Encounters With Star People: An Extraterrestrial, A Spacecraft & An Alaskan Blizzard

I’ve dived into the lore of supposed extraterrestrial encounters for quite some time. I find it fascinating how thousands of stories can corroborate with each other, and I find encounters with supposed extraterrestrials, although they cannot be verified, to be a critical part of anybody's investigation if they want to have a broader perspective of the UFO/UAP phenomenon.

One area of interest for me is stories from the lore of Indigenous people around the world, be it stories from the past or more modern-day encounters that Native Americans have had, for example.

Richard Wagamese, a well-known Ojibway author and journalist from the Wabaseemoong Independent Nations in Northwestern Ontario, Canada once wrote,

“My people tell of Star People who came to us many generations ago. The Star people brought spiritual teachings and stories and maps of the cosmos and they offered these freely. They were kind, and loving and set a great example. When they left us, my people say there was a loneliness like no other.

- “Star People” by Richard Wagamese

Dr Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University who is Cherokee/Choctaw has been researching the Star People and collecting encounters between them and Native Indians for many years. In her book, “Encounters With Star People, Untold Stories of American Indians” she details many of these stories and explains how her fascination with Star People came from stories told to her by her older relatives like her grandmother when she was a child.

The book is filled with many interesting encounters. I’ve shared multiple stories from her work with our readers. In one of the chapters, she describes a story told to her by an Alaskan Native who apparently “came upon an alien in the middle of the road during a blizzard. True to the Alaskan code of honour, he invited the alien to join him in his vehicle for fear he would freeze in the 70-degree below zero night.”

His name was Ross (the Alaskan Native), and he had heard about Clarke and how she collects stories about extraterrestrials and UFOs from Indian people.

They met at a restaurant, and Ross told Clarke his story.

Ross operated a snowplough for a living, and on the night of his encounter he was working a 50-mile stretch during a terrible snowstorm where visibility was almost zero, and the temperature with the wind chill hovered at nearly 70 below.

In the book, Clarke outlines a conversation between her and Ross. I left out most of what Clarke asked and focused on key quotes from Ross describing the encounter:

“Ross: My partner comes from the south. We drive up and back over that stretch of the highway keeping the roads clear. Sometimes we drive 18-hour shifts. Sometimes more. We usually meet each other around Lucky Gil’s.

Clarke: I recognized the place that he was talking about. It was a halfway inn consisting of a bar, restaurant, and gift shop.

Ross: About an hour into the shift that night, I got a call from Bill, the other driver, that there was a strange glow up ahead of Lucky Gil’s. He asked if I saw it. Before I had a chance to respond, I came upon a disk sitting in the middle of the highway. It covered the full two lanes. It was round with bright orange lights around the bottom. I stopped within 20 feet of it. I flipped my lights up and down. I tried calling Bill, but my radio was dead.

Suddenly, blinding white lights came on and the craft moved upward and was gone. I watched until it was out of sight, but that was not long because the storm cut the visibility that night to nearly zero. When it was gone, there was darkness all around me…I sat there for a moment, I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. It was at that moment I realized my engine was off. I never turned off the engine for fear it would not turn over again in the extreme temperatures, but it was off. I held my breath when I turned the key in the ignition, and fortunately, the engine came to life on the first try. I put it in gear and began to move forward. Just as I got up a little speed, I felt a bump under my right tyre as though I had run over something. That freaked me out. I thought it might be something from the spacecraft. I stopped the plough and readied myself to go outside. As I tightened the string of my parka under my chin, I saw a hand reach upward and pound on the side window. Then a second hand appeared.

It was the scariest damn thing I have ever seen. I swear to you. Those hands only had four digits…I turned on the light inside the cab and suddenly a face appeared and stared at me. Suddenly, it turned and ran across the road to a stand of trees and disappeared.

It ran across the road into the woods. I had no intention of following it. Leaving a vehicle in a blizzard could have deadly results. I thought that was the end of it, but it wasn’t. Suddenly, the creature reappeared in the middle of the road ahead of me. Somehow I understood that it was cold and needed a place of shelter. I offered him to come inside my snow plow but he wanted nothing to do with it.

He stood in the middle of the road and told me he was cold and it was my fault. He said the vehicle took off without him. He was outside when I came upon the craft. In their haste to evacuate the scene, the other crew members left without him…I invited him inside the snowplough again. I told him I had to clear the roads and I could not leave him outside in the cold. Reluctantly he came inside, but not like you and I would climb inside. He just appeared. One minute he was standing in the middle of the road, the next minute he was inside the cab with me.

I would be lying to you if I said it didn’t scare me. I was nervous and frightened. I just remembered what my grandfather taught me and stayed calm…That was the longest night of my life. I made it to my destination uneventfully; all the time the space traveller was riding shotgun in the passenger’s seat. He paused and then a smile crossed his face. I think we must have made an unusual pair.

Once I made it to the 50-mile point. I turned around and began the journey back again. It was snowing hard. The roads were covered with another four inches of snow. On the return trip, the spacecraft appeared again, in the middle of the road at the exact same spot as I encountered it earlier. The star man suddenly disappeared. Within seconds, I saw him in front of the craft. The pulsating lights outlined his shape and in the dim light I detected a brief and simple salute or a wave, I am not sure, directed toward me and then he was gone. He just disappeared in the night along with the craft.

He told me the craft had malfunctioned. They sat down in the middle of the road only momentarily for repairs. He was curious and had gone outside to do some testing of the snow. They didn’t realize it was a highway because of the storm. When I came upon them, my appearance shocked them, and in their confusion, they took off without him. They had not expected anyone to appear in the middle of the storm.

To add to his dilemma, they were not allowed to make human contact so he was uneasy about being discovered. So they immediately took off, leaving him behind. In the process, they violated several rules of their travel. He said they were a young crew and would likely lose their rights as explorers if their superiors discovered their mistake.

He was fascinated with the snowplough and how it worked. He considered it a rather primitive machine but one that he was curious about. He told me that humans put too much reliance on oil-based machines. He said they should spend their energy on studying the use of magnetic propulsion for travel. He could not understand why our scientists had gone in this direction.

He had never experienced snow before or the extreme cold. He said on his planet, the weather never varied. He had never been so cold in his entire life and hoped never to repeat the experience.

The alien was quiet most of the time. I was lost for words. I didn’t know what to ask a man from the stars, so I was quiet too. After he was gone I thought of a million questions, but when you are there and it is happening to you, it is different.

He was small in stature. He had a human form, but he wasn’t human. He could have passed for maybe a ten-year-old from a distance. His ability to appear and disappear fascinated me. I asked him about it, but he said that everyone from his world could come and go like that. He said I could do it, too. I just had to learn to use my brain in the right way. I didn’t understand what he meant.”

The day after this happened, a couple of military officers showed up at work and asked if anyone had reported strange lights or UFOs on the night of the storm. Of course, my boss told him there were no reports. I had not reported it either and neither had Ed, the other driver. I thought it was best to keep quiet so I never told them about the star man. When the military showed up, I played dumb too. I didn’t want to lose work because of some government investigation. Besides, the military has too much control in this state anyway.”

- Encounters with Star People: Untold Stories of American Indians

It’s fascinating to contemplate the implication of acknowledging that “we are being visited, and have been visited for many years by people from outer space, from other civilizations.” (Lord Admiral Hill Norton)

What I also find interesting about supposed stories of extraterrestrials is how many, over the years, have tried their best to avoid contact with humans. It’s almost as if many different races have a strict ‘no contact’ rule, and do their best to remain unseen. This is one of several common themes I’ve discovered when it comes to sifting through supposed contact stories.