What bought you to the dance/whats your story?

i found myself naturally drawn to matters conspiratorial/speculative from an early age. i felt abstracted from 'the norm'. these feelings may or may not have been influenced by certain experiences . suffice to say the mainstream aspects of life held little appeal for me, while the 'exo/crypto' aspects were intriguing. still are.

a reply to: Schmoe55

Yes, I saw it at night. It was more of a zig-zag motion then a skipping motion. It would change it's trajectory as it moved - like in seemingly impossible ways. I wasn't the only one who saw it - my brother and my dad saw it as well. My brother is an amateur astronomer (or was, at the time), so he was fairly familiar with different sights in the skies - but that one stumped him.

Like a lot of other members, I lurked around the boards for a long time after stumbling over the site when I was looking up stuff online.
I am the kooky one in the family, they make jokes about my tin foil hat, aliens ...and did we really land on the moon in 1969? (all good teasing ) that kind of thing.
I am actually old enough to remember being allowed to stay up all night in July 1969, and still can't shake off the " pivotal moment " feeling that it left me with.
But for as long as I can remember I have been drawn to anything paranormal or unexplained. Grew up reading Stitchin and Von Daniken..seeds were planted early for me..... since then I have had a thirst for hidden knowledge.

I like reading philosophy, quantum stuff ( which i don't understand but it fascinates me anyway ) UFOlogy, Disappearances, MK Ultra, Government Conspiracies, Space Stuff and lately I am finding it harder to resist the current affairs/war boards although they usually wind me up no end and I need an ATS break to mend my soul.

I read more than I post, usually dip in to the boards every day ( unless I am politically burnt out ) and love the wide ranging points of view, experiences and the plethora of subject matter.

I would say that ATS has helped me be more subjective and reasoned. I would like to Believe, but am more drawn to hard evidence and proof than I used to be in the Stitchin / Von Daniken / Apollo 11 days.

Love this thread btw..especially reading the "ATS veteran" posts

A series of Yellowstone swarms - I heard about it on the news and was already aware of what Yellowstone is so I wanted to find more in depth information. The news was mostly just a sound bite. I joined right away but still mostly just lurk and read.

I was exploring the (ever decreasing) chance that I would complete my Masters by writing a dissertation on paranormal experience and acquired brain injury effects.

In no way a cynic, over the years in my job I have learned just how complex the brain is, and wanted to see if there was a connection.

Shortly thereafter, I was in that 'I'm awake, but it's the weekend and I don't have to get up' state of luxurious lolling when a large weight 'sat' on the bed by my feet. Before I could react, a kindly male voice said, low but clear, ''we MADE it!'

So, then, I became interested in non-ABI experiences!

Several events/experiences in my life left many unanswered questions and a feeling that I had been lied to by EVERYONE from the BEGINNING. As one of my fav 80's song says: "One thing leads to ANOTHER!". Here is brief list of the events/experiences that lead to my being here:

(in chronological order)

1. (Age 2?) - Visitation in my bedroom by 'light-beings'... I remember telling my mom, "I saw Jesus!"
2. (elementary school) - Like most children, I had a very active imagination brought on by a love of books, however, the beings I saw in our basement in an unfinished part of the house (I called them 'Sleestaks') seemed all too real for me and I began locking the door that lead to the basement steps and refusing to enter.
3. (teenager) - several experiences with animals that made me certain that they are not what we are told in school, but far more intelligent/capable than most could imagine. I changed my career choice from "Astronaut" to "Veterinarian/Zoologist".
4. (early 20's) - began having memories and dreams or memories of dreams or dreams of memories that left me feeling terrified that I had done something unspeakable. This has ceased (thankfully), but questions still remain: was this a past life experience, implanted memory, altered time-line, psychic connection with someone else?
5. (late 20's early 30's) - moved to 'Eatonville, WA', a tiny town at the base of majestic Mt. Ranier (close to where Kenneth Arnold had his well-known experience) - here I had a couple of strange occurrences that changed my life (in a wretched horrible way). On several occasions I witnessed UFOs/Orbs, and had an experience with an elk at close range that I will never forget.
6. (mid 30's) - had some nightmarish experiences with a dark entity with red eyes (demon? shadow creature?) that were so disturbing that again, my life was changed. What made this particular experience so powerful was that it was the first time that it was shared with another person- this reinforced the reality of the event. However, some time later I asked the person about what had happened and they became uncomfortable and pretended like it did not happen.

At this point I was ready for ATS but the internet was still mostly just AOL and BBS'.

Wild, huh?

I was googling about security clearances and what kinds of clearances there were back in '07. One of the links that popped up was this site. I thought that maybe it was a site for ex-spooks and maybe they would let me join in. Maybe...

Some great replies here so far - and sadly I've not got the time at the mo to reply to them all individually but please keep things coming!

Not only is this a great "find out more about" thread, its also a wonderful ideas box for looking at other subjects

I hear a different drummer
the name Above Top Secret caught-my-attention

I guess because I gravitate to psychic stuff, even mesmerized by the Nazi Occult sphere/Rasputin/Shamans/non-ordinary reality...

ATS seemed a big enough tent to enter without being either too expansive nor too specialized... an equivalent to an X-Files which touches many bases

still today, some 12+ years later ATS is relevant to my sensibilities...

a reply to: neformore

I've been around for a few years,I started off with a different username but forgot that after a long break-mostly ghosting but never contributing anything of substance.

When I first found this place,I was a believer.Oh,yes,I believed EVERYTHING and thought that the "truth" must be out there.

Now I'm older,cynical and jaded.
And a skeptic.
And an atheist.

At first,my mind was open at the top and everything fell in.

Now only the bottom is open and all the **** fell out.

I stared lurking a few months before 2012, I was living in Ventura California and fairly convinced that even if the world didn't end the big one was imminent. Basically stumbled across ATS while researching doom. I was very green to all things conspiracy related, and clueless as to what else was waiting in the site. I joined up after surviving the Mayan apocalypse.

I eventually learned to just click recent posts every now and then. I've been hopelessly hooked ever since.

Back then I believed in the paranormal but never had any solid evidence for myself. I have since seen what could only have been shadow people, and also the most blatant daytime UFO, it was a giant egg gliding through the sky ..... Now I have no choice but to believe something we don't understand is going on.

a reply to: neformore

This makes the 4th time I have answered this question.I came to ATS because
my son was a regular member here.I wanted to check out what he was posting.
I didn't want the FBI pounding on my door looking for him.I liked what I was
seeing and joined that same day.

What brought me to the dance...well, see there was this girl...yeah, isn't always. Only this time it was my mom who questioned Neil Armstrong's walking on the moon. Not that we went to the moon mind you, but that we brought the weight of the equipment to video walking around on the moon with syncing audio to boot. For her watching it live (I was another year and a half away yet) just seemed too much like a studio production.

It was that sort of questioning what you saw and was told versus what you witnessed and understand that put me down the path.

As a child I was a voracious reader and my favorite subjects were folk lore and ghost stories. From there I branched into the panacea of ufos, Bermuda Triangle and other mysterious phenomena.

As for what brought me to ATS in particular, I was looking for a good timeline on the JFK Assassination for a role playing game I wanted to run. Unfortunately that timeline didn't come until years later from a talented young man that died far too soon. But I liked the forum and the way the rules were enforced by an approachable staff well enough to sign up and stay. Somewhere along the way I was asked to help make the forum as enjoyable for others as I found it.

And so that was how it all came about. A fit before I was even born, I suppose.

Mostly Aliens and UFO phenomena almost ten years ago. When I was a teenager, I went on this huge alien and ufo kick. Never saw one in real life, and I honestly don't know what started my interest. This seemed to be the least shady site (as far as viruses and malware go) to be on, and it had a good selection. I credit this interest in ET and such with part of who I am today. I'm ridiculously interested in space technology. I've even come up with some space based weapons I think might work (particle beam like Star Trek) and even a couple ideas for space elevators. If given the opportunity to live on say, Mars for a time, I would jump on it in a heartbeat. I also truly believe that humanities course will lead us off of Earth.

This all being said, I haven't actually posted anything in Aaliens and Technology forums in quite a long time. My interest in politics and the situation our country has deteriorated into racially and socially since Obama took office has taken my attention away from that.

For me, it was aliens.

I'd been reading a lot of books speculating on extraterrestrial life for decades since I was a huge science fiction fan growing up. I loved the idea of someday seeing another planetary civilization firsthand, be they friendly or not.

Friendly would mean a rethinking of our place in the universe, possible scientific breakthroughs and a much needed brake on international warfare.

Unfriendly would mean a complete stop of international bickering and the unification of all humanity against a common enemy: A Darwinian conflict between sentient species. Even if we lose, at least we, for once, all struggled together.

Then I started reading *cough* Sitchin *cough* and wondered about how, perhaps, aliens had once visited here in the long distant past. This made me start searching the web for related topics just over a decade ago and that's how I found ATS.

Strange how, in Sitchin's time, he wrote about a Tenth Planet before Pluto was downgraded and today we have evidence of a Planet9, a gas giant 5 times (?) the size of Earth. So did Velichofsky write about 'Planets in Collision'.

So... my interest continues and here I remain on ATS, hoping still for the exciting event proving that we are not alone, even within our own galaxy amid the fullness of the universe.

I want to believe

a reply to: masqua

Unfriendly would mean a complete stop of international bickering and the unification of all humanity against a common enemy: A Darwinian conflict between sentient species. Even if we lose, at least we, for once, all struggled together.

It would be wondefull to see, the full 2 seconds before they completly wipe us out

Ball lightening. I saw it fly over my head during a storm and thought it was UFO. I googled the description and ended up on a UFO forum here... after digging around ATS I came upon forum about it and the mystery was solved. I stuck around because I found topics interesting and I enjoyed the management of ATS preventing the free for all of insanity found in other forums. Plus the members are highly knowledgable - for the most part.

This one is easy, I'm a horrible dancer.

Funny enough, I found ATS while looking for a subject that I haven't looked much into, the Kennedy assassination.

I was doing mostly random searches on the Internet, trying not to think about my father's death, after returning from the funeral, and found some news article about some guy that was killed and that some people said had some connection to the other political assassinations. I found the topic interesting and kept on searching, and the Kennedy assassination, naturally, appeared. I followed a link to a site in which someone pointed to ATS, and I followed the link.

I liked what I saw, not only the discussion looked balanced, the site had many topics available, including UFOs (one of my favourite topics), space, ancient civilizations, etc. I lurked for one year, until one day I read something about Atlantis that I had to correct (it was something related to the Azores, and I, being Portuguese, had to correct what I saw was wrong), so I decided to join, thinking it could also be a good way of practising my English, as I had rarely written in English before (just a few messages in newsgroups).

I have been visiting ATS every day since then (except in two occasions in which I didn't have Internet access on the weekend), so I suppose I liked it.

I've always been into the paranormal, and ufo's and just general conspiracy, ( who really was to blame for the death of JFK, Did Hitler really die, ect) It wasn't until recently (last couple years) that I have started really paying attention to government and politics (I have no idea why, it just gives me a headache). I believe it was the Dyatlov Pass incident that brought me here. I was looking for MORE, for anything other than just the main account of what happened, and well here I am. I lurked for a bit, then signed up, and lurked some more. I still haven't started a thread, but I'll get around it it some day. I pop in and out here and there.