Paul Spera points out an unexplained pattern of light that he taped on a camcorder near his Tilton home. He thinks the lights may be from portholes lining the edge of a saucer-shaped UFO.
(Photot by DANNY GAWLOWSKI / Monitor Staff)

article tools

• Email
• Comments (0)
• Share
• Print

Paul Spera points out an unexplained pattern of light that he taped on a camcorder near his Tilton home. He thinks the lights may be from portholes lining the edge of a saucer-shaped UFO.
(Photot by DANNY GAWLOWSKI / Monitor Staff)

TILTON - Go ahead, call Paul Spera crazy. He's used to it. Whenever Spera talks about the lights he sees flashing and circling in the sky, most people dismiss him as a goofball.

And really, Spera doesn't fault them for it. He knows how it sounds to people who haven't seen signs of extraterrestrial life themselves. But he is sure the lights he sees aren't airplanes or satellites, and he knows there are plenty of people out there who agree with him.

"Saying you believe in it or you don't believe in it is like saying you believe in the Sears Tower," said Spera, 36, who lives in Tilton. "UFOs are real, there's no doubt about that. Now we just have to figure out what they are."

Spera, a musician and bartender who is currently unemployed, said he has been seeing UFOs for almost 20 years. Last year, he and his girlfriend started videotaping the sightings to prove it to people, and they have culled more than two hours of footage. Spera has a Web site, http://www.jerrypippin.com/UFO_Files_paul_spera.htm, dedicated to his observations, and he has corresponded with people from all over the world who have had similar experiences.

Last month, Spera sent a letter to the Monitor, telling of earthly encounters with multiple spacecrafts.

"Many people in this community have known what is happening here for years, and no matter what you do, you can't stop the truth from coming out," Spera said in the letter. "Extraterrestrial contact has been made."

Spera's letter generated tremendous interest. It was one of the most widely read items in months on the Monitor's Web site.Since his letter was published, Spera has heard from people who want to know more about his experiences. They often ask questions he can't answer. Why have the lights from alien craft appeared to him so many times, and why are they here? He doesn't know.

Spera is well aware of most people's attitude toward tales of extraterrestrial contact. Hollywood movies and supermarket tabloid stories about little green men don't help, he said.

But like many who describe firsthand accounts of extraterrestrials, Spera does not believe his stories will be dismissed forever. He said it's just a matter of time before the rest of the world catches up with what he and others believe.

"There's thousands of books about this, thousands of people with pictures and videos and all kinds of evidence," he said. "If I'm crazy, and I'm hallucinating, so is my video camera."

Spera's mother told him when he was a child about a UFO she had seen decades before. He always thought she was nuts, he said, until one night in the late 1980s when he was 18. While driving along a road he saw a triangular formation of lights blinking high above Lake Michigan in the spot where his mother had seen them long ago. The lights remained for 12 hours, he said, changing colors from green to red, and many people in the neighborhood called the police and local news outlets.

"Pretty much everybody in my family was scared except me," he said. "I was interested in finding out what it was."

Spera and his family moved to Pittsfield when he was 23 and opened a restaurant that he managed for several years. Shortly after moving to New Hampshire, Spera saw more unexplainable sights, most notably a red spherical light, 30 feet in diameter, that he said descended right in front of him while he was on Catamount Mountain.

When he started researchingextraterrestrial sightings, he learned that North Country residents Betty and Barney Hill were among the first in the country to report contact with aliens. More research led him to sightings elsewhere in the state, and from there, he started watching the skies.

"It became more of a hobby," he said.

Spera now lives with his girlfriend, Tara Landry, and plays guitar in a blues and rock band. When he and Landry started dating about five years ago, she didn't believe his stories. But then she had her own sighting, and now, from the back yard of their apartment, they often watch together for lights beaming from sources they can't identify. (next page »)