Hal Sparks' Childhood UFO Encounter-- Did It Give Him Extra Abilities?

I heard Hal Sparks mention on his show once, that he had a UFO encounter when he was a kid. I looked it up and found a longer description of the incident where something very strange happened, like a possible abduction. The reason I found this interesting is Hal has the most amazing combination of analytical skills, memory recall and vocal skills (accents, imitations, singing and stamina) I've ever seen. I just have to wonder if his UFO experience had something to do with his amazing brain.

Actor & writer Hal Sparks sits down for an interview where he discusses a very strange incident that happened when he was young, growing up in Peaks Mill, Kentucky. 

"Hal Sparks was born on September 25, 1969, in Cincinnati, Ohio. At a young age, his family moved to Peaks Mill, Kentucky where he would spend most of his early childhood. He would eventually go on to become a successful actor, writer, comedian, musician, and, most recently, political pundit. Sparks rose to fame after landing the lead role in the popular TV show 'Queer As Folk' in 2000. He also appeared in nearly 40 movies, including “Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2” and “Dude, Where's My Car?”. 

In 2019, Hal sat down for an interview with the TV program, “Famously Afraid.” The episode aired on November 5, 2019. In it, he discussed a very strange incident that happened when he was young, growing up in Peaks Mill. He had two friends that he hung around with and they would spend hours hiking the local fields and forests as there were no recreational parks at the time. He claims that one evening in 1977, when he was 8 years old, he and his pal were hanging out at their other friends' house, chilling out and watching TV. The place was an old country house in the middle of nowhere. It was surrounded by acres of overgrown hilly fields. It was around 10:00 PM. The friend's parents were not home and Hal and the other two boys sat around watching cartoons on old TV, one with rabbit ears for reception, which was situated right in front of the window. 

“Almost simultaneously we all look. We see something out the window over the field out back of the house. It comes in, zips like that (uses a finger to show its movement), and a cigar-shaped orange craft appears. It's zipping around in the sky. We looked at each other. Looked back at it. It stayed still after we saw it move, just kinda hovering. And being 1978-79, we're all 'Star Wars' fans, we all agreed mentally at that moment, it can't be anything else but a UFO. Nobody said anything, we just got up and ran. We all just wanted to see it closer. We immediately race outside and that's when it gets immediately hazy. We're racing towards this thing in the field, running as fast as we can to try and catch up with this thing. It was still. It was just hanging out there... waiting for us. I cannot say with any clarity whether it was close or far away. It never gets bigger than half an inch in width from what we're seeing but the idea is that it's substantial. 

And next thing you know... We're back in the room as if nothing happened but time has passed. None of us knew how we got back in the room. We just kinda sat there stunned a little bit.” Hal claims that the three of them sat discussing what had happened, trying to make sense of it. “I remember very distinctly most of what happened and that gap stands out. That gap between us running out there to see this thing, whatever it was, and ending up back in the house. It's very stark and very blank.” “As a kid, I was more amazed than afraid. It wasn't until I'd grown up that it became scary.” 

In 1993, Hal moved to Los Angeles to pursue his love of acting and comedy. He needed to pay his bills so he got work as an assistant to a Hollywood science fiction screenwriter. “I was basically a research assistant,” Hal noted. “I was sent out to find every book on aliens interacting with humans that I could possibly find. So I take this giant stack of books on UFOs and abductions back to my house and I sit in my bedroom and I'm surrounded by piles of them and I start cracking. I spend the next two weeks reading everything, from Project Blue Book to Whitley Steiber's 'Communion', all the 'Fire In The Sky' type stuff.” Hal admits that he became a little paranoid after reading so much bizarre material. He wondered if aliens could actually be visiting Earth and snatching people up, testing them, impregnating them. Was it possible, and why? Then he remembered his own experience when he was 8 years old. “I don't know if I thought about that thing that happened when I was kind in the context of this at all until that darn weird self-printed crazy book.” 

One of the last books Hal read was from a man calling himself Commander X. Hal notes that he was mostly underwhelmed by the material, as it seemed to rehash the same stories from the other books except for a paragraph in the final chapter that caught his attention. “I read it cover to cover. So I get to the end of the book and almost the very last paragraph is sort of a warning. If you have been drawn to this kind of material about UFOs it is more than likely it is because you are one of the abductees. And it runs in your family and the aliens have been tracking your hereditary line... I kind of panicked. It never occurred to me that what I saw when I was a kid was part of an abduction As a child I didn't think, 'Oh, I've been abducted'. I didn't carry that around. Then I was like, 'What if? Oh my god, what if?' I was scared to go outside. I didn't leave the house for three days. I finally talked myself down. But then I was like, You know what, nobody in my family has ever talked about this stuff, it's clearly just, I'm inundated with this stuff, I just need to chill out.” 

Not long after that Hal returned to Kentucky to visit family for Thanksgiving. They were all at his grandmother’s house. He started talking about the script he was helping with and how it was about alien abduction. Hal's grandmother proceeded to tell him that his late grandfather had had an experience involving aliens that so traumatized him that he actually got a shotgun. Further, his grandmother also saw an object, as well, his great-uncle had an encounter with a UFO around the year Hal's father was born. “What immediately runs through my head when she says this is, It runs in your family. Not only are you being abducted but you're probably from a long line of people who are being tracked. The fear that this is true has lurched back into my life. Up to that point, I had been safe because no one in my family had ever talked about this stuff before.” Hal continues to wonder if he will have another encounter like the one he had as a child. “Will it keep coming up and in what form? How will it re-enter my life” 

Source: Famously Afraid, Season 1, Episode 1, November 5, 2019