Episode Recap: Haunted Highway/Kentucky UFO Chase

Haunted Highway

Subject Names:  Deborah Hoyt, Deputy Rick Strasser, and the family of Christine Skubish
Subject Location:  Highway 50 near Sacramento, California
Paranormal Experience: A mother watches over her son from beyond death

Christine Skubish was embarking on a new life with her son Nick in southern California.  When she left her family's home near Sacramento, everything looked bright.  Until her father got a call two days later saying Christine had never arrived.

As she'd only been missing for a couple of days, the police believed she would show up somewhere, and were treating the case as a "routine" missing persons report.

Christine's aunt Karen called the family's home, distraught over a dream she'd had where she saw Nick and the number 16 kept repeating.   Karen had had premonitions before, and the dream drove her to come to Sacramento.

After four days, Christine's case got higher priority.  The detective assigned to the case asked Deputy Strasser about contacting gas stations on the route.  They got lucky in Placerville, CA.  The clerk remembered her from her picture, including her son waiting in the car.  Christine had told him she was tired, and was going to have to drive the winding mountain roads of Highway 50 to see a friend.

In Sacramento, Deborah Hoyt awoke that following Saturday night with the overwhelming need to go home.  On their way up Highway 50 to Lake Tahoe, Deborah saw a naked, obviously dead woman on the side of the road.  They found the nearest phone and called 911.  When the police arrived, the officers found nothing.  When Deborah returned home, all she could do was cry. 

After meeting the officers who talked to Deborah Hoyt, as well as encountering Christine's aunt, Deputy Strasser was increasingly convinced the Hoyt sighting and the disappearance were connected.

He investigated after sunrise, looking for anything out of the ordinary, and found a child's shoe by the roadside.  Could it really be Nicky's shoe? 

Making his way down off the road, Deputy Strasser began to see debris, his path resulting in a red car that had been torn apart as it went off the road.  When he approached the driver's side, he found Christine's body.  Nicky was unconscious on the passenger's seat.  Deputy Strasser was convinced both were dead, until Nicky's chest rose in a breath. 

Deborah Hoyt later saw a news report on Christine's case, recognizing Christine's face from the body she'd seen.

Two weeks after the crash, Christine's family went back to the site to make sure they had collected their daughter's personal effects.  By the road was a sign pointing to Placerville, 16 miles away.

Seventeen years later, Nick remembered the accident.  He also remembered a light right beside the car on his mother's side.  The same light appeared up by the road, and he could see a silhouette inside the light.  His mother?  An angel?  Or what?

Kentucky UFO Chase

Subject Names:  Kenny Graham, Kenny Downs
Subject Location: Louisville, KY
Paranormal Experience:  A dogfight with a UFO

It was a quiet night in Louisville when police pilots Kenny Graham and Kenny Downs took their helicopter up to run a routine patrol.  About an hour into their patrol, they got word that there was a robbery in progress, and headed off.  Just as they arrived at the scene, the radio informed them it was a false alarm.

The team decided to head back to the heliport for a break.  On the way, Downs spotted something that looked like a tower.  When Graham took a look, he discovered it was pear-shaped, glowing, and most assuredly not a tower.

The object rose to an altitude almost level with the helicopter before stopping, almost as though it were sizing up the other aircraft.  According to Downs, it then moved to the right, and to the left, before returning to a hover.  In the blink of an eye, the craft shot off at a speed Graham estimated had to be over 600 miles/hour. 

No sooner did it disappear from the two pilots' sight than it returned just as fast.

Joe Smolenski, another member of the Louisville police department, spotted the helicopter hovering.  On the assertion that there might be something chasing the helicopter, Smolenski came over to investigate.  He said he could see the light all around the copter. 

The craft began to circle the helicopter.  Graham, afraid that it might hit their tail rotor, began trying to evade the thing.

Smolenski followed the helicopter as far as he could as Graham tried to evade, but eventually he could not keep up.

That was when the craft began shooting what Graham described as "fireballs" at them.  Each shot was equidistant from the last.  Graham used every bit of his piloting skills to evade the shots.  After one particularly steep maneuver, Graham brought the helicopter back around to bear, only to have nothing in his sights.  The craft had disappeared.

Graham and Downs tried their best to say it wasn't a UFO, but they couldn't do it.