Reindeer Bells

There are a few UFO or paranormal related experiences in my life that I haven't shared public, for a variety of reasons. Mainly, they're -- more correctly, I'm -- too embarrassed to acknowledge. Some are very personal and "embarrassing" or maybe intimate is a better word, others are almost goofy in my perceived embarrassment. And sometimes the event is something I'm not sure what to do with, regardless of embarrassment factor.

Last night, in bed, I was thinking about something that happened to me when I was a kid. I always thought it was too silly-goofy to really think about it, but it always troubled me. I must have been about five, because that's how old I was when we lived in that particular house.  The memory:

I'm in my bed, nighttime.  (This is the same bedroom where I had my "cylinder alien heater" episodes.) Suddenly I hear the bells -- jingle bells! Santa's bells! He's here! I run, very excited, to the window, and look outside. I can clearly hear the bells; sweet, tinkling, jingling bells right above me, on the roof. I stick my head out the window, trying to look up to the roof to get a glimpse of Santa and the reindeer. Nothing. But those bells! They are calling me! I'm very happy and in a waiting mode -- I know "they" (he? it? Santa?) are/is here. I just have to be patient.

Now, I've never related this story because it seems like a typical little girls innocent anticipation of Santa and Christmas magic. I have always been a little embarrassed , as an adult, that this memory has always been so damn vivid. It was real!  I wasn't dreaming, I didn't just think it happened, it did happen! So, I just put this memory into that gray basket.

But last night, with a jolt of awareness, I realized that this event didn't happen during Christmas time!  Adding to the strangeness: in the memory, I am on the second floor. I remember distinctly the night sky and the brilliant blue stars, so close I could easily touch them.  Only, we didn't have a second floor.

That familiar nudging voice appeared, that told me, with a soft little kick, that this was a cover memory, and Santa had nothing to do with the memory. Those bells were not the bells on reindeer harnesses, but something else entirely.

The memory, the feeling of this memory, has always been on the same level, the same emotional tone, as the ones involving waiting for my "invisible" little friends -- the ones who would carry me out through walls and doors and into the large tree, where I'd look up at those stars, into the rich velvet blue night, to wait . . .