Close Encounters of the Shopping Kind: The Century III Mall Alien

 Close Encounters of the Shopping Kind: The Century III Mall Alien

By Cole Herrold

Extraterrestrial encounters typically are one of the most bizarre Fortean events a person can experience. There are countless cases that range from absolute insanity to absolute terror and occur in a number of locals, typically in a large open field, dense woodland, or often most horrifying in a bedroom; however, there's one location where one almost never would think to encounter such an interstellar being, and that would be a shopping mall. However, on occasion, such reports do occur, and when they do, they are particularly bizarre.

In June of 2008, a 65-year-old woman by the name of Barbara was shopping at the Century III Mall near West Mifflin. Barbara recently became wheelchair-bound and so had decided to go to the mall in an attempt to regain some normalcy in her new state. She was with her husband, who, as is rather common in such situations, was not too keen on wandering through the racks of dresses and blouses and decided to sit on a bench in the middle of the mall while she went through all of her desired stores. As Barbara entered one specific store, she had worked her way near the men's department when she saw a mother dragging her young son rather speedily away from the area. She could hear the boy cry and talk rather loudly as he drug his feet, saying, "I want to see!" the mother, however, was only pulling harder and said, "no, we need to leaver now!" as the woman sped up. Barbara could tell the woman was particularly upset and wondered just what could have created such an issue and so began to wheel around the area. As she made a turn around some of the clothing racks, she stopped dead, for she saw what the woman and child saw.

She saw a figure that she instantly knew was male and at first thought that it was a man with a kind of terrible deformity, but as she looked, she soon realized that whatever this being was, it was not human. The creature was bald and wrinkled and bore bumps all over its gray epidermis, and the creature had almost black almond-shaped eyes. The main reason she had at first thought that this entity was simply some poor soul with a terrible condition was that this creature had blue pants and a plaid shirt, something that seemed to of been pulled straight from some of the racks not too far off. The entity noticed her and began to approach as it beamed a warm, friendly smile. She shifted her eyes away from the figure for just a second, and when she looked back barely a moment later, the figure was gone. Barbara was completely perplexed as there was no discernible place for the figure to of gone; it was as if in mid-stride he disappeared. Barbara was noticeably shaken by this and so began to head over to one of the nearby cashiers and asked to talk to a security officer. The security officer came over to her, and Barbara told him that she was looking for a particularly bizarre man. The officer could tell that this individual she spoke of might have been somebody suspicious and took her to the back where they kept the security footage and had her look through the video to find the man she saw. As she watched, however, she saw only herself in the video. The entity, whatever it was, wasn't captured on camera. This shook her up even more, and her husband, now brought back to the area by the security guard, told her that it was time to go. The husband had wanted to catch a flick at the theater in the mall and so finished their shopping and headed over. His wife, as he seemingly sprinted through the mall floors, had attempted to tell him about what she had seen, but he, in full movie mania, was not having it and said for her to tell him later. All the while, as she attempted to keep up with her husband, she scanned the faces of the countless mall patrons and searched for the wrinkly warted gray skin being that she had seen earlier, but she never saw it again. When she got home, and after her husband had filled up on movie mania, she had decided to not tell him about her experience at the mall; it was just too bizarre and something that she just wanted to forget, and eventually, she would.

Time passed, and she had forgotten all about that bizarre day at the mall, but as she was reading a copy of an early October issue of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, she froze as she stumbled onto an article revolving around a UFO sighting. As she read the account, her hands began to shake, and as she read on, she began to remember. As the images reflooded back into her head, she had felt that the reason she had forgotten was that the entity somehow had altered her memory, making her forget all about him. Barbara then began to tell her family all about the bizarre incident and reached out to the Western Pennsylvania branch of MUFON. She was later interviewed by the regional MUFON director John Ventre and felt her to be truthful and began digging into the encounter. Ventre was surprised to find that Barbara was not alone in seeing something anomalous at that location that day as another witness also claimed to of seen a UFO in the area of the mall. Ventre would conclude his findings thusly "normally, I would write this report off as a hoax, but she never changed her story and was completely convinced that she saw an extraterrestrial being."

This account is particularly bizarre but extremely interesting and seems to be at least on its face and what the witness felt to be an extraterrestrial. The being bears a resemblance to some famous Extraterrestrials that have appeared over the years even though it doesn't exactly match anyone, in particular, some of the most notable, however, are the Greys, the Blue "doctors" that Whitley Streiber reported, and the 1955 Loveland Frogmen. The fact that a UFO was seen in the same location on the same day as this entity as well does seem to point to an extraterrestrial as being the entity she saw. Another interesting connector is the plaid or Checkered shirt the entity was said to wear. Checkered shirts are something that pops up in tons of Fortean cases and are specifically brought to the forefront by the works of John Keel, who really took note of this kind of clothing choice by such entities. The infamous Grinning Man cases, including Indrid Cold, the extraterrestrial that went hand in hand with the high strangeness of the Mothman in West Virginia in 66' and 67', had on at least one occasion bore a checkered or plaid shirt. I will say, however, that it does seem strange to me that if this being is an extraterrestrial is that it would be bizarre for it to appear at a mall unless this was some sort of interstellar tourist destination or some anthropological study of our behavior or trade, but if that is to be the case, one would think a more subtle approach would have been taken for even in its relatively normal duds the entities appearance, needless to say, does make it stick out making any survey or testing or research difficult.

While there is a very strong argument that what was seen at the Century III Mall was an ET, there are some alternative possibilities. If this entity is not an ET, I would venture that the closest other possibility would be that this entity is a fae. The fae are not always beautiful, and many do have the same description as the entity seen in the mall. They too also wear plaid or checkered clothing much like the ETs and the Checkered clothed ghosts and Checkered clothed entities Keel described. The reason I also point to the fae is that in a lot of fae encounters, as soon as you look away from the entities, they disappear; this is a constant not only in authentic accounts but also in centuries of folklore. Reports of people who have captured Leprechauns, for example, have often said that even if they have their hands wrapped around the creature if they blink, the creature is completely gone and in an entirely different location. The sighting of a UFO is also not indicative solely of an ET encounter and very likely could have been a Fae as there are reports of faerie vehicles and fairy lights which are very similar to the orb-shaped UFO that is so frequently seen. Jacque Vallee mentioned such similarities of the phenomenon in his books, and often there is this consensus that reports of the wee folk and similar fae were ancient accounts of extraterrestrials; however, there is also an equal chance that they are completely different phenomena that bear a strong resemblance to each other. The fact that the entity was not photographed is another reason that the fae hypothesis could be a possibility as faeries are notoriously hard to photograph, and there have only been a handful of possibly real photos, and most are of the winged variety even though they seem to be the minority of reports. The more humanoid fae like the leprechauns, red caps, elves, trolls, and gnomes are much more frequently reported than the flying pixie or sprite. Even then, there's a reason for this as the fae are reported to be able to hide their presence even from cameras if they do not wish to be photographed, and only a few of the more humanoid cases of faerie photography were acquired through asking the entities for permission before taking the image.

There are not really too many other possibilities as to what Barbara saw; of course, there are always such things as Keel's Ultraterrestrials or the interdimensional entity, which again could explain why the entity did not appear on camera. Another possibility is that this being could have been a ghost of some individual who was either deformed or in some state of decomposition that his features seemed alien, and this could also explain why the entity suddenly disappeared. However, it is worth pointing out that spectral apparitions do frequently appear in videos and photographs upon manifesting or even without for that fact, so it is unlikely that this being is a spirit of some kind.

Malls while dying are not the type of places one would expect to encounter the unknown unless you’re a connoisseur of horror and familiar with such films as Dawn of the Dead or Chopping Mall. The typical person who still goes to such a location would tend to think that such locations are relatively safe from something that defies explanation, such as an alien or, on occasion, cryptid sighting, but they do happen and so that at least to me makes such cases so interesting. This gets into more of the motive of such beings, and less into just what they are, which is equally important a location such as a mall is a public place it's crawling with people and in so if an alien, fae, or interdimensional traveler would appear there the entity in question is just asking to be seen. It just seems like a bizarre place for such a being of intelligence to show up, and if so, one would think it would have a better disguise than something from a 1970s Sears catalog. So we're left wondering, as with most considerably intelligent encounters, just what is the purpose of this being and just why did it seemingly choose to show up and disappear in this particular mall near West Mifflin but as with most cases, I'm sure we'll never come close to discovering an answer.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Extraterrestrial or some Other Paranormal Entity

Location: Century III Mall, West Mifflin, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Sighted: June 2008

Works Cited:

UFOs in Pennsylvania: Encounters with Extraterrestrials in the Keystone State By Patty A. Wilson