Spring has sprung, and with it come familiar ideas of renewal and growth. People tired of being cooped up inside venture eagerly back into nature. Humans — at least in Western culture — have a funny relationship with nature. You can see it in this very paragraph, where nature is spoken of as something to be returned to, as if it were ever separate from us in the first place. This perspective also shows up in our stories, from ancient folklore to modern encounters with the supernatural.

There is a clear connection between the natural and the supernatural. In many ways, this connection is self-evident, as shown by the very derivation of the word supernatural — implying something above or beyond the natural.

Supernatural entities run the gamut. Some are said to supersede nature without being entirely divorced from it — lake monsters, sasquatch and other cryptozoological creatures are prime examples. Others, like gnomes or fairies, are often imagined as nature spirits.

However, nothing quite encapsulates the “above nature” quality of the supernatural like UFOs and their odd occupants (UFOnauts). They come, quite literally, from above — part technological marvel, part biological enigma. These beings have an equally odd relationship with nature. They often act as scientists of sorts, as in stories of alien abduction surgeries or in the benign reports of people witnessing UFOnauts collecting flora and fauna from their landing sites. In this way, UFOnauts are similar to the most common supernatural being — humans.

Humanity has a long history of viewing itself as separate from or above nature. There are religious examples proclaiming man’s dominion over the Earth, such as the medieval Christian idea of the Great Chain of Being, whose hierarchy went: God, angels, man, animals, plants and minerals. Today, this anthropocentrism plays out in arguments around climate change, animal rights and other ecological concerns, where people view nature as a resource for exploitation rather than a system they are a part of.

Humanity’s supernatural mindset in this regard adds an interesting layer to the stories of encounters with the actual supernatural, especially within the context of the Oz Factor.

Coined by researcher Jenny Randles, the Oz Factor is a term used to refer “to the experience of being isolated or transported by the real world of everyday life into another environment which is quite similar to the real world but changed enough to be noticeable and disturbing.” The Oz Factor is seen across supernatural events but is most often associated with UFO encounters.

One major hallmark of the Oz Factor is the quieting of the environment. Busy highways seem to hush, the wind falls silent and any previously active wildlife disappears. It’s been described as being suddenly placed under a dome, creating an eerie, intimate moment between the witness and the supernatural.

Anechoic chambers, rooms designed to absorb all sound, produce a similar effect. Deprived of the usual ambient noise, visitors often become overwhelmed by the sound of their own bodies: heartbeats, the rush of blood and the clicking of joints, for example. Most can’t last more than a few minutes inside of one.

These moments of silence associated with the Oz Factor are often short-lived but can stretch for hours, as in the following case from the files of Wisconsin ufologist Allen R. Utke — whose work we have covered extensively here.

The encounter Utke investigated took place in Ogema, WI, in 1967. The witnesses were a husband and wife. The couple were sleeping in their camper while on a visit to their in-law’s farm. At around 11 p.m., the pair were woken by their German Shepherd barking. Moving to see what had alarmed their dog, the couple saw a dome-shaped object glowing with fluorescent light that was shooting another light into the nearby milkhouse. The couple told Utke:

“The object was shining a beam of light to the milkhouse, which was 25 feet from us. The beam was sharply defined, and covered a distance of about 150 yards. It seemed to penetrate through the milk house walls, stopping abruptly at an open door. The dog had made no further sound after his initial barking and the normal night sounds stopped after the barking stopped.“

This unnatural silence would only be broken by the sound of footsteps. About an hour after the UFO appeared, the couple said what sounded like a “heavy person” began walking outside their camper between the farmhouse and milkhouse on and off throughout the night. The couple were too frightened to ever look and see what was making the sound, spending the night huddled together and with their gun trained on the camper door.

As daylight broke, so too did the Oz Factor. As the couple described:

“It was getting lighter but there was still no normal sounds. I then heard my dog whimper like a puppy about six times and then he started to bark. I’m sure he had been immobile all night. A sound like a huge generator then came from the direction of the object. But quiet or muffled. The sound faded after six to eight seconds.”

With the world seemingly returned to normal, the couple looked outside to find their dog unharmed and the cows in the pasture unfazed. They said it was as if nothing had happened.

What stands out about this event in regard to the Oz Factor is that the couple was able to experience its onset and end. More often, people report suddenly realizing something is off rather than experiencing the transition from everyday reality to Oz.

Notably, the couple said the sound their dog made after the event ended suggested to them something physical had happened to it that it was aware of, as opposed to if it had been frozen mid-bark at 11 p.m. and then resumed like nothing had happened at dawn. And since this Oz Factor blanketed the entire area, rendering all of nature in the same state as the dog, it leaves us with the question of why the couple were unaffected.

Perhaps our own supernatural consciousness — the belief that we stand apart from nature — is what shields us from the forces that silence the rest of the natural world during the Oz Factor.

To what end? Maybe the Oz Factor is akin to that cinematic “scratch moment,” when the main character’s world halts and reality wobbles in the face of some great revelation. In this case, the revelation might be that while humans believe they’re separate from nature, they are not. And when that illusion of separation is stripped away — when we are truly removed from nature’s rhythms and sounds — we find it unnerving, uncomfortable and terrifying. We cower with a gun aimed at the door while waiting for it all to end.

By contrast, the actual supernatural behaves in ways that are far more natural. The UFOnaut comes from and returns to the sky, the sasquatch moves through the woods, and the lake monster submerges back into the waters from which it came. Each is intertwined with nature while simultaneously being supernatural — whereas humans often see themselves as supernatural because they’re disconnected from nature.

Perhaps the point of supernatural encounters, then, is to remind us we’re not.