OUR STORY

WILLIAM JACKSON PRATER - STRANGE HAPPENINGS

Page 47

He also plays the saxophone in the Rabun County High School Marching Band. He has been in this band for several years. He did play in the school Jazz Band but had to give it up because of time limitations. He plays and owns, an alto saxophone and two soprano saxophones. He also plays a baritone sax.

At this writing he is a junior in high school but is looking ahead to college. At this time he is considering a dual major, Music Education and Classical Languages.

William is a skilled actor having performed in a number of plays ranging from school plays to community theater. He has sang in public since he was about four and has competed in numerous competitions. As he himself said when he was about five, “I was born to perform.”

Strange Happenings

Needless to say you can’t live a lifetime without of strange things happening. Either Francine or myself were superstitious, except in a fun way. But there were many bizarre coincident that was often funny or hard to explain.

I have seen one ghost and one UFO in my life. The UFO I figured out on the spot. The ghost is still unexplained.

I saw the unidentified flying object driving home one night around 1990. It was a foggy night and I had just turned in to a street close to home when I saw a out of the ordinary object, way up in the sky. It looked like one of the alien craft from “War of the Worlds”. I stopped the car and just stared and thought, that this can’t be happening to me. I watched and saw that it moved slightly and appeared to be several thousand feet up. I knew it wasn’t a plane or a helicopter.

Other than the UFO the only thing different that I could see was the fog. I watched it for a few minutes and saw an extension to the craft as the fog shifted. Then I realized what I was seeing was a street light. Instead of thousands of feet in the air it was about 30 foot up to the light. It was a Halogen light with cutoff optics which directed the light downward. It was on a davit pole which placed it almost directly over the street. The “movement” was caused by the shifting fog.

Even as I figured out what it was it still looked to high in the sky. Had I had a camera with me I could have photographed it. I can see why there are so many sighting of UFO’s. When you see something you don’t understand your mind fills in the missing data and comes to some conclusion, albeit the wrong one.