Month: September 2025

Let me say right here at the beginning that I don’t believe in Extraterrestrial beings. Nor do I believe in Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Mothman, or any of those types of legends. However, I have watched all those movies and every variation of them. And I will watch all the new ones as well. Even more, I love to stop at off the wall places dedicated to all those creatures. So when I ended up in Roswell for a day, I was thrilled to visit the UFO museum.

This place walks you through the complete history of the Roswell incident. Reproductions of news articles, government documents, and photos are prominently displayed. There are full scale models of flying saucers and the infamous grey aliens. I had lots of pictures of these, which I would share if I hadn’t lost them in the Gulf of Mexico when my phone went overboard. But I’ll provide an example here.

Strangely enough, the city of Roswell appears normal in almost every respect. Just a small part of old downtown reflects the UFO phenomenon. In that area, there are street lamps in the shape of aliens. Alien themed shops are around, but they can be as hard to find as the actual grey aliens themselves. But I did find them and I did buy alien souvenirs. I posed for many alien themed pictures as well. Sadly, they are also at the bottom of the Gulf.

In conversations about extra terrestrials, I’ve found a lot of my Christian friends have strong feelings about their existence. Some feel that the existence of aliens is impossible because God created humans; the Bible says nothing about aliens being created. Other friends are ambivalent about the possibility of aliens; if they exist, God created them and they’re part of His purpose. Another small group believes that aliens are demonic beings and UFO sightings are the work of the devil. As I said at the top, I don’t believe in aliens. But I also don’t know the truth about aliens and UFOs. I could be wrong.

Now excuse me while I go watch Sigourney Weaver kill a bunch of aliens!

When I think of Romania, I immediately think of Transylvania and vampires. It’s probably not that strange to think that way. Transylvania is a region in Romania. Books, movies, and TV have made Transylvania famous for Dracula and vampires in general. Hence, Romania equals vampires. However, one thing I have never associated with Romania is the presence of monasteries. Yet there are some famous, and extremely beautiful, painted monasteries in the Bucovina region of Romania. For the moment, I’ll just focus on one of them. Sucevita.

The monastery at Sucevita was founded in the 1580s and the extensive paintings were completed in 1601. The architecture of the building is a combination of Byzantine and Gothic style, neither of which I can describe without extensive research. So I’m not going to try. You can look those up yourself. The paintings themselves are considered masterpieces of Byzantine art.

The various paintings of monasteries portray Biblical episodes. Sucevita boasts a magnificent depiction of the Ladder to Paradise. This was a popular concept and image taken from the account of Jacob’s vision in Genesis 28. Over time, the ladder to heaven developed into a complex depiction of salvation and condemnation. In the Sucevita depiction, red-winged angels in orderly rows attend the righteous on a slanting ladder to the heavens, each rung inscribed with one of the monastic virtues. Sinners fall through the rungs and are driven by grinning devils to the chaos of hell.

In the last ten years, Romania has created the Via Transilvanica. It’s an 800 mile hiking trail that crosses the Transylvania, Bukovina, and Banat regions of Romania. When I came across this fact, I realized that these painted monasteries are relatively close to the fictional location of Dracula’s Castle. In the future, I’m going to alter my self-thought. Romania equals vampires equals painted monasteries. That’s a better thought to end on.