Close Encounter

 

Ester Lopez

“Close Encounter”

 

I actually started writing in 1992, but my journey began in 1989. I was a Campfire Leader, driving home with 8 children and one other adult in my car from an outing at Ft. Pickens, part of Gulf Islands National Seashore on Pensacola Beach, Florida.

It was a school night in September when we left the fort area. The drive was seven miles from the fort to the entrance station, and then another six miles to the main intersection on Pensacola Beach, where we would turn left and head over the Bob Sikes Bridge into Gulf Breeze, Florida where we lived.

As we drove, it grew darker. The sugar white sand of the beaches is made up of crystals and glows at night with the moonlight. From the corner of my eye, on the Gulf side, I saw something black rise up from the sand. I thought it was a helicopter and said so to the father of two of the children. He said, “I design helicopters for the Navy and that’s no helicopter I’ve ever seen.”

The object flew over my van and remained on the driver’s side. (I drove) It was about 25 feet up and about ten feet in front of my van. It stayed with me all the way to the intersection on Pensacola Beach. No other vehicle was on the road. My heart pounded in my chest when I realized that was a flying saucer. The red and yellow lights beneath it chased each other in a circular pattern. Once we reached the intersection, there was so much light pollution, I lost sight of the UFO.

I thought of that incident for years and talked about it to anyone who would listen. Even my husband had seen one hovering over the sound from the same road. He could see the port hole glass and saw figures through the windows, just before it disappeared at a high rate of speed. (He was a Park Ranger at the time). There were other sightings in the Gulf Breeze area in 1989 that made national news.

The thought that kept coming back to me was ‘what if I had been abducted?’ Someone even asked me if I had, but I can honestly say, I don’t remember, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t happen. But the thoughts kept coming back and haunting me.

Finally, I had to write it down. The story changed so many times until it became, “The Abduction,” which was nothing like what I experienced. Imagine being mistaken for a criminal and being abducted by aliens. Then you discover the criminal you were mistaken for was your alien father. In order to escape, you have to make a deal with the bounty hunter who wanted you dead. It took 27 years from my “Close Encounter” with the UFO to publication. Never give up, even when everyone else tells you to. I now have 17 books published and I’m writing number 18. I hope to have two more by the end of the year.

When a mining accident claims the lives of several criminals in the Plumaris Prison Mines on Leviticus Station, a condemned slave trader faces a harrowing choice: risk his life to help others or focus solely on his own survival. Upon discovering that one of the survivors is his female cellmate, he begins to confront his troubled past, leading him to seek redemption.

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https://www.esterlopez.com

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