Heya. I live about eight miles outside Waycross, right on the edge of the Okefenokee. Have for most of my life. My property backs up to a stretch of marsh, maybe three, four acres of wetland before it opens into the bigger swamp. That's just how it is out there. It's always been loud. Spring through fall, you can't hear yourself think for all the frogs. Thousands of them. You get used to it after a while. It becomes like white noise. This was in June of 1993. Hot as hell that summer, humid enough that you'd sweat just standing still. I remember because I'd been sleeping with the windows open, trying to get any kind of breeze through the house. That's how I heard it when the frogs stopped. It was around two thirty in the morning. I know because I looked at the clock when I woke up. And the silence, it was so complete it actually woke me. You don't realize how constant that sound is until it's gone. I got up, went to the window. Figured maybe a gator had come through, scared them quiet.
But when I looked out toward the marsh, I saw the light. It was hovering maybe thirty feet above the water. Not moving, just hanging there. Pale yellow, almost white, but not harsh. Soft, like lamplight through fog. Round shape, maybe six or seven feet across. Hard to judge distance in the dark, but that's my best guess. I watched it for a minute, maybe two, just trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at. It wasn't a helicopter. No sound at all, and helicopters make noise. Wasn't a plane, obviously. Too low, too still. And there was something about the quality of the light itself. It didn't cast shadows the way normal light does. It just kind of... existed there, in the air above the marsh. Then it started moving. Slow drift, like something floating on a current. It moved across the marsh, east to west, taking maybe five minutes to cross the whole stretch of water. The whole time, completely silent. Not a sound except for, and this stood out to me, not a single frog.
I grabbed my binoculars from the bedroom and went out onto the back porch. I wanted a better look. The air was completely still that night, thick and heavy. It was totally overcast too. Couldn't see a single star, everything just dark above that light. Through the binoculars, I could see the light more clearly. It had this quality like it was somehow behind the air, if that makes sense. Like I was looking at it through a thin veil. And the way it moved, it would drift, then pause, then drift again. Methodical. Deliberate. Like something was guiding it, looking for something. The moonlight was reflecting off the water beneath it, and I could see ripples where the light passed over. reflecting on water is beautiful - Valerie' Not like wind ripples. More like something pressing down from above, creating circular patterns on the surface. The water seemed to react to it. I stood there for maybe twenty minutes, watching this thing make its way across the marsh. When it reached the far tree line, it just rose up, straight up into the sky, and disappeared. Didn't fade out. Didn't fly away. Just went up and was gone. And the second it vanished, I mean the exact second, the frogs started up again. All of them at once. Like someone had flipped a switch.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]