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The Siege - Four After he finished speaking to his friends, Ted was totally frustrated. All of them immediately turned the situation around to show Ted just how privileged he was to be taught this valuable information. No matter what he suggested, his friends countered with some justification that made it all acceptable. They told him he was being ridiculous to even consider that the alien device wasn’t one hundred percent benevolent in its nature and intent. One person came over to inspect the wall where the ball of light entered and exited Ted’s house, searching for any evi- dence of penetration. Another insisted that Ted should try to direct the UFO controllers to his home because he would not show them the lack of respect and consideration which he felt Ted obviously had for the situation. Ted wondered if he was being just plain negative, as his friends accused him, or if they might be walking around with some metaphysical blinders on their eyes. “Oh, well,” Ted reminded himself, “I haven’t been injured, just frightened a bit, so maybe something good will come out of all this yet. But one thing I do know. I’m going to play the game like my friends are, that it’s all for the good, until I know otherwise, because I’m tired of getting attacked every time I even suggest that there are elements to this that I don’t like.” Through the people to which Ted told his story, word got around the Shreveport UFO community about the ball of light. Within ten days, he received three intriguing phone calls from local people who chose to remain anonymous. One man, who worked for a utility company, told Ted that he, too, had had a strange experience only a few weeks before, with a marble-sized ball of white and yellow light that made a slight buzzing noise. He noticed it hovering over his head while he was up a utility pole at work. It slowly tra- versed his entire body, softly humming and making almost undetectable clicking noises. The man said he never saw where it came from, but that when he came down the pole, what had seemed like a ten-minute event had actually taken over an hour. He, too, felt that something had crammed his brain with Masquerade of Angels 30 The Siege - Four information that went in too quickly for him to decipher. The thing that disturbed him most, he said, was that in spite of everything he tried to do, he couldn’t get the strange device to go away, and that it finally entered his chest, not to be seen again. He wasn’t able to tell anyone about this until talking with Ted, and he wanted Ted to reassure him that it was all right and that he wasn’t in any danger. Ted could only share experiences with the man and com- fort him with the fact that if anything were really wrong, it probably would have shown up by now. Other than losing a little sleep the first few nights, the man seemed to be okay. Ted talked to him a few weeks later, and the man stressed that nothing else had occurred, and that he felt better after discussing the experience with Ted. Another caller, a woman, told him about a night three years earlier, in which she and a friend observed a similar device floating around her large, open porch during the wee hours of the morning. The two friends had been out to a local club that evening and arrived back home around 1:30 a.m. They both got ready for bed but then decided to sit on the porch for a while, enjoying the cool summer night, to have one more cigarette before retiring. As they sat there, an object that looked like a ball of fire darted across the lawn and made a right-angle turn toward them on the porch. It hovered silently in front of them for about ten seconds and then sped away. The women were frightened and locked themselves in the house for the rest of the night. They shared their story with one other friend, who laughed and suggested they stay out of the bars, and that maybe someone had slipped them some LSD in their drinks. The women insisted that wasn’t true, but they realized this was not an experience that just anyone would care to hear. So they vowed not to bring it up again. One of the women told Ted that she was relieved to find someone else who could relate to her experience. As she wished Ted well, she told him that she prayed every night that she would never see the device again because it left her with an uncom- fortable and uncanny feeling. Her friend rarely spoke about it. The women had no recollection of any missing time, just Masquerade of Angels 31