We met Ron Quinn a little while ago on the blog due to this terrific collection of Little People encounters that he received from persons living mainly in the Catskill area of New York state. John Timmerman, however, met him in 1991 in Tucson, AZ, when John was exhibiting the CUFOS photo exhibit there. Ron Quinn was a writer and an artist/cartoonist as well as other creative sorts of interests, who was fascinated by both the UFO phenomenon and the Little People phenomenon ever since having his own experiences with each in the 1940s [in Washington state and New York state, respectively]. He had settled for some while in the Tucson area, living mainly by writing for newspapers and weeklies, and making films. He came up to John to tell him of what he felt to be the most peculiar anomalistic claim that he'd been involved with, though it was an experience which had not happened directly to him.
Here's how the story goes: Ron had an old friend of about twenty years living in Tucson. His friend had been a high school math teacher, was a solidly conservative person in his beliefs and interests, and Ron was the type of close friend between which there would be no "funny business", even if the friend's personality had been different. The friend was retired at the time [1988] and liked to drive about southern Arizona pursuing his favorite hobby, photography. One day in 1988, Ron got an excited phonecall asking him to meet him at the Denny's restaurant on Oracle road [that's it above; thought it was just fun to put the real one in there]. Ron hurried on over and got an earful of a story.
Ron's friend, who he wanted to keep anonymous, so he called him "Sam", liked photographing Arizona's old Ghost Towns, and one of them was nearly to the US-Mexico border, the old mining town of Ruby.
Rubies weren't mined there, but Lead, Zinc, and Silver were. The mine was particularly profitable for Lead and Zinc in its hay-day. Sam had visited Ruby many times and doubtlessly photographed everything in the town area worth shooting, so he had taken to wandering around the rough mountainous surroundings, camera in hand.
A prominent feature which you can't miss from the town is Montana Peak. This is, in fact, a somewhat popular destination for casual hiker-climbers in southern Arizona, though hardly any tourist Mecca. Most days there are no people anywhere about the peak. It was one such day when Sam encountered the "alien".
You have to get well beyond Ruby to the back side of Montana Peak to find yourself at "the scene of the crime". Sam had been exploring the backside canyons and what is called California Gulch, when he heard an odd whishing sound in the air. Whether this had anything at all to do with his later encounter, who knows? About twenty-to-thirty minutes later, Sam is walking down one of the small washed out "canyons", when he spots a small "something". The being turned to face Sam, and, though startled, Sam, camera in hand, shot a picture. At that, the being turned away and rapidly scrambled up about 100 feet of fairly steep angled cliff-face. Sam tried to follow, but age and athleticism failed him. By the time he finally got to the top, the being was gone from sight. Other than scuff marks, it also left no prints.
Now shaken by the full realization of the oddity of the experience, Sam got down the mountain, into his car, drove to Tucson, nervously glancing around a good bit of the way, convinced that he should have, somehow, not been there and certainly not shot a picture. [You and I may not have felt this way, but Sam, as said was a very conservative-thinking and socially-nervous person]. He had the roll of film developed at the local Walgreens [again showing that this guy was a naive sort of fellow], got his prints back with the picture of the being there, and called Ron. At Denny's, he showed Ron the photo as he told him the story.
Ron wanted him to submit the photo for analysis, but Sam was scared and wanted to seek his brother in San Diego for advice. He kept the photo, but Ron was able to stare at it for nearly an hour. That was plenty for him, an artist, to get back home, sit down and sketch the being from fresh memory. That is, of course, the sketch you see above. The photo appeared to show a creature, very humanoid, standing about 7 to 8 feet away from the photographer. The creature's height was four to four-and-a-half foot tall, and it was clad in a tight-fitting dull silverish coverall. You can see the shape of the head and sense perceptors for yourself on the sketch. Quinn had time to study the photo even with a magnifying glass, so he felt that he had this almost exactly correct.
The story ends mysteriously but not happily for research. Sam went to visit his brother's home for the Christmas holidays.Before he left [he had apparently contacted his brother by phone], he told Ron that he was not going to give the photo up for analysis, but rather would try to make some money off it [what his brother wanted to do] or just try to forget about the whole thing [which is what he, given his personality, seemed to want to do]. Ron never saw him again [nor did the photo surface]. Sam's home grew eerily abandoned, then one day it had been emptied.
In the meanwhile, Ron had published the story in the weekly Southern Arizona Trails journal, and was later interviewed by a Tucson TV station about the mystery. The TV piece was 1990. In 1991 here he was again telling John the same story that he wrote about and was interviewed about earlier. Quinn was out-spokenly convinced that this friend was FAR away from any sort of hoaxer, and that the photo that he studied so closely was a real photo. But WHAT really was it a photo of?
Quinn and Sam apparently immediately thought that the creature photographed was an "Alien", by which Quinn means either extraterrestrial or a terrestrial time-traveler [this latter is a bankrupt concept in my mind but some see it as possible]. Unfortunately there was no UFO anywhere in the experience. Quinn "likes" the ETH/TT hypotheses I believe because he thinks that the creature looks right for that. With the possible exception of the dull silver suit, I feel no urge to go there with any conviction. Quinn also seems to prefer a sort of bald-headed clean-cut alien vs scruffy-faced mediaeval-clothed Little Person dichotomy. Well, I get the urge to follow old imprintings, but the Faerie trickster is well up to manifesting in a clean-shaven bald-headed look. My mind is open on what we are treated to here.
Once again, our debunkers won't give this the time of day. They could be evidentially right in the end, but are certainly attitudinally wrong at this time. Ron Quinn says that this came from a very old trusted friend. He reported on his friend's sighting immediately to the local community [some of whom probably had pretty shrewd guesses about whom he was talking]. He stuck with the story for years. This counts for something. It at least counts for a vote for some open-mindedness.
But still, what was this thing from the backside of Montana Peak?? Strange things are said to exist in places like California Gulch. Will you be the stalwart intrepid explorer who ventures down into the Earth to find them??
If you ever return, let the rest of us know.
