8) Physiological and psychological effects, such as electric shock, radiation burns, dimming of vision, blackouts, temporary paralysis, headaches, blood disorders, nightmares and dreams, reported by observers in close UFO encounters, both in the air and on the ground.
9) Electromagnetic interference reports caused by UFOs on compasses, plane and car motors, headlights, houselights, searchlights, radar beams, radios, TV, power stations and other instruments and communication devices.
10) Skyquakes, explosions and sonic booms in the skies during UFO appearances
11) Propulsion sounds and smells attributed to UFOs.
12) Landings and near-landings (hoverings) of UFOs and their occupants.
13) Hostile acts due to. UFOs (both towards and from these objects).
14) Reports of so-called “contactees” in association with “space visitors” as occupants UFOs.
15) Straight lines of flight related to UFOs, along with their other kinematic, geometric and luminescent characteristics.
16) Reputable sightings by scientists, astronauts, engineers, astronomers and other trained observers of UFOs.
17) Appearances of “little men” (apparently humanoids) and other entities in relation to worldwide UFO landings, who were reported to have taken rocks, vegetation, soil, water, and animals, flowers, etc. Several hundred cases of human kidnappings, abductions, physical examinations, etc.
18) Periodic cycles of increased UFO sightings every twenty-six months, five years, and ten years in large numbers.
19) Unique shapes of UFOs, especially nocturnal lights, daylight disks, domed saucers, cigar-shaped or rocket-shaped objects, crescents, half-globes, and Saturn-shaped objects.
20) Revolving wheel-like machines in oceans, seas and vast masses of water reported by ship and plane crews and passengers, and other witnesses nearby.
21) Depressions, craters, denuded vegetation, holes, ground markings, burned areas and landing-gear marks on the ground due to UFO landings worldwide.
22) Power failures due to UFO appearances, both locally and on a widespread basis.
23) Severe animal reactions reported during UFO encounters.
24) Levitations in close proximity with UFOs of persons, cars, helicopters, trucks, garage roofs, fishing bobbers, UFO occupants, horses, etc.
25) The historical evidence of UFOs found in archaeology, cave-wall drawings, Holy Scriptures, legends, mythology, ancient manuscripts, frescoes, and folklore throughout the world.
To investigate any phenomenon in or outside of a laboratory requires that they must be repeatable, and such UFO encounters are recurrent in nature regardless of where they occur. Thus, the challenge in future scientific investigations remains.
Future science must meet the challenge posed by these UFO repetitions among over 140 world nations in order to solve the growing, global UFO problem; otherwise, it will become part of the problem itself. The peoples of the world deserve better than that.
—GEORGE D. FAWCETT
Fire Came By, The (Doubleday, 1976) John Baxter & Thomas Atkins rely on the expeditions, researches, and the theories of Russian scientists to conclude that a nuclear spacecraft may have caused the 1908 explosion at Tunguska in Siberia. They base much of their evidence on purported eyewitness accounts that a huge shining, cylindrical object had manuevered and changed directions before falling and leveling 1,200 square miles of forest.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
Fitzgerald, Randall (b. 1950) A former investigative reporter for syndicated columnist Jack Anderson and congressional reporter for Capitol Hill News Service, Randy Fitzgerald has twenty years’ experience as a Washington watchdog for the American taxpayer. He has reported on public policy issues for Reader’s Digest since 1981, becoming a staff writer and contributing editor in 1984.
Randall Fitzgerald
The Texas native began his journalism career straight out of high school, writing for the Tyler Morning-Telegraph. He later graduated from the University of Texas, receiving his B.S. degree in journalism in 1974.
He was a founder and co-editor of Second Look magazine (1978-1980), later called Frontiers of Science, and is the author of four books: The Complete Book of Extraterrestrial Encounters (1979), Porkbarrel (1984), When Government Goes Private (1988), and Cosmic Test Tube (1998).
Address:
P.O. Box 1536
Cobb, CA 95426
U.S.A.
E-mail:
[email protected]
POSITION STATEMENT: I consider myself an open-minded skeptic/agnostic on the UFO issue. However, at the very least, I think the UFO phenomenon should be considered as an evolutionary benchmark by which we can begin to measure our potential as a species for absorbing future contact with a higher intelligence.
—RANDALL FITZGERALD
Flatwoods (West Virginia) monster In modern police parlance a long-unsolved homicide or other crime may be known as a “cold case,” a term we might borrow for such paranormal mysteries as that of the Flatwoods Monster, which was launched on September 12, 1952, and never completely explained.
About 7:15 P.M. on that day, at Flatwoods, a little village in the hills of West Virginia, some youngsters were playing football on the school playground. Suddenly they saw a fiery UFO streak across the sky and, apparently, land on a hilltop of the nearby Bailey Fisher farm. The youths ran to the home of Mrs. Kathleen May, who provided a flashlight and accompanied them up the hill. In addition to Mrs. May, a local beautician, the group included her two sons, Eddie 13, and Freddie 14, Neil Nunley 14, Gene Lemon 17, and Tommy Hyer and Ronnie Shaver, both 10, along with Lemon’s dog.
There are myriad, often contradictory versions of what happened next, but UFO writer Gray Barker was soon on the scene and wrote an account for Fate magazine based on tape-recorded interviews. He found that the least emotional account was provided by Neil Nunley, one of two youths who were in the lead as the group hastened to the crest of the hill. Some distance ahead was a pulsing red light. Then, suddenly, Gene Lemon saw a pair of shining animallike eyes, and aimed the flashlight in their direction. The light revealed a towering “manlike” figure with a round, red “face” surrounded by a “pointed, hoodlike shape.” The body was dark and seemingly colorless, but some would later say it was green, and Mrs. May reported drape-like folds. The monster was observed only momentarily, as suddenly it emitted a hissing sound and glided toward the group. Lemon responded by screaming and dropping his flashlight, whereupon everyone fled.
The group had noticed a pungent mist at the scene and afterward some were nauseous. A few locals, then later the sheriff and a deputy (who came from investigating a reported airplane crash), searched the site but “saw, heard and smelled nothing.” The following day A. Lee Stewart, Jr., from the Braxton Democrat discovered “skid marks” in the roadside field, along with an “odd, gummy deposit”—traces attributed to the landed “saucer.” (Barker, 1953)
In his article Barker (1953) noted that “numerous people in a 20-mile radius saw the illuminated objects in the sky at the same time,” evidently seeing different objects or a single one “making a circuit of the area.” Barker believed the Flatwoods incident was consistent with other reports of “flying saucers or similar craft” and that “such a vehicle landed on the hillside, either from necessity or to make observations.” (At this time in UFOlogical history, the developing mythology had not yet involved alien “abductions.”)
In addition to Barker’s article and later his book (1956), accounts of the Flatwoods incident were related by another on-site investigator, paranormal writer Ivan T. Sanderson (1952, 1967), as well as the early UFOlogist Major Donald E. Keyhoe (1953). More recent accounts have garbled details, with Brookesrnith (1995), for example, incorrectly reporting five of the children as belonging to Mrs. May, and Ritchie (1994) referring to the monster’s hoodlike feature as a “halo,” which he compared with those in Japanese Buddhist art. However, Jerome Clark’s The UFO Encyclopedia (1998) has a generally factual, sensib
le account of the affair, appropriately termed “one of the most bizarre UFO encounters of all time.”
THE UFO
On June 1, 2000, while on a trip that took me through Flatwoods, I was able to stop off for an afternoon of on-site investigating. I was amused to be greeted by a sign announcing: “Welcome to Flatwoods, Home of the Green Monster.” Although the village has no local library, I found something even better: a real-estate business, Country Properties, whose co-owners Betty Hallman and Laura Green generously photocopied articles for me and telephoned residents to set up interviews.
Johnny Lockard, 95, told me that virtually everyone who had seen the alleged flying saucer in 1952 recognized it for what it was: a meteor. He, his daughter Betty Jean and her husband Bill Sumpter said that the fireball had been seen on a relatively horizontal trajectory in various states. In fact, according to a former local newspaper editor, “There is no doubt that a meteor of considerable proportion flashed across the heavens that Friday night since it was visible in at least three states—Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.” (Byrne, 1966) The meteor explanation contrasts with the fanciful notions of Sanderson (1967). He cites several persons who each saw a single glowing object. Although observing that “All of the objects were traveling in the same direction and apparently at the same speed and at exactly the same time,” he fails to draw the obvious conclusion: that there was one object, albeit variously described. (For example, one report said the object landed on a nearby knoll, while another described it as “disintegrating in the air with a rain of ashes.”) Instead of suspecting that people were mistaken or that they saw a meteor that broke apart, Sanderson asserts that “to be logical” we should believe that “a flight of aerial machines” were “maneuvering in formation.” For some reason the craft went out of control, with one landing, rather than crashing, at Flatwoods, and its pilot emerged “in a space suit.” Observed, it headed back to the spaceship which—like two others that “crashed”—soon “vaporized.” (Sanderson, 1967)
Such airy speculations aside, according to Major Keyhoe (1953), Air Force Intelligence reportedly sent two men in civilian clothes to Flatwoods, posing as magazine writers, and they determined that the UFO had been a meteor that “merely appeared to be landing when it disappeared over the hill.” That illusion also deceived a man approximately ten miles southwest of Flatwoods, who reported that an aircraft had gone down in flames on the side of a wooded hill. (That was the report the sheriff had investigated, without success, before arriving at the Flatwoods site.)
Keyhoe’s sources told him that “several astronomers” had concluded that the UFO was indeed a meteor. As well, a staff member of the Maryland Academy of Sciences announced that a meteor had passed over Baltimore at 7.00 P.M. on September 12th, “traveling at a height of from 60 to 70 miles.” (Reese, 1952) It was on a trajectory toward West Virginia, where the “saucer” was sighted minutes later.
SPACESHIP AGROUND?
If the UFO was not a spaceship but a meteor, then how do we explain the other elements—the pulsating light, the landing traces, the noxious smell, and, above all, the frightening creature? Let us consider each in turn.
As the group had proceeded up the roadway that led to the hilltop, they saw “a reddish light pulsating from dim to bright.” It was described as a “globe” and as “a big ball of fire” (Barker, 1953) but Sanderson (1967) says they “disagreed violently on their interpretation of this object.” We should keep in mind that it was a distance away—an unknown distance—and that there was no trustworthy frame of reference from which to estimate size (reported to Sanderson as over twenty feet across).
Significantly, at the time of the incident, a local school teacher called attention to “the light from a nearby plane beacon,” and Sanderson (1952) conceded that there were three such beacons “in sight all the time on the hilltop.” However, he dismissed the obvious possibility that one of these was the source of the pulsing light because he was advocating an extraterrestrial explanation.
But if a UFO had not landed at the site, how do we explain the supposed landing traces? They were found at 7:00 the morning after the incident by A. Lee Stewart, Jr., editor of The Braxton Democrat, who had visited the site the night before. Stewart discovered two parallel “skid marks” in the tall meadow grass, between the spot where the monster was seen and the area where the red pulsating light was sighted. He also saw traces of “oil” or “an odd, gummy deposit.” (Barker, 1953)
Johnny Lockard’s son, Max, describes Stewart in a word: “windy.” Max had tried to explain to him and others the nature of the unidentified object that left the skid marks and oily/greasy deposit, namely Max’s black, 1942 Chevrolet pickup truck. Soon after news of the the incident had spread around Flatwoods that evening, Max drove up the hillside to have a look around. He told me he left the dirt road and circled through the field, but saw nothing, no monster and no landing traces in the meadow grass.
At the time of the incident a few locals who had been skeptical that a flying saucer had landed on the hill attributed the skid marks and oil to a farm tractor. When several others told Gray Barker that the traces had actually been left by Max Lockard, he recalled his old high school chum and decided to telephone him. They had a proverbial failure to communicate and Barker—who admitted to seeing “an opportunity to get my name in print again”—concluded that Max’s truck had not been at the exact spot where the alleged UFO markings were found.
Reading Barker (1956), one senses his impulse to dismiss the tractor and pickup hypotheses and never even to consider the possibility of some other vehicle. It is not clear that Barker ever saw the traces. He arrived one week after the incident, and during the interim rain had obliterated the evidence. He could find “no trace of the oil reported to have been on the ground,” and although he saw “marks and a huge area of grass trampled down,” he conceded that could be due to the “multitudes” that had “visited and walked over the location.” (Barker, 1953, 1956)
Max Lockard took me to the site in his modern pickup. A locked gate across the road prompted him to shift into four-wheel drive and take us on a cross-country shortcut through a field, much as he had done in his search for the reported UFO and monster nearly a half century before. He has convinced me that he indeed left the supposedly unexplained traces. With a twinkle in my eye posed a question: ‘Max, had you ever piloted a UFO before?’ His snffle answered that he had not.
As to the nauseating odor, that has been variously described as a sulfurous smell, “metallic stench,” gaslike mist, or simply a “sickening, irritating” odor. Investigators first on the scene noticed no such smell, except for Lee Stewart who detected it when he beat close to the ground. The effect on three of the youths, particularly Lemon, was later to cause nausea and complaints of irritated throats. (Barker, 1953, 1956; Sanderson, 1967; Keyhoe, 1953)
This element of the story may be overstated. Ivan Sanderson (1967), scarcely a militant skeptic, also noticed the “strange smell in the grass” but stated that it was “almost surely derived from a kind of grass that abounds in the area.” He added, “We found this grass growing all over the county and it always smelt the same, though not perhaps as strongly.” Keyhoe (1953) reported that the Air Force investigators had concluded that “the boys’ illness was a physical effect brought on by their fright.” Indeed Gene Lemon, the worst affected, had seemed the most frightened; he had “shrieked with terror” and fallen backward, dropping the flashlight, and later “appeared too greatly terrified to talk coherently.” (Barker, 1956). As to the strange “mist” that had accompanied the odor (Barker, 1953), that seems easily explained. Obviously it was the beginning stage of what the sheriff subsequently noticed on his arrival, a fog that was “settling over the hillside.” (Keyhoe, 1953)
THE CREATURE
Finally, and most significantly, there remains to be explained “’the Flatwoods Monster,” a.k.a. “the Phantom of Flatwoods,” “the Braxton County Monster,” “the Visitor from Outer
Space,” and other appellations. (Byrne, 1966) Many candidates have been proposed, but—considering that the UFO became an IFO, namely a meteor—the least likely one is some extraterrestrial entity. I think we can dismiss also the notion, among the hypotheses put forward by a local paper, that it was the effect of “vapor from a falling meteorite that took the form of a man.” (Sanderson, 1967) Also extremely unlikely was the eventual explanation of Mrs. May that what she had seen “wasn’t a monster” but rather “a secret plane the government was working on.” (Marchal, 1966) (Both she and her son Fred declined to be interviewed for my investigation.) I agree with most previous investigators that the monster sighting was not a hoax. The fact that the witnesses did see a meteor and assembled on the spur of the moment to investigate makes that unlikely. So does the fact that everyone who talked to them afterward insisted—as Max Lockard did to me—that the eyewitnesses were genuinely frightened. Clearly, something they saw frightened them, but what?
The group described shining “animal eyes,” and Mrs. May at first thought they belonged to “an opossum or raccoon in the tree.”’ (Barker, 1956; Sanderson, 1967) Locals continued to suggest some such local animal, including “a buck deer” (Barker, 1956), but a much more credible candidate was put forth by the unnamed Air Force investigators. According to Keyhoe (1953), they concluded the “monster” was probably “a large owl perched on a limb” with underbrush beneath it having “given the impression of a giant figure” and the excited witnesses having “imagined the rest.”
I believe this generic solution is correct, but that the owl was not from the family of atypical owls” (Strigidae, which includes the familiar great horned owl) but the other family (Tytonidae) which comprises the barn owls. Several elements in the witnesses’ descriptions help identify the Flatwoods creature specifically as Tyto alba, the common barn owl, known almost worldwide. (Collins, 1959) Consider the following evidence.
The “monster” reportedly had a “manlike shape” and stood some ten feet tall, although Barker (1953) noted that “descriptions from the waist down are vague; most of the seven said this part of the figure was not under view.” These perceptions are consistent with an owl perched on a limb
The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 37
