Kriti Mehrotra
As a documentary episode living up to its title in every way imaginable, Netflix’s ‘Encounters: Messengers’ can only be described as equal parts baffling, intriguing, haunting, and threatening. That’s because it carefully incorporates not just dramatic recreations but also exclusive interviews to really shine a light upon the 2008 Unexplained Aireal Phenomena (UAP) in Central Texas. So amongst those to thus extensively feature here to help move the narrative along was Dr. Norma Villicaña-Briseño.
Who is Dr. Norma Briseno?
Although a native of Burley, Idaho, with Mexican roots, Norma has been residing in Erath County, Texas, ever since she was a teenager — she’s actually a proud Dublin High School graduate. It’s hence quite believable when she claims that after she witnessed “lights in the sky” over her city on the evening of January 8, 2008, she recalled having seen those exact orbs before in 1989. “For Christmas break, we were getting ready to travel to Michoacán in Mexico with our family,” she elucidated in the original to paint a clear timeline of the events leading up to her own experiences.
Norma continued, “My mother, the evening before, was on the dairy farm. She says, ‘I was out there feeding the calves, and these lights were appearing up in the sky, like bubbles. Could it be evil spirits or-or-or something?’ Because we tend to be a very superstitious culture, when she saw those, she was very much startled. She was afraid. The next day… we were in our vehicle, already loaded up, headed out, and these lights started coming up. Then my mom said, ‘Those are the ones I saw yesterday.’ Me, my sister, plus my other siblings saw those at the time.”
Norma’s second/2008 sighting was actually eerily similar, with the only difference being it was near Stephenville as she and her husband were returning home from a road trip to Fort Worth. “We could see the lights up in this [emplty field],” the University of North Texas, Ranger College, and Tarleton State University graduate stated in the production. “They would bubble in one spot, then bubble in another. It was too fast for any airplane or helicopter to do… I’m hanging out the door with my camera, trying to take pictures, but it just wasn’t fast enough… Then they were gone.”
Where is Dr. Norma Briseno Now?
Since Norma has seen the lights twice and realizes, thanks to her culture, that things can be real even if no one wholly understands them, she truly believes in the presence of the phenomena. “What we don’t understand, we try to explain,” she voiced in the docu-episode. “But our culture is very open to accepting things we cannot see or understand. We do not rely on the facts constantly.” She also added, “I believe that when people come to our area, it’s for a reason… [Me and the other witnesses] know we’re not mad. We know there is something credible to this because too many people saw these lights in the sky… There’s – – there’s more to this.”
Coming to Norma’s current standing, with her Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Tarleton State University (2020), she still serves as the Principal of her alma mater, Dublin High School. After all, in this family woman’s own words, per the original, she loves working with children and has “always told them, ‘You have a mind of your own. You need to see what information A and information B has.’ Not going against their parents or going against any type of doctrine, but just to be informed.” It’s part of the reason she does her best to keep an open mind at every step of the way too.
