|
We were fascinated with the stories we found on the Internet about
the Oviedo Lights and decided to hide a night cache in the area of
the bridge. After hiding the cache and putting up the reflective
indicators, we went back at night to verify all the locations and
secretly hoped to spot some of the strange lights.
As we pulled up, my monkeez became very agitated. I had to bribe
them to come out of the car. And then only LugMonkee would come
out. The other two stayed in the car with an FRS radio. I
waypointed the car and grabbed the 2.25 million candlepower spot
light, my GPS and some other flashlights and we headed into the
woods to retrace our steps from earlier in the day.
After about five minutes of hiking, I heard Bmonkee screaming
something about lights into the radio, but I couldn’t
understand him or reach him on the radio due to high static volume.
As I turned around to return to the car, I saw them. The lights
were about 250 feet away. They were eerie green and about 2 feet in
diameter…and moving! LugMonkee got almost hysterical and we
started to run. I checked my GPS and due to some
magnetic/atmospheric anomaly, our GPS showed us to be about 2 miles
from the car! And we had only walked about five minutes! So the
GPS, which we were reliant upon to retrace out steps, was totally
useless. I shoved it in my pack and gave my LED flashlight to
LugMonkee and fired up my spotlight. It wouldn’t turn on. I
set it down and grabbed my mag light out of my pack and it
didn’t work either. Only LugMonkee’s LED light worked.
For some strange reason, the FRS radio, GPS, and incandescent
lights stopped working.
With LugMonkee’s LED flashlight leading the way, we ran
toward the car, occasionally turning around to check the lights. A
strange thought occurred to me as we fled the scene –
“I should get a photo”. So I pulled my camera out of my
pack and turned it on. I turned around to face the lights and
depressed the button. FLASH! After the flash went off, the lights
suddenly moved towards me, as if enraged by the camera’s
flash. I quickly turned the flash off and took another picture
which is posted below. I could see the lights getting bigger as
they approached. I quickly turned around and started toward the car
and realized that my only light source was with LugMonkee who was
long gone by this time. Lugging a heavy spotlight, camera, and
backpack; fleeing scary and seemingly supernatural lights, and
racing through the pitch-dark spooky woods at night with no
flashlight became a dangerous adventure. Man, where’s the
moonlight when you need it? I raced ahead toward the car, branches
hitting me in the face until I ran into a thick patch of palmettos.
My foot hit a root or palmetto stump and I went tumbling, headfirst
into the palmettos. The stuff I was carrying flew
everywhere…spotlight, keys, cell phone. Cell phone? Hey! It
was lit up! I grabbed it and faced the display toward my landing
zone and quickly spotted the spotlight, but not my keys. I stood up
and looked back only to see the chasing lights getting even closer!
Keys, schmeez. I have a spare key in my wallet. Using my cell phone
display as my guiding light, I continued the trek toward my car.
Finally exiting the woods I spotted LugMonkee inside my car talking
excitedly to his brother monkeez. I ran to the car and threw
everything inside, got my spare key out of my wallet, and turned
around one last time to see if the lights were still coming. They
were gone. I paused to catch my breath and check out the damage. My
legs were ied, my shirt was covered with mud, and I had a few
scrapes on my face and neck from running through the branches in
the woods.
Then a horrifying thought occurred to me: if my spotlight, GPS, and
radios all went out, would my car start? I grabbed my spotlight and
aimed it into the woods and pressed the button. It worked! But,
similar to the camera flash, it seemed to trigger a response from
the Oviedo Lights! They were coming at us again! I jumped in the
car and took off as fast as I could with my monkeez screaming in
the back seat. As we barreled down Snow Hill Road, I saw the lights
disappear in my rearview mirror. As if to give me one last scare,
the speedometer pegged and the instrument lights flickered before
returning to normal. Man, I’m glad I don’t have to go
back in there and find that cache at night!
|