Josh Young - March 13, 2023
Click
“This is Officer Peters of the Idaho Soda Springs Police Department recording the testimony on the night of the event on October 20th, 2016. It is currently November 4th, of the same year. I have with me here the primary witness of the event, a local radio tower maintenance worker named Mark. So tell us again Mark, what were you doing at the time of the event and what exactly happened?”
“Well, I guess it would be best to start from the beginning, I’ll try to remember the best I can…
It was as you said, October 20th, and I started my shift as usual. I was scheduled for a damage check on all nearby radio towers following the terrible snowstorm a few days prior. I was to check all nearby radio towers immediately after the snow cleared near Soda Springs. I woke up early, about 4:30, and went through my standard routine getting ready for the day. I put on my winter clothes, had a nice cup of coffee, black just how I like it, and I packed up my truck with the rest of my work equipment.
When I was ready, I then left my house at around 5:15 and went to the gas station in town to fill up for the day. After that, I started my drive west on State Road 30 over to Petticoat Peak to check the tower there first. When I arrived at the base of the peak at around 6, maybe 6:15, I put on my snow chains as the roads leading up to the peak weren’t cleared of snow yet. Skipping ahead, I’d say I reached the tower at about 7:00 and began getting out some of the equipment I would need to climb up the tower. I checked the base of the tower, everything seemed fine, everything was operational. I clipped into the tower and began climbing. The Petticoat tower was much shorter than the Sulphur tower and the climb wasn’t too bad. Once I reached the top I noticed one of the primary dishes had been bent, and one of the secondary dishes had nearly snapped off…”
“Is this relevant to the sighting at the Sulphur tower?”
“Uhh, no, it’s not relevant.”
“Can we skip ahead to when you arrived at the Sulphur tower?”
“Yeah sorry, I can skip ahead.”
“It’s ok.”
“So…
I arrived at the radio tower on Sulphur peak, east of town, at around 6 pm. The sun was starting to set, so I wanted to speed things up. I gathered my stuff again, checked the base of the tower, maybe not as close as I should have, and I clipped in and began climbing. This tower was around 150 ft taller than the Petticoat one, and you could definitely feel the difference.
When I reached the top the sun had just set, and I decided to take out my binoculars and look across the landscape towards town. I took a deep breath and relaxed. Although there weren’t many lights in town, I felt like I could see it all. I felt the breeze flow around me. I was in my happy place, far from the limiting world on the ground. Up here, all I could do was take in the beauty of it. Just before the sun could fade below the horizon, I looked around some more. I faced away from town and looked into the woods that seemed to stretch on forever, eventually reaching into Yellowstone. When the sun finally set, my radio on my belt began to produce a strange static. I thought it was very odd; I only use that radio to call for help if there is an emergency. No one should be reaching out to me through it. The static continued. I clipped my binoculars back onto me, and I fiddled with my radio. It soon produced a horrible screeching noise. It was ear piercing; I fumbled to turn it off and ended up dropping it off of the tower. I heard it screech all the way down, and then there was a faint clack that silenced the screeching as it hit the concrete base and shattered. The noise still rang in my head, and I felt sick. I began to feel dizzy. I knew I had to get down immediately.
As I started my awkward descent downwards, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I couldn’t explain it, I wasn’t scared. I was just—I felt something coming. About 5 minutes later, I was almost a quarter of the way down, still around 450 feet from the ground. This is when it happened. Everything seemed to go completely still. The ringing stopped. Even the wind had fled. In an instant, there was the most blinding flash, and I was instantly stunned. A few seconds later came the terrible crashing; it was like thunder—right in front of me. I was mortified. When my eyes recovered, I saw this fading beam of white light from the ground going all the way up into space. I followed the light down, and on the ground about maybe 100 feet east of the tower, there was this orb. This luminescent, perfect orb glowed a soft, faint white, but I couldn’t make out much more. I then remembered my binoculars and got them out. When I looked through them, I noticed the orb was fairly small, and was hovering above the ground, maybe 30 feet or so. It stayed perfectly still for what felt like forever. I still couldn’t hear anything, the ringing and crashing still bouncing around in my head. It hurt, and I knew I should’ve been terrified or excited or something, but I was strangely calm.
I’m not sure if a minute passed or ten, but I kept staring at it through the binoculars. Suddenly, the orb descended very slowly. I could tell it still hovered above the ground, but just slightly. It began to smoothly glide around almost randomly. It bumped into a tree; it seemed disoriented. I noticed a small tube had extended out of the side of the orb and began to touch the earth around it. It seemed to be vacuuming up shrubs, leaves, sticks, rocks, and whatever else it happened across. I was so entranced by its perfect swaying that I didn’t even notice it was coming towards the base of the tower. It bumped into my truck and stopped this time. I awoke from my trance and fear began to grip me. The faint glow of the orb flashed twice, then the tube extended out into my truck. It seemed to go right into it. When it finished doing whatever it did, it resumed gliding towards the base. I began to sweat, I felt like it knew I was there. The orb then sucked up the broken radio fragments. It stopped again. This time it flashed once. Terror filled me. It definitely knew I was there.
Without any warning the orb released another blinding flash and I couldn’t see. I heard when you die you see a very bright light. Well, I felt I had died. The horrific crashing sound soon accompanied the light, and I was again stunned. It was worse this time, it came from right in front of me. Yet I was able to make out another sound amidst the echoed crashing: I heard snaps. I knew this was bad. I remembered those snapping sounds from my training, they were signs that the tower was collapsing. As I regained my sight, I noticed the support cables began to whip around. Some of them were so violent they whipped the side of the tower. I quickly heard a different cracking sound, and I looked down at the base. I was petrified. One of the corner supports making up the foundation of the entire tower had been utterly decimated. I saw the metal had been bent upwards, some of it red hot. I knew the tower was collapsing, and without much more thought, I dropped my favorite binoculars, losing them, and raced down the ladder. The ringing of the orb was overtaken by the unfamiliar crashing of the tower. The entire thing is going to collapse.
Despite all of this, I managed to make it down. The straining and warping of the steel screeched oddly similarly to my radio. I kept thinking, ‘this is where I die,’ over and over. I struggled to get the safety clip off of the ladder as the screeching turned into cracking. The metal lattices were giving way, one by one. Finally I unclipped and ran opposite the direction the tower was falling. I ran faster than I ever had before. I didn’t even turn and watch as the rest of the tower finally toppled to the ground. The noise again was petrifying. I soon stopped running when I got too tired. And I took a moment before I made my way back.
The ringing again finally faded and my eyes adjusted to the new darkness. I returned to the tower, and I’m pretty sure I was in shock, because I have no idea why I went back. I noticed a new smell as I got there. It was familiar; I remembered it from when my dad tried to burn sulfur to keep bugs away from our crops. I also remembered we got a notice from the sheriff saying we couldn’t do that anymore, because burning sulfur created a poisonous gas. This smell was definitely sulfur dioxide. I instinctively covered my mouth and nose with my hand and rummaged through the wreckage. Some of the steel was still hot and glowed faintly like the orb. I found my way back to my truck after hazily stumbling through for about 5 minutes. My truck seemed completely fine. I struggled to climb in. I was so fatigued, but I eventually got in the driver’s seat, closed the door, and passed out from exhaustion. I was startled awake the next day by a tap on my window, and that was from you.”
“Hmm. And when I found you, I noticed you had been bleeding quite badly from your nose. Do you have any recollection of that?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you remember getting sick in my squad car?”
“No.”
“Ok. I have just a few more questions for you.”
“Go ahead.”
“Did you drink any alcohol that day?”
“Of course not! My cousin got me into this type of work, and one day he drank before work. All in all, I was more mad at him during his funeral than sad.”
“Did you use any drugs?”
“Hell no! I stay away from that stuff! You don’t even believe me, do you! What I saw was real!”
“Ok well. The tower never collapsed that night.”
“Wha-What!?”
“You didn’t return home the next day on the 21st. A woman named Sandra called us; she said she couldn’t reach you and wanted a wellness check. After we found you weren’t home, we searched your job sites you had reportedly been at the previous day. I found you in your truck, dried blood all over you.”
“But…”
“We’re trying to figure out what you were doing. There wasn’t a drop of gas left in your truck. There was a circular hole cut all the way into your fuel tank from the side.”
“I was attacked! I just explained that to you in my story! I didn’t do anything!”
“Ok well. No one else heard these ‘crashing’ sounds or saw these ‘bright flashes’ as you described.”
“How!?”
“We think you were hallucinating. You cut into your gas tank for whatever reason and the fumes messed with your senses.”
“I want to see this! I want to see that tower again! Take me back at once!”
“That won’t do any good. The tower is perfectly fine. We towed your truck down as well.”
“You don’t understand! I know what I saw!”
“It doesn’t matter. Your family is worried. You should go home.”
“Please listen to me!”
“I think we’re done here. End recording.”
Click
“Do you think he’s onto us?”
“No. No one will believe him. We’ll just need to be more careful on the next reconnaissance mission. I don’t want to have to clean up our mess next time.”