Visitors from space, environmental Armageddon, or societal rebirth—these are some of the things local people expect to see when the Mayan calendar ends tomorrow.

NASA has released a video debunking doomsday predictions as fears spread around the world that the end of the 5,125-year calendar spells Armageddon. The video says there is no evidence supporting claims of impending disasters such as a sudden polar shift or a meteor strike.

Many in Chilliwack are expecting change —in one form or another.

“Saturday, if I’m alive and I’m awake, I’ll be happy,” said Susanne Reed, a Sardis housewife.

Reed’s fascination with the Mayan calendar goes back to an experience she had in 1997 at the ruined Mayan city of Chichen Itza. After developing a photo of herself in front of El Caracol, a temple from which the Mayans are believed to have observed the sky, Reed discovered what she says is a UFO in the background.

The end of the Mayan calendar is a “wake-up call,” Reed said.

“Now, I would say the aliens are going to be here, but obviously, with my picture, they’re already here,” she said.

Although Reed was reluctant to specify what she believes could happen tomorrow, she said: “I’m gonna stock up on coffee and bread and milk; I’m gonna be looking out the window.”

Janet Newport, the owner of Amethyst Books and Essence, a local spirituality shop, does not believe the end is nigh.

“The Mayan calendar signifies the end of one age and the beginning of a new, but not the end of the world,” she said.

Humankind is shifting into a higher level of consciousness, as we “move into the age of Aquarius, which is a more enlightened age,” Newport said.

Marjorie Perzow, a retired psychiatric nurse who works in touch therapy, says the fascination with the Mayan calendar stems from a sense that something is missing from modern society.

“Overstimulation is the norm; there’s something wrong with that,” Perzow said.

“Everybody’s plugged into all these gadgets, but they’re not aware of themselves, of their interior worlds—how they think, how they feel . . . They’re lost.”

She said wisdom comes with stillness and quiet, but “that gets lost in the chaos and all of the noise that we have in our day-to-day lives. People are time-starved, they’re sleep-deprived and they’re on a race that they can’t seem to stop.”

To make sense of what’s happening, some people look to the past, to the Bible or to ancient civilizations such as the Maya, Perzow said.

Perzow believes that the end of the Mayan calendar coincides with “an increase in consciousness” which, according to her, is evinced by an increase in popularity of organic food and yoga, as well as the widespread opposition to the proposed Enbridge pipeline.

Eddie Gardner, a member of the Skwah First Nation and elder in residence at UFV, calls tomorrow the “end of a huge era.” He expects “an intensification of global warming and natural disasters.”

“This is a great time of reflection about where humanity is heading,” Gardner said.