Amber and Jillian:
Two Similar Encounters
How Many Others Are There?By Michael Mannion
In 1999, Amber's anomalous encounter story was written up in a two-part article. One aspect of her account involved the unexplained appearance in about 1989-90 of two strange, different symbols pressed into her skin, one on each leg, just above her knees. Amber noticed them on her legs while in the bathroom shortly after waking.
She returned immediately to her bedroom where she searched her bed for an object that may have been on the mattress and been responsible for the impression on her skin. There was no such object present. Amber went to her desk, got a piece of paper, and drew a rendition of each symbol. After about 15 minutes, the impressions faded from her skin, leaving not a trace. Not knowing what to do about such an unexplainable experience, she placed the drawings in a manila folder, marked it “Hieroglyphics,” and put the folder in a filing cabinet
Over the succeeding years, Amber often thought she should try to find out more about the unusual symbols. However, she was busy running her own business and she did not know where to turn for help. In 1998, she began to work with an investigator who was conducting a study of extraordinary experiences. It was through this work that she learned that an extraterrestrial encounter, of which she had no conscious memory, was the origin of the symbols she found on her legs.
After this discovery, she searched through books on ancient symbols; perused published drawings of alleged alien writings and signs; and studied scholarly works on alphabets from Sumeria, Babylonia, Egypt, China, Persia and other parts of the world. Despite all her effort, Amber never found anything that looked like — and emotionally felt like — the symbols on her legs…until just recently, when she began reading an exciting new book by astrobiologist David Grinspoon, Lonely Planets: A Natural History of Alien Life.
Chapter One of Grinspoon's book opens with a humorous, engaging anecdote about the author's failed attempt to find “a spoken-word/hip-hop/acid-jazz event” in Manhattan. Instead of attending the avant-garde event, he and an old friend wound up spending the snowy winter night in a bar, sharing their thoughts, nursing a few drinks and listening to a mediocre jazz band. At the end of her shift, their waitress asked Grinspoon and his friend what they had been talking about all night and what they did for a living. When she heard that Grinspoon was an astrobiologist, and writing a book on alien life, she told him and his friend her unusual story.
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The drawing by Jillian is presented on the right (Figure 1). It is from page 2 of Lonely Planets: A Natural History of Alien Life. (Harper Collins, 2003).
Amber's drawings are reprinted below (Figure 2). Like Jillian, she did not know what to make of the symbols visible on her skin. Did Jillian, like Amber, subsequently investigate the strange marking on her leg? Has she too, perhaps, discovered something about its origin? This author does not know.
 FIGURE 2: DRAWING BY AMBER |
What is Grinspoon's perspective on this? On a scale ranging from UFO debunker at one end to UFO true believer at the other, Grinspoon falls somewhere in the moderate middle. He expresses a skeptical viewpoint about the reality of experiences like Jillian's and Amber's. However, unlike the majority of his colleagues, Grinspoon is at least willing to discuss the topic openly and without derision.
It is fascinating, for both Amber and this author, to come upon a story resembling what happened many years ago to Amber. How many others are there who have had similar experiences of awakening to find unexplained markings impressed into their skin, associated with a period of missing time or a sense of something unusual having happened during the night?
Jillian, if you are reading this and would like to talk about your experience, send an email to Michael@Mindshiftinstitute.org I would love to hear from you. Also, if you are interested, Amber would like to communicate with you as well. I will forward your message to her. And if there are any other readers who have had this particular kind of anomalous experience — waking up to find symbols or markings impressed on your skin — please feel free to send an email briefly describing your experience. If you have any drawings of markings or symbols, please send them as well.
Who knows what we may discover.
Figure 1 excerpted from Lonely Planets by David Grinspoon.