Alaska Diaries - Spooky "Hello" and Northern Lights

So, we had obviously Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) on our list in this Alaska Trip. Whether we could see it or not, we weren't sure. Weather, Clouds, it's frequency of occurrence everything played a role. We were just staying hopeful that we could get atleast a glimpse of it; and that was the only reason for us to drive North towards Fairbanks.

Aurora Borealis that night

We started at 12:30 in the night, on the remote roads of Fairbanks peeping out of the car's window to see if we can see THE LIGHTS! And we were testing the slightly doubtful clouds by clicking its picture to see if it was just another passing cloud or was really the hidden aurora. We turned into Old Murphy Crossroad, pulled over the curbside and started clicking the pictures of the sky, and it showed green streaks. Wow.. we were excited and started clicking more pictures at different corner of sky to see more of aurora.

And suddenly I heard quite a heavy toned "Hello" right over my shoulder. I freaked out, sprang from the ground and ran over around the car to the other side where my friend was standing. He yelled back Hello, but we dint hear anything else. His wife was sitting in the car, she kept calling us to hop inside the car. We were all freaked out for a few mins. It was a dark night, a new moon night, that morning we had seen solar eclipse...If my mom heard about this she would be dead sure that it was some spirit that came to haunt us. After 5 mins of silence and waiting in car, we hopped out and started clicking Northern Lights. Well, we wouldn't have missed the Aurora even if we had seen a Ghost!!

But when we came back to the hotel, we kept discussing on what was it that we heard. I still don't know. There was no rustling before that sound, it was a pretty clear hello word, it felt like it was right behind me, and there was no rustling after that. It was a very silent night, there's no way we could have missed out anyone walking towards or away from us. We learnt that Caribou makes sounds like that, but again, no sound of animal roaming around, no way that a huge caribou would have made its way in and out so silently. Well whatever it was it did add an extra shade of color to the northern lights experience!!

-Sarita
Dated - 22nd August 2017

Comments

RobertOctober 17, 2019 at 4:14 AM
Nice blog. Yes, we are not sure about we see the northern lights or not. But when I visited Alaska, it was the winter season and it was the best time for seeing northern lights. I see it actually. You can also plan trip to see the northern lights in Sep-Oct.
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unknownDecember 16, 2020 at 4:02 AM
Great post and thanks for sharing. In Alaska you can also experience alaska bear viewing trips.
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