“Foreword, Introduction, Chapters 1–29, Acknowledgments”
From the very Foreword by Jim Semivan, we get an
invocation: this is territory we don’t quite understand, a “one-way
conversation with the phenomenon,” as he puts it. That tone — of humility
before strangeness — is precisely what this book must live up to, and in large
measure it does. Semivan’s presence also signals that the author is staking a
claim not just in personal testimony, but in the often cold, bureaucratic
precincts of government and intelligence studies of UFOs.
In the Introduction Bledsoe frames his story as one
not merely of spectacular sightings or encounters but of spiritual crucible:
loss, physical illness, financial collapse, and then, out of desperation and
prayer, an event on the banks of the Cape Fear River that upends everything. We
learn early that this is more than a thrill ride — it is a lived testimony,
flawed, raw, occasionally frustrating, but courageous.
The successive chapters map the arc of that transformation:
the initial encounter, hours of missing time, pursuit by orbs, household
incursions, red-eyed beings, healing moments, and the shockwave effects on
family, community, church, and psyche. The structure may at first glance read
like a catalog of anomalies, but what it slowly reveals is a man trying to
integrate the extraordinary into the ordinary, to find meaning amid
bewilderment.
Chapters 1–5 ground us in the “before”: Bledsoe’s life, his
faith, the collapse, and the crisis that primes him for something “other.”
Chapters 6–15 delve into the early events — the orbs, the missing time, the
apparitions, the more dramatic intrusions. From 16–22 we see how Bledsoe’s life
unravels socially and spiritually: church conflict, community suspicion,
psychological pressure. In chapters 23–29 we arrive at the attempt to map the
phenomenon: seeking experts, documenting evidence, negotiating the paradoxes of
belief, disclosure, and doubt. The Acknowledgments are fitting — full of
named individuals who tried to help, and quietly admitting what this story
still leaves unresolved.
Strengths & Tensions
What shines in UFO of God is Bledsoe’s sincerity. You
feel, in many passages, that he is struggling to say what he saw, nearly
resisting it even as he feels compelled to share. There is a visceral texture
to moments: how orbs shift color, how beings appear in peripheral vision, how
emotional or spiritual states seem to modulate the phenomena. These are the
“data” of the book — not scientific graphs, but lived qualia.
Yet sincerity alone does not suffice. Here is where the book
strains: sometimes the narrative leaps without connective tissue. A detail
appears and is never revisited (some readers on forums have flagged a bizarre
“Chiwauwa creature” episode that vanishes). Reddit The leaps can make one suspect the limits of memory,
or narrative expedience. At times the pursuit of meaning tries to outrun the
scraps of evidence Bledsoe is able to marshal.
I also sensed tension in the way Bledsoe negotiates faith
and the phenomenon. Unlike many contactee accounts that lean heavily on New Age
or syncretic cosmologies, he remains anchored in Christian language and
theology. Yet the phenomenon seems to insist on a more expansive metaphysic —
or a metaphysic that undermines fixed theology. This liminal ground is fertile
but precarious, and Bledsoe sometimes stumbles when forced to name or define
what lies between angel, alien, entity, spirit, or projection.
Connecting Bledsoe to American Cosmic
Diana Pasulka in American Cosmic argues that UFOs are
not just physical objects to be catalogued; they are technologies of belief,
weaving into religion, art, science, and the shaping of knowledge itself. The
phenomenon is as much about faith as it is about hardware. Bledsoe’s narrative
lives that premise: his encounters are not side-bars to his life — they become
his theology, his moral test, his vocational project. In American Cosmic
Pasulka shows how artifacts, images, even “evidence,” can be sacred emblems;
Bledsoe treats his orbs, his red-eyed visitations, his healings as touchstones
of revelation.
Where Bledsoe and Pasulka converge is this: the phenomenon
demands interpretation, offers a kind of revelation, and provokes the believer
to wrestle with humility. Where they diverge is methodological: Pasulka retains
more stance as observer, mapping how communities adopt the UFO as a new faith;
Bledsoe is deep inside that adoption. (One might even see UFO of God as
a case study of American Cosmic in action.)
Conversing with Passport to Magonia
Jacques Vallée’s Passport to Magonia is a touchstone
for anyone wanting to collapse the boundary between folkloric visions, fairies,
angels, and modern UFOs. Vallée doesn’t treat UFOs as “spaceships from Mars” so
much as expressions of a deeper, recurring phenomenon that consistently presents
in whatever symbolic vocabulary humans have at hand. A Sky of Books and Movies+1
Reading Bledsoe’s story, I found echoes of that insight: his
“Lady” reminds one of Marian or angelic visions in religious lore; his orbs
trigger folkloric resonance. Bledsoe’s attempt to couch the phenomenon within
Christian language is exactly the kind of cultural adaptation Vallée predicts.
One might argue that Bledsoe’s narrative is Vallée’s “Magonia” reanimated —
where the modern mythic symbols (orbs, ET beings) are grafted onto Christian
cosmology.
However, Vallée is more cautious about ontological claims;
he generally leans toward hypothesis of a “control system” or intelligence that
modulates manifest phenomena. Bledsoe is bolder: he attributes intention, love,
spiritual message. That leap from ambiguity to purpose is where Bledsoe’s faith
meets Vallée’s probabilistic models.
A Glancing Toward The Super Natural
When you bring The Super Natural (assuming you mean
Whitley Strieber or related works) into the conversation, you’re talking about
a broader taxonomy of the “weird” — entities, boundary states, belled reality,
intrusion. Bledsoe’s story resides in that intersection: sometimes the phenomena
feel alien, sometimes spiritual, sometimes demonic, sometimes angelic. In The
Super Natural tradition, the takeaway is that reality is porous, liminal,
haunted, multiply intelligible — not irreducible to “not yet understood
physics.” Bledsoe’s narrative, with its fluid borderlands, is very much in that
thematic lineage.
Bledsoe contributes to the “super natural” argument by
insisting that skeptical materialist reductionism cannot contain these
anomalies. And yet he seeks transparency, disclosure, accountability. He
desires not only to transcend but to testify.
Final Assessment & Recommendation
UFO of God is neither a perfect account nor a final
proof, but it is among the more compelling recent contactee narratives. Its
greatest strength is the courage to stay in contradiction: to live with doubt,
to press for evidence, but also to lean into meaning. Bledsoe’s story is
striking precisely because he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers — he
offers fragments, hopes, questions.
If I were to assign a star rating (with hesitation), I’d
give it 4 out of 5. It loses points for sometimes thin narrative bridging,
occasional abrupt transitions, and moments where I desired deeper critical
self-reflection. But it earns strong praise for being heartfelt, for pushing
forward in darkness, for offering a case that other researchers and
experiencers must wrestle with.
For readers of American Cosmic, Passport to
Magonia, or The Super Natural, UFO of God will feel resonant.
It is a lived crucible of the very claims those books theorize. It puts flesh
on the bones of hypotheses about belief, disclosure, and the anomalous. It
invites us to place our own intellect and faith, our skepticism and wonder, in
dialog with something that may not bend to either.
So yes: read it. Carry it with you. And after finishing,
walk outside at night, look at the sky, and wonder whether just maybe the
conversation has already begun.
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