What would you do with this information?

[The Curmudgeon]

Sometimes I write a thread and have zero idea of where it should go. If in doubt - Timewasters.

So I know a guy. Almost fifty, married, kids, businessman.. that whole thing. Good guy, known him for a few years, and recently on Facebook made quite the startling claim.

There was a chain post thing going around where people would nominate you to reveal seven little known facts about yourself. You would give the facts and then nominate three other people on your Facebook friends list. I actually nominated him.

So, hidden in there at number four was the as yet undisclosed fact that, when he was a teenager he saw a UFO. Not just a weird light in the sky, but an actual CRAFT with actual ALIEN BEINGS inside it.

I've known him for a good few years and he'd never mentioned it before. I quizzed him about it on Facebook and he said "I don't like talking about it, it was horrible." He's since deleted the whole thing.

What do you do with THAT kind of information? I haven't seen him in person since, so I'm totally dying to talk to him about it, but.. would you believe such an outlandish claim because the source is obviously someone you know and trust or.. I dunno. Do you tell him he was obviously mistaken/high/concussed?

If someone you knew told you something like that, how would you react?

[Ben]

I'm always impressed by people who don't want to talk about that shit. Definitely indicative of them BELIEVING what they saw, even if they happen to be mistaken. I think I've mentioned this before, but I've got a pal from school who doesn't believe in any of that shit. No monsters, no bigfoot, no aliens, no God, no demons, no nothing... except he swears ghosts are real and will tell you about how the house he grew up in is haunted as fuck. Seeing is believing, I guess.

What did your friend say the aliens looked like?

[trashcanman]

Just let it go. It's pretty common for people to do this sort of thing. I have no explanation why other than people are freakin' strange. Maybe this shit exists and it sucks for people that nobody believes them, but I tend to shrug these kind of stories off. I can't prove that they didn't happen, but I'm hitching to that wagon either. A friend's father used to tell me these big, involved, detailed stories about rock stars that are publicly known to be not true. Stories about Bon Scott dying in a car crash in Fresno or Steven Tyler battling throat cancer as a kid and being told he'd never sing again before becoming the greatest singer of all time and shit like that. And he seemed totally serious and passionate that this stuff happened even though pretty much every known detail of their lives contradicts everything he said. I just go with it.