I'll never forget that night. It was probably 2005, and I was sitting in my living room in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia, playing the 1981 Intellivision release "Astrosmash" on an emulator. The TV was right next to the window, which faced out onto a nearby stand of pines, about 40-60 feet high, which defined the edge of a large wood. The place was at the top of a low foothill ridge, right at the end of a gravel road.
My girlfriend of the time had just gone out to call the cat inside, when I noticed an extremely bright flash outside the window, streaking across the row of pines like a spotlight before disappearing. When I walked outside to investigate, I found my girlfriend in a daze, standing at the end of the driveway and staring up into the pines. After getting her inside and snapped out of her fog, she relayed the following.
She was standing there with her back to the road, facing the woods and calling the cat, when all of a sudden she was hit with a bright beam of light. She instantly "knew" that this was because an old, tan oldsmobile sedan was coming up the driveway with its high beams shining on her, she could "see" it. Except then she realized all of a sudden that her back was turned completely away from the road; she couldn't be seeing any car. There was no car, just an oddly specific projection of one in her mind! At this moment of realization, she looked up and saw a spotlight shining down on her from right above the treetops. There was nothing else visible there, though it was dark... all that she could see was the beam of light, and as soon as she noticed it, it swiveled away for a split second, creating the flash I saw from inside, before disappearing into the night, silent and invisible.
