Introduction

3-2-1…and…I'm back - a mere three and a half months since since my last appearance. After a lengthy slumber spent in my (stolen) Venusian hibernation pod, I emerge refreshed and reinvigorated - ready to face both January's inclement weather and matters extraterrestrial. Without further ado…

Today's entry takes us back down Mexico way, where an amiable pair of space brothers await. For the third time running I'm drawing heavily (if not exclusively) on Gordon Creighton's "The Humanoids of Latin America".¹

Art duties have (once again) been tackled by the wonderful "Q". I thank her.

Event

Creighton's account is drawn (according to his source list) from the piece "Mexican Taxi Driver Meets Saucer Crew?" (FSR, March/April 1959) by that old rogue Desmond Leslie. UFO enthusiasts will no doubt recognise Leslie as the Anglo-Irish co-author of Adamski's seminal Flying Saucers Have Landed. Fans of unscripted fisticuffs will probably know him better as the man who once punched the late Bernard Levin in the face live on TV.²

Note: When I say "the late Bernard Levin" I'm not trying to suggest that Leslie's hay-maker actually killed him. It's a safe bet that the two events were unrelated - given that Levin died some 31 years after the punch landed.

Anyway, back to Gordon Creighton:

At 6 o’clock one evening in mid-August of 1953 (between August 17 and 20), the 40-year-old Mexico taxicab driver Salvador Villanueva was underneath his broken-down vehicle on the main highway when he became aware of two pairs of legs in something like ‘seamless grey corduroy’ and, scrambling out, found two pleasant-looking men about 4 feet high clad in one-piece garments from neck to toe, with wide shiny perforated belts, metal collars round their necks, and small black shiny boxes on their backs. Under their arms they carried ‘helmets like those worn by pilots or by American football players’. Their small height was not too strange in Mexico, where many Indians are quite short, and he concluded that they were airmen, no doubt from some neighbouring Latin American republic.

One man spoke good Spanish, but in a peculiar manner, ‘stringing the words together’ in a strange accent, while the other evidently understood it but did not speak it. Both smiled sympathetically, they discussed his car and trivial matters, and when it began to rain they accepted his invitation to shelter with him in the vehicle.

During the night various casual remarks began to make Villanueva nervous, and finally came the statement: ‘We are not of this planet. We come from one far distant, but we know much about your world.’

At dawn he went with them to their craft in a clearing half a kilometre from the road and noticed that, as they crossed swampy terrain in which he sank deeply, the legs and feet of the little men remained clean. ‘When their feet touched the muddy pools, their belts glowed, and the mud sprang away as if repelled by some invisible force.’

The saucer, about 40 feet wide, resembled two shining soup plates, one reversed on top of the other. There were portholes in the shallow dome, the craft stood on three great metal spheres, and a faint hum was coming from it. A portion of the lower hull opened, forming a staircase with the supporting cables as handrails. The two little men went aboard, inviting Villanueva to follow, but he turned and ran to a distance, and then watched the craft rise slowly, in a kind of pendulum movement, ‘or like a falling leaf in reverse’, until at a few hundred feet, when it began to glow intensely, and then shot up vertically at staggering speed, with a faint swishing sound, and was at once out of sight.

Thoughts

The short stature and good humour of the duo call to mind Rosa Lotti's encounter a year later, while the discussion about cars and "trivial matters" has something of a Jean Hingley quality to it.

There's also a gem of a short play waiting to be written about Villanueva and the aliens' night spent chatting in his car. A confined space, Villanueva telling the little fellas the ins and out of the taxi business, one alien listening but saying nothing, the other nattering away in his "peculiar manner, 'stringing the words together'" etc.

The bare bones, "factual" account above just doesn't satisfy - leaving one wondering what the "casual remarks" that made Villanueva nervous actually were. Sheltering in such an intimate space is bound to forge a bond I suppose, making even the most normally circumspect being let its guard down (in the manner of an interplanetary Breakfast Club). One can certainly imagine comments like the following giving one the heebie-jeebies:

Your earth cars are interesting to us.

or…

Is this what you humans refer to as 'friendship'?

The visitors did, of course, choose to remove any ambiguity with the unequivocal "We are not of this planet. We come from one far distant, but we know much about your world" - perhaps after growing tired of Villanueva's failure to pick up on their many hints.

Mention should be made (before we wrap up) of their craft's movement. We're told that it rose slowly "in a kind of pendulum movement, 'or like a falling leaf in reverse'". The "falling leaf" metaphor, one frequently found in Ufological literature, has always fascinated me. It seems rather bizarre that so many reports of close encounters describe a motion that seems perfectly consistent with "car hub-cap on a piece of string" fakery!

P. S: If anyone out there (on earth or in space) enjoys the blog they might consider voting for it in the upcoming "Irish Blog Awards" (I guess "Best Specialist Blog" is probably the most appropriate category).

The voting form (detailing instructions and restrictions) can be found here. Nominations close at 9pm, this Friday, 18th of January.

If you're feeling extra-generous you might even consider www.fustar.info in "Pop Culture" or "Arts & Culture".

Transmission ends. I thank you.

Images

1. The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974), pgs. 90-91. [back]
2. An act of retaliation for Levin's review of (Leslie's then wife) Agnes Bernelle's stage show Savagery and Delight. [back]

Introduction

From last week's Triclops we move on to today's Monoclops, or Cyclops as pedants might choose to call it. Cycloptic beings have, of course, a long and distinguished mythical/otherworldly pedigree, so it should come as little surprise that they find themselves included in ufology's vast and colourful bestiary.

Top of the Cycloptic charts is nasty old Polyphemus - he who enjoyed snacking on the crew members of brave Odysseus/Ulysses. It was Ulysses who taught us of the dangers involved in antagonising an already irritable Cyclops - particularly when said Cyclops's father is (God o' the sea) Poseidon. Not content with thrusting a red-hot club of wood into Polyphemus' one good eye (annoying as that was), Ulysses decided to rub salt in the wound by shrieking the following from the deck of his ship (as he fled the Island of the Cyclopes):

Cyclops, if any one asks you who it was that put your eye out and spoiled your beauty, say it was the valiant warrior Ulysses, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca.¹

Oh dear. A scene straight out of that classic TV show - When Ithacan Kings get Hubristic…

While the Brazilian children involved in today's tale were not quite as reckless, they still didn't exactly greet their one-eyed visitors with open arms.

[My thanks (once again) go to 'Q' for creating the above groovy image for me.]

Event

As with the previous entry, we depend on Gordon Creighton's "The Humanoids of Latin America" to provide us with a fairly detailed version of the encounter:

At 7.50 p.m. on August 28, 1963, three boys who were in their garden in the residential suburb of Familia Sagrada, Belo Horizonte, saw a large transparent luminous sphere float down, with four entitles seated in it. One of these beings emerged and descended to the garden on two beams of brilliant light. He was a tall, slim man, about 2 metres in height, wearing a slightly inflated 'diver's suit' of some material that resembled brown leather, gauntlets, and high black boots. Upon his extremely round and totally bald head the man wore a large round trans­parent helmet surmounted by a circular object. He appeared to have no ears or nose, his mouth appeared to open in a strange manner, his complexion was a vivid red, and he had only one large brown eye, devoid of any eyebrow.

The man seemed about to touch one of the boys and the eldest boy (aged 12) tried shortly afterwards to throw a brick at the entity when it had its back towards him, but it veered round, shot an orange beam at him from a square lamp on its chest and 'paralysed' the boy's arm, so that he dropped the brick.

The luminous sphere described by the boys as the size of a large room, bore three tall antennae on the top. There were two other men inside it, identical with the one described, and a woman, who had fair hair drawn back in a sort of 'pony-tail' style. The boys only had a full view of the faces of the man who emerged and the one who operated the controls, and both, they say, had only one eye, and the other two appeared no different. All had the vivid red skin,

This case only became widely known in the summer of 1965. Since then, Professor Hiúlvio Brant Aleixo and other investi­gators have interviewed the boys and the father of two of them, Senhor Alcides Gualberto, have probed the case most deeply, and find no reason to believe that the boys are not telling the truth.²

Thoughts

Some classic narrative details here. The aliens show up, make a move/gesture that's interpreted as hostile (but very well may be intended as chummy), meet with resistance that they counteract with paralysis, and then (presumably) leave.

It all seems rather a lot of fuss for little end product. One can imagine them returning to their home planet (let's call it Cyclopsia) to file their report:

"Well…after very many of our light years our translucent sphere arrived on the Terran's home-world. We attempted to initiate contact with some juvenile Earthlings but met with some casual resistance. One of their number threw a brick at us. At this point we decided to abandon the experiment and set off home. Er…that's about it."

These visitors just don't seem to have any "follow through". The slightest (quite understandable) signs of defensiveness and they reach for the paralysing rays (before zooming off).

I was quite taken with the detail of the fair-haired woman who seemed to be sharing the "luminous sphere" with the Cycloptic entities. Fair-haired woman? Luminous sphere? Now where have I seen that before…

Addendum (25/09/07):

Thanks to "graylien" (see comments) for pointing out that Jacques Vallée has some additional details to offer in his 1988 volume Dimensions. I own the book in question but somehow completely missed the mention.

Vallée names the young chaps who witnessed the "Cyclopes" (see above) and also ups the strangeness ante by describing the peculiar movements of the chief alien protagonist:

He alighted in the garden and walked for twenty feet or so in an odd fashion: his back seemed stiff, his legs were open, and his arms outstretched. He swung his body from left to right as if trying to find his balance and then sat down on a rock.³

There may be a quite prosaic explanation for this curious lurching about of course. The journey from Cyclopsia was no doubt long and arduous, while a modestly-sized (and quite heavily-populated) transparent sphere is no place to do any serious stretching…particularly when you're 2 metres tall. Given the circumstances, I'd suggest that popping oneself down on the nearest rock (and, possibly, sneaking a quick Cyclopian smoke) seems a most sensible option.

Images

1. The Odyssey, Book IX. [back]
2. From The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974), p. 104. [back]
3. Vallée, Jacques, Dimensions (London: Sphere Books, 1988), p. 138. [back]

Introduction

While details about one-piece silver suits, enigmatic devices, interplanetary craft (etc) are often vividly recalled by those who claim to have encountered alien entities, nothing burns itself into a witness's memory banks quite like the alien eye. Whether these eyes are the oft-reported glowing red balls or inky black pools (reflecting the witness's gaze back upon itself), not many aspects of such encounters seem as memorable or unsettling.

As Bryan Appleyard succinctly puts it (in his entertaining Aliens: Why They Are Here) "When the eyes are wrong, everything is wrong".¹ Given that observation, the case I present today (beautifully illustrated by the mighty 'Q') might well be subtitled: Two eyes wrong, Three eyes wronger.

Event

Details on the incident are not particularly precise (Jacques Vallée, for instance, lists the witness's name as "Roberto Mievres" and not "Ricardo Mieres") but Gordon Creighton's account (in "The Humanoids of Latin America")² seems as good as any:

On July 27 or 28, 1962, Ricardo Mieres, a 17-year-old student at the Colegio Nacional de Paraná, was riding his motorcycle near Bajada Grande, 5 kilometres outside Paraná, when he encountered a very tall creature with a melon-shaped head, very long and almost white hair, and 'three eyes which stared fixedly, without blinking'. In his terror he tried to flee, but his engine had mysteriously gone dead. The creature came up and violently snatched his muffler from his neck. It then 'did an about-turn, like a robot', and walked off, leaving footprints in the sandy soil.

The motorcycle now functioned again, and the student rushed into town and gathered a party of other motorcyclists to hunt the 'robot', but they found only the footprints, and the muffler lying on the road. There were several witnesses who saw some­thing luminous fly over at great speed at the time.

Thoughts

Regular readers will notice many elements we've seen before (the theft of a personal object, engine malfunction, the "robot-like" behaviour and body language), but it's those "three eyes which stared fixedly" that remain the most potent of the story's images.

The aforementioned Bryan Appleyard would no doubt agree, for he devotes an entire chapter of his book to matters ocular:

The eyes of aliens are different. They can penetrate in novel, disturbing ways. But they cannot be penetrated precisely because they are alien. We cannot know what they are thinking because we do not know how they think. We can only know that they are looking. Typically, the alien eyes are large and black, lacking the colour and detail of human eyes. Frequently they reflect what they see, like mirrors. They haunt and baffle those who see them.³

This feeling of being penetrated, of being exposed, of being known (in the face of something unknowable) is one that can inspire not only dread (as with Ricardo Mieres) but also a sense of profound intimacy, even empathy (as articulated, for example, in Whitley Strieber's Communion).

It all depends, I suppose, on how comfortable one feels with the idea of being penetrated…

Images

1. Appleyard, Bryan, Aliens: Why They Are Here (London: Scribner, 2005), p. 201. [back]
2. From The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974), p. 103. [back]
3. Appleyard, p. 192. [back]

Introduction

Given the gap between the last post and this one some of you might have been wondering if I'd been abducted, or sent to sleep with the fishes by some zero tolerance Men in Black. The truth is rather more mundane. Since last we spoke I've been both sick and on holiday, though thankfully not at the same time. Anyway, enough about me and my terrestrial adventures, let’s move on (but not before thanking the talented and generous David Sankey for the use of the above image).

1947 is, of course, a significant (and celebrated) year in ufological circles with two seminal events occurring within a fortnight of each other: Kenneth Arnold's famous sighting of "flying saucers" near Mount Rainier, Washington (June 24th), and the crash of something that may or may not have been a weather balloon in Roswell, New Mexico (July 4th).

In these early moments of an explosive post-war wave one can see a modern "myth" beginning to assemble itself - pulling together its key motifs and images. A fascinating time then, and one we're going to revisit today by taking a look at one of the earliest modern¹ encounter narratives.

Appearance

The beings were "no more than 90 centimeters in height" and wore "dark blue overalls" made of a vaguely "translucent" material. Their heads were "bigger than the head of a normal man" and were covered by what looked like dark brown tight-fitting caps. Their noses were "straight…and very long", while each being had a mouth that was "a mere slit", which opened and closed at regular intervals "very much like the mouth of a fish". The eyes were "enormous and protruding" and there may have been horizontal or vertical pupils. Their skin was of an "earthy green" colour. The witness also noticed "eight fingers, four of them opposable to the others" on each (claw-like) hand.²

Event

On the morning of August 14, 1947 Professor R. L. Johannis ("a well known Italian painter and writer")³ was making his way up a short valley that "ends on the lower slope of the central mountain massif, the Carnico del Col Gentile".⁴ With him he had a small knapsack and a geologist's pick to assist him in the collection of some fossils (Johannis was a keen student of geology).

His encounter occurred as he followed a path (that wound through clumps of fir trees) by the banks of a dry stream:

As I emerged from one of these clumps of fir I noticed, on the rocky river bank, and at a distance of about 50 metres from me, a large lenticular object of vivid red colour. I am slightly short-sighted, and so I quickly put my glasses on. When I had arrived at a spot a few steps distant from the 'thing', I was able to establish the fact that it was a disc - seemingly of varnished metal like the metal of an ordinary toy - having the shape of a lens and a low central cupola with no apertures. At its tip a sort of shining metallic antenna, of telescopic form, was pro­truding, roughly similar to those we have on our present-day motor-cars.

(And here I must state straight away that I knew nothing whatever in those days of flying saucers and I do not think that the Italian newspapers had even started to talk about them.)

The object, some 10 metres wide, was embedded, to the extent of about a quarter of its length, in a great transverse cleft in the friable rock of the mountain side, and was at a height of about 6 metres above the bed of the stream.

Without more ado I decided that I would climb up there to it and see what it was, but first of all (and anybody else would have done the same) I looked round to see whether there was anybody about who - should the need arise - could help me.⁵

It was at this point that he noticed (about 50 metres from where he stood) a pair of "boys" on the edge of a grove of trees. He began walking toward them, shouting and pointing at the disc. When he got within 25 yards of the two figures he stopped, petrified:

The two 'boys' were dwarfs, the likes of which I had never seen nor even imagined. They were coming towards me slowly, with tiny strides, with their hands at their sides and their heads motionless. When they had come to a few paces from me, they halted. I had no strength left, I seemed to be paralysed, or to be dreaming. But I was still able to observe them in every detail. And those details have remained impressed upon me so indelibly that even now I could make a portrait or even a statue of those extraordinary beings. However I must confess that the dominating sentiment in me then was one of enormous astonishment com­bined with fear, as you will well understand.⁶

Johannis goes on to describe their appearance much as I have summarised above, before continuing the narrative:

I remained there in astonishment, for what seemed to me an interminably long time, gazing at the two extraordinary creatures. Only later was I able to calculate roughly how long it was. I think the silent confrontation lasted no more than two or three minutes. Then I raised my arm with the pick and waved it in their direction and then in the direction of the disc, and, in an agitated voice, I shouted and asked who they were, where they came from, and if I could be of any help to them. They wheeled round very quickly and I can't remember what I said after that, for things began to happen fast.

I now believe that the two beings had interpreted my precipitate gestures as being threatening to them. But I don't know for sure, and don't suppose I ever shall. What is certain is that one of them raised his right hand to his belt, and from the centre of the belt there came something that seemed as though it might be a thin puff of smoke. I now think it was a ray or something of the sort. Anyway, before I had time to move or do anything, I found myself laid out full length on the ground. My pick shot out of my hand, as though snatched by an invisible force.⁷

Johannis found himself "deprived of all strength" and unable to raise himself. As he watched, one of the beings bent down to pick up the tool, allowing Johannis to observe that its chest was quivering: "like a dog's chest when it pants after a long run".

After some "fantastic efforts" Johannis managed to force himself into a sitting position and watched as the two beings climbed slowly back up to the disc ("which was imbedded almost vertically in the rock").⁸

A few more minutes elapsed, and then the strange object shot straight out from the rock and rose into the air. A cascade of stones and earth fell down on to the bed of the river. And that was the only noise that broke the silence in that lonely spot. The stream, being at low water, was trickling silently over the pebbles.

The disc remained there stationary in the air, like an enormous suspended gong. I could distinctly see its sharply cut flange 4 or 5 metres from me, and for a moment I was seized with terror that it was going to come down and cut me in half like a worm.

I am not sure, but I think I shouted at the top of my voice. At any rate, I am certain that I made every effort to get up and es­cape. The result was that I kept falling back again, supine and racked with pain.

Meanwhile, the disc had tipped slightly away from its vertical position. Then it suddenly grew smaller, and vanished. Im­mediately afterwards, I was struck by a tremendous blast of wind (the air shock?), which rolled me over and over on the ground and filled my eyes with dust. I ended up against the stones in the river bed and remained there for I don't know how long. Finally I managed to get into a sitting position again and it was then that I looked at my wrist watch. It was 9.14.⁹

It was not till midday, however, that Johannis felt well enough to set off home - "My bones all felt as if they were broken and my legs were weak and trembling, as though after a fearful bout of drinking." It was then that he discovered (as is fairly common in such encounters) that the "visitors" had taken some souvenirs: the metal casing of his thermos flask, an aluminum fork and an aluminum can were all missing.

Aftermath

In a 1964 letter to Gianni Settimo (founder of the Centri Studi Clipeologici, Turin) Johannis reflects on the episode and mentions that a sketch he had done (of the beings) soon after the event was lost by the editorial office of the Italian weekly L'Europeo. The well-known image below was not sketched by him until the mid-60s, and thus is not (by his own admission) as faithful as the original.

As he puts it:

The sketches of the complete figures are to be considered as rough and approximate outlines and consequently of purely general value. Besides, I am at present inclined to believe the two pilots were nothing more than two "robots" whereas in 1947 I was convinced that I had met real and actual extra­terrestrial beings.¹⁰

Thoughts

Though occurring right at the birth of the modern "flying saucer" era, Johannis' account contains numerous themes that were to become commonplace throughout the years that followed: paralysis (caused by an enigmatic device), the theft of personal objects, the loss or misplacement of "evidence" (in this case, a sketch), a sense that the entities' behaviour was "robotic", feelings of powerlessness and terror etc.

The sense one always gets from such tales (and it should be noted that Johannis has written works of science fiction) is of industrious creatures being rudely interrupted by an unwanted passer-by. Then follows the usual induced paralysis (or other more hostile action), before the creatures hop into a waiting craft and make a speedy exit. Not only are these aliens not seeking humans out, they seem to treat human presence as (at best) a total nuisance. A far cry from those proctologist Greys¹¹ who never seem to leave us alone, invading our bedrooms to whisk us away for unmentionable tests.

The notion of such entities being little more than "biological robots" has been discussed here before but it remains an intriguing one. Perhaps one could (if one subscribes to the view that these entities really were/are extraterrestrials) see such a reading as evidence of communicative breakdown. Given the importance of body language as a means of communication, it's possible that physical signals from aliens would be…well…alien - i.e. extremely difficult to interpret or understand.

Whatever the case may be, there's now something quaint and charmingly "old-school" about the idea of humanoid robots. Do they even make regular appearances in encounter narratives any more or have they been consigned to a retro Sci-Fi dustbin? While robots appear to be the accepted way of the future as far as our own exploration of space is concerned, it's highly unlikely that NASA (et al) would seriously consider Professor Johannis' "little green men" as optimum models of high-tech efficiency.

A final mention should be made of the Professor's missing metal objects. Once again it's hard to avoid touching on those hoary old alien/fairy parallels, for (as anyone with a passing interest in folklore will tell you) it's well-known that "The Gentry" have a fear of metal (iron, in particular). Make of that what you will dear reader.

Images

1. i.e., Post-Kenneth Arnold [back]
2. Johannis, R. L. "I Saw a Flying Saucer" reproduced in The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974), pgs. 190-191. [back]
3. Creighton,Gordon "The Villa Santina Case" in The Humanoids p. 188. [back]
4. Johannis, p. 188. [back]
5. Ibid., pgs. 189-190 [back]
6. Ibid., p. 190 [back]
7. Ibid., pgs. 191-192. [back]
8. Ibid. [back]
9. Ibid., pgs. 192-193 [back]
10. Ibid., p. 198 [back]
11. Hat tip to "Copernicus" for coining this natty term. [back]

[A hearty Greetings Earthlings welcome to Graylien - the blog's very first guest poster. I hope he enjoys his stay and returns soon and often.]

Introduction

Celtic folklore is replete with tales of hunters who encounter otherworldly beings in enchanted forests. It was perhaps inevitable that this motif would later resurface in UFO folklore. One of the most vivid of such narratives was produced in October 1974 by a 41-year-old oil driller named Carl Higdon.

Event

Higdon's close encounter took place in the Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming. It began when he saw a group of five elk standing motionless in a clearing. He took aim at one with his rifle and fired. What happened next blatantly defied the laws of physics:

"The bullet left the gun's barrel noiselessly and in slow motion," he recalled. "It floated like a butterfly, finally falling to the ground about 50 feet from where I stood. All around me there was a painful silence - not a chirping bird or the rustling of leaves on nearby trees could be heard."

The eerie silence was broken by the sound of a twig snapping. Turning round, Higdon found himself confronted by a bow-legged "man-like" being wearing a tight black "wetsuit". "How ya doin'?" asked the being genially. "Pretty good, I guess," replied the astonished Higdon.

The stranger, who introduced himself as "Ausso", had a chinless face with small eyes and no visible ears. A pair of antennae poked out through his golden straw-like hair, and in place of hands he had pointed appendages. "Are you hungry?" he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he "floated" a packet of pills towards Higdon. "These are four-day pills," he explained. As if in a trance, Higdon obediently swallowed one and pocketed the rest.

It was then that he noticed a transparent cube-shaped object, 7 feet long and 5 feet wide, resting in the clearing. "Do you want to come along?" asked Ausso. Higdon shrugged his shoulders helplessly. Suddenly, he found himself sitting inside the cube. Like the TARDIS, it was much bigger on the inside than it appeared from the outside. The interior was roomy enough to contain Higdon, Ausso, a second humanoid, and a cage containing the five elk Higdon had seen earlier. ("We must have been shrunk - there's no other way!" he later surmised.)

Ausso placed a helmet "with a wire sticking out" over Higdon's head. Then he pointed his appendage at a control panel, causing a lever to move. Perhaps Higdon's subsequent experiences were merely illusions generated by the helmet, but it seemed to him that they were now in motion. Half-an-hour later, the craft arrived at Ausso's home planet, "163,000 light miles (sic) from Earth". It landed beside a tall tower festooned with multi-coloured flashing lights. When Higdon complained that the lights burned his eyes, Ausso retorted, "Your sun burns us too!"

Higdon noticed a small group of normal-looking humans standing near the tower. Then he suddenly found himself inside the building. Ausso led him into a "cubicle-type office" and placed him before an opaque "shield", which seemed to examine him. Then the alien escorted him back to the craft, saying, "We'll take you back since you're not any good for what we need".

The cube soon arrived back in the forest and hovered directly over Higdon's truck. For no apparent reason, Ausso pointed at the truck and made it disappear. Then he pointed at Higdon, causing the packet of "four-day pills" to float out of his pocket. Higdon suddenly found himself back on the ground, dazed and confused. He stumbled through the forest, unsure of who he was or where he was going. Eventually he found his truck, mired in mud, and radioed for help.

Higdon's rescuers reported that he seemed utterly delirious. At first, he did not even recognise his own wife among them. He was kept under observation in hospital until the next day. Fragmented memories of his close encounter gradually returned to him, later enhanced by sessions of hypnotic regression conducted by researcher Leo Sprinkle.

Aftermath

In evaluating Higdon's experience, it is perhaps best to begin at the end. Only three facts seem certain. Firstly, Higdon was found in a hysterical condition, suffering from exhaustion and amnesia. Secondly, his truck had somehow ended up stuck deep in mud, far from where he remembered parking it. Thirdly, while in hospital he repeatedly complained that his head hurt, although doctors could find no sign of physical injury. "The best way I can describe what I felt is to say it seemed as if someone had hit me over the head with a baseball bat," he later explained.

Much of the material recovered through hypnosis by Leo Sprinkle seems deeply suspect. The aliens, Sprinkle discovered, travelled using "magnetic force". They were visiting Earth in order to obtain animals and fish to breed on their planet. Unfortunately, our fish could not survive in their oceans, so they had to keep "coming back after them".

Higdon suspected that it was not just our animals that the aliens were breeding. He had, after all, seen a group of humans on their home planet. Perhaps they had only sent him back to Earth because they had discovered that he was unable to father children, having had a vasectomy. "I kind of sensed that they wanted young people," he told Sprinkle.

Thoughts

Alien breeding programmes and spacecraft that use magnetic forces have long been part and parcel of UFO folklore. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Higdon's story is an apparently minor detail that is rarely included in summaries of the case. All the while he was with the aliens, Higdon recalled, he only ever saw them from the front. "I was looking straight into their faces… [I] never looked at the side or back. There was just a direct front view - that's all I ever got".

It would be interesting to know whether Higdon had any Swedish ancestry. Swedish folklore tells us of a race of forest spirits called the Skogsra who are often encountered by hunters. Here is what Nancy Arrowsmith's A Field Guide to Little People has to say about them:

The males are shape changers… and can expand and shrink at will. Their true form is that of old men with wide hats, although they can appear as horned owls or come riding a storm or whirlwind… They have claws in place of fingernails and always keep their backs hidden. Anyone who manages to catch a glimpse of their backs will see either a long cow tail trailing out or will notice that they have no back - what should be solid flesh is instead a transparent hollow.

As well as using human males for breeding purposes, the Skogsra delight in leading them astray:

If they can make a man answer 'Yes' to one of their calls in the woods, he is in their power. They lead him astray for hours, forcing him through brambles and thorns, enticing him into bogs. If a man refuses to answer one of their calls, they can trap him in huge invisible nets from which he can only free himself at the sound of a church bell.

Arrowsmith tells us that hunters should always leave offerings for the Skogsra, and if possible "enter into a compact with them" over hunting rights. A sure way to attract the Skogsra's attention is to kill an animal that they consider theirs. Higdon - you will recall - encountered Ausso after shooting at a group of elk, which the alien subsequently bagged for himself.

Writing soon after the incident, Ufologist Timothy Green Beckley declared that Higdon's experience was "equal in importance to the famed case of Betty and Barney Hill". Today, the Higdon case is all but forgotten, while the Hill abduction continues to generate seemingly interminable debate. Why should this be so?

Perhaps Higdon's tale of visiting Ausso's home planet was too reminiscent of the fables told by the long-discredited contactees. Perhaps his revelation that aliens were travelling "163,000 light miles" to Earth in order to steal our fish was too reminiscent of bad science fiction. Or perhaps he was simply guilty of encountering the wrong sort of alien - spiky-haired blondes rather than little grey men. Nevertheless, for sheer richness of detail, Higdon's narrative remains one of the most compelling visions in the UFO canon - even if it has been relegated to the Apocrypha.

Sources:
1) Arrowsmith, Nancy, A Field Guide to the Little People (London: Macmillian, 1977).
2) Brookesmith, Peter, UFO! The Complete Sightings Catalogue (London: Blandford Press, 1995).
3) Green Beckley, Timothy, Strange Saga (USA: Global Communications, 2005).
4) http://www.ufoevidence.org/

Images

Introduction

For those ufologists who exhibit a desperate need for their field of inquiry to be taken seriously by (what one might call) "square" society, nothing gladdens the heart like a sober, educated (preferably titled) witness.

Take Mrs. Mary M. Starr (of Old Saybrook, Connecticut) for example - a holder of not one, but "two degrees from Yale University" as Coral Lorenzen (in "UFO Occupants in the United States") is only too happy to tell us.¹

Though Mrs. Starr appears to lack that magic (and fetishised) combination of letters - PhD - the mention of Yale is obviously supposed to be sufficiently dazzling and impressive. Someone, somewhere, has, I’m sure, created a graph that purports to show that how "increasing" education leads to decreasing fabulation (and, perhaps, vice versa).

Ho hum. The only people this sort of thing seems to impress are those who like books that a) list the author's credentials after his/her name (the longer the better), and, b) are illustrated with a studio photograph of the author in suit & tie (or equivalent).

All very earnest. All very "square". All deeply tedious and uninspiring.

Event

Mrs. Starr describes the encounter's early moments as follows:

"I went to bed early," she said, "about 10:00 o'clock. Some time between two and three in the morning, I was awakened by a bright light in my room. I looked out the window and there was what I first thought was a crippled airplane in my back garden. But when I got my eyes really open, I saw that it was a cigar-shaped object, brightly lit and with square portholes, hovering just above my clothesline. I could see men inside. . ."²

The story continues:

Through the 'windows' Mrs Starr saw two forms which passed one another, going in opposite directions. What appeared to be their right arms were upraised. Reminding her of stewards carrying trays, but no hands were visible. They wore a kind of jacket, their 'heads' were square or rectangular, of a reddish-orange colour, with what appeared to be a red bulb located at the middle of the 'head'. The feet were not visible. A third form entered from the left and Mrs Starr leaned forward in an attempt to see his face better, and at that point the portholes faded and the entire shell began to glow.³

It concludes:

From the top end closest to the witness there arose a kind of six-inch "antenna" that oscillated and sparkled. After five minutes of glowing steadily, the antenna was retracted and the craft began to move. It retraced its original path, gliding smoothly in the direction from which it had apparently arrived. It then made a very sharp right-angle turn, appearing oval in shape. The hull had turned a dull grayish-blue and small, circular lights now outlined the entire rim. The UFO dipped and undulated, following the contours of a small depression to the north of the witness' house, then tilted sharply and shot up into the sky at terrific speed, in total silence.⁴

Thoughts

While many aliens appear (to those witnessing) to behave in a vaguely "robot-like" manner, the beings Mrs. Starr saw hovering near her washing line seem explicitly robotic.

The suggestion is of automatons dashing hither and yon, busying themselves in obscure acts. Like many such sightings the "visitors" seem dynamic and industrious…but with all this energy being expended to no clear end.

Aimé Michel, in his speculative, free-wheeling piece "The Problems of Non-Contact",⁵ casually offers a possible explanation for such activity:

…the beings who are really responsible for the UFO phenomenon are never there, and nobody has seen them, ever. All that we see are robots (either biological or not…)⁶

Though these beings, Michel speculates, may simply be designed for specific tasks, the purpose of these tasks remains unknown (possibly even unknowable) to us.

Before I finish today's entry, a brief question should be asked about a common (though curious) aspect of UFO design. I speak of the humble "porthole" - a feature that (to me at least) has always seemed oddly quaint (and "Jules Verne-esque") given the supposed technological sophistication of the crafts. Do these portholes function to allow "us" to be observed and surveilled (by inscrutable and uncanny alien eyes), or are they there (instead) to permit us to see them?

Who's watching who?

Images

1. Lorenzen, Coral "UFO Occupants in the United States" in The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974), p. 157. [back]
2. NICAP - "Are There UFO Occupants?" [back]
3. Lorenzen, p. 158. [back]
4. NICAP - "Are There UFO Occupants?" [back]
5. Michel, Aimé "The Problems of Non-Contact" in The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974) [back]
6. Ibid., p. 250. [back]

Introduction

One doesn't always need a lengthy and detailed narrative for an encounter to grab one's attention - as (I think) today's GE entry demonstrates.

The only source for the story I've discovered is Jacques Valleé's Passport to Magonia - and I'm only aware of that through various online references to it (see ufoino for example). Annoyingly, the book itself remains out of print, and I've yet to track down a reasonably priced eBay copy (to place alongside Anatomy of a Phenomenon and Dimensions on my shelves).

On that note, if anybody out there ever fancies donating a relevant book to the GE library please feel extremely free. After the X-Files-inspired glut of the 90s, this decade has seen practically everything of interest go out of print. I'll reward you with a badge, or a gold star, or some such nonsense.

Moving on - the fabulously groovy image above comes courtesy of the mega-talented Mr. Bob Byrne (of old Dublin town), and is (I believe) the very first "artist's impression" of Bruno Senesi's terrifying encounter (a larger version can be viewed here).

I send kisses, sweets, and old-school Lego pieces in Bob's direction as small tokens of my big gratitude (even though he already asked for, and received, an original piece of art from my 5-year-old niece Hannah).

Event

Blink and you'll miss it - this is as much information as I could find "out there":

Bruno Senesi saw 2 shining objects emitting smoke land in a field. Out of them came small, red, monstrous beings that chased him. In a state of great excitement Senesi was brought to a hospital, where he tried to hide under a bed, screaming and trembling with terror.¹

Thoughts

Just like fairies (their close kin), the behaviour of aliens can often best (and generously) be described as erratic. Little more than a fortnight (and 100 kilometres or so) separate this encounter and that of Rosa Lotti, but in terms of alien amiability they're poles apart.

While Mrs. Lotti's visitors chuckled merrily before (fairly harmlessly) pinching one of her stockings and some of her carnations - Bruno's entities appear to have malevolently pursued him to the point where he was reduced to a gibbering wreck.

There's nowt as queer (nor as protean) as extraterrestrials.

Images

1. http://www.ufoinfo.com/ [back]

Introduction

I've just received (via eBay) a copy of Hilary Evans' 1984 volume Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors: A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma. Time has not permitted me to do more than dip into it yet - though (at first glance) it looks quite interesting and broad-ranging. Like most people presented with a previously unseen non-fiction book (I'd imagine), I went straight for the middle pages in search of illustrations. There, among "ghost" photographs and sketches of the BVM, I found the above - a wonderfully arresting and unsettling image created by an English teenager called "Glenda" (full name not stated).¹

Event

The most recent reference to Glenda and her visitor I've found is in Evans' own 2005 (Magonia Supplement) article "Beyond the UFO Horizon".² Here's what he had to say on that occasion:

In 1976 a 17-year old girl from Dagenham, near London, England, told investigators of a series of strange experiences culminating in a cigar-shaped UFO which followed her along a city street. She revealed that five years earlier she had come home from school one afternoon, gone upstairs to her room, only to be joined by a spacewoman who walked in through the closed door, sat beside her on her bed and talked with her for an hour or so. Ever since then, the spacewoman had been a sort of companion, counsellor and friend - generally unseen, but always felt.

A further detail or two can be found in Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors:

This entity was later to appear intermittently in Glenda's life - sometimes when awake, sometimes in dreams; neither malevolent nor benevolent, though seemingly concerned for Glenda's well-being. An elusive, enigmatic apparition.³

Thoughts

While Glenda's sketch of the entity unambiguously suggests "alien" - her description of its arrival, actions, and (apparent) concerns leads to the kind of "category blurring" so typical of many such experiences. The scenario of a young, (pre)teenage girl being visited by an enigmatic (but comforting) female figure clearly calls to mind certain famous Marian apparitions, while the notion of an ever-present counsellor/companion can't but make one think of "spirit guides" or "imaginary friends" (like Carl Jung's "Philemon").

The bedroom setting is also, of course, a staple of otherworldly experiences. It is, after all, something of a liminal place - a gateway (of sorts) between the waking and sleeping worlds. Little surprise then that ghostly visitors, religious apparitions, alien abductors, incubi (etc., etc.) all see it as a happy hunting (or haunting) ground.

I see that Evans mentions David Hufford's book The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions, a volume I've been meaning to buy/read for some time. I once used to experience some pretty vivid and terrifying sleep paralysis/night terror episodes myself (see comments section here), but got to a stage where I became aware I was actually asleep when they were happening. One practical observation confirmed for me that this was the case: I could "see" everything in the bedroom clearly when thus paralysed. Since I am very short-sighted, this shouldn't have been the case.⁴ I've often wondered whether myopic "alien abductees" have re-examined their own experiences in the same way.

None of this is meant to trivialise encounters with "bedroom invaders" of course. While I'm reluctant to view them as literally real, physical experiences, I'm happy to imagine that there very well may be something fundamentally human at play in all of this. What that is exactly, I don't know…but then this is a realm where very little is exact.

Images

1. "Glenda" may, of course, be pseudonymous. [back]
2. Magonia Supplement, No. 58, 10 August 2005. [back]
3. Evans, Hilary, Visions, Apparitions, Alien Visitors: A Comparative Study of the Entity Enigma (London: Book Club Associates, 1984), p.15. [back]
4. Obviously enough, I don't wear glasses or contact lenses in bed! [back]

Introduction

While "contactees" such as George Adamski and George Van Tassel¹ achieved considerable fame and notoriety as a result of their alleged encounters (channelled or actual) with benevolent space brothers, there are numerous examples of contactee "cults" that never quite got started - withering (sadly) on the vine. John Reeves' 1965 encounter with a "robot" near Brooksville, Florida (and his subsequent recovery of "extraterrestrial" sheets of paper) is a case in point.

Before getting on to the details of the incident I'd like to thank Embarr for her colourful and creative interpretation of Reeves' visitor. She's currently knee-deep in nappies, bottles and the rest so hopefully this little project proved a refreshing change of pace.

Appearance

Like much about the encounter, descriptions of the creature's appearance are rather vague and lacking in specifics (although after a later meeting with similar beings Reeves suggested it/they were "beautiful, slim, tall, with smooth skin and features similar to Orientals"). Most sources seem to agree that Reeves claimed (at least initially) to have seen a smallish (5 feet tall or so) humanoid that wore "a transparent, spherical helmet" as well as a tight, silvery, one-piece suit - an item of clothing that was once de rigeur for alien visitors.² The eyes were apparently "slanted" and widely-set, while the chin was pointed.³

Event

This description has been cobbled together from a number⁴ of⁵sources.⁶ I've found it hard to locate anything like a "definitive" account.

The date was March 2nd, 1965, and John Reeves (a 65 or 66 year old "former steelworker") had gone for a walk behind his house. The time was either mid-afternoon or 2 O'Clock in the morning, while the countryside in which he strolled may have been wooded or (possibly) "sandy" and hilly. As should be apparent from this brief scene-setting, there's no ready consensus on the specifics.

Billy J. Rachels takes up the story:

Just as he topped a sand dune he saw an amazing sight. Approximately 100 yards away was a disc-shaped object sitting on the ground with four stilt-like legs. Mr. Reeves described the object as a disc with a dome on top, a dull, silvery-gray color. He estimated the diameter at 40 feet, 8 to 9 feet at its thickest point, and the distance from the edge of the disc to the ground was approximately 3 1/2 feet.

He goes on:

As he approached the strange craft he noticed a figure about 25 feet from the saucer. He said it appeared to have a tight, luminous skin covering the entire body. Later, he thought it may have been a robot. The being turned suddenly around and started moving toward John, pulling from its side a small square object, similar to a camera. The being held the device at chin-level, then pushed a button that caused an extremely bright flash. Mr. Reeves attempted to run away, but tripped over a bush and lost his glasses. Lying on the ground, he watched the being as it picked up the glasses and gave them to him. (!) By this time, John was quite upset. As the being made its way back to the ship, it dropped two pieces of paper onto the ground, then entered the object via a slat-like stairway on the underside….The Saucer began rotating counterclockwise, slowly at first, then faster as it rose gradually and finally left the area at a high rate of speed.

Aftermath

Though the incident may not (at first glance) appear all that different from a dozen other contemporary cases, it's what happened next that makes it as memorable as it is. Over we go to Patrick Gross of ufologie.net:

Later, footprints were found at the landing site, and Reeves also discovered two pieces of tissue-like paper at the scene of the encounter which bore strange symbols of handwritten appearance, which he gave to US Air Force investigators at McDill Air Force Base and the Pentagon, who then said the paper-like stuff is common material and that they have partly decoded the message.

Jack Robinson of "Tampa Bay Sceptics" claims that he was given (by a "courier for NICAP")⁷ what was alleged to be one of these very pages (a week or so after the encounter) - and here's the script he saw:

His attempts to crack the code appear to have uncovered the following:

Planet Mars
Ston _ _ _ _
Are you coming home
soon We miss you
very much Why did
you stay away too long
(?) _ _ _ _ _ g _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

While some commentators point to the above translation as evidence of a playful hoax, the inevitable dark rumours about military interference seem to circulate. For those of a conspiracist bent it's probably not too hard to believe that "They" kept the "original" pages only to return this absurd one into the public domain - thereby ridiculing this and similar encounters. It's an old story.

For a description of how Mr. Reeves went from 65/66-year-old ex steelworker to budding alien contactee, we return to Billy Rachels (who met Reeves) of Alternate Perceptions:

Mr. Reeves would have more sightings and contacts with the Space People. His most outstanding took place on August 6, 1968, almost a full year before Neal [sic] Armstrong landed on the Moon. Responding to an unexplainable urge to go to the same part of the woods where he had encountered the saucer, he saw the same type of ship, and met with the Space People for several hours. He asked them all types of questions. He said they spoke English, as well as other languages. They told him their ships were made of a super strong substance, much stronger than steel but lightweight like aluminum. He went on to describe the beings as beautiful, slim, tall, with smooth skin and features similar to Orientals, but only slightly. They wore tight-fitting, one piece jumpsuits, and appeared to be in their 30s, though they claimed to be much older. The Space People asked him if he would like to take a trip to the Moon. John quickly said yes, as he felt he could trust them.

The entire trip (there and back) took a little over six hours. They landed on the dark side of the Moon, where he found their base enclosed in a large, transparent dome, under which he was able to walk comfortably in his short-sleeved shirt.

[…]

Needless to say, being the first Earthman on the Moon, Mr. Reeves' eyes almost popped out of his head. Realizing he would need proof of his trip, he reached down and scooped up some dark gray lunar dust into a medicine bottle, and picked up an approximately softball-size crystal. Later, when he talked to scientists about his trip, he told them that the Earth was more egg-shaped than round, and that you could see light clouds on the Moon. He did not show them the dust or rock because he feared they would take his samples and never return them.

Rachels adds:

I saw the dust. It was much finer than coal dust. I also looked in a book on all types of rocks and could not find anything that matched the crystal that John had let me hold, though he would not give me a sample. He kept the dust and the crystal under heavy lock and key. He would show them to almost no one, and I had to beg to see them. He also showed me a duplicate of a flag he had from their world, saying he had the real one in a safe deposit box (I never found out if that was true). The Space People told John that their home planet was called Moniheya. It was 32,000 miles around, with 30 countries, total population 15 billion.

Thoughts

Contactee narratives (and the publicity surrounding them) have always been considered something of a nuisance by earnest ufologists. In a field that has long struggled to be taken seriously, contactees (so the story goes) have done irreparable damage to ufology's fragile respectability with the "outrageous" nature of their claims. Personally, I don't have much time for that view…but then I'm not an earnest ufologist.⁸

One of the fascinating things about "contacteeism" is how "amateurish" and occasionally comical its associated trappings (see Van Tassel's "Integratron") and pieces of evidence (Adamski's films etc) are. Given their "homespun" charm, it's hard not to read them as the work of "folk artists" (and approaching them as such probably gets us closer to "the truth" than po-faced denunciation).

By all accounts, John Reeves too had more than a touch of folk artistry about him - having built both a "a full size wood model of the saucer in his back yard"⁹ and a monument (to the "Space People") under which he planned to be buried.¹⁰ Unlike more successful contactees whose works remain behind them, Reeves' saucer and monument appear to have been fallen foul of developers and the construction of a "mobile home park". A sad end for intriguing objects. If anyone has any images of these lost treasures please send them on to me.

A closing thought on hoaxing, and the question of why a man of pensionable age would suddenly decide to concoct such an improbable and ludicrous tale (if indeed he did concoct it).

It's often assumed by UFO/Alien researchers that when no attempt is made to profit financially from an alleged encounter, there's a greater chance that it's "authentic" (i.e. the event either happened or the witness genuinely believes that it did). This, it seems to me, is only partially true. While blatant attention-seeking and profiteering do point to probable con-artistry, the motivations behind a hoax are often (I would suggest) quite complex and unclear (even, perhaps, to the the hoaxer him/herself).

I'll leave it to John Rimmer to sum it up nicely (and bring this entry to a close):

It's an irony of ufology that one of the ways in which investigators dismiss the charge of hoax is by saying that the alleged perpetrator 'had nothing to gain by it', as though all hoaxes were only carried out after sober and careful analysis. This is far from the case. Most hoaxes seem to be carried out for strange, hidden motives, perhaps as a form of expression - artistic expression, even - of half-understood, half-concealed feelings and urges.¹¹

Images

1. Van Tassel, for example, had an "airport" at Giant Rock, California where he hosted the popular "Giant Rock Spacecraft Conventions" during the 50s and 60s. [back]
2. http://ufologie.net/htm/w.htm#weeki [back]
3. Randle, Kevin, & Russ Estes Faces of the Visitors: An Illustrated Reference to Alien Contact (New York: Fireside, 1997), p. 100. [back]
4. http://ufoexperiences.blogspot.com/ [back]
5. http://ufologie.net/htm/w.htm#weeki [back]
6. Randle & Estes, pgs. 100-101. [back]
7. National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. [back]
8. With a carefully-placed "PhD" tacked on to the end of my name. [back]
9. http://ufoexperiences.blogspot.com/ [back]
10. Randle & Estes, p. 102. [back]
11. Rimmer, John, "Levels of Mystification" in UFOs 1947-1987: The 40 Year Search for an Explanation, eds. Hilary Evans & John Spencer (London: Fortean Tomes, 1987), p. 345. [back]

Introduction

While Greys, Nordics, Reptoids (etc) have (over the years) hogged their fair share of headlines, an obscure, but significant, group of "visitors" has been operating somewhat under the radar (so to speak). I speak of none other than the "Hairy Dwarfs" (or "Dwarves" if you prefer) - ufology's¹ most hirsute mischief makers.

The above drawing was submitted by the mighty Mr. Simon McGarr of tuppencenworth.ie fame. Since it's a photograph of a sketch (no scanners involved) Simon worried that it might be "one piece of home spun charm too much" for me. I assured him that such a thing was not possible.

Appearance

There are quite a few descriptions of today's dwarfs floating around online and in print, but this one, from Kevin Randle, seems as good as any:

The creatures were described as about 3 feet tall and covered with stiff, bristly hair. They appeared to be extremely light, weighing as little as 35 pounds. The hands had retractable claws. The bodies were extremely hard.²

Randle doesn't make any mention of the creatures' eyes - an unusual omission given that "uncanny" eyes are some of the most frequently commented upon alien features (though our old friends "glowing eyes" are refered to in the account that follows).

Covering sartorial matters, Albert Rosales (on his "Humanoid Sighting Reports" page for 1954) notes that the attacking alien daringly wore "only a loincloth".³

Event

Ufological heavyweight Jacques Valée lists the incident as number 188 in his exhaustive contribution to (the now out of print) The Humanoids (ed. Charles Bowen):⁴

Two truck drivers found their road blocked between Caracas and Petare (Venezuela) by a luminous sphere over 3 metres in diameter, hovering 2 metres above the ground. Coming out of the truck they met a small creature with claws and glowing eyes coming towards them. One of the witnesses, named Gonzales, grabbed the being, found it surprisingly light (about 35 pounds) and observed its body was very hard and covered with fur.

The creature pushed him back with one hand in spite of its small weight. The second truck driver rushed to the police. Two more creatures emerged from the brush and leaped into the sphere, carrying stones and other samples, while the first individual attacked Gonzalez again.

Now terrified, he tried to defend himself with a knife, but the blow did no harm to the hard skin of the entity. Then one of the dwarfs in the sphere blinded Gonzales with a light while the others re-entered the craft, which took off.⁵

Kevin Randle supplies a couple of details missing (possibly because they're later modifications?) from Vallée's summary.⁶ According to Randle, an examination of Gonzales revealed that his ordeal had left him with significant "scratches". Further "corroboration" of the story apparently arrived a few days later when an unnamed doctor revealed that he had seen the interplanetary fight but had decided (perhaps understandably) not to get involved…

Thoughts

While the hairy, be-loinclothed appearance and aggressive attitude of the creatures suggests a "primitive", Captain Caveman-esque nature, their "craft" and "blinding light" points to a certain technological sophistication. In addition, they were interrupted while collecting "stones and other samples" - classic alien behaviour of course, and usually taken as a sign of scientific curiosity. A curious mixture of signals.

Their apparent invulnerability to harm is not altogether unusual. In fact, case "194" in Vallée's list describes a very similar encounter that occurred on December 10th of the same year (also in Venezuela): Two men approach a bright object near a road; Four small beings attack them; one of the men hits them with his rifle but it breaks etc. The attackers were described as "extremely strong and…covered with hair".⁷

One is also reminded of the famous Kelly-Hopkinsville Goblins, who responded to point blank shotgun/rifle blasts by simply flipping over and running away (before returning later, apparently unharmed). The fact that the sound of the on-target shots sounded like "bullets striking a metal bucket" also suggests impressively hard bodies.

A final note - Is it just me or does Simon's sketch suggest a "Hairy Dwarf" who (having been left behind by his fellows) finds himself down on his luck, begging for Earth currency as he sits on an Earth kerb? He also seems to have "let himself go" rather, if that gut is any indication.

1. Spellcheck continually "corrects" ufology as urology. It's taking the piss. [back]
2. Randle, Kevin, & Russ Estes Faces of the Visitors: An Illustrated Reference to Alien Contact (New York: Fireside, 1997), p. 28. [back]
3. Albert Rosales, "1954 Humanoid Reports". [back]
4. Vallée, Jacques "The Pattern Behind the UFO Landings: Report on the Analysis of 200 documented observations made in 1954" in The Humanoids, ed. Charles Bowen (London: Futura, 1974) [back]
5. Ibid., p. 57. [back]
6. Randle & Estes, p. 29 [back]
7. Vallée, p.59 [back]