It was a Thursday morning and Nam was waking up after a good night’s sleep. Bleary eyed, she motivated herself to get up by counting down the weekdays on her hand.
Thailand Special Report The truth is out there ... in Nakhon Sawan UFO believers at Khao Kala say they can talk to extraterrestrials through meditation, and they're not the only ones having strange close encounters PUBLISHED : 24 May 2015 at 06:34 NEWSPAPER SECTION: Spectrum WRITER: Chaiyot Yongcharoenchai Small Medium Large 58 Mrs Somjit Raepeth, 56, member of Khao Kala group It was a Thursday morning and Nam was waking up after a good night’s sleep. Bleary eyed, she motivated herself to get up by counting down the weekdays on her hand.“Two more days of school,” Nam said, reluctantly dragging herself out of bed. She headed to the back porch of her traditional Thai-style house in Khao Kala, Nakhon Sawan to brush her teeth. Still sleepy, Nam looked up to the sky and blinked, allowing the first light of day into her eyes. The sky was orange as the sun slowly came up. Nam swept her gaze across the horizon, like she did every day, but something was different. “It looked like an upside-down wok floating in the sky,” recalled Nam, who was 12 at the time. “I started to yell for my grandmother to come and see,” she said. But by the time her grandmother came outside, the mysterious entity had moved behind a cloud and disappeared. It was unlike anything Nam had seen before. “It must have been a UFO,” she said. “It must have been something from outside planet Earth.” Paranormal activity: Somjit Raepeth, 56, runs the UFO Khao Kala group. Her father was the first one in their family to make contact with aliens, she says. OUT OF THIS WORLD As a medical professional and science lover, 56-year-old Somjit Raepeth doesn’t just believe in things that can’t be proved by fact. Mrs Somjit was born and raised in Nakhon Sawan where she worked as a nurse at a local hospital. After a long shift one day in late 1997, Mrs Somjit received a phone call from her father, Cherd Chuensamnuan, a retired army sergeant living in Uthai Thani province. “Do aliens exist?” he asked her bluntly. Based on her own experience and a lack of any evidence to the contrary, she told him, “no”. Sgt Cherd was a monk before he joined the army. He loved to meditate and did so every day. Several weeks later he called his daughter again. He said he could hear an alien in his mind while he was meditating. It said there would be a big disaster that would kill half the world’s population. “They are real,” Sgt Cherd said. “I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes,” she replied. Mrs Somjit asked her father to send the alien over to her house in Nakhon Sawan, repeating that she’d believe him when she saw it first-hand. Not long after, the nurse received a phone call from her father while she was working her night shift at the hospital. “They are on their way to see you now,” he said, before hanging up. Less than five minutes later, Mrs Somjit got a worried phone call from her sister-in-law. “He is spinning out, please come home,” her sister said, referring to Mrs Somjit’s husband, Charoen Raepeth. Mrs Somjit was confused, but she couldn’t leave her shift until the morning. Bright lights: Villager Payung Chuensrinuan, 67, says she saw a flying saucer when she and her nephew were home alone one night. INVADERS FROM SPACE When she finally arrived home, Mr Charoen explained everything. He said he had lost control of his body and began spinning like a top. He spun out to the front yard of the house and was shocked by what was in the sky. “I saw a big, round flying object with a bright orange light in the centre and many other smaller lights spinning around it,” Mr Charoen told Spectrum. Mrs Somjit called her father back and told him to inform the aliens that she was at home waiting for them. Around 8pm, when most houses in the neighbourhood had already turned out their lights, she got the call. “They are on their way again,” he said. Mrs Somjit and her two other sisters went outside to stand in front of the house. There it was, up in the sky. The sisters looked each other in the face and said: “It is real.” Having lived in Khao Kala for 47 years, not much surprises 67-year-old Payung Chuensrinuan. She lives at the foot of Hill 145, which is part of the Kala mountain range and named after its height above sea level. The place is a hot spot for sightings of unexplained lights in the sky. Mrs Prayung had her first encounter with the paranormal long before Mrs Somjit. The incident took place one evening when everyone in her family was out at a local funeral. She was home with her nephew that night. Sitting on her front porch at 9pm, a large object with a light “as bright as the moon” came flying out of nowhere and hovered down close to her. She didn’t know what it was, so called her nephew to come and see. “It was quiet so it couldn’t have been a plane and it was covered by blinking lights,” she said. “Then it flew away very fast. I thought I was dreaming.” Spooky spot: The UFO group meditate on top of Hill 145. The hill also allegedly hides a wormhole, which they sa...