Lights In The Dark

I don't know what these are, but I first began to see little lights around me when I was in high school in the 90's. Just to describe them, they only last for a second, and I mean I can look directly at them. They're usually white, but they can be any color (even black once, which looks like little holes in the air), and they range in size from smallish to miniscule (except for one, which I'll get to in a minute). They don't look as though they're only in my eyes, they look as if they're out in my field of vision somewhere and have distance to them, but even stranger, I think maybe I only see them with one of my eyes at a time. I think this because they have the same quality that light has when it's reflecting off a mirage in the road, or when you're looking at the highlights on a piece of glassware where both eyes can't focus on the same piece of light at once.

For a long time, I had no idea what they were and I thought I was crazy. I told my mom about them when this first started happening, who ended up actually taking me to the doctor in case something was wrong. They gave me a CT scan, but they found nothing wrong with me.

Usually, I will see these lights outside, either late in the day or full on night, but it helps if there's at least a little light to see by (for instance, moonlight makes them really shiny). I don't see them nearly as often indoors. I've noticed it depends on the location, but sometimes it seems like there are thousands of them, sort of like fireflies. They settle down in grass or hang out in trees. They don't literally float in the air; as far as I can tell, they're always attached or resting on something. But in some locations, even though I'm consciously trying to see them, I won't be able to spot any lights at all, or maybe only one or two. I had a bit of a time specifying a location for this story, because I've seen them all over the world, from California to the East coast, from Canada to Mexico, even once in a tomb in China.

Pretty early on, once I got used to the idea of these lights being around me all the time, I began to notice them on people and animals, too. I've seen them on hands and in the middle of foreheads. On cat's, I usually see them on their ears, and on dogs, on their nose. On people, most commonly it's their eyes, but I've seen them all over. I've seen them on horses all the way down to insects. It's like it's whatever part of the body might have its focus trained on you where you're allowed to see it, and something slips out for a second. For instance, I've seen them right as someone has started to laugh.

Ever since I was little, I had this weird 'problem' where bugs would fly into me like a bird hitting a window. I've never met someone else who has this problem where bugs are constantly flying full-speed into their ears (I have really sensitive hearing). I've also noticed that moths like to land right in the middle of my chest, and that my driver's side windshield always has a statistical nightmare of more insects-smears on it than the passenger side. It has occurred to me that maybe bugs can see these lights on people, too, and are getting confused.

Once, when I was in college (good-grief, about ten years ago, now), my boyfriend at the time and I were sitting on a couch in my parents' house talking when it started to get dark outside. We'll call him Fred. We didn't bother to get up to turn on the lights, we just kept sitting there while we talked, and we both started to notice these little, itty bitty lights all over my hands. I remember waving them around and watching the trails. He was the one that actually pointed them out, and then he held up his hands and tried to wave them around too. He said, "I wonder why I don't have them." His hands were just blank and dark. I learned a little later on that this guy was sort of a compulsive liar if not an actual sociopath. I think he was always trying to hide his real self.

But something similar happened one day with my current boyfriend when we were first dating. Let's call him Bob. We were sitting in a dark room talking and we ended up looking at our hands as we waved them around and we noticed all these tiny lights on them, just as I had seen with Fred. But we both had them, and we sat and played with them like giggling idiots for a while. I think it was because we were both being open and honest with each other.

Now for the creepy part. About a year ago, this one light actually seemed to be following me around for a while. It was yellow and a lot bigger than any of the other lights had ever been. I was home in Missouri visiting my parents when I first noticed it. I was staying in my old room, which was a basement room with two ground level windows near the ceiling. I remember it was full on night and all the lights were off except for the desk lamp when suddenly this huge, yellow light pops up right outside one of the windows like a silent explosion. It had all the same traits as the other lights I was used to, but it was so big I didn't believe, for a second, that it couldn't have been something real. I clearly remember seeing blades of grass and part of the window cutting across it, as if it were something that was actually out there. But I would have been looking very high up in the sky at the top of the tree-line from my perspective and my parents live in the middle of nowhere. I can't imagine what else it would have been.

I think I saw it a couple more times, the same color, just bouncing around here and there at normal size for the next few months, but then one day, when I was back home in Philadelphia, I saw it again, and for some reason, this time it really spooked me. To be honest, it had sort of spooked me in my parents' basement, too, but since I'd been in the city for a while at this point, I hadn't been seeing lights as often and wasn't as used to them just popping in like that. To be even more honest, I don't generally feel comfortable when I see them indoors, anywhere, unless it's on a living being, but I digress.

That night, Bob and I had a guest staying with us and I had gone up to my room to dig the air mattress out of the spare closet. I didn't think much about it and left the door open just a bit. Later, once everyone had gone to bed, I was in my bedroom alone trying to go to sleep when all of a sudden, my eyes flew open at the crack in the closet door just as the yellow light was going out inside. It was big again, not just a little point at all, but a shape that was actually cut off by the edge of the door, and it seemed to me like it was examining the things I had shuffled around earlier in a place I don't usually go into. This was the first time one of these disembodied lights have ever struck me as sentient or interested in what I was doing.

Since then, I haven't seen it again, but I'm a little wary of any disembodied light that isn't white, anyway, just because I don't know what they are. The white ones just seem friendlier and more innocent, and there's even one white light that visits me in the same spot whenever I'm working at my desk. However, sometimes a disembodied colored light just seems to be associated with a certain living person, or possibly their motivation toward me. I've noticed, at different intervals in my life, that I will often be able to see a certain, familiarly colored light right before the telephone rings, and I'll always know who it is. For some odd reason, I can see this kind the best when I'm looking into a bright computer screen. I've wondered even, if maybe somehow the thought can travel through the wires of the internet, and anytime I want to be in a really private, secluded space, I make sure I turn off the connection in my room just in case it leaves an opening of some sort.

I'm sure I have more stories about these little lights, but that's all I can remember for now. I'd love to hear if anyone else has shared a similar experience.