Ok, here's a weird childhood experience that I'd like to tell.
Late one night in high school some friends and I drove to a mall near our town because we'd heard that one of the restaurants was open late, and we had a plan to sneak out of the restaurant and run around the inside the mall all night.
Well it turned out that we were a little too late and the restaurant was closed as well, so we turned around to drive back home. This took us along the highway, and it was then a little after midnight.
The weather that night was clear but there were low-hanging cumulus clouds, and as we drove back we were surprised to see a gigantic orange glow coming from the forest to our left and reflecting up off the clouds. We all immediately thought "forest fire", and since we were in the mood to find some sort of adventure, we decided to drive toward it.
We drove around in the neighborhood adjacent to this forest, but there was no road that led into the woods toward the glow. Since we were young and reckless we actually parked our car and walked into the forest in the middle of the night! We were able to direct ourselves because even though we were in pitch darkness, we could still see a huge orange glow reflecting off the clouds in the distance, and we just walked toward that glow.
After a good long while of walking, we suddenly came upon a path in the woods. It was actually a narrow road which was fashioned out of thin planks of wood lying side-by-side and creating a pathway in the midst of the forest. This pathway seemed to lead directly towards this giant glow.
So now we followed the pathway, but sort of on the margin because we weren't sure who we might run into. Soon we saw what certainly looked like some sort of huge fire in the distance, and we moved deeper into the woods and away from the path as we approached it.
We came upon a huge clearing in the woods, and as my friends approached the edge of the clearing I climbed a tree for a better view. This clearing was several hundred yards across, with a large trench dug around the perimeter. In the center of this clearing was what looked like a gigantic moon crater. And coming out of this crater was the biggest fire that I've ever seen. It was ridiculously big, but completely contained. From my vantage point I could see that in the center of the flame was some sort of large black object but I couldn't tell what it was. Occasionally a bizarre metallic groaning sound would emit from the crater and the fire would leap up into the air even higher. We could easily feel the heat from this fire even though we were still a distance away.
Surrounding this fire were men in protective suits, covered from head to toe. I think they might have been yellow. There were about 12 of them and they stood roughly equally separated. In the background behind the fire I could see vehicles and what looked like trailers or temporary homes.
We watched this for a long while, and we wanted to walk out there and ask what was going on. But finally we decided to turn back and go home. We talked and talked about what this might have been. If this was some legitimate project, why were they doing it in the middle of the night?
A few days later, I took another friend of mine to try and find the site in the daytime. We followed the exact same route through the woods and we found the road again. We followed it to the clearing and we discovered that everything was gone. No trailers or vehicles, even the crater and the object inside it was gone. It was just a flat empty clearing with a trench dug around it.
Anyway, there's a good chance that there might be a completely normal explanation for this scenario. Maybe someone here knows exactly what was going on. It was certainly strange, even more so because it was going on in the dead of night. It certainly gave everything that sinister feeling, like they were "burning the evidence" or something like that.
Anyone here ever seen something like this? Is this a normal occurrence in some particular occupation?
Late one night in high school some friends and I drove to a mall near our town because we'd heard that one of the restaurants was open late, and we had a plan to sneak out of the restaurant and run around the inside the mall all night.
Well it turned out that we were a little too late and the restaurant was closed as well, so we turned around to drive back home. This took us along the highway, and it was then a little after midnight.
The weather that night was clear but there were low-hanging cumulus clouds, and as we drove back we were surprised to see a gigantic orange glow coming from the forest to our left and reflecting up off the clouds. We all immediately thought "forest fire", and since we were in the mood to find some sort of adventure, we decided to drive toward it.
We drove around in the neighborhood adjacent to this forest, but there was no road that led into the woods toward the glow. Since we were young and reckless we actually parked our car and walked into the forest in the middle of the night! We were able to direct ourselves because even though we were in pitch darkness, we could still see a huge orange glow reflecting off the clouds in the distance, and we just walked toward that glow.
After a good long while of walking, we suddenly came upon a path in the woods. It was actually a narrow road which was fashioned out of thin planks of wood lying side-by-side and creating a pathway in the midst of the forest. This pathway seemed to lead directly towards this giant glow.
So now we followed the pathway, but sort of on the margin because we weren't sure who we might run into. Soon we saw what certainly looked like some sort of huge fire in the distance, and we moved deeper into the woods and away from the path as we approached it.
We came upon a huge clearing in the woods, and as my friends approached the edge of the clearing I climbed a tree for a better view. This clearing was several hundred yards across, with a large trench dug around the perimeter. In the center of this clearing was what looked like a gigantic moon crater. And coming out of this crater was the biggest fire that I've ever seen. It was ridiculously big, but completely contained. From my vantage point I could see that in the center of the flame was some sort of large black object but I couldn't tell what it was. Occasionally a bizarre metallic groaning sound would emit from the crater and the fire would leap up into the air even higher. We could easily feel the heat from this fire even though we were still a distance away.
Surrounding this fire were men in protective suits, covered from head to toe. I think they might have been yellow. There were about 12 of them and they stood roughly equally separated. In the background behind the fire I could see vehicles and what looked like trailers or temporary homes.
We watched this for a long while, and we wanted to walk out there and ask what was going on. But finally we decided to turn back and go home. We talked and talked about what this might have been. If this was some legitimate project, why were they doing it in the middle of the night?
A few days later, I took another friend of mine to try and find the site in the daytime. We followed the exact same route through the woods and we found the road again. We followed it to the clearing and we discovered that everything was gone. No trailers or vehicles, even the crater and the object inside it was gone. It was just a flat empty clearing with a trench dug around it.
Anyway, there's a good chance that there might be a completely normal explanation for this scenario. Maybe someone here knows exactly what was going on. It was certainly strange, even more so because it was going on in the dead of night. It certainly gave everything that sinister feeling, like they were "burning the evidence" or something like that.
Anyone here ever seen something like this? Is this a normal occurrence in some particular occupation?
