Was this a UFO experience?

Many years ago I lived in Fayetteville, NC.  The majority of the time I was there I lived out on a lake called McFadden’s Pond.  First in a rental house next to the waters edge that was accessed off Cliffdale Road, and then, out in the middle of the lake on what appeared to be a small island.  It was not really an island, but a peninsula with a one lane drive that snaked out into the lake and then opened out into an island.  If you looked at it on a map it looked a diagram of a male sperm, long narrow tail with a large head.  This drive was accessed off of Morganton road and was about a mile long through the sandy soil from pavement to house.  Going in, I passed two houses on my left along the way and then about a hundred feet past the last house, just before the drive dropped down hill toward the lake, there was a locking gate.  This gate was about a quarter of a mile from the house.  You would wind through the trees downhill and then start out into the lake on the azalea lined driveway.  The drive curved in such a way that once you reached the yard of the house, you could stand there and look around you and see water in every direction that you looked.  The house was at the very end of the yard with its back porch hanging out over the lake.  I used to keep my canoe floating in the water underneath my porch, ready for quick access.

            The incident that I want to tell you about happened at night.  I was sitting in my favorite chair and reading when it finally dawned on me that the dogs on the opposite sides of the lake were barking like crazy.  I don’t think I have ever heard such frantic barking from so many different dogs at once.  I got up from my chair and went to the door leading out onto my porch over the lake and opened it. I stepped out onto the porch and then very quickly stepped back inside and closed the door.  When I had stepped out onto the porch it was like I was stepping into an electric field.  My hair had stood on ends, both head and arms.  I rationalized that it was goose bumps because I must have been cold.  I put on a very heavy over shirt and stepped back outside.   It happened again.  My hair was waving around like magnetic filings following a magnet.  I quickly stepped back inside and closed the door.  Now I had a problem.  I admitted to myself that I did not know what was going on and I was in fact, somewhat afraid to open my door and go back out.  I have pretty much always lived alone out in the woods or out in nature.  I realized that I would not be able to continue living alone out in nature if I was going to be afraid to open my door and go outside.  I kept trying to figure out what to do.  And then I thought of Jimmy Durante, who used to walk around the completely dark stage with just a spotlight following him wherever he went.  I decided to imagine a spotlight surrounding me. Completely engulfing me and following me wherever I went.   My spotlight, however, in my mind, was from God.

            With my shield of light, I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.  My hair immediately stood on end again and felt like it was moving.  As I stood on the porch, I realized that my hair standing on end and the dogs barking like crazy everywhere was not the only unusual things going on.  The entire surface of the lake seemed to be churning.  I realized it sounded like the sound fish make when they dash away when you walk up to the shore and startle them.  The entire surface of the lake was being agitated by fish.  There was also a very heavy fog.  With my spotlight from God surrounding me and following me in my imagination, I descended the steps to the narrow concrete walkway connecting the steps to the side yard of the house and the dock.  If you turned right, with a step up, you went around the side of the house up into the yard.  If you turned left and stepped up, you were on my dock leading out into the lake. 

When I had moved in, this dock was in major disrepair. It was not safe to walk on it with all its rotten and missing boards.  I had rebuilt it, and in doing so, I had left one post sticking way above the treads.  Its top was at about shoulder level.  Due to the heavy fog covering the lake, and the fact that it was very dark out, I could not really see the floor planks on the dock.  In order to safely walk out onto the dock, I aligned myself just to the right of this protruding post and shuffled out onto the dock, sliding my feet along the boards to make certain that I did not step off into the lake.  The entire time I was doing this, my hair was still waving around like it was in a magnetic field, the fish were crazily churning the surface of the water and the dogs were barking their heads off.  When I reached the end of the dock, I stood there with my spotlight from God in my imagination surrounding me and a hand on my tall post and looking up and around trying to discover the source of all the commotion.  I saw nothing.

I must confess that what I really expected to see was a UFO.  Several days prior to this event, the paper had reported that a deputy sheriff who had been born and raised in Spring Lake, where Pope Air Force base is located, had reported seeing an unidentified flying object.  The authorities claimed that he had mistaken training flights from Pope Air Base as the UFO.  It was my opinion that a man who had been seeing training flights from Pope Air Force Base since his childhood and was responsible enough to be in law enforcement would be able to tell the difference between training flights and something he had never seen before.

    I stood out on the dock for quite a while waiting to see something.  To try and understand what was causing all these unusual effects.  After awhile, my hair began to settle down, the fish calmed and the water quieted, the fog dissipated, and the dogs stopped barking.  I was just standing alone out on the end of my dock over the water on a quiet night.  I never saw anything to which I could attribute all the unusual occurrences. 

    I watched the paper and listened to the news closely for the next several days and never saw anything about any UFOs being reported.  I felt like there had been a UFO somewhere close that night, and that was what was causing all the disturbances, but I never saw one.  In all the time that I continued to live there on the lake in the island house I never experienced any thing like it again.