UFO News from the 1947 Mountain: a few 1960 Close Encounters.

As you've heard a few posts ago, Jan Aldrich {the "1947 Mountain"} sent me a thick pile of close encounters cases from his files and I've tried to penetrate that a little. Today: year 1960. 

1960 is known traditionally as a relatively dud year, and the number of cases in Jan's stack showed it. There were only nine listings, and one had no UFO present, and another had an error in the date written on it by the original collector. Nevertheless I've listed/illustrated all nine above.

For comments, I feel brevity calling me --- it's called laziness, I think.

"H" is the famous Red Bluff supercase, despite trying to fake me out by naming itself "Corning, CA". It is a UFO Anchor case and we don't need to relive it here. "B" is a military case, very brief and horribly written and nearly illegible, but with cut-off military communications and color changes. "C" is another crescent like the one we had last time. Even green. "E" is more of a physiological case or some other strange physical effect, as the car passengers felt stifling heat despite the distant UFO. "F" is one of my favorite types of cases as it seems to involve what Jim McDonald called "mass displacement". The truck overflown seemed to be lifted and flipped off the road onto its back. This is close to one of McDonald's and my favorite individual cases, the Herman, MN truck displacement of 1965. "G" is a nice sort-of ordinary case of a disk stopping a tractor. The variation here {there's always something} is that the disk is made of separate metal plates, one of which seems to be malfunctioning {smoke} and gets automatically replaced before the witness' eyes.

This leaves three more.

Case "D": Slagelse, Denmark. This is a bit of funny nonsense by the UFO phenomenon --- the sort which makes you think that you have no idea what the agenda of this motley crew of lunatics could be. The case begins with a "common" CE2em vehicle stop with an up-close discoid object. OK, fine. The UFOthing then settles, hovering just over the ground. Three "landing legs" come down and between them a tube of some size. A door slides open in the tube and out step four shinily green-clad "frogmen"--- not actual frog-like men [thankfully] but like Navy frogmen under the sea. In fact their walking motions are just like persons walking under water would look. {Wrap your head around THAT}. They come over to the stalled car followed by a long cable moving out of the ship on its own. The cable has something like a flat TV screen on its end. On screen there seems to be a round lens or "eye". This panel "stares" into the car while the four frogmen [each holding a tube-like "green lantern"] walk about placing their devices here and there on the car. The beings looked very humanlike with slightly flattened faces. They seemed to be talking to one another without any audible sound. Then, they all left back to the craft; it brightened fiercely and shot away. Getting out of the car, the witness smelt a strange odor and felt a lot of remnant heat in the landing trace holes which he checked.

Yep, I've got THAT one surrounded.

Case "A": Aston-Clinton, UK. This was a lot simpler but has a small life lesson for a UFO researcher. The piece of paper involved here was a rudimentary fragment.

To start out I couldn't even tell what clipping on this piece of paper I was supposed to be looking at. Finally I found it and marked what seemed to be a CE2em case. The clip said Aylesworth and was marked 1960. It was the kind of thing you thought: #@*& with this, and tossed it. But in a moment of insanity I decided to look it up, as I had no reference to Aylesworth, UK 1960 in my files. Well, neither did my two super-references for such matters, UFO-DNA nor my "private" gift of a fantastic and obsessive case location catalog bequeathed me by old-time CUFOS associate Hal Haglund. With all those zeros facing you, you have two choices --- quit [wise] or plough on [foolish]. Not wanting to break with my established character, I ploughed on. Through much pulling of library books, turning of papers, and staring at internets, it finally arose that "Aylesworth" was called "Ivinghoe" by Flying Saucer Review, and "Aston-Clinton" by everybody else. And 1960 was 1962. So, light dawned. ... and I could actually read the fuller case in the literature. Well, it's a nice metallic disk/oval which seems to alter the speed of a car, with some dark squares around the rim and generating an obscuring mist. So who cares about the little fragmented clipping? Maybe I shouldn't. But this clipping indicates that the witness reported this immediately to the local police. This solidifies the credibility of this single witness case --- something not included in the FSR article, and something which alongside the investigators' report gives the case its believability. 

Case "I": The not-a-UFO case of Marlington, WV. This is a Bigfoot case with two appearances by Bigfoot, both times accompanied by an engine stoppage. If that is not weird enough, when the Bigfoot seemed to stop the engine its long hair was standing out as if it were affected by static electrical charge as in the old VanderGraff generator "party games" {the pretty girl gets her hair out and crackling a bit, and then zaps anyone who gets close enough to touch --- the static-carpet-on-a-dry-day magnified }. When our Bigfoot "dropped his hair", the car could start again. 

Now that's just ridiculous --- strange plus --- WAY Out Proctor. 

I've always wanted to avoid the so-called UFO/Bigfoot connection, but we had a fellow in Indiana named Don Worley who was an energetic believer and passionate field worker. He collected a couple dozen cases mainly from the midwest during the 1960s and even gave a report on this in the 1976 CUFOS {Invisible College} science symposium. I doubt that many of those guys were convinced, but over in the Land of OZ Mark Moravec was. He ended up with over seventy cases for his catalog above. But it still grates on me --- UFOs and Bigfoot --- NOT part of the core UFO phenomenon as I've seen it. A deliberate sideshow? A "Whole 'Nother Thing?". Folklore Tricksterism? 

Stan Gordon needs no convincing. Pennsylvania seems rife with ABSMs cozying up to flying objects. And an odd thing happened at the Skinwalker Ranch.

I was sitting with Colm Kelleher at lunch one day [at a meeting where both CUFOS and NIDS, among other folks, were present] and Colm wanted to talk about some of the things that had just been experienced at the Ranch. Below are some of the brief notes that I made.

It seems, as you can read more formally in the book, a lightform turned into a tunnel vortex in the air, and a large dark heavily-built "animal" crawled out of it. Holey Portals, Batman!

But, gee whiz that complicates things. It brings me back to that "crazy" old Curtis Gibson guy from the last post --- ETs he said [with authority] just abandon their "pets" here.

No. I'm not buying it. ... and No, I'm not susceptible to hypnosis, so don't even try it.

Peace, friends --- your bedroom is NOT the Skinwalker Ranch, so relax.

1959 UFO News from the 1947 Mountain

More CE2s from Jan Aldrich's stack. 

Although almost any CE2 UFO encounter is interesting,  a few of these seem [to me] more so. 

Freeport, TX: August of 1959.

Four persons, three young women and one young man [who was engaged to one of the girls] were driving to an outdoor swimming area at 9:30pm. A bright object neared their car and the engine stalled and the headlights went out. Two smaller lights which seemed not to be parts of the bigger object, flew ahead and circled over the road, going on to seemingly land in a wooded area. The bigger object followed them. The big object was extremely bright and constantly changing colors. The guy wanted to stay and watch, but the girls objected. The car was restarted and they went on to the swimming area [a beach spot called The Duchess, which closed at around 11pm]. 

Returning around midnight, the UFOs were still there in place. This time the guy voluntarily stopped the car and got out with the intention of investigating. As he began to walk, the big object brightened considerably and the two small lights appeared. The UFO began generating a penetrating low humming noise. The guy was thoroughly scared and ran back to the car, where the girls were hysterical. No conversation was needed and they drove off as fast as the car would take them. 

Although newspaper stories differ on what happened next, it seems that the witnesses reported their experience promptly to the police, and returned to the scene, whereupon the UFO was gone. The report says, however, that there were two other witnesses to such an object flying in that vicinity that evening. APRO ultimately interviewed in this case. 

The event is interesting not only for the "electromagnetic" vehicle interference effects, but because it seems to include a direct response to a behavior by one of the witnesses. ... and it is a multiply witnessed case reported to authority. 

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Cumberland, MD: October of 1959.

This encounter was reported by a New York newspaper columnist who was a good friend of the witnesses [three in number]. They were driving from NYC down to Maryland, had their vacation and were driving back early the following Sunday evening just after dark. The witnesses were an engaged couple and the older brother of the to-be groom. Upwards and just to the right ahead appeared a circular, metallic disk, hovering and emitting an energetic [like a "mercury arc"] bluish-green light around the edges of its ring. The driver slammed to a stop. 

At that moment, the disk dropped down to about fifty feet altitude. It then "side-stepped" to align itself directly in front on the highway. It hovered precisely in place --- no motion and making a slight humming sound. The brothers decided to get out to investigate. As they reached for their door handles, the car shut down --- no engine, no headlights, no radio. The young woman said: "I think that you should stay here with me ... please." The guys thought that this was wise and stayed put. 

When they settled back, the UFO seemed to turn 90degrees, tilt, and whisk away upwards. Just as it was entering the cloud layer, the car's lights and radio came back on. The driver was then able to re-start the car and drive the rest of the way back home. 

This seems to be another case of a "display" of the UFO for a limited set of witnesses --- note that for the duration of the event, no other car appeared on the road. The UFO also, as in the previous case, seemed to respond to the witnesses' intentions. The case has credibility due to the personal nature of the relationship of the witnesses and the reporter. 

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Alvin, TX: November of 1959:

A driver of a gasoline tanker truck was going from Corpus Christi to Houston, when he noticed that he was being paced by an unidentified object very high in the sky. Normally, this would mean some kind of misidentification by an excited observer. But this thing did something nearly unheralded in the UFO literature which puts it FAR outside the norm of close encounters. 

Several times this object descended towards the road ahead of the tanker. When it got low, it seemed to "spray out" billows of fog across that localized area of highway. When the driver would tentatively enter these fog patches, and if the UFO lowered over his truck, his truck would shut down. These delays ultimately made him six hours late for his arrival in Houston. Though not clearly stated in the text, apparently the UFO would regain height, the fog would dissipate, and he could get going again. 

The last vehicle stoppage occurred just outside of Alvin, TX, and this time the truck would not restart. The only thing to do was to stop a passing vehicle and ask the driver to inform the police in Alvin [The Chief thought it high humor that a gasoline truck was stranded, assuming it was out-of-gas... the part of the message naming a UFO as the culprit also evoked rolling eyes.] 

Ultimately the tanker was towed to town [a high-up "balloon-like object" being still seeable when the Chief and the tow-truck arrived.] A mechanic from Houston HQ arrived soon also, to pronounce the tanker now ready to go with no perceivable problems. 

The credibility of the case isn't as strong as the previous two, but the driver had reported his saga to more than one police department along the trip. The strangeness is high. It is a "stalker" case supreme, and the mist production is rare --- see the paralysis and involuntary arm movement case of Leominster, MA, and the Aveley, UK saga for other examples. 

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Between Roswell and Corona, NM {in air}: August of 1959.

This is a particularly intriguing thing since it involves effects on compasses. 

A pilot flying [unfortunately] alone between Hobbs and Albuquerque, NM noticed that his "Magnesyn" {electric} compass was revolving in full 360degree motions at about five second sweeps. The plane was staying on course, but he noted that his other compass, a standard magnetic compass, was crazily gyrating. 

Now he saw three elliptical objects approaching. These gray slightly-fuzzy-looking disks passed in front of him at a distance of about 150-200 yards, and proceeded to circle his plane. As they circled, the Magnesyn compass kept pace with them, always pointing towards the objects. The bogies made two and a quarter circuits then broke off and flew away to the rear. Both compasses then settled down.

Going into Albuquerque he reported the encounter. The tower told him not to land there but to proceed instead to Holloman AFB nearby. Upon landing at Holloman, Goldsberry was interviewed by the base UFOB officer, a major, for two hours. He was told to keep quiet about the experience [which he did for 6 years] and that if he got ill to report to hospital right away, inferring that radiation exposure could be involved. 

What I think that I know and maybe others have not connected with this, is that in 1958 two ladies had a close encounter with a UFO at Alcalde, NM and were extensively examined [at the Air Force's insistence] at the Lovelace Clinic in Albuquerque for radiation effects. The investigating officers here may have been from Kirtland rather than Holloman, but both bases were heavily involved with UFO phenomena and investigations in that era. 

The big phenomenological thing here is the compass effect, and the difference between the compasses. It's another tribute to Air Force incompetence that this case wasn't pursued with a second-level [laboratory] investigation to deduce the type of force needed to create the different instrument responses. 

With an eye to perhaps publishing a little UFO research [which seems not to have happened to any extent], someone on the west coast collected the Compass Effect cases seen in the not-overly-helpful listing above [I tried to locate just which cases these were and succeeded in only a little over half of them --- if any of you folks have a list I'd like to see it.] A rather pretty graph was created, and it, as usual, shows the notorious drop-off of CE2 cases worldwide c.1980. 

Oh, those uncooperative UFOs!! 

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{Last one}, near Proberta, CA: December of 1959.

Although this case IS a CE2e effects case, I prefer to list it as a CE2physiological event. 

A single male was driving to work in his truck at 5:45am [his shift started at 6.] His radio began making a snapping noise. Then his lights began to dim. He stopped the truck and got out to look at the headlights. As he glanced about, he saw a large bright green crescent [concave side upwards] following behind him about 60 feet off the road. This scared the heck out of him and he simultaneously noticed that his clothes were close to soaking wet --- he seemed to think that this was a UFO effect, not "just" his system's shock from fright. This was because his outer clothes were moist too. 

The big deal physiologically was that he felt great pressure to his guts "as if he was being crushed inside". He also felt as if the object was "drawing him up" towards it. Who knows whether all this was produced by his terror or whether the UFO had "forces" associated with it which directly acted upon him? 

He went for his gun [a rifle] in the truck. As he did, he clumsily smashed into his rearview mirror and sent himself reeling. When he got back up the object had gone. Looking out the opposite window, he saw the object rapidly flying towards the Sierra foothills. It showed no trail exhaust as it went. 

Trying to concentrate on what he'd just experienced, he pictured the object hanging there over the road, gently rocking side to side. It was colored a deep vividly penetrating bluish green. There was no noise at all, and no cars on the road throughout the event --- something very odd for that road. The witness said that this had never been true before or since. When the object left, the headlights came back on. He resumed his trip but at no more than 200 yards smelt rubber burning. Stopping again, all his battery caps had blown and the battery was bulging out of shape. The generator was destroyed, the wires and armature melted together. Only a short distance from work, his truck was able to limp the rest of the way.

he reported his story to the night foreman, who noticed that the driver's clothes were damp. Later on his shift, a fellow worker came to him to say that his new radio had gone dead at 5:45am that morning and came back on 5 minutes later. He lived within a mile of the encounter. 

The sad thing about this story is that there are no other persons who were involved who remembered much nine years later when NICAP was made aware of the case and went out to interview. Only the wife remembered how scared her husband was as he retold his tale to her. 

So, although the strangeness of the case is high, the credibility factor is mediocre. There's no reason in the investigation to suggest that the witness was a bad guy or incompetent, just that there is little corroborating information. Still, the "pulling up" sensation, the soundless car-less OZ factor, alongside the CE2p and CE2e effects make the case worth keeping. 

So, here are some of today's culprits. Once again there is no sense that extraterrestrials want to buy identical looking models to buzz lesser technology planets in.

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Till next time folks. Who knows whether it will be back to the Cryptodumps or more wrestling with the Close Encounters.... 

..... or something REALLY unbelievable.

Peace and Happy Joyful Beltane.

1958 UFO News from the 1947 Mountain

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS of the SECOND KIND.

Another day in the life of a too-old UFOlogist ... a package came in the mail the other day. It was a large stack of pages, all pertaining to UFO Close Encounters. I was happy to get them, but forgot what I was supposed to do with them. My best guess is: look at them and see if any useful thought pops into your head about them. I can't promise "useful", but maybe something will happen

Most of the following is the fault of these two guys: Loren Gross on the left, and Jan Aldrich to his right. Jan had been collecting stacks of paper on Close Encounters of the Second Kind [for usages unknown] and had extracted most of Loren's history series of monographs for the bulk of the cases. Knowing a sucker when he sees one, Jan asked me if I'd like him to ship me the pile. Not having the sense of a wombat, I said "Sure. Send them over." So now what? 

The stack is about a half a foot high and, due to Jan's diligence, is in date order. The first year is 1958, the year following the great flap of 57, which featured a flurry of electromagnetic vehicle interference cases. Maybe we'll see if such UFOlogical weirdness persisted, despite conventional UFO history saying that there was a severe drop-off. 

What I'm going to do [to save time, sanity, and the possibility of even getting through the stack] is to begin at least going year by year and we can see what we may see. So: 1958.

This is what we have in this pile for 1958: 23 cases, all but one of which I read as a CE2, and all but two of which have a CE2 E&M component. The one CE2 which does not have a CE2 E&M aspect to it is Snag, Yukon --- and it provides the opening picture for the blog entry today. It is a case where one of the two witnesses decided to fire away at the UFO but his gun jammed. One can imagine an electromagnetic "freezing" of the gun parts so that it wouldn't fire, but that's wild guesswork by me. [and I don't believe it either]. [Why? Such an E&M effect would probably have magnetized the gunmetal, and we should have heard about that in the report.] 

Of the twenty one incidents having E&M effects, only eight of the cases appear in Mark Rodeghier's catalog of UFO vehicle interference events. Mark did a good job with that catalog, but if he only got about a third of what Loren/Jan were collecting, imagine how many CE2 E&M cases are really out there. [the Rodeghier catalog cases are marked with a small red circle near the number.] [only seventeen of the above cases are of interference with a VEHICLE in some way, though, so Mark got about half of them.] 

What intrigues me the most about case clusters such as this, though, is something we've seen on this blog before.

That is: there is no uniformity of type of UFO "craft" which parallels CE2 E&M events. Once again, this data seems to indicate that you cannot use what you see to predict anything about what the UFO is actually doing in physical effects cases. The visual appearance is like the ghostly head of the Mighty Wizard of OZ, but you're not Toto-enough to rip away the curtain to see what the show is really about. 

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AN ADDENDUM FROM THE OTHER DAY: 

We were having difficulty coming up with any documentation about a 1954 Germany CE3, until the ever-vigilant Tooth Fairy dropped a reference to Jimmy Guieu's book into my lap. Now the even-more-vigilant Rob Swiatek has discovered that NICAP and Richard Hall in very early days knew about the case. We know that the Boss, Don Keyhoe didn't like the idea of little men from saucers, but one wonders if the young Dick Hall was wavering on this conservative NICAP stance even before Ted Bloecher and Isabel Davis joined NICAPs staff. We know that Dick at least had the fun of drawing his rendition of the aliens on his record card. 

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So, what would these two guys think about all this? 

MDS: Yo, Carl! What do you think? 

Carl: Don't know, Mike. Are we on camera?

MDS: Think so. Better smile.

Carl: Yeh. That's all they'll get for today. 

Guess we'll never know what brilliant thoughts they had. [hint: it was lunchtime]. 

Peace.