular incident take place?

MIKE:  I’d say about 1992, or ‘91.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Would you pursue this any further, or you just content to live your life as it is now?

MIKE:  I’m just content to live my life the way it is going and not worry about what’s going on out there anymore.

SGT. SHELSKY:  And you’d just like to finish it out without any upset, any invasion, or anything?  (Laughs)

MIKE:  (Laughs) Absolutely!

SGT. SHELSKY:  One thing, you are on your deathbed, you are dying, would you want to know the answer then?

MIKE:  (Long silence) Well, that’s a tough question.  I didn’t anticipate that one.  Uh . . . it depends on what knowing the answer would include.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Well, the worst or the best.  I mean, you wouldn’t know until to got the answer.

MIKE:  I mean, if finding out the answer would mean that they interfere in our lives and destroying us, no, I wouldn’t care to know that answer.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay, and did this permanently alter your perception of your life in this world?  Has this happened with you?  I mean, are you more thankful for your life as it is?  Are you thankful that you can go on living your life in peace?  Some people, it would really prey on their minds and I know you went through this sort of thing for a while.  Are you saying you don’t have to know the answers now, or would prefer not to?

MIKE:  I’m saying that I got so involved with wanting to know that it was interfering with my life.

SGT. SHELSKY:  It was becoming a real obsession.

MIKE:  Right.  It was becoming an obsession, and I don’t think it is worth it to let anything become that much of an obsession in your life, and possibly something we may never know the answer to, at least not in our own lifetimes.  It’s like a quest for the Holy Grail.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Yes, but one does seem a little nicer thing to do than the other one.  (Laughs) Do you have anything you want to say to anyone?

MIKE:  Like I said, the only thing I’d want to say to anyone is that if something like this happens in their lives, not to waste half their lives looking for answers they may possibly never know.  My advice is that they just go on living their lives as best they can.  It’s all anyone can do.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Oh, a question—Mike do you feel like this may still be going on in your life; that you are still somehow involved with these things, aliens, I mean?  Or have they left you alone now, or are they still tagging you, so to speak?

MIKE:  No, I think they’ve left me alone.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Maybe, that’s because you aren’t still hanging out with John anymore, since you now live in Iowa?

MIKE:  That’s possible.  I don’t know.  (Laughs)

SGT. SHELSKY:  Final question for the record. Mike, do you think you are reasonably mentally balanced, sane, stable?

MIKE:  Oh, yeah.

SGT. SHELSKY:  You don’t think you are crazy?

MIKE:  No.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay, well you see, I think differently about that . . .

(Both Laugh.)

MIKE:  And John I know is stable, you know.  I’ve known him all my life.

SGT. SHELSKY:  Okay, I’ll believe that and that wraps it up. Mike, I want to thank you for being so willing to share this with people.  It takes guts, and I’m not sure I’d have that kind of courage myself.

MIKE:  Your welcome.

That ends this interview with Michael Shelsky.  Next time, we talk to John, Mike’s friend, and hear how he remembers the same incidents, and even more importantly, what he feels and thinks about it all.  According to Mike, John was even more obsessed, or caught up in it all.  So, until next time, Watch The Skies!  Be Wary!