Beyond the Beyond: Blinding Lights – The Dorothy Izatt Story
Dorothy Izatt is a fascinating case. I first watched the documentary Capturing the Light years ago and didn’t quite know what to make of it. Here was an elderly woman, an amateur photographer and housewife, who seemed to have some type of gift for capturing what appeared to be otherworldly beings and strange craft in the sky. There didn’t appear to be any hoaxing going on, and there were several eyewitnesses to the occurrences.
What stuck out to me, and is something I have never forgotten, is in the film there is a portion where the documentary crew are interviewing Dorothy’s daughter in the kitchen of her home and a bright red light appears through the window over her shoulder, zips to the left and stops, and finally reveals itself to be some type of luminous craft hovering silently behind her in the night sky. The object was not seen until the filmmakers were going over the footage from the day. Strange stuff, and one of the stranger occurrences I can ever remember seeing on film.
In Vancouver, Canada in the mid 1970s, a housewife and mother named Dorothy Izatt was making food in the kitchen when she started to have a strange feeling that she was being watched. When she looked out the window, she saw a giant diamond shaped craft glowing in the sky. She started seeing them more regularly, but no one in her family believed her. They claimed that what she was seeing were airplanes or other objects of natural or human origin. Because of this, Dorothy decided to try and prove the existence of these very unnatural objects she was seeing in the sky.
One night, a light appeared in the sky above her. She used a flashlight to attempt to communicate with it, turning the flashlight on and off. As she slowly swayed the light back and forth, the object mimicked her actions and swayed across the night sky above her in the same motion. Eventually, Dorothy started recording the lights on her Super 8 camera. Upon reviewing the film in detail, she found that they were occasionally emitting some type of burst of energy. These strange pulses would send zigzagging streaks of light across the sky, but it happened so fast that it was only visible on a few frames of film. This suggested to Dorothy that these beings were trying to communicate with her.
Eventually, she accumulated over 25 hours of film and became well-known in small pockets of the UFO community. An investigator went to her house to analyze some film, and when doing so began to hear a small high pitch buzzing sound in his ear. Dorothy heard it too, and when the two went outside they witnessed a large metallic craft floating over her house.
Dorothy claimed that these beings would communicate with her telepathically. They told her that the universe is teeming with biological life, and that many of the the entities that populate it look like or are similar in appearance to human beings. One day, while working in a department store, a man of small stature approached Dorothy and spoke to her. He had twinkling eyes as he told her that her name sounded Egyptian. Years later, she claimed to be taken aboard a ship and that same man was there. He leaned down and kissed her forehead while speaking to a woman who was also in the craft. What he said was puzzling and would normally make no sense, but for some reason Dorothy understood every word and all of its meaning.
To me, this sounds like a sort of dream speak. In dreams, I will often encounter a situation or location that has no meaning, except in my dream it makes perfect and complete sense. Whatever this phenomenon is, there does indeed seem to be some psychological component attached to it.
When asked why she was chosen to communicate with these beings, they simply shrugged her off as if to say “What difference does it make?” After she pressed harder, they told her that they had been with her for many lifetimes. This seemed to conflict with Dorothy’s worldview, as she had been raised Catholic and had no belief in reincarnation. But is this exactly what the beings were trying to communicate?
There is also the footage she took or what appears to be alien “grays” piloting a ship. She claims she could see these creatures through windows lining the side of a spacecraft in the sky in front of her. Telepathically, she asked them to dim the lights on the ship so she could see the pilots better. Evidently, that’s just what happened and the results are what we see below.
In total, Dorothy has accumulated over 20 hours of footage and thousands of photos. I have to admit, I initially found her case to be quite eye-opening, and thoroughly enjoyed the documentary mentioned above before reading the book of the same name. Upon reading, the interviews and information in that text started to slowly erode the faith I had built while researching this case. Parts of the story are fairly straightforward, but as Dorothy begins to open up more to the authors, the tales of her encounters begin to to become more and more outlandish. Flights in a black triangle to Coney Island come to mind.
Upon closer observation, it seems that the camera that Dorothy was using has a an advancement mechanism that may be malfunctioning, causing occasional immobilization of a single frame for several seconds. Unintended time exposures can occur on these frames, accentuated by the camera’s movement and creating patterns of light due to shake.
This was initially a hypothesis by a CBC crew during a segment featuring Mrs. Izatt on the program On the Road Again. Rarely discussed, the crew requested that Dorothy capture footage of ordinary scenery and her grandchildren using the same camera used for the supposed UFO recordings. Upon processing the film, flashes of light were indeed present. However, these “flash” frames were entirely overexposed, lacking discernible detail. But what if these shots were taken of lights (planes, maybe) at night? Could this be what was causing the scribbles seen on the film?
It’s important to note that with minimal ambient light available, and the flash firing at its highest intensity with the lens set for distance, the flash can illuminate nearby water and dust particles, which can in turn create blurry reflections on the film. This phenomenon then manifests as eerie orbs of light which seemingly float in the night sky above the landscape.
And what about the fast moving spheres seen in the many videos that Dorothy filmed? Or the strange red light that seemed to suddenly morph into a craft above her daughter’s shoulder? Or the many eyewitnesses who had their own experiences while in her presence? Those would appear to be unexplained at the moment. Could this be a case of someone that saw something in the sky, maybe several times, got some attention and then hoaxed some footage and stories to try and get more of it? Or maybe it’s another case of a hoaxer starting small, with doctored film and footage, and then going bigger and bigger, until her stories were so elaborate and outlandish that they’re teetering on the edge of unbelievable.
I find it interesting that the UFO community seems to largely ignore the things that give doubt to the credibility of this case. And it’s not just this case, but dozens of others over the last 50 years. Oh, and it’s not just the UFO community. Go online into almost any forum and you will see examples of confirmation bias. From people accepting outlandish news articles that align with their political views without critically evaluating their sources, to ignoring scientific evidence that contradicts what they heard from said news source, to thinking that a particular conspiracy theory is true because it supports a distrust of authority or believing that their big sweaty multimillionaires in leggings will beat the other multimillionaires in leggings despite all the evidence to the contrary.
It might be a cultural thing, but my guess is it’s more of a human being thing. Obviously, when we were roaming the forests with mud on our feet and gleaming spears in our hands, believing in shared group ideas and reinforcing them through confirmation bias could promote cooperation, cohesion, and unity which are essential for survival and protection against external threats. Perhaps this trait, like many others, carried over to a simpler yet more complicated time for our species. Now we wear Nikes and carry computers, and confirmation bias is now like that weird dude at the party who doesn’t know what he’s doing there. Oh, shit… that was me.
The Dorothy Izatt case, like the UFO phenomenon itself, is both fascinating and troubling. While her experiences are intriguing, they also raise a healthy amount of questions about how the footage was taken, the camera it was taken on, the reliability of eye witness testimony, and about the cognitive barriers that we humans are constantly building around ourselves. Was Dorothy Izatt just an attention seeker, a master hoaxer, or a real-life experiencer? Or maybe all three?
What do you think?
Oh, and in the immortal words of Aesop Rock:
“Party over here. I’ll be over there.”
Have you been transported in a cobalt black TR-3B to Coney Island for a chili dog? Message me @beyondthebeyond1 on Instagram.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Eastern Sierra Now. Readers are encouraged to conduct further research and consult with relevant experts or professionals before making any decisions or taking any actions based on the information provided in this article.
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