Felicia
Appearances
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And we were just like really confused. And so we were looking up and I think my mom and I, we were both looking at... where we thought the opening might be and we were just waiting for it to open. And you know, like those classic abduction scenes, like, and we were just waiting for that. We were holding our breath.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And I think that both of us were like, we kind of wanted that to happen because we stared at it for so long. It's like at that moment that you realize that whatever
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
structures are in place to like save you from things like this completely go out the window because it's not like we could call 911 we were just looking at this thing and being like you know in two seconds if it decided to open its doors and take us to whatever it came from like we would be gone in an instant nobody would know no one have any one no one would have any trace and
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
It's completely unbelievable. So all we can do is stare at this thing and pray or hope that it isn't going to abduct us. And also just sort of bewildered by like looking at something you've never seen before and will likely never see again. This idea that like you're just stuck in this moment, taking it in, but also fearful that this is your last moment on earth.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And so we were like, essentially felt like we were staring death in the face and we were looking at these lights blinking and they were blinking kind of like, I don't want to say peacefully, but it was like in a way that didn't feel aggressive, but was still strange. And they were blinking and blinking and blinking. And then after a few more blinks, like it started...
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Like you could tell that it was moving like at a glacial pace above us. And when we when we got that sort of confirmation that it was like moving towards like moving north and we were sort of like not in its path of fire or whatever anymore, we we were like, OK, you know, that seems like the worst of it.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Finally, my mom closed the moonroof and was like, I need to, you know, jolt us out of this shock or awe or whatever. She closed it and then she drove us into the driveway and the saucer was still up ahead. Like, it's not like it had passed over us or anything, but my mom was like, I have to do something about this. You know, whatever just happened, we're closing the door on this.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And just, I just remember us leaving, closing the door, walking the garage and going upstairs and I had school the next day so it was very much just like a do the routine to get ready for bed and I felt like we never spoke about it again at least for 14 years and then yeah we kind of just like put it to bed after that what do you do with a memory like this
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
I held onto it for a really long time and I didn't even think about telling people again until, you know, the, in 2020, 2021, when all of those like documents were sort of unsealed and the existence of UFO aircraft has been something that the, the country has known about for many, many years. And that's when I really felt safer to be like,
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Yes, like I know that and I'm glad to have been able to have experienced it myself. And I think the thing is like the first time I ever actually acknowledged it to myself verbally was I was watching Unsolved Mysteries, like the original version of it. And the first episode was about like this city in Hudson Valley. I guess Hudson Valley is a city.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
But like all these residents had reported seeing this same exact phenomenon. And when I saw it on TV, I was like, wow. wait, like I'm pretty sure that I saw the same thing. Like I'm almost certain that that's the exact account of things that I had. And so it was through that that I like really started expressing it to like people more vocally.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And also like now it's sort of like a story that I tell at like dinners or like when I'm getting to know people or like I don't feel that shy or embarrassed or ashamed about it or scared about it anymore either. Yeah.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
So that happened also in, like, 2021 or whenever that, like, Tesla, like, Starlink thing started. So my parents live in Phoenix, and I was visiting them, and in the sky there was, like, a row of satellite dishes or, you know, like, the Starlink. It was all in a row, and we saw it, and we were like, oh my gosh, like... what are those things? Those aren't stars.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And then it was my mom who initially, she turned to me and initiated it. And she was like, do you remember when we saw that UFO? And I was like, oh my God, I was just so relieved that she not only remembered, but that she brought it up. She felt like it was time to talk about it finally. And so that's when we started talking again about what it felt like, what we remembered.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And it was really nice to know that we both remembered it the same way. It's funny because I feel like I never wanted to talk about it with her until that point. And...
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
I think it was just because maybe in the early days after the UFO, it was just like, it seemed like we both just wanted to forget that it happened or that we were still stuck in some sort of fear that it would come back if we talked about it. And again, it was because like my dad traveled a lot, so he wasn't home at the time and it was just us in this very large house together. And I think...
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
you know, both of us were going through transitional periods in our life. So it was like, we didn't know, like everything felt so unclear and unknown. And I think both of us were just desperate for some sort of stability. And I think to talk about this at any point during that time would feel like things were completely out of control and that whatever was happening
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
coming or whatever that was would come back for us so i think it was just like we wanted to forget it and we wanted we felt like we had like dodged death or something and and we didn't want to invoke that again in that same way that i think that like chinese superstition is if you in it's like invoking something is an invitation to allow it to come back into your life
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
You know, at some point when you have like a memory like this, that rationality and science and everything around you tells you that it can't be real or that like you can't prove it. So it's not real. At some point you just, you start to question things and you're just like, is it really like my imagination that's sort of gone awry?
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Like I don't, it feels so clear to me what happened and I can put myself in that space again and I can visualize it so well. half of the people who I tell are going to believe me and half aren't. And even the people who do say they believe me, I don't know if they do or don't because I don't know what their relationship to UFOs are.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
So there's always this feeling of everyone else out there is denying my reality, but I know that it's real, but who's the wrong one? When I get really deep into the weeds, I can start... sort of going back and forth on this in my mind. But then again, if I didn't have my mom there securely saying like, yes, this like really happened, I don't know if I would feel as confident today telling that.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
It suggests like another plane or like another universe or another world that we just don't have access to. And I think when I saw this UFO, it felt like all of those beliefs were just sort of acknowledged or just like I had proof that all the things that I believed were real. And I think because of that, like, I feel like it opened the door of some sort of like paranormal world where I'm kind of
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Like, I know that it's there. And for some people, they question that, like, oh, how can I believe something if I can't see it? And for me, it's very much like I did see it. It was something that I believed even when I hadn't before. But now it's kind of like, you know, there are things out there that you can't explain and you'll never get proof of it, but they can still be out there.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
My name is Felicia and I am a screenwriter. I live right now in Los Angeles, but I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. We lived in a suburb outside of all of the hustle and bustle of the city. So I had a very early 2000s suburban lifestyle. American childhood. I was in orchestra. I ran track and I had a good solid group of friends.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
I was pretty much a latchkey kid and I watched a lot of movies and TV shows and I read a lot of books. I was very imaginative and even before the story, like I felt very paranoid being in my own home because growing up it was me and my mom and my dad would travel a lot for work. And for me, it felt like way too big of a house to be in for just us two.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
But because of that, I would have a lot of paranoia about like ghosts and spirits and paranormal. But for the most part, like other than that, it was a very stable and standard childhood. My dad is just, he's like a very standard Asian dad. He's an engineer and he has a very, he's sort of engineer minded. He's a little bit awkward in social situations and he loves playing poker.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
So that's like his sort of almost like hobby that he does all the time. So he's out of the house quite a bit. But my mom is, right now they live in Phoenix. And if Phoenix had like a real housewives, she would definitely be there. She's an artist and she is an interior designer. So she's very much about aesthetics and she's Chinese. She's an immigrant.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
She came from Taiwan and she's just very gregarious and extroverted and everyone loves her. And she believes that everyone loves her. And she thinks she's like a mini influencer and she sort of is. So she has that sort of like charming quality to her. Her side of the family is all Christian, like Baptist Christian. And so they were converted during the war in Taiwan.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And so they all became Christians like in the early 1950s or so. Before that, though, there's like a long history of like Chinese superstition and spirits and ancestors and ghosts. So there's like a part of the family that still believes in that, like fortune telling and superstitions and symbols like that. all of that.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
But after the 1950s, it was a really sort of hard left into Christianity and believing that, sure, there are ghosts and demons out there, but God protects us from all of those things. Growing up, I used to get told a lot of stories about various superstitions from China that my parents believed, but also kind of didn't. And so they would always speak in the same breath about
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
oh, there's this spiritual superstition, you know, don't invoke or invite the other world to like enter into ours. And so I kind of believed in the existence of it while also growing up believing that I was part of a religion that didn't acknowledge those things. So I was sort of like straddling a line between two cultures, which is, you know,
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
like the standard that people say, but I really felt like there was also this straddling of like the real world and like the after world. My mom is very much, she's extremely Christian, doesn't believe in any of those superstitions, but kind of acknowledges them. Like, I think that she's just more like, I don't want anything to do with them, but it's not a straight up denial.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
She doesn't believe in fortune telling, like the idea that there's this concept called suanming, which means like a fortune teller can like, you know, read your face, like the moles on your face to tell you what's going to happen in your life. Or like, you know, hand reading, reading various things, just like the size of your ear, your nose, that kind of stuff.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Even your birth date, even the amount of brush strokes in your name. Those are all like... where people believe like this can mean a certain thing. And also like your name, it can have like the same sort of phonetic tones as other words.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
So I know she's superstitious enough where she like, when she named me in Chinese, they had to go to a fortune teller to make sure that the number of brushstrokes, the way that the word flows and potential like phonetic similarities weren't pointing me in a direction of like, oh, she's going to have misfortune in her life. So there's that. And then there's also like various symbols.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
I think I believe that August is like the demon month or like, you know, the doors to the after world is like opened slightly kind of like Halloween, but like for an entire month. And you're not supposed to do anything that's taunting or teasing the after world or opening the door because that can cause chaos in your life.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And I remember like this one time in August, like I had, I was just like wearing like for style reasons, just like a little like black ribbon around my finger. And she like freaked out and made me take it off because she said that was bringing bad luck to the family. And she was kind of right, actually.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Like we got into like a very minor car accident, which is what prompted her to see the black ribbon. And then she was like, take that off. So I took it off. And I guess you would say she believes it, but I think she's just of the like, believes it, but doesn't want to give power to it. And, and, and,
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
The idea of Christianity is attractive because to be a true believer means that you don't worship other idols. I think it's easy just to be like, I'm part of this religion now, so those things can't touch me and I disregard them. But she still believes that those are there. Growing up in the Bay Area, it's a highly competitive environment for kids, especially like immigrant kids to grow up in.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And as you can imagine, my mom was very much like, you're going to do every activity. You're going to be in orchestra. You're going to learn music. to speak Chinese and you're going to play the piano and there's going to be no sort of debate about it. Like you're going to do it. I had to play piano an hour at home every day.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And I remember that fed a lot into like the paranoid feeling that I would have because I would be playing piano and like my back would be turned. to the window, which would face out into the sort of hillside. And in the darkness, like, you know, it was very creepy. And I would always, it was just like this creepy image of me sitting alone at the piano, like playing it for hours.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And then the dark hills, like overlooking me from behind. And it was, it was just sort of almost gothic in nature. And then to go play an orchestra, you know, I would have to practice the violin. Similarly, just like in a dark space, like playing into the void, it felt like My mom would always, you know, she would take me to violin class.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
She would take me to piano class and she would always like do the drop off and the wait there and then take me home. You know, typically these things last about an hour to an hour and a half. So we would drive from our house and we lived in the sort of hills area and we would go to this college called Cal State Hayward, which is now Cal State East Bay.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And you would take the back roads, which it would be like 10 to 15 minutes away. And we would drive through actually a cemetery and then we would go back. There'd be like farmhouses and all of that. So it was kind of desolate and in the woods. And there was like a lot of trees and all that. So we would go there at like seven.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And then by the time daylight savings in the fall, that meant that it would be quite dark. And then driving home, it would get out at around like nine o'clock. So we would be getting home. And because, you know, again, the suburbs, everybody was asleep or in their houses by the time like nine, 10 o'clock rolled around. it would just be us like in the roads coming back.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
On this particular day, I remember it was just a pretty standard drive through the backwoods area back to our house. And we were pulling up on our street. And then I think that one of us noticed like there was up in the sky, this like row of blinking lights. And we were You know, really kind of weirded out because, again, these drives are mostly uneventful.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
But to see that, it was kind of strange. So as we were slowly pulling up to our driveway, my mom decided to open the moonroof so we could get a better look. And it turned out like this thing was taking up the entirety of the sky and it was so slow moving. It was just sort of like hanging over us. So we were looking at it and we could see that it was like this like giant metal craft.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And it started to freak us out. Like I feel like both of us got the same feeling at the same time where this didn't just seem like a plane that was flying too low. When you see a plane pass overhead, you can see like the various lights on it. And that's how you know it's a plane and that's how you identify it. But when we saw it, it just felt like
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
It felt like there was a giant saucer craft and then there were lights that were blinking all along the side of it, like a very clear sort of metallic saucer with lights blinking along the pathway of it. Not even in a real pattern, but just enough to outline the shape of the saucer, which clearly was not plane-shaped.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
I guess the lights felt like they were very distant because, you know, they were clearly very bright, but they weren't blinding. It felt like when we saw it that...
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
no matter where we were turning, and we were just really only able to see it through a moonroof and also our windshield, but it felt like it was taking up the entirety of the sky in that way, where it was like nowhere could we see the sky at that point. You know, it got really close to us.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
Like, it felt like it was as close as when you look up at the ceiling above you, and how close that is to your face is how close it felt to us. Even in the windshield, it was reaching too far for us to see the other side of it. And so it really just felt like this thing was above us, like it felt almost suffocating in how much space it was taking overhead.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And I think that definitely added to the quality of fear. It felt inescapable. And partly like the reason why I think we were stuck there was because we were in our driveway already, but it was like, what's safe? You know, if this is something that is...
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
overtaking the sky like we'd never seen anything in our in our human lives like that could do something like this and also where could you hide from it with how big it was it just felt like this is all this is all it'll ever be and there's nowhere to go there's nowhere to hide like it is all seeing and all knowing and omnipresent and that was the most terrifying part
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
We were still trying to identify it. And I think like, again, that's why like the fear didn't hit until the moment we were in the driveway and we look at it and it's like passing overhead really slowly. So it's also not moving with any sort of urgency. And we realized that we're the only people on the street. We're looking around. There's no one else there.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
There's no one to hear a scream, essentially, if something happened there. And it was that moment that we were like, oh, like this doesn't feel human and it doesn't feel safe. We just felt like when this craft came over us, it just felt like there was no sound whatsoever. It felt like we were in some sort of like vacuum where the sound had just been muted by how big this craft was.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
It was like just dampened by this huge thing. And I almost feel like I could hear the craft itself in that almost like vibrational tone that happens when something is hovering above you. It's not actually making a sound. It's not like a helicopter, but it's like... You just feel that, like, it's pushing sound waves around. That's just what it felt like.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
And it was a completely sort of humorless experience. We were both very scared. I think we were both paralyzed with fear. Again, in our brain, like, had always... feared like this other side or like the paranormal and always sort of believed that it was there and always kind of had an inkling that we're repressing something that we don't want to acknowledge.
Otherworld
Episode 106: Up in the Sky
For me, like I, you know, all of my interest in the paranormal, for my mom, it's this opening to the other side. So I think like both of us, our brains were breaking and we were staring at this thing being like, what do we do? We also don't know what's going on. Did it just, you know, abduct everybody in this neighborhood? Because it was so quiet. Not a single person was outside.