Hi there I'm Amara Kofer and I'm the host of Black Girl Gone and this podcast I tell the stories of missing and murdered black women and women of color in America.

I want to bring light and awareness to all of these powerful stories.

Listen to Black Girl Gone on the I Heart app,

on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This series contains adult language and depictions of graphic violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

There was a time when the story I'm about to tell you would have potentially

gotten me ostracized from the general public, ridiculed, perhaps openly, for my

naivete or at the very least, aggressively accused of having an

overactive imagination.

But times have changed, and now it's no big deal to admit, even for a skeptic like me, that I totally saw a

UFO in Los Angeles when I was 22 years old. I mean it. Decades later, and I'm back living in roughly the same neighborhood and I

drive by the spot I was standing in when I saw it at least a few times a week I

remember it like it was yesterday.

It was the height of a scorching summer in the San Fernando Valley

and to keep cool, I would push my workouts to later in the day,

especially the days I would take my runs.

So there I was at the corner of Carpenter Avenue and Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, on the

south side of the street facing west into the setting sun.

I was finished with my run and it was getting dark.

I'll call it late twilight.

Cars wouldn't have their headlights on yet, but they would in probably five or ten minutes.

...