Reports of Unidentified Flying Object – Part 1: The Quiet Of Dusk . . .
As we close out the decade of the eighties, new public interest in UFOs, it seems, is surging. Some of it is probably the trickle-down from new books on the market, but for the most part new and old researchers alike are being spurred by recent revelations of official cover-up amid some sobering reports of human encounters of the first, second, and third kind.
Perhaps already an established fact is the climactic close encounter of the fourth kind: contact with an alien race.
Because of rumors contending that a covert human-alien relationship has been in operation and, of late, more rumors that tell of a ruptured “alliance, ” we must not only pause and wonder about the magnitude of a colossal cover up but also the implications of an eventual open contact even if it were on terms of peaceful coexistence. Any other alternative staggers the imagination! But getting down to Earth, as we once knew it, we must also pause and ask in all seriousness: where is the proof that alien spacecraft exist or, for that matter, that there is a cover-up?
A seemingly stupid question, when we hear so many lurid tales about abductions, alien underground installations, genetic manipulation, animal and human mutilations, of American and Russian satellites exploding in space, of alien artifacts on the Moon and Mars, of dire predictions of the world’s end and, yes, to a lesser degree, UFO crash/retrievals. Once a blockbuster to research in the late seventies and early eighties, a crash story in 1988 was no longer big ufological news.
As I weigh all the reports, or rumors, mindful of mis/disinfonnation, I still maintain that it is in C/R re search that we may find our elusive proof. Once the hard ware and the crews, cadaverous or alive, are forced into public view, then we may find credibility for some of the other postulations, and be in a better position to espouse endless hypotheses.
Since presenting my paper, The Fatal Encounter at Ft. Dix-McGuire: A Case Study, at the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Symposium, St. Louis, in 1985, and pursuing some leads in that case to little consequence, I have remained relatively quiet on the literary front. New C/R reports have surfaced from time to time since 1985 , but most were secondhand or of the “Cheshire Cat” variety, providing scant information. What I had, with a few exceptions, were not up to Roswell caliber, and these could wait until . . . August and September of 1988.
Then, in the quiet of dusk, the valley of my research suddenly hit a peak. As Richard Hall, author of Uninvited Guests, commented, the “thermostat” seems to have been turned up (by official operators). During this time ten new sources emerged, each promising that useful information about UFO crash/retrievals would soon follow.
By the end of November most promises were fulfilled. Some were firsthand reports, others secondhand, but more importantly, some provided new back-up information for cases cited in my previously published status reports. Most rewarding was the timely emergence of persons serving in covert positions with substantial information in key areas of my work. Reflecting back, I see in them parallels to the medical sources who surfaced in 1978 and shared graphic descriptive anatomical details of the alien for release in Status Report II: The UFO Crash/Retrieval Syndrome. As a matter of record, this prototype information remains to this day analogous to most reports of alien encounters and is much like the computerized rendition shown in October 1988 on the TV documentary, UFO Cover-Up ? Live.
Proof? Of course not. Getting close to it? Perhaps. And, yes, I am aware of the adroit arts of disinformation. While I see no evidence of devious game-playing in my current input, nor in some of the material received in the later seventies and early eighties, I am aware of another recent suspect annoyance, where my name was in blatant public view in a tabloid, the Weekly World News. In its September 20, 1988 issue I was headlined as an “expert” having the inside scoop on an alleged alien underground facility in Dulce, New Mexico. Bunkum! The fact is, I have no such scoop, although I have heard the rumors about Dulce as well as the one in Nevada, and others.
Alert to the risk of tabloid exploitation and official machinations that try to maintain secrecy, those handling a sensitive subject like crash/retrievals must also expect the unexpected from even “friendly” quarters. And, most often unexpectedly, from out of the rank-and-file of re search, comes the sudden strike of a cobra or a “loop” of such snakes-in-the-grass who try to take one’s work and credibility to task and make a big stinking mess of it. The reasons may be many. Is it simply arrogance, a thirst for fame or power, or is it the work of the orchestrators who pick and choose their lackeys? Whatever the reasons, I have felt their sting since I presented my first paper, Retrievals of the Third Kind, at the MUFON Symposium in Dayton, Ohio, in 1978. While most of these early adversaries have faded away, little loops persist who employ subtler ways to undermine my work.
Haunting me still is a remark by a loop kingpin averring that all my case histories, published in my series of status reports, were “fairy tales,” thus of no substance. Drawn into his loop is a pundit, a prominent writer in the UFO media who, having belittled my work since 1978, has worked well into the scheme. In later years, through his editorial controls, whenever C/R was an issue, my work was simply snubbed. More recently, yet another in the loop told a mutual correspondent that my investigations have no depth and that I am a good subject for disinformation.
Sad to say, these loopers have obviously not done much “investigation in depth” about my modus operandi, nor have they taken into consideration the lack of funds at my disposal to follow up hundreds of leads, coast-to-coast. Also, it is beyond my comprehension how some of my contemporaries can entertain the notion that I have gullibly accepted as valid, or bona fide, every item of C/R material published in my papers. For the record, the purpose of my status reports is to draw in new sources with new information that could either strengthen a case or give reason for dropping it in the circular file.
It is true that some of the best-made plans go awry and true that some entries in my monographs have obvious weaknesses and that some, based on new information, have become questionable. An example is Case A-2, Status Re port Ill. However, the mainstream material from early sources remains solid. One that I thought deserved a full investigation was the Ft. Dix-McGuire case, which has become stronger as a result of new information from new sources. Someday, perhaps, I may write a special paper updating the status quo of my published case histories.
While the mid to late eighties period did not yield any substantial C/R case histories worthy of a monograph, except the Ft. Dix-McGuire affair, it was not devoid of high points .
The Pentagon, 1952
While attending the MUFON Symposium in St. Louis in 1985, Raymond Jordan, a MUFON investigator, gave me a confidential lead to follow up involving a lady who had worked at the Pentagon in 1952 who, he said, had seen an ” alien body “pickled” in a glass tank in an “Off Limits” room. By mistake, she had entered the room and was promptly nabbed and forced to sign papers swearing her to secrecy.
When I reached the lady, who was still employed by a government office, she said, “I know what you’re talking about, ” then added, “but I can’t talk. ” I suggested that she communicate by other means, to which she replied, “No. I don’t want to talk about it at all . “
Recovered Disk, 1963
Thanks to Michael Johnstone, a California researcher who did some good spadework, it was arranged for me to talk with a former marine who claimed that in 1963 he had stood guard at an undisclosed military base which houses a “disk-shaped vehicle with ovoid cross-section, 40 feet across and 13 feet thick at the center. “
A more detailed description appears in my article, ”The Chase for Proof in a Squirrel’s Cage, ” published in the British book, UFOs 1947-1987 (Fortean Tomes, London 1987) . The marine, who signed a security oath , said that he had guarded the premises for two weeks while a technical crew, speaking in code, tried every known means to gain entry into the craft, including a laser device. Once, he said, he observed that it deflected off the curved side of the craft into the rafters, causing some damage. “The public should know the truth about UFOs, ” the ex-marine told me. I felt that he knew more than he had cautiously related, but he refused to disclose the name of the base.
McClelland AFB, 1973
Former military sources with information about witnessing a special movie showing deceased alien bodies sur faced in the late seventies. These were published in my Status Report II (see cases A-4 and A-9). The viewing of the film was always behind closed doors and the viewers were few. Then in 1985 Chris Coffey, of Cincinnati, who was a close friend of astronaut Ellison Onizuka, revealed to me that she had asked him about his interest in UFOs when they met after one of his visits to Wright-Patterson AFB. Onizuka admitted that he kept an open mind on the subject and added that his curiosity was aroused when he and a select group of Air Force pilots at McClelland AFB in 1973 were shown a black-and-white movie film featuring “alien bodies on a slab. ” In his state of shock, he said he remembered saying aloud, “Oh, my God! “
Chris, knowing my work in C/R, had arranged for me to meet Onizuka to discuss UFOs after his scheduled flight on the space shuttle Challenger. As it turned out, fate intervened tragically when the shuttle exploded.
Mexico, 1948/49
With the confusion among researchers over the number, locations, and dates of several alleged UFO crashes on the Texan border with Mexico-and in Mexico-Tom Deuley, who heads the MUFON team in Texas, wrote to me in February 1988 saying that his group had been challenged to look into the Ellndio-Guerrero case that is briefly mentioned in the Majestic- 12 document. Could I give any de tails, or rumors, beyond what I had already published? he wanted to know.
I responded that in recently sorting some old correspondence I had found a letter dated March 1985 on which I had noted ”Follow Up. ” I noted also that I had tried to reach the sender, seeking more information, but got no reply. So I tried again in January 1988. Fortunately, this time I was able to reach the son-in-law of the source. Co operatively, he gave me the phone number-Mr. JA, in California. Having a friendly chat with JA, I found no reason to question his sincerity. He was no UFO buff, having no knowledge of current affairs. According to JA, he was aboard the USS McKinley, car go class, the commandship for amphibious operations, docked at San Diego, with many admirals aboard, when the incident took place. His job: messenger. The date: late 1948 or early 1949. It was winter and he remembers a quick cruise to Alaska in between those years.
JA was on deck when he learned from the top brass that a small task force was assembled and ordered to go to a certain location (unknown to him) in Mexico to retrieve a crashed “flying saucer. ” They departed by vehicle, but he was not certain if they drove to the site or used other means to reach what was described as a ”remote region of Mexican desert. “
The task force was gone for several days and when they returned, JA said, everything was hushed up. He did, however, hear one of the officers on the mission say that they recovered some dead bodies but some had managed to get away. “They were able to move at great speed,” he recalls the officer saying. JA never heard more about the saucer or the bodies, but he did remember reading a brief item in a San Diego newspaper about the crash in Mexico.
St. Geniez, France, 1972
Something unidentified crashed into the rocky slopes of a mountain in the township of St. Geniez, France, on March 18, 1972. According to witnesses it caused brush fires over a forty-acre area. Significantly the incident occurred during a flap of UFO reports in that south-eastern part of France.
The story was originally obtained by researcher Olivier Rieffel in 1986, during a meeting with Leon Visse, the person identified in Dr. Jean Gille’s papers published in Status Report III (see Case B-8). With Visse’s disclosure that the crash occurred near the Durance River, Rieffel informed his colleague Jean Sider, who found in his records that the time and place coincided with a reported crash of a “space object” into a mountain near the town of Sisteron. According to most witnesses , the UFO was described as a “red ball” of fire and one informed source, who prefers anonymity, stated that it was “red-orange, shaped like a disk. “
While the investigations continued, through the well coordinated teamwork of Sider and Rieffel, extensive records of their findings were sent to me for appraisal in April 1988. Included was a fragment from the site of a ceramic like substance appearing to have been baked by intense heat, and three pages of first-hand reports from witnesses who saw the descending red object, among them fanners in the region, the son of a mayor, a newspaper reporter on the scene, and members of the police and fire departments. Of note was an astronomer whose investigations ruled out a meteorite and meteorological and atmospheric phenomena.
“The facts of the case remain classified in the files of the military and the Gendarmerie Nationale archives, ” Sider reported, and added, “Confirming all the main de tails was a member of an intelligence agency who stated that ‘something’ was received by the Gendarmerie and shipped in a truck to a location near Paris. “
Sider emphasized that his report was not conclusive and that investigations were still in progress. Listed were many more names of people directly involved, who he hoped to trace and interview.
Kentucky, 1987
Far more spectacular, but affording far less supportive evidence than the St. Geniez incident, is the first-hand report from a retired medical doctor who alleges that he accidentally found the skeletal remains of two humanoids, possibly of alien origin, on his farm in western Kentucky in March 1987.
When informed of the story, I was eventually able to reach the doctor through his friend Bill Boshears, who first aired it on his radio talk show in Cincinnati. Having been warned to “shut up” since the show, the doctor nonetheless entrusted me with his name, but would not reveal the location of his farm nor give me his unlisted phone number. He also advised that some of the details he shared with me about the Air Force investigation should be kept confidential .
The doctor, when he talked with me on his friend’s phone, was cordial but brief. He said that it was during a routine evening stroll on his farm property of 400 acres that he discovered the extraordinary evidence. Next to a burned-out circle, about four feet in diameter, in an open, grassy field, he found the skeletons of two humanoid entities about four feet apart. Without a trace of clothing, some of the bones showed residual ligament, he said, with evidence that predators had been at work. As a doctor, he was certain that the bones were not of animal origin and on closer examination he was shocked, he said, to find that the structure was bipedal, about four feet tall , with a large skull and cat-like jaw, and a barer l-like rib cage with long arms and three fingers.
The doctor’s next move was to call the sheriff, who immediately called the Air Force. The next morning at sun rise, the doctor was surprised to see three helicopters land in a clearing and many people, some in uniform, being deployed over a wide area. Greeting him was a colonel (name known to me) who cordially introduced himself and stated his mission: remove the bones and undersoil , test and remove the burned circular soil, and comb the area for any other evidence. Later in the day fresh soil was filled in the excavated areas, and the doctor was told that the soil in the circle had been baked at 3,000 degrees.
When asked about the time factor of body decomposition (allowing for predators), the doctor estimated that, according to cursory examination, the aliens had been ex posed for less than a hundred days .
Reminding me that “they put the fear of God” in him after his trip to a military base for further interrogation-and where he was shown photos of other alien corpses-the doctor expressed interest in my research, so I suggested that we lunch together soon. He agreed, but never called.
Ohio, 1987
News of a UFO crash on a farm in Brown County, south western Ohio, in the spring of 1987, looked promising at the outset, but as I tried to put the pieces of raw information into some order to make the next move, mainly to reach the principal source, I ran into every conceivable roadblock. A year later, after “giving up, ” information surfaced from a new source to give credence that some thing did crash at the farm site. Whatever happened, I could now see through some of the bizarre diversions that blocked me from contacting the farmer who claimed that he saw the crashed disk, three small female non-human bodies strewn in the field and, above all, had some un usual metallic fragments from the debris to prove it.
My initial informant was JD, a gemologist and a per severing UFO buff who, in getting many packages by United Parcel Service, learned from the driver on her rural route that the farmer “down the road” had pieces of metal from a UFO that had crashed on his property. When JD tried to learn the farmer’s name and location, the driver became scared, and I was later told that to avoid the issue he even changed his route. Undaunted, JD then opted to go to the local police office near the site, hoping to locate the farmer. There she got the runaround and was advised by one officer to forget the matter. But according to JD, the officer later visited her home and for some unexplained reason gave her a photo of the farm property.
At this point, JD suddenly showed signs of confusion and fear, claiming that her house had been entered, that the photograph of the property had been taken, which she had used as a bookmark in a library book (by Major Key hoe) and that the book was found on the hood of her car in the garage. Next came word that she had been injured in a fall into a sewer hole between her house and the ga rage. The lid had been loosened, she said. Investigating, my son-in-law and I could find nothing abnormal in her manner of housekeeping, but we did begin to wonder about her going off the deep end, and if she had become obsessed to a degree of fantasy. Or was it a hoax, or a ploy of disinformation?
Time went by without further contact. I felt that some thing was amiss about the case. Concerned, I got in touch with a former Air Force intelligence officer who had the “right” connections, and asked if he could help throw light on the affair. Two days later he called back to relate that he had been in touch with the “right” person and was told that there had been “no significant UFO sightings in that area for the past year. ” He added that my informant would soon be visited by two investigators in an official capacity.
Several weeks later I received a surprise call from JD, who simply said, “I ‘m not supposed to talk with you, but here I am. ” She went on to explain that she had had two visitors who, on learning that she had no hidden metal artifacts, debunked the crash as well as my crash/retrieval research, and advised her in so many words that she should not contact me again.
Not long after that, JD called me again, admitting that she had met the fanner, had visited the farm, saw the newly added soil over the crash site and, moreover, gave me the farmer’s name, and had even arranged for him to visit me the following week. He never came, as expected, and when JD called a few days later she regretted to tell me that he had been moved, expenses paid, to Virginia. This, if true, I suppose, was his reward for being a good citizen, a real patriot.
In April 1988 a researcher, joined by a person knowledgeable of military intelligence operations, visited my home to discuss an abduction case. Inevitably, the conversation drifted to crash/retrievals and I mentioned the alleged crash in Brown County. “Oh, yes,” said my knowledgeable guest, “I heard that a jet crashed on a farmer’s property. ” She added, “It was in an inaccessible area and they had a hard time getting the wreckage out. “
A jet? Certainly there had been nothing in the news about a jet crashing the previous spring in that locality and, as we all know, airplane crashes, of any kind, always make news. Significantly, my guest also stated, “I heard from a good source that the government came in and bought the farm and moved the owner out of town. ”
Amen!
Much can be said about this case, pro and con. I have also omitted some details that might compromise the positions and activities of certain people involved.
https://scienceandspace.com/ufos/the-ufo-report-ufo-crash-retrievals-is-the-cover-up-lifting-part-2-to-the-burst-of-dawn/