Eight-year-old Devon Heenan stood with her arm extended in the parking lot of the Ingles in Cashiers. With her cell phone camera, she and a friend were taking pictures of the summer sun in hopes of seeing a sky ship or UFO like her mother Glynis Heenan.

The night before Glynis Heenan saw a bright light in her backyard. She thought it was the moon and stepped outside to have a better look. Instead, she said she saw a circular sky ship with radiating rainbow colored lights.

“The first thing you do is feel afraid,” Heenan said. “It’s amazing how afraid you can be of what you don’t know.”

But Devon Heenan wasn’t afraid. She turned her head from the sun and snapped another picture. When she looked at the screen, she saw the outline of a ship in front of the sun.

The picture Devon Heenan captured finally pushed Mary Joyce and Evelyn Gordon to create a forum where people from across Western North Carolina could report similar sightings and information.

“That’s the picture that started the whole thing,” Joyce said.

In 2008, Joyce and Gordon launched www.skyshipsovercashiers.com. Since then, the website has gained international attention and got the duo a speaking engagement in Laughlin, Nev., at the 2010 International UFO Congress, the largest UFO conference in the world.

In front of an audience of more than 900, Joyce and Gordon presented a log of UFO and spiritual sightings in Western North Carolina.

At 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 13, the women, along with eyewitness Glynis Heenan, will share their conference presentation and answer questions at the Jackson County Senior Center, 100 County Services Park in Sylva.

“This isn’t about us,” Gordon said. “It’s about helping the world.”

Seeing UFOs is commonplace for the women. Gordon claims she receives telepathic messages from them, which Joyce then transcribes. The two have delivered letters to presidents and foreign dignitaries.

Although most of the messages are personal – secrets only known by Joyce, Gordon and the recipients – Gordon and Joyce will share portions of the more generic messages with audiences.

The three women also will tell of spiritual sightings in the area such as 30-foot hologram of Jesus and a man with the face of Jesus wearing a maroon space suit.

Military actions, missile silos and nuclear power plants attract alien activity, the women say.

According to Joyce, what may draw the aliens to Western North Carolina in particular is a secret underground facility at Balsam Mountain.

The facility goes six stories deep into the earth and has electromagnetic equipment that can erase memories, the women posted on their website.

“We’re seeing a lot of activity in North Carolina period,” Gordon said.

Gordon and Joyce have known each other since the 1980s when a mutual acquaintance suggested they meet. The two have been a team since, and Joyce has written books Gordon has helped promote. They moved to Western North Carolina 12 years ago from Florida.

Joyce lived within eyesight of Kennedy Space Center, and every time a rocket launched, her Cocoa Beach apartment would vibrate. She’d see UFOs guiding the rockets through the upper atmosphere and into space, she said.

Joyce said an unnamed NASA insider she knew said all astronauts who’ve been to space have seen UFOs. The group’s website includes testimonies from law enforcement officers, a security watchman, a man who was in the Navy, among others.

For more information, visit www.skyshipsovercashiers.com.

Hear it firsthand

“Sky Ships and Cosmic Spirituality” will take place 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 13, at the Jackson County Senior Center, 100 County Services Park, Sylva.