The first sighting happened on a quiet Tuesday in the small town of Hollowbrook. A farmer named Eli Carter was out checking his fields when he noticed a strange light hovering just above the tree line. It wasn’t a plane, and it wasn’t a drone. It moved slowly, like a shadow with no source. He didn’t say anything at first, but that night, he dreamed of a voice speaking to him in a language he didn’t know, though he understood every word. Over the next few weeks, more people reported seeing the same light. Some claimed it had a shape—like a long oval, smooth and silent. Others said it pulsed with a soft blue glow, as if it were breathing. The townspeople began to whisper. Some believed it was a government experiment, others thought it was a sign from another world. But no one could explain why the light always appeared at dusk, never during the day, and always over the old forest at the edge of town. A local historian named Marla Whitmore started collecting reports. She interviewed everyone who had seen it, and she found something strange: all the witnesses had dreams afterward. Not just any dreams—dreams of being watched, of standing in a vast, empty space, of hearing a low hum that made their bones vibrate. None of them could remember the details clearly, but they all woke up with the same feeling—that something had been trying to tell them something important. One evening, a group of teenagers decided to go to the forest to see for themselves. They brought flashlights, a camera, and a sense of bravado that quickly faded when the light appeared. It hovered above the trees, moving in slow, deliberate circles. The teens stood frozen, their breath visible in the cold air. Then, without warning, the light vanished. They ran back to town, shaking and silent, and told no one what they saw. The next morning, the town’s power went out for two hours. No one knew why. When the lights came back on, the power station was empty. No workers, no machines, just silence. The mayor called in engineers, but they found nothing wrong. The only clue was a faint symbol etched into the wall of the control room—a spiral with three lines inside, like a compass pointing in different directions. Marla visited the power station later that week. She stood in the empty building, the cold air pressing against her skin. She traced the symbol with her fingers, and for a moment, she felt a presence around her. It wasn’t threatening, just... watching. She didn’t know how long she stood there, but when she finally left, the sky had turned a deep, unnatural blue. That night, the light returned. This time, it didn’t just hover—it descended. It landed in the center of the town square, glowing softly. People gathered, some afraid, some curious. No one dared to approach. The light pulsed once, then dimmed. Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, it lifted again and disappeared into the sky. After that, the sightings stopped. No one saw the light again. But the changes remained. The townspeople spoke less, smiled less, and looked at the sky with a strange kind of fear. The power station was never repaired, and the symbol on the wall remained untouched. Marla continued her research, but she never found the answers she sought. She kept the journal she had been keeping, filled with notes, sketches, and the names of those who had seen the light. One night, she opened it and found a new entry, written in a hand that wasn’t hers. It read: *"It is not here to harm. It is here to listen."* She never wrote anything else after that. The last page of her journal was blank, except for a single symbol—exactly like the one in the power station. No one knows what happened to her. Some say she left town. Others say she never left at all. But in the quiet hours of the night, when the wind carries a whisper through the trees, you can still hear the hum of something watching, waiting, listening.