This incident occurred on April 23, 2012 at approximately 4:40 AM. At the time, I lived in a town house in Villa Park, Illinois, and often sleep on the ground floor in my living room on the couch. I could see both front and back doors, including a sliding glass patio door leading to the back yard. I am a 31-year-old male Army veteran, and lived alone at the time. Being a former military man, I was and am still a very avid and active supporter of self-defense. During and also after my military service I have always kept a weapon in my home for self-defense purposes. Even sleeping with a weapon (.380 caliber pistol) no further than arms length, in case of an intruder or burglar. Up until this event I was also very skeptical of anything I hadn't seen with my own eyes, especially things related to the paranormal. All of this changed that early morning.

As I slept on my living room couch a strange feeling came across me and awoke me from my sleep in the pitch blackness of the room. As I moved myself to the sitting position, I saw a small flash of yellowish light piercing my sliding glass patio door through the closed tall swaying blinds. At first I didn't think much of it, until only seconds later. I see another flash of light, this time the flash was red and seemed larger. Thinking maybe there was an intruder inside the closed wooden gate of my backyard I quickly grabbed my .380 pistol from the floor near the couch and hurried to look through the blinds. What I saw next changed my life and has affected me mentally until this day.

As I stood at the sliding glass door looking across the parking lot, maybe 60 feet away on the rooftop of the adjacent townhome directly in front of me, was a perfectly round extremely bright orb which could have been approximately 5 to 6 feet in diameter. I couldn't help feeling as if I was being beckoned to come to the door with these flashes of light. After about 10 seconds or so of staring at the bright luminescent orb it had doubled in size and again changed color to yellowish green in a single flash of bright light. Immediately following the flash there was what sounded like a very loud helicopter, if one could have been directly above my house. At the same time the orb grew something that looked like a large praying mantis mixed with a snake flew out of the orb and straight up. I could see that it had what seemed like a long 3-4 ft tail as it exited what I can only describe as a 'portal' and then the portal was gone. Almost as quickly as it had exited this orb, the being flew directly towards me as the loud sound was ear piercing. The being moved at an extreme speed toward me. It took all of 2-3 seconds to cross the 60+ ft. of parking lot between the adjacent rooftop of the town home directly behind mine, over my wooden backyard fence where it came to a stop directly in front of me no more than two and a half feet, hovering about five feet off the ground.

At this time the creature displayed no lights. It was all black with what seemed like very strange symbols I had never seen before that went across its midsection (torso area). At first glimpse I could only describe this being as a bio-mechanical praying mantis mixed with a snake. It had a small head, long ringed neck but very large in-laid black eyes that extended beyond the sides of its head.

I quickly and carefully looked it over from bottom to top, my jaw stood wide open in awe. Out of sheer terror and the close proximity it was to me, I immediately raised my weapon over my head and pressed it firmly against the glass of the sliding doors. Almost as soon as I had made this motion the creature then extended from both sides what I can only describe as two sets of wing like appendages and emitted what looked like hundreds of tiny blue, sparkling lightning bolts in every direction, above and below each of the 4 'appendages' (I say appendages because if they were wings they didn't seem to be used for flight). The small bolts encompassed and engulf the being completely. At this moment the loud helicopter, static-like sound had completely stopped. Each of these small blue lightning bolt like energy emissions were no larger than my pinky finger. After just a few short seconds of me witnessing these lightning bolt-like electric emissions the entity shot directly up and over the roof of my home at an amazing speed, out of sight towards the front of the townhome.

After much time and thought I've come to the conclusion that this entity did not spread the wing-like appendages and emit the plasma like discharge until I brandished my weapon. This led me to believe that this display must have been some sort of protective energy field to shield itself had I fired upon it. This entire encounter lasted no longer than a few minutes. After the being had disappeared out of view over my home, I quickly ran to the back door and went outside. As I stood there staring into the sky I immediately realized that it had left almost the exact time of dawn because the sun was coming up.

Honestly, I don't like mentioning this part of the account. At that moment I realized that what I thought to be only a few minutes was, in reality, an hour or more had passed because it was now dawn with the sun quickly rising. Until this day, years later, I'm still no closer to an answer of what this being could have been, what it wanted or why it beckoned me to the door with the light flashes. And, most importantly, what happened during that missing hour. (Source)