Any mention of “animal mutilations” invariably, and quite understandably too, provokes imagery of the notorious “cattle-mutilation” events that reached their peak in the southwest regions of the United States in the mid to late 1970s. On the issue of whether or not the killing and mutilation of animals on a large scale was, and perhaps still is, the work of extraterrestrials, occult groups, government personnel engaged in biological warfare experimentation, scavengers, shadowy figures with concerns about exotic viruses entering the U.S. food-chain, or a combination of all the above, the jury is very much still out. But, less well known, is that such events are not limited to the United States…

One particular case stands out for truly memorable and macabre reasons, as will now become apparent. It all began on 1 October 1997, as a good friend of mine, Nigel Wright, then of the Exeter Strange Phenomena Research Group, and the co-author with Jon Downes of the book The Rising of the Moon, reveals:

“Approximately three weeks ago two young men were swimming in Otter Cove [Lyme Bay, Exmouth, England]. As darkness drew in, they decided to make for the shore and change to go home. As they got changed, one of them looked out to sea. He saw what he described as a ‘greenish’ light under the surface. He called to the other young man and they both watched as this light ‘rose’ to the surface of the water. The next thing they knew there was a very bright light shining into their faces. They turned the scene and fled.”

Meanwhile, on the top of the cliffs, equally strange things were afoot. The two young men raced for the car of a relative and breathlessly explained what had happened. Incredibly, she, too, had seen something highly unusual in precisely the same time frame on the road leading to Otter Cove: a strange animal that she likened to “an enormous cat.” Whatever the origin of the beast, however, she was certain of one thing: it was, to quote her, “all lit up” – glowing almost.

On the following day, a dead whale was found washed upon the beach below the cliffs. This did not appear to have been merely a tragic accident, however. On receiving reports that a whale had been found in precisely the area that anomalous lights and a strange creature were seen, Nigel Wright launched an investigation.

“The first thing that struck me as I looked on at this scene,” recalls Wright, “was how perfect the carcass was. There was no decay or huge chunks torn from it. Then, as I wandered around it, I noticed that there was only one external wound: in the area of the genitals a round incision, the size of a large dinner plate, was cut right into the internal organs of the mammal. The sides of this incision were perfectly formed, as if some giant apple corer had been inserted and twisted around. From the wound hung some of the internal organs.”

Nigel continues: ”I quizzed the official from English Heritage, who was responsible for the disposal of the carcass. He informed me that no natural predator or boat strike would have caused this wound. As I looked at this sight, the first thing that came into my mind was how this looked just like the cattle mutilation cases of recent times.”

Wright was also able to determine that this was not the only time that unusual lights had been seen in the vicinity of Lyme Bay: “No precise date can be given for the evening when a fishing boat encountered a strange light over Lyme Bay,” he explains, ‘but, since this was told to me by the skipper of the vessel concerned, I can vouch for its authenticity. The vessel in question was five miles off Budleigh Salterton. The crew became aware of a bright, white-blue light which hovered some distance from the boat. At first they thought it was a helicopter but they heard no engine sounds, nor saw any navigation lights.”

Nigel was told by the captain of the vessel that the night had been “bright and clear” and that if the object had made any noise, it would certainly have been “audible for miles.

“The light remained stationary for about one and a half hours. Judging by the mast of their vessel, which is twenty-eight feet high, the crew estimated that the light was not much higher than that,” adds Wright. “It then very suddenly disappeared.”  The case was over.

The mutilators of England – whatever their point of origin – have not disappeared, however. Expect further revelations on this very matter in the near future!

This is a special guest post by Andrew Nicholson - www.weirdaustralia.com

A recent article by an Australian astronomer on UFOs and extraterrestrials illustrates the continuing ignorance of many within the scientific community in relation to the UFO phenomenon and other aspects of the paranormal, and exposes the double standards employed when it comes to making extraordinary claims.

In Encounters of the third kind? Not even close published on The Sydney Morning Herald website on 19 January 2012, Perry Vlahos, an astronomy educator, author, broadcaster and past president of the Astronomical Society of Victoria discusses the subject of UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Vlahos begins by taking a refreshingly objective point of view in relation to the possibility of intelligent life existing elsewhere in the universe.

“From my experience, astronomers disagree on the possibility of sophisticated civilisations among the stars – some think ‘yes’ and others think ’no’,” he states.

But he is far less flexible in his thinking when it comes to the possibility that we may have been visited by any such ‘sophisticated civilisations’. “But most agree on one point,” he continues. “There is no credible evidence to suggest we have ever been visited by extraterrestrials.”

“If they exist, they’ve not been here yet,” he confidently concludes.

Oh, really!

This is a bold statement. In fact, it is an extraordinary claim. And as Carl Sagan famously said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. This should be as true for a scientist claiming we have never been visited by extraterrestrials, as it should for an ancient alien proponent claiming we’re the descendants of a slave race of alien-human hybrids.

Perhaps he should’ve said that, “If they exist, we have no conclusive evidence that they have ever been here”. A far more scientifically acceptable approach, one would think.

Vlahos then takes it upon himself to share the thoughts of the astronomy community.

“Most astronomers think reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are just that – objects in the sky that are yet to be identified. Certainly, all reports of such sightings cannot be hoaxes and so we must accept that some of them are genuine.”

I commend Viahos for at least acknowledging that some UFO reports are genuine.

He then adds that, “It does not necessarily follow, however, that they are craft piloted by extraterrestrial beings.”

This is true. We do not know that such sightings are craft piloted by extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, there is a widespread misconception that any poor misguided soul who takes the subject of UFOs seriously believes they must be piloted by aliens from elsewhere in the universe. The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH) is just one theory on the origin of the UFO phenomenon. There are other equally valid theories, and not everyone open minded enough to take the phenomenon seriously automatically equates UFOs with extraterrestrials.

The fact is, we do not know who or what is responsible.

Vlahos then discusses the astronomy community’s involvement in investigating sightings. “Many astronomers, including the author, have been involved in identifying sightings that have puzzled the public.”

“In most of these cases, natural phenomena, astronomical objects or local intelligence in the form of aircraft, balloons, satellites and the like are the cause.”

I agree with Vlahos here. The vast majority of UFO sightings, once investigated, usually have a more prosaic explanation.

It’s time to redefine what a UFO is.

It is time to weed out such reports that, with a little investigation, can be easily explained. The current convention that any anomalous object seen in the sky remains a UFO until it can be identified otherwise only damages the credibility of the many genuine, inexplicable UFO sightings. We need to turn this on its head. Only after a sighting satisfies certain criteria, and all other possibilities ruled out, should an anomalous object be classified as a UFO.

Such criteria might include, for example, the number and/or credibility of witnesses, the size and shape of the craft, the ability of the object to defy known laws of physics, and the object demonstrating speed impossible for any known aircraft.

Tick two or more boxes, and you have a UFO sighting. No more sightings of satellites, Jupiter, Chines lanterns, balloons or swamp gas please.

Double standards … what happened to scientific rigour?

Next, Vlahos links the UFO phenomenon with crop circles through the religious fervour of some believers.

“In some instances, it becomes almost a religious experience to people and no amount of explanation seems to change their beliefs.

“A good example of this is the crop circles that started appearing in England in the late 1970s. Some members of the public thought these to be the work of artistic aliens.

“Some years later, however, two men, Dave Chorley and Doug Bower, decided the joke had gone on for long enough and declared to news reporters how, under cover of darkness, they had made the circles in the wheat fields with rope and boards. They even gave a demonstration for the cameras.”

Ok, this is fair enough. This pair of pranksters was obviously responsible for some crop circles. But all crop circles? And where their claims rigorously tested as the scientific process dictates?

No. Because they came forward and admitted to some reporters they were responsible and gave their demonstration with a couple of planks and some rope, that’s good enough for this scientist. Case closed!

Similarly, the famous Belgian Triangle UFO photo was declared a hoax when last year, a Belgian man identified only as Patrick, obviously wracked with years of guilt, announced to the world that as an 18 year old, he had hoaxed the photo by making a simple polystyrene model and photographing it.

Okay, maybe he did perpetrate a hoax. But where was the scientific testing to prove or disprove his claims? There was none. Because he said he did it, again that’s good enough. Why weren’t his claims treated with scepticism until he could successfully reproduce the photos using the same camera he supposedly used to take the original photos?

Here is a case of double standards, as the scientific establishment is often quick to dismiss the claims of the paranormal due to the inability of paranormal investigators and researchers to replicate results.

A mystery no longer, should all the facts be known.

Vlahos concludes in his article that, “The tiny percentage of UFO reports that remain unsolved would almost surely be a mystery no longer, were all the facts known.”

Tell this to the former Head of Operations at the Belgian Air Staff and to the Iranian and Peruvian fighter pilots who contributed to Leslie Kean’s acclaimed book UFOs Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On The Record.

It is time for all of us to take a more mature, open-minded approach to the UFO phenomenon. This includes scientists taking a more objective stance and treating the true phenomenon with the same scientific curiosity admirably demonstrated in so many other areas of our everyday world.

And it applies equally to the so-called ‘true believers’ who treat every coloured light in the sky as a sign that our space brothers are lovingly watching over us.

Only then can we hope to have an intelligent conversation and perhaps gain some understanding of the perplexing UFO mystery.

This is a special guest post by Andrew Nicholson – www.weirdaustralia.com

For decades, within the annals of Ufology, countless types of apparent alien entity have been reported by startled witnesses to UFOs and their other-worldly crews. The list of extraterrestrial life forms is truly bizarre and includes beings that resemble (a) huge, flying jellyfish; (b) oversized bananas; (c) the Michelin Man; and (d) long-nosed, scrawny humanoids with glowing red eyes. But, such beings are most assuredly not typical of those reported in the vast majority of close encounters of the ufological kind. Indeed, they are firmly in the minority. Dominating the UFO scene are without doubt the human-looking Space-Brothers, the insect-like Grays, and the sinister Reptilians. But, there are a surprising number of reports on file describing giant-sized aliens, too…

While the tales of alien giants most certainly do not attract the same sort of attention and acclaim as their long-haired cousins did way back in the Contactee-driven era of the 1950s, and the emotionless Grays do today, that does not mean such issues are of no consequence. In fact, one could convincingly argue quite the opposite!

Two such notable cases emanate from with the British Isles; the details of one of which were given to Charles Bowen, a former editor of Flying Saucer Review magazine, and that were duly published in a classic book on alien entities that Bowen edited himself, The Humanoids.

The year was 1958 and the location was very near to Balmoral, Scotland. As part of their basic training, an Aberdeen-based unit of the Territorial Army had been dispatched to the area in question to take part in a weekend of maneuvers.

During the course of the exercise, two of the group were deployed to guard a small hilltop and, fully equipped, set about digging themselves a trench for cover. On the first morning, just as dawn was breaking, both heard what they later described as a strange “gurgling” sound that seemed to originate from behind a dense group of trees, several hundred yards from their position. Unsurprisingly somewhat curious, they set out to investigate, when two giant, humanoid figures suddenly emerged from the shadows and proceeded towards them in ominous, lumbering fashion.

Naturally overcome with overwhelming terror, the pair hastily retreated. As they ran in panicked style, they heard a “swishing noise,” and glancing over their shoulders saw a gigantic, disc-shaped object in the sky above which appeared to be following them. Reportedly “pulsating,” the UFO swooped low over their heads and – to the complete and utter relief of the pair – quickly disappeared, curiously trailing a shower of sparks as it vanished from view.

A similar case, involving the Schwab family, who was then living in the English city of Bath, occurred late one weekend night in mid March 1978, while they were attending a family get-together in the county of Wiltshire. While driving past the legendary Stonehenge around 11.00 p.m., they were shocked to the core by the startling sight of a “twelve-foot-tall thing, like a giant man,” standing in the middle of the road.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Schwab brought the car to a rapid, screeching halt, and he, his wife and son watched amazed as a bright light from above suddenly enveloped the mighty being, and which ‘”lit it up and we could see it was like me and you, but twice as tall and in a silver suit and two big eyes [sic].”

Even more startling, the huge creature then began to slowly rise into the beam of light – which, the three could now see, was “coming out of the bottom of a big square-shaped object in the sky, and black [in color] that hummed so loud and made us all feel sick.”

Within seconds, the giant and the beam of light were gone, and the mysterious craft duly soared into the heavens, leaving the Schwab family wondering what on earth – or, very possibly, off it – had just happened.

Rogue cases of Goliath-like aliens in decades past may not attract the same levels of attention and fascination as those of today’s alleged DNA-stealing, pasty, skinny, denizens of Zeta Reticuli, but that does not mean they are without merit.

After all, if extraterrestrials are visiting us, then perhaps – just like us, the Human Race – they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes!

Senator Barry Goldwater served as a Major-General in the Air Force, as the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in the 1964 election, and as the Chairman of the U.S. Government’s Senate Intelligence Committee. On March 28, 1975, Goldwater wrote the following, highly thought-provoking words to a UFO researcher named Shlomo Arnon: “The subject of UFOs is one that has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret.”  

Goldwater later clarified, and expanded on, this by revealing that years earlier none other than U.S. Air Force General Curtis Le May had given him, Goldwater, absolute hell for daring to ask if he could see the USAF’s top secret UFO data  rumored to be stored at Wright-Patterson – which many UFO researchers believe may possibly include preserved alien corpses and recovered extra-terrestrial hardware and technology. Moreover, Le May told Goldwater, in just about the sternest of all tones conceivably possible, not to even think about bringing up this matter with him again – ever.

But, this was not the only time when Goldwater approached officialdom on a matter of some secrecy and relative to an enigma that was of interest to the U.S. Intelligence community. The second such example, however, was linked with a definitive puzzle of biblical proportions: that of Noah’s Ark, an issue that has fascinated and intrigued the CIA for years.

On September 1, 1978, Goldwater wrote a letter to the then-Director of the CIA, Stansfield Turner that began as follows: “You may think this is a screwball request and it may be, but I would like to know if you can do anything about it.” Goldwater went on to ask if “satellite photography” could be searched “to determine whether or not something in the way of an archaeological find might be located near or on top of” Mount Ararat.

Goldwater explained to the CIA director that he had received a letter “from a man in whom I have great confidence, who certainly is no nut, who knows Turkey rather well but who feels that there is reason to believe the Ark may be resting at or near the top of the mount. I assure that I will keep this at any classification you want it kept and if you desire me to go to the devil, I know the way.”

The CIA responded that it had no data on file suggesting the Ark of Noah had been identified or located anywhere on Mt. Ararat, or indeed anywhere else. Goldwater’s comment that he would understand if the Ark issue was of “any classification” that might result in the CIA telling him to “go to the devil,” however, is extremely – and eerily - reminiscent of that earlier experience with General Curtis Le May in the 1960s, in relation to the rumors concerning what may have been hidden deep below Wright-Patterson Air Force Base of a specifically alien nature.

If Goldwater – who had a deep, personal interest in UFOs – had even the slightest inklings or suspicions that official research into Noah’s Ark was somehow a matter of national security, rather than just a subject of religious or archaeological proportions, then this might very possibly explain why he anticipated being told to go to hell by the CIA in 1978, in much the same way that Le May had less than tactfully suggested to him years earlier in relation to rumors of captured UFOs held at Wright-Pat.

And why, precisely, might the CIA’s interest in Noah’s Ark be considered a matter having a bearing upon national security? Much more will be revealed this year…

Admitting you’re active in the field of UFO research, in all likelihood, will not serve you well as a pickup line when visiting a bar. After all, anytime a subject like alien abduction lands on the table during a conversation with someone you’re just getting to know, you’re bound to get a few strange looks… and if you’re lucky, you might even get a few strange stories, also.

To put it simply, I got lucky last night. But before I have to drag your mind back out of the gutter, I should make it clear what I mean: I was lucky enough to be able to share a conversation with someone who, rather than getting squeamish when the conversation drifted to the subject of alien abduction, responded by calmly saying that, “oh yeah, well that happened to a family member of mine.” The details that followed were incredibly interesting… and perhaps even a bit unsettling.

The conversation took place during a break between sets at a pub I visit once a week near the North Carolina/Georgia border, where my acoustic group is the house band on Wednesday evenings. My friend Amy had stopped in to watch us play, and since she was waiting for a few of her friends to arrive, I started chatting with her at the bar after she came over and told me “she had seen a wolf” on her way into town earlier that evening.

“A wolf,” I said, admitting a bit of skepticism. “Are you sure that wasn’t a coyote?”

She argued that coyotes she had seen were always more scrawny and physically smaller, and soon, a couple of the locals had chimed in with information about wildlife programs where Timber Wolves had been reintroduced in certain areas throughout the region. From this point, the conversation went on to sightings of weird or unusual animals, and before long, a full-on discussion of the unexplained had been initiated. When I admitted my primary area of interest dealt with UFOs, Amy told me something I had hardly expected.

“Well, I believe there’s evidence for that sort of thing. My dad’s mother actually said she was abducted by a UFO back in the 1970s.”

“Oh really?” I replied with genuine interest, though I’ve grown accustomed to people telling these kinds of stories by now.

“Yeah, but they say she’s a little crazy. And the weird thing about it was that she said that when they took her on board, they did all these tests on her… but they weren’t aliens or anything,” Amy told me, grasping for words a bit. “She said they were people on board that thing.”

“Wait, you said people? You mean humans?”

“That’s right,” Amy said. “She lives in Florida now, but if she’s ever in town, I’ll try and bring her by to speak to you.”

“I may just want to speak to her before then, if it could be arranged!” I told her. While there are a plethora of interesting reports of alleged alien abduction, the more seldom reports where people have claimed that there is a human connection to the entire UFO mystery have always intrigued me. Such reports are often connected with stories of underground bases, secret military projects, and a number of other conspiracy theories; but also of interest are studies that have emerged over the years which seem to suggest altered states of consciousness might be capable of inducing strong hallucinatory experiences where an individual might misinterpret things about their environment (such as with the research of Dr. Rick Strassman, outlined in his book DMT: The Spirit Molecule). Could it be even a remote possibility that some accounts of “alien abduction” involve something far more terrestrial going on, as perceived by abductees who filter their experience through the distortions some kind of altered state might present? Furthermore, what could be the reason for such an altered state (which could lend itself to the reasons for “dreamlike” experiences reported by many abductees)? Is there a chance they could be the result of some variety of hallucinagens that victims of abduction scenarios might be introduced to in some way?

While this is all mere speculation (and stemming from a conversation this author had with a friend at the pub), it does remind me of the countless other experiences reported by abductees that seem to bear these sorts of characteristics. What could be the real story behind the abduction phenomenon, and might certain aspects of the mystery remain far closer to home than most of us are willing to accept or realize otherwise?

Since 1947, countless UFO sightings have been made by numerous sources all across the world. And, amongst those same reports, are a significant number that have been filed officially by pilots, both military and civilian, and, probably most famously, by Kenneth Arnold in June 1947. And from my home country of Britain, come a number of significant “pilot-UFO” cases, as we shall now see. Declassified British Air Ministry files of 1957 detail an extraordinary, and very close, encounter of the pilot variety. It was 10.22 a.m. on April 29, and a pair of Hunter aircraft took off from RAF Odiham to engage in a mid-air exercise. At 45,000 feet one of the pilots was confronted by an unidentified aerial object…

The official report on the matter states: “…when over Hayling Island Mission 28 No. 2 saw a large white object at 10 o’clock slightly above. The object was circular with a white slightly curving tail hanging below. The time was approx 1110. Formation Leader was informed and both pairs turned east onto a northerly heading to look for the object. At first the object was thought to be a parachute but later it was realised that the object must have been larger and at a greater distance because of the slow passing speed.”

A document of December, 29 1962 from a Squadron Leader J.G. Mejor of the Air Ministry Operations Center to Air Intelligence states: “A civilian pilot, call-sign GASCX, name and company unknown, flying from Renfrew to Manchester, was over Morecambe Bay at 7,000 ft at 1955z on 28th December, 1962, when he saw approx 1,000 ft below him a bright light, three times brighter than a star, traveling East to West at approx. 800 m.p.h. At exactly the same time a motorist, reporting via the Morecambe Police and Crosby Coastguard, said he saw a green flare. He was at LEVENS BRIDGE, Nr. HARROW, looking south. No radar confirmation.”

A public service corporation, the Civil Aviation Authority was established by the British Parliament in 1972 as a specialist aviation regulator and provider of air traffic services. Following its separation from the National Air Traffic Services in 2001, the CAA became the U.K.’s independent aviation regulator, with all civil aviation functions (such as economic regulations; airspace policy; safety regulations; and consumer protection) integrated within a single, unified body. The CAA has declassified into the public domain a number of documents that tell of extraordinary encounters with UFOs, as the following, small selection acutely demonstrates:

“19 Sep 79 Vicenza – UFO observed passing 200 feet below aircraft. Milan control reported no traffic.

“11 Jun 80 Vicenza – UFO passed close to aircraft. Object appeared to be like a fighter aircraft drop tank.

“13 Feb 81 Lyon – Unidentified foreign object seen on aircraft radar. A sizeable oval shaped target appeared on radar center-line at limit of range tracking at very high speed. No visual sighting made.

“12 Jun 82 Dinkelsbuhi – Large translucent object 500 feet long at 41,000 feet. ATCC [Air Traffic Control Center] requested subject aircraft to investigate this object which was found to have the form of a double rectangle surmounted by a globe (egg shape) crowned by a silver cone. Object observed by all on board.

“21 Jun 82 Brindisi – Unidentified object sighted by pilots. Object passed down left hand side at same height as aircraft (FL230) & 2 miles away. Black shiny doughnut shape about the size of a car. Object was tumbling and judged to be stationary.

“18 Aug 83 Florence – Unidentified flying object seen by crew. Large black object, balloon shaped with large white spot on it, observed 10 NM SE of Firenza. No attachments to object. SUPP. INFO.: Italian CAA replied no met [meteorological] balloon could possibly have been present at the indicated place or time.

“24 Aug 84 Ipswich – UK Reportable Accident – A/C [Aircraft] struck object in cruise. Propeller, fuselage, cowling & control runs damaged. The A/C was flying in slight turbulence when a bump was felt. Just before descent the right hand engine control was found to be seized so an asymmetric approach & landing was executed. On inspection it was apparent that the left propeller had struck an unidentified object, propelling it through the cabin roof, with a piece exiting through a window. There were several holes in the fuselage & damage to the engine, aileron & rudder trim cables. Three pieces of foreign metallic object were found, including a small cylindrical magnet. The UFO has not been identified. No information received concerning nature or origin of UFO.
“20 Dec 84 Herald – Bright white lights arced across A/C track. No range activity in channel. Lights also seen by another A/C.”26 Oct 84 Reading – Unidentified flying object: bright light 65 Deg Elev, 200 Deg T, duration 7 minutes.

“5 Feb 86 5427N 0530W – Bright light passed upwards in front of A/C. A/C was crossing east coast of Ireland on descent. Light travelled towards A/C from a 2.30 position range approx 11/2 miles and passed 1000 feet above travelling right to left 1 mile ahead. Burst of green light observed at peak of its ballistic flight. A/C ht [height] 1450 ft. CAA closure – possibly flare fired at about time of OCC by Aldergrove. Pilot considered this unlikely but no other explanation has emerged.

“21 Aug 86 Belgrade – Non UK Airmiss missile type object passed 500 ft above on reciprocal track A/C heading 290 MAG at FL 390. Object was black, cigar shaped, without wings. Belgrade radar informed on RTF. CAA closure – foreign authority advised.

“1 May 1994 – Sighting of unusual object. Member of public reported seeing a black boomerang-shaped object, which appeared to hover over RAF Northolt, above 30,000 feet, before tumbling approx 2000-3000 feet, while rotating through 180 degrees on its axis. No other reports of anything unusual received – possibly A/C in Bovingdon stack seen from odd angle in setting sun.”

Moving on…

Shortly before 1.00 a.m. on June 8, 2008, a South Wales Police helicopter, carrying a crew of three, was over MOD St. Athan, awaiting permission to land and refuel. As they held their position in the skies, the crew’s attention was drawn to a ‘brightly lit’ object above them that was reported as being”flying saucer shaped.” Suddenly, without warning, the object raced towards them at ‘great speed’ – something that caused the pilot to take immediate, evasive action to avoid a potential collision. The object then sped away and the helicopter crew decided to follow. Their pursuit took them over the Bristol Channel until, as they neared the North Devon Coast, a lack of adequate fuel forced them to abandon the chase.

What may have been the same object was seen later that same day by George Withrington, who happened to be a retired RAF glider pilot from St. Mellons, Cardiff. He said the unknown intruder was “peculiar with lots of flashing lights” and added that: “I was looking at an aeroplane overhead when I spotted this thing that was in the corner of my eye. It shifted direction very quickly, in the blink of an eye. I looked at it for quite a while. I was watching it for at least 10 minutes. It flew off towards the east, towards Newport.”

Media coverage was intense; which led South Wales Police to state that: “We can confirm the Air Support Unit sighted an unusual aircraft. This was reported to the relevant authorities for their investigation. The crew are very experienced and responded in a professional manner in relation to what they saw. In today’s skies, there are a wide variety of aircraft which come in a range of different shapes and sizes and in all probability, this sighting has just confirmed that one of these was in the area at the relevant time.”

Today, the case remains steeped in controversy, with some UFO researchers perceiving the incident as prime evidence that aliens were flying over South Wales on that fateful night. Others, meanwhile, suggest that nothing stranger than Chinese Lanterns and media exaggeration were the cause of all the cosmic fuss.

In view of all the above reports from qualified and experienced pilots, however, if one day you should be in the fortunate position to see a UFO, remember: you’ll be in very good company!

By all accounts 41 year-old oil well driller, husband and father of four, Carl Higdon, was not a man prone to flights of fancy, but on the crisp autumn afternoon of October 25, 1974, he had a close encounter with a bizarre being who would not only test the limits of his imagination, but quite literally take him on the ride of his life.

Like many Americans in the 1970s, the hardworking Carl Higdon was hit hard by the recession. As food prices crept ever higher, Higdon decided that he would have to hunt in order to feed his family and stock their icebox with enough meat to get them through the harsh Wyoming winter that was just around the corner. It would be during one such expedition that Higdon would go from being the hunter to becoming the hunted.

THE HUNTER, THE ELK AND THE ALIEN

The day began like any other. Higdon awoke and was getting ready for his 2^nd shift work day at the AM Wells Service Company in Riverton, when his telephone rang. After working his way up through the company for the better part of 20-years, Higdon was now the foreman, and therefore it fell to him to take “sick calls” from his crew. He described the situation:

“I was all set to leave for work when one of my key men phoned to tell me that he was sick. Realizing that nothing could be accomplished with him at home, I decided to take the day off.”

Having committed to not going in to work, Higdon decided to utilize his unexpectedly free afternoon by using it to hunt for elk. With his plan in place, the oil man packed his gear into his company pick-up and began heading towards McCarthy Canyon in nearby Carbon County. It was then that a random act of kindness would forever change his destiny.

While cruising toward McCarthy Canyon, Higdon spied a pair of stranded motorists working on their immobile van. The Good Samaritan pulled over and helped them repair their vehicle. During the course of their conversation the duo revealed that they were also hunters and they knew of a place where there was much more game than Higdon’s current destination. Higdon recounted the encounter:

“I pulled in front of them and helped them. During our chat, they told me the hunting was much better farther back in a remote section of the Medicine Bow National Forest.”

Higdon thanked his fellow hunters and without delay decided to change his course and begin driving toward the northern region of Medicine Bow National Park, which is located just 40-miles south of his home in Rawlings. Higdon arrived at the park in the late afternoon. Once there he was surprised to bump into an old buddy:

“Around four o’clock, I parked my two-wheel-drive on a knoll and pulled out my thermos to pour a cup of coffee. An old friend, Gary Eaton, walked over to where I had stopped and together we surveyed the area. After a few minutes, Gary told me he was going on higher up into the forest. Jokingly he suggested he might scare down some elk for me.”

Higdon and his compatriot then separated, at which point the hunter pulled out his brand new Magnum rifle and loaded it with powerful 7mm bullets. Higdon decided to explore an area that was concealed behind a hill and set off… never imagining what would happen next.

Higdon walked for a few minutes and then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of movement. It was exactly what it was he had come for — a small herd of elk. Higdon silently raised his heavy rifle, put his eye to the sight and took aim at the largest male:

“I walked maybe five minutes until I came to a rise in the ground. Down below in a clearing were five elk, huddled closely together. From my vantage point, several hundred yards away, I could see that one of them was a really outstanding animal. I lined him up in my telescopic sight and fired my gun, a Magnum rifle. It can give your shoulder a mean whack if you’re not careful.”

It would be at this moment that Carl Higdon’s world would take a decided twist toward the bizarre.

THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS:

As soon as Higdon pulled the trigger of his Magnum he was astounded by the fact that there was no kick back from the rifle. What was even more perplexing was the fact that the detonation was absolutely silent. In fact, according to Higdon, it was as if the entire world had fallen still.

As if all of that were not strange enough, for the first time in his life Higdon claimed that he was actually able to watch as a bullet left the barrel of his rifle and soared forward so slowly that it looked as if were traveling through a wall of invisible Jello. Higdon later swore that he watched the bullet glide about 50-feet before it plummeted to the snow speckled ground before him. In Higdon’s own words:

“I couldn’t believe my senses! Instead of a powerful blast, the 7mm bullet left the gun’s barrel noiselessly and in slow motion. It floated like a butterfly, finally falling to the ground about fifty feet from where I stood. I was awestruck. I froze. All around me there was a painful silence. Not a chirping bird or the rustling of leaves on nearby trees could be heard. The only sensation I could detect was a tingling feeling which crawled up my spine. This was similar to the feeling you often get before a fierce thunderstorm, when the air is full of static electricity.”

Still immersed in the eerie, static charged silence, Higdon cautiously retrieved the bullet and inspected it closely. He immediately noticed that the lead portion of the 7mm had disappeared and only the oddly misshapen case remained.

He placed the bullet into his pocket and took a few perplexed steps forward. That was when the deathly silence surrounding him was abruptly broken by the sound of a twig snapping. Higdon spun around and was a confronted by a sight that he instantly knew was not of this Earth:

“Turning to my left, I saw a ‘man’ standing there. At first I thought he was just another hunter so I lowered my gun. Then he moved out of the shadows, into the light, and immediately I realized something was terribly wrong… My heart skipped a beat and my knees were shaking so badly I could hardly stand. I thought, ‘Hell, I should have stayed in McCarthy Canyon like I’d originally planned!’”

Standing before the trembling hunter was what appeared to be a humanoid being clad in a skintight, black, one piece outfit that Higdon claimed was: “similar to a wet-suit scuba divers wear.”

Atop the suit was a pair of harness-like straps that crisscrossed its chest, below which was a metallic belt adorned with a large, yellow, six-pointed star. Beneath the star was an insignia that the outdoorsman could not identify. Higdon described the (at least what he presumed to be) masculine entity in detail:

“It was definitely a male… The visitor had no detectable ears. His eyes were small, and lacked eye brows… The dome of his skull was covered with the coarsest hair imaginable. It looked as if he had straw growing out of his head… [his complexion was] very similar to an Oriental’s… He was definitely man-like in height. I’d estimate he stood well over six feet, and weighed around 180 pounds. This was definitely no ghost! Good Lord, he was flesh and blood. Amen.”

Higdon would go on to depict this creature’s oddly upsetting facial features, including a lip-less, slit-like mouth that concealed three exceptionally large teeth — not entirely unlike the notorious Fanged Humanoids of Kofu — on the top and bottom, a pair of antennas and, most alarmingly to Higdon, a face that blended directly into its neck. Higdon continued his disturbing depiction of this alleged alien:

“Personally, it took getting used to, in order for me to look at him without getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. No chin was visible. His face just seemed to blend right into his throat. He had no jaw bone!”

Stranger still was the fact that this long armed, bow-legged, jaundice skinned creature had a pointy, almost drill bit-like appendage sticking out of its wrist where its right hand ought to have been and nothing at all on the left. At this point the being slowly approached the terrified Higdon and did something completely unexpected… it asked him: “How you doin’?”

The bewildered hunter admitted that he was “trying to stay calm” when he weakly responded: “Pretty good.” At this point the ostensible extraterrestrial, like any good host, inquired whether or not Higdon was hungry, but before he could respond the creature sent a small, clear cellophane package floating toward him:

“He waved a pointed object where his right hand should have been, and it levitated over to me. I opened the packet and found four pills inside. He told me, In English, to take one of them. That it would last four days. Now normally I don’t like taking pills, not even an aspirin, but something happened. It’s as if I had no control over my actions. So I just swallowed one of them, and put the other three into my jacket pocket.”

THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR:

The strange, jawless humanoid then introduced himself as “Ausso One.” That was when Higdon’s gaze caught a strange box-like object catching the sun’s rays in the clearing behind strange creature:

“There, not far from us, was a transparent, cube-shaped object resting on the ground. To me it looked like a huge Christmas package. You know — flat on all sides, like a box. I couldn’t see any landing gear or entrance… It was much smaller than any of our commercial or military planes. In fact, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but this thing couldn’t have been more than five feet high, seven feet long, and four and a half feet wide. Tiny is the only word I can think of to accurately describe its size!”

Apparently intrigued by the awe at which Higdon was staring at its ship, the alleged alien gamely asked the hunter: “Do you want to come along?” Higdon, fully aware of the fact that he was in no position to refuse this being any request, lamely shrugged his shoulders in assent. It was at this point that time appeared to leap forward, as Higdon’s next recollection was of being inside the cube-like craft.

“Before I was able to move a muscle, I found myself inside this contraption. It was instantaneous. How I was able to fit inside remains a riddle. They must have shrunk me, that’s the only explanation that seems plausible… I wouldn’t venture how they accomplished this feat. Ausso One just pointed, and we were where he wanted us!”

After Ausso One loaded his Earthly guest into his tiny — perhaps TARDIS-like — box, Higdon’s mind began to get fuzzy and he started to panic:

“My memory fails me, here. I recall my head starting to reel. My hands sweating. Somehow the pill this fellow gave me must have deadened at least some of my senses; otherwise I’m positive I would have been crying and perhaps even fainted. I may be strong, but I’m only human!”

At this point Higdon noticed that all five of the elk he had been stalking just moments before were also in the cube behind what he perceived to be an invisible barrier. The hunter marveled at the creature’s ability to incapacitate the untamed animals: “I’m kind of fuzzy as to how they managed to contain such wild beasts. They were motionless; paralyzed.”

It would seem that the elk were not the only things paralyzed, because at virtually the same moment as he saw the frozen beasts, Higdon claimed that he became abruptly aware of the fact that he was now sitting in a high-backed “bucket seat” with what he described as restrictive “bands” securing his arms and legs:

“As we took off, I found myself strapped down to this seat with my hands held fast to the armrests of the chair. My legs were similarly bound.”

Resisting what must have been an overwhelming urge to panic, Higdon watched in growing horror as another jawless, straw haired being appeared out of nowhere, at which point and he and his genial partner strapped a bizarre, wire smothered, football helmet-like device to his head, prompting the hunter to state: “I felt like the monster in an old Frankenstein movie.”

Higdon then observed a console with three dissimilar levers, which Ausso One used to control the craft. The alien pointed its “hand” at the longest lever and seemed to move it with a telepathically. It was then that the peculiar, transparent cube that Higdon would later describe as a “flying box car” took off.

Ausso One manipulated the vehicle so that it hovered above Higdon’s truck. With a point of his conical hand the vehicle vanished before his eyes: “When we got above the trees Ausso aimed his arm at my pick-up and it disappeared — poof — vanished into thin air!”

A WORLD WITHOUT FISH

As if this entire ordeal weren’t already quite outlandish enough, Higdon testified that just as suddenly as they left terra firma he abruptly spied an ominous, planet-like sphere — “shaped similar to a basketball” — through the clear floor of the box-like craft… a planet he immediately knew was not Earth.

The most memorable sight that Higdon recalled from his impromptu tour of this ostensibly alien world was a colossal tower that loomed above the surface.  He would later compare it to Seattle’s Space Needle, but unlike its earthbound namesake, this huge, umbrella-like structure was covered in rotating lights that were so blinding that they hurt his eyes. The hunter was also overwhelmed by a sound that he compared to an electric razor buzzing:

“All around this tower were revolving patterns of multi-colored lights, not unlike powerful spotlights. They were so intense that it was actually painful to keep my eyes open. These lights were so brilliant that I held my hands to my face as a protective shield. I vaguely remember shouting, ‘Shut them off… they’re burning me!’ I just couldn’t tolerate them.”

Rather than comforting their frightened guest, the second drill handed humanoid merely commented that they had similar problems on our home world, insisting that:”Your sun burns us, too!” It was then that the odd craft landed about 150-feet away from the platform at the base of the tower, at which point the second being vanished just as abruptly as it had arrived.

Through the transparent walls of the ship, Higdon saw what he claimed were five human beings, dressed in average Earth fashions, talking to one another. The individuals consisted of one brown-haired girl who appeared to be about 11 years-old, a blonde girl who was just a few years older and a teen couple who seemed to be about 17 or 18. The group was rounded out by a man who seemed to be in his 50s. The people seemed to be talking to one another and did not notice Higdon.

Ausso One, who had so cordially offered Higdon food pills and a ride around the cosmos, did not explain the presence of the other humans, but patiently explained to the anxious oil man that they had touched down on a planet that was 163,000 “light miles” from earth.

Higdon was quick to elucidate that the creature did not say “light years,” which to him indicated in no uncertain terms that: “To them the passage of time is different than it is to us.”

Ausso One escorted Higdon into the dazzling tower. The pair ascended in an elevator, which deposited them into a room where the hunter was instructed to stand on a small platform. Higdon noted that he and the alien never actually walked anywhere, but seemed to be floating just above the ground. While they hovered toward their destination Ausso One (arbitrarily, or so it seemed) explained that there were no fish on his planet and that these finned critters were one of his peoples’ favorite things about Earth.

THE EXAMINATION:

At this point an odd device — that Higdon described as resembling a “glassy shield” — slipped out of the wall and paused in front of the human. The “shield” was evidently some kind of medical device and scanned the man for almost 5-minutes before it disappeared back into the wall.

Rejection is never fun, but it’s hard to contemplate that Higdon did not consider it to be a stroke of luck when his extraterrestrial tour guide informed him that he was going to return him to the spot where they had first met because the examination had shown that he did not: “suit their purpose.”

Higdon (perhaps mercifully) never knew what this potentially nefarious purpose was, but he would later speculate that he thought it had to do with a “breeding program.” Ausso One led the oil man back to the elevator and then down to the main door.

With the same abruptness that he had felt earlier, Higdon realized that he and his alien companion were now back inside the clear cubicle, this time sans elk. Ausso One was admiring the human’s rifle and with a tinge of regret admitted that as much as he would like to he would not be able to keep the “primitive” weapon as a souvenir.

Ausso One telepathically handed the rifle back to Higdon, then removed the food pills from his pocket, a fact that dismayed the hunter as it represented the only piece of concrete evidence he had of this weird event. Once again the alien pointed at the longest lever. It was then that our intrepid hero suffered another disorienting time jump.

HOMEWARD BOUND

Higdon quickly realized that he was no longer hovering above an alien world, but that his alien comrade and his miraculous cube had seemingly instantaneously transported him back to Earth. He claimed that he saw his truck, which had been inexplicably transported some 5-miles from the glade where it had been parked two and a half hours before. The hunter later considered the situation:

“Since I was in a state of mental stress, this fact did not have any impact on me until sometime later. I know that I could never have driven over that impossible terrain — even if I had been physically capable of driving, which I most certainly was not!”

At this point the kindly spaceman said to the Earthling: “We’ll see you.” The foreman was overwhelmed by a floating sensation and without warning found himself standing on the edge of a steep, rocky slope. The loose stones could not support his weight and he suddenly found himself plummeting down the 9-foot decline, severely impacting against the hard ground and injuring his head, neck and shoulder.

STUCK IN THE MUD:

The next thing the bewildered father of four consciously recalled was staggering nearly 3-miles down an old, dirt road, rifle in hand, freezing and in a state of nearly hysterical amnesia:

“I didn’t know what had happened, who I was, or where I was, for that matter. The only thing I could think of was to get out of there as fast as possible and find someone who could help me.”

Higdon was in such a state of shock that he walked past his pick-up without even recognizing it. When he realized that he was utterly alone on the dirt road he backtracked to the vehicle:

“There I stood, shivering, eyes filled with tears and not knowing my own identity. I saw a truck parked off the road between some trees, and decided to crawl into it for shelter and to keep warm. I didn’t realize the truck belonged to me.”

Huddled and trembling in shock, Higdon was startled by a feminine voice that suddenly crackled over the CB radio: “There was a two-way set under the dashboard, so I picked up the mic and held it close to my mouth. I managed to blurt out that I was sick and lost and desperately in need of assistance. When the voice on the other end asked me where I was, I told ‘em I had seen a sign down the road which read, ‘North Boundary National Forest.’ This didn’t seem to be much help, however, as there was absolutely no indication as to what forest the sign was referring to.”

THE POSSE ARRIVES:

A search party led by a local sheriff — and accompanied by Higdon’s wife Margery — had a lot of difficulty navigating the backwoods paths with their 4-wheel drive vehicles and were unable to locate the panicky hunter until almost midnight. It was during this arduous trip that Higdon’s wife and two other deputies claimed to have spied green, red and white flashing lights in the sky, but they were too far away to discern its true origin.

Later it would come out that two residents of Rawlins, Wyoming, Don and Marliyn James, claimed to have observed an unusual radiance in the vicinity of Medicine Bow Forest at the same time that the posse was making its’ way toward the missing hunter.

Not long after, the baffled officers were astounded to find Higdon’s 2-wheel drive truck bumper deep in a mud filled sinkhole in the center of a forest ravine that was impenetrable by motor vehicles. In fact, the conditions were so bad that the police were forced to make the final leg of the journey by foot!

Even more perplexing was the fact that there were no tire tracks leading into the bog. The sheriff and his men could not comprehend how Higdon had managed to get his pick-up stuck there. Judging from the circumstances it would’ve had to have been dropped from above — it seemed to defy rational logic.

As if things weren’t bizarre enough, when they finally managed to pry the still terrified Higdon from the truck he was shrieking that: “They took my elk.” He even failed to recognize his own wife.

Deputies quickly packed the hunter and his wife into one of their vehicles, while the rest the police were confronted with the puzzle of how to get the seemingly impossibly trapped pick-up truck out of the bog. Eventually they created a sort of bridge with fallen trees and finally managed to tow the truck from the shallow ravine and down the dirt paths that would have proven impossible to navigate with a 2-wheel drive. Higdon later described the situation:

“Using towing equipment, I was hauled out. They immediately took me to the nearest hospital, where I was placed under day-and-night observation. Not until the following evening did I begin to regain my memory and start to recall a few details of my ordeal.”

A MIRACULOUS RECOVERY:

Sheriff’s deputies wasted no time in transporting the frantic hunter and his wife to the Carbon County Memorial Hospital in Rawlins where he was admitted at 2:30 am. The doctors on staff noticed that his eyes were extremely bloodshot and that he seemed to be suffering from nervous exhaustion, not to mention the injuries he sustained during his fall into the gully.

Following an extensive series of medical tests, the doctors noticed that despite Higdon’s clearly injured and anxious condition, his blood was extraordinarily nutrient and vitamin rich. Even more peculiar was the fact that in 1958 Higdon had been hospitalized after he came into contact with tuberculosis and at the time x-rays showed a significant amount of scarring on his lungs.

Be that as it may, the x-rays that were taken following his presumably intergalactic expedition in 1974 showed no scar tissue on his lungs and his doctor — one R. C. Tongo — even noted that some painful kidney stones which had been plaguing the hunter were no longer evident. The mystified Dr. Tongo even stated that: “He’s now in A-1, super condition!”

Despite his new and improved organs, the still petrified oil man remained incoherent throughout the night and, according to most reports, did not manage to reclaim his memories until the following day when his daughter came to visit him. It was then that he regaled his wife, doctors and police officers with his harrowing run-in with Ausso One (and his unnamed copilot) and their journey to another world.

While it’s difficult to imagine that that his rapt audience — consisting of both loved ones and authority figures — were not at least initially skeptical, this did nothing to prevent the deputies from informing the press and local ufologists about Higdon’s wild adventure. Margery, however, claimed that she never once doubted the sincerity of her husband’s strange tale, later telling reporters from the Star-Tribune:

“I believed him because it was him and because I was out there and saw a lot of different things that went on that night.”

Although his innards showed a marked upgrading, Higdon’s appetite did not return for days (a fact that he attributed to Ausso One’s miraculous pills) and he grumbled about sharp pains in the base of his skull and neck, claiming that he felt as if his body had been treated like an accordion: “I feel like I’d been pushed together like this. That’s just the way my muscles feel — like they were compressed, and then yanked apart.”

After three days of observation, the swiftly recovering outdoorsman was released from the hospital and into the care of his wife and family.

THE BAFFLING BULLET

Within days of her husband’s hospitalization, Margery discovered the crushed 7mm bullet hidden in her his canteen patch. Higdon was still at a loss to explain the force which had managed to so thoroughly damage his bullet, so he took the casing to the sheriff’s office. According to Higdon:

“I’d never seen anything like it before, to compare it to. Soon as I could I took it to the Carbon County Sheriff’s Department where the officer in charge of ballistics analysis examined it through a microscope. He told me it was from a 7mm Magnum rifle, which is the caliber of my gun. Returning the chunk of metal, he noted that he had never seen a bullet in that shape or condition.”

The Sheriff inspected the warped bullet and claimed that he had never seen its equal. He was convinced that it was impossible to hammer the bullet into its existing shape and felt that the bullet had probably not hit a solid object, like a tree or a rock. The copper jacket had been turned inside out and the lead slug was missing. He later wrote: “It looks as if it has been turned inside out by a superhuman being!”

The Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) sent metallurgy consultant, Dr. Walter Walker, to inspect the jacket. After a rigorous examination of the object he testified that it had collided with and exceptionally solid surface with immense force. This assertion is not to be underestimated as a 7mm bullet travels at such a fantastic rate of speed it would have been well nigh impossible to track the casing down had it not hit something incredibly hard — much harder than a rock or a tree.

In the APRO Bulletin, Vol. 23 No. 5, which was published in March, 1975, investigators were planning on organizing a search party in order to find the lead slug of the 7mm in the hopes that it might produce additional evidence of what it had impacted against. Quoted from the report: “After the snow melts, an attempt will be made to locate the lead slug from the bullet and hopefully it will be able to add something to a very puzzling story.”

Unfortunately the search party failed to come to fruition, or if it did their efforts were met with naught, leaving the mangled bullet casing as the only physical evidence in support of Higdon’s account. Despite the lack of corroborating proof, on October 29, 1974, the Rawlins Daily Times published an account of Higdon’s extraordinary experience and from there the story spread like wildfire.

ENTER THE HYPNOTIST

Like many abductees — or in this case invitee — Higdon claimed to have had only a partial memory of his close encounter of the weird kind. He recalled his bullet hitting the invisible barrier, meeting the alien and entering the clear cubicle with the elk, but after that his recollections became hazy.

Due to the success their team had had with the method in the past, the APRO investigators suggested that the distressed huntsman undergo hypnotic regression in order to reclaim his lost memories and (hopefully) put himself at ease with the reality of what had happened to him.

Higdon agreed and on November 2, 1974, APRO consultant and Professor of Psychology at the University of Wyoming, Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, spent over four hours with the Higdons and their children, discussing what had happened as well as their responses to it.

Sprinkle — a trained hypnotist and former UFO skeptic who had allegedly investigated thousands of alien abduction cases and believed that he himself was a victim — was assisted by MUFON field investigators Rick Kenyon and Robert Nantkes. Sprinkle employed the classic pendulum technique in order to elicit hidden information from Higdon, but his efforts were met with disappointment.

Over two weeks later, on November 17, Sprinkle took another crack at it utilizing alternative hypnotic methods… and this time he was not thwarted. While many modern investigators take an understandably dim view regarding the validity of hypnotic regression, it’s important to note that unlike many similar cases, Higdon had a conscious memory of his alien encounter before he was “put under.” This would seem to lend at least a little credibility to the account that followed.

Under hypnosis, Higdon was able to recall his trip to Ausso One’s home world in minute detail. He revealed to all of those observing the session that the straw headed alien and its kin where searching for food and used the Earth as a sort of game preserve where they came to hunt and fish — not unlike an more amiable (and less anti-human) group of “Predators.”

They also wore their black, skin tight suits to protect them from the rays of our sun and brought the elk back to their planet for “breeding purposes,” but whether Ausso One was referring to a program that is analogous to a game warden ensuring a population of wild animals survives, am alien slaughterhouse or some kind of unimaginable extraterrestrial genetic experiment is, of course, unknowable.

According to Higdon, breeding was also the reason why human beings were brought to this alien world. Higdon was under the impression that the aliens had harvested these primarily young humans in order to use them in some kind of propagation program and that he did not: “suit their purpose”  due to the fact that in 1965 he had undergone a vasectomy: “Maybe this is what they meant when they said, I wasn’t any good! I kind of sense that they wanted young people.”

At the end of their hypnotic session, Sprinkle eased Higdon from his “trance” with the instruction that he would retain his memories of Ausso One and their expedition, but would no longer fear said recollections. Later Sprinkle would write in his official report on the case:

“Although the sighting of a single UFO witness often is difficult to evaluate, the indirect evidence supports the tentative conclusion that Carl Higdon is reporting sincerely the events which he experienced. Hopefully further statements from other persons can be obtained to support the basic statement.”

THE UFO AND THE POLYGRAPH TEST

Higdon, still a nervous wreck about the whole affair, claimed that for weeks following the “trip” he was followed by a colossal “green light” in the sky. Some ufologist speculated that it might have been the extraterrestrials keeping a watch on their quarry, much like modern scientists tracking a tagged bear.

Four years later, in September of 1978, Higdon was subjected to what was then one of the most advanced polygraph test available, the PSE (Psychological Stress Evaluator) device. The test was presided over by a technical consultant for LAPD, Dr. Greenberg and his colleague Dr. Sidney Walter.

The scientists ascertained that the former hunter was giving a truthful account of what happened and Greenberg concluded: “I am forced to admit that something utterly fantastic did happen in this man’s life. The test proves it beyond doubt.”

THE EVIDENCE

The evidence in this strange case is circumstantial at best; there are no corroborating eyewitness who saw anything more significant than a few random lights in the sky and even the celebrated bullet only shows that it hit something — hard!

Nevertheless there are more than a few elements — above and beyond Higdon’s fascinating sketches — regarding this case that have a way of nagging on even the most skeptical of minds.

The first thing that comes to mind is how did the permanent scars on the inside of Higdon’s lungs simply vanish without a trace? Investigators claim to have seen before and after x-rays that seem confirm this seemingly miraculous healing process, which left doctors baffled. If this curative process was not instigated by the alien visitor, then what might have been responsible for the cure?

The second — though harder to verify — factor that lends to the credibility of the hunter’s account is the state in which his company truck was discovered by his rescuers. If reports are to be believed then there is simply no way Higdon could have moved the vehicle to the place where it was discovered without the aid of a military helicopter. As to why his otherwise polite host would leave him in such a muddy lurch is a matter of debate.

Of course there’s always the possibility that Higdon made up the whole tale after he got the company truck stuck while playing hooky from work. Perhaps he assumed he would be better off making up a patently outlandish story about alien abduction rather than fess up to having made a mistake while traipsing in the forest when he should have been working. Maybe… but I doubt it.

To begin with his employee called in sick before he decided to pack it in and go hunting. Also he was the boss and almost certainly could have concocted a more reasonable falsehood if he had to. Lastly, who in their right mind would subject themselves to the kind of public scrutiny and ridicule that invariably follows a report of this nature?

Add to this the undeniable fact that Higdon was well liked and respected by his neighbors, bosses and co-workers. Not to mention the effort that would have been involved in creating the performance he would have had to put over on his wife and rescue team in the forest — not to mention the nurses, doctors, police and press in the hospital — and it becomes clear that this working class Wyoming man was either one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century or very likely the victim of a very bizarre episode.

CONCLUSION

So how is it that a case involving a solitary hunter and his (frankly credibility taxing) tale of a run-in with an intergalactic angler has transformed over the decades into one of the most significant extraterrestrial encounters of the 20^thCentury — even going so far as to be loosely adapted into comic book form — especially considering how most folks would dismiss it as a story that was barely noteworthy enough to make page three in the Weekly World News?

That’s a difficult question to answer. Perhaps it was the hard working, straight shooting Higdon who lent some integrity to the proceedings.

The oil man has maintained the veracity of his story throughout his life and is the first to admit that his trip is a difficult pill to swallow — even for him:  “I’d like to think it was just a nightmare, except I know it was real. I’ve tried to shake my mind clear of all thoughts pertaining to what took place, but frankly that’s totally out of the question at this point.”

just months after his abduction, Higdon went on to say this about the incident at Medicine Bow Forest:

“Though I remain apprehensive over the events of last October, I firmly believe the American public is brave enough to accept the truth about such matters. Of course, I wish the whole episode hadn’t occurred, but since it did, I don’t see any reason to keep it secret. Some folks may think I’ve gone off my rocker, but anyone who knows me can tell you I’m not making up any of this… People seem to accept it now. I’m being truthful as I can be. This all really happened!”

Regardless of whether this was a genuine celestial encounter, an elaborate ruse or the frightful dream of a man who had taken a nasty spill and was suffering from a concussion, one overwhelming fact remains; if Carl Higdon had it to do all over again he would not have stopped and helped those strangers fix their van. Instead he would have continued onto McCarthy Canyon where he would have never… ever… have met a friendly, jawless, drill-handed alien named Ausso One.

Just recently, I was giving some thought to which UFO-related stories could be considered the most outrageous, controversial and sensational in nature and content. Well, I know one thing for sure: there’s certainly no shortage! But for one that really stands out, we have to turn to a long-forgotten saga and a man named Samuel Eaton Thompson, who claimed an encounter in March 1950 that certainly set the scene for a whole range of similar Contactee-like tales that would soon follow in its bizarre wake. The respected UFO authority Jerome Clark justifiably described Thompson’s story in his classic title, The UFO Encyclopedia,  as “surely the most outlandish story in early UFO history [and] also one of the most obscure.” And, with that said, read on…

That Thompson’s tale surfaced on April-Fool’s Day in 1950, has led some commentators to suspect that his claims were merely borne out of a good-natured prank; others, meanwhile, are not quite so certain that fakery was a dominating factor. As Thompson told the story, on the night of March 28, 1950, he was driving between the towns of Morton and Mineral, Washington State: he had been visiting relatives in Markham and was headed towards his Centralia home. Tired, and needing a break, Thompson pulled his vehicle over to the side of the road in a heavily-wooded area, and took a walk along a nearby logging-trail. He was shocked to the core by the scene upon which he stumbled.

As he reached a clearing in the trees, Thompson maintained that sat before him was a large object, “shaped liked two saucers fused together,” that was around eighty-feet in width, thirty-feet in height, and hovering very slightly above the forest-floor. Two naked and heavily sun-tanned, human-like children were blissfully playing near the entrance to the craft, which could be accessed via a small ramp.

Thompson added that as he got to within about 50-feet of the craft, he felt extremely hot; at which point several adults – humanoid, “attractive,” and also naked – appeared in the doorway of the strange object. When Thompson succeeded in convincing them that he meant no harm, they invited him aboard what he quickly deduced was an alien spacecraft; but not before being made to remove his shoes and socks.

Thompson learned from the crew – who spoke in a stilted form of English – that there were twenty adults and twenty-five children aboard the craft, who originated on the planet Venus, and that this was not merely a space-vessel: it was their home, too, as they adventurously explored the solar-system. Strangely, as Jerome Clark noted when commenting on Thompson’s recollections, the entities seemed to operate “more by instinct than by intellect.”

As Thompson watched the aliens’ actions, he noted that although they understood which levers to pull and which buttons to press to operate their craft, it was all done parrot-fashion, and without any actual understanding of their actions.

Evidently, this didn’t bother Thompson: he claimed to have spent forty hours romping around the ship – during which time he learned a great deal, such as the revelation that several of their craft had been shot-down by military forces on Earth; and that everyone of humankind’s problems stemmed from astrology, and specifically because human-beings were born under a variety of star-signs (which always led to conflict), whereas Venusians were all born under the sign of – what else? – Venus.

And Thompson seemed to accept, quite matter-of-factly, the startling assertions of the aliens that he, Thompson, was nothing less than a fully-fledged, reincarnated Venusian! Thompson was also told that the aliens were vegetarian, enjoyed excellent health, and desired to help us by ushering in a new era of humanity that would culminate in a return to our planet by Jesus Christ in 10,000 A.D.

According to Thompson, he remained on the spaceship until March 30. He did admit, however, that at one point he quickly returned home to get his camera, so that he might capture the moment on film for posterity. The photographs came out as either “just blank” or as mere blobs of light. Before he finally left for good, Thompson was given a friendly warning by his cosmic friends that he should keep “certain information” strictly confidential.

Whether or not the aliens were impressed by Thompson’s decision to spill the interplanetary beans to the Centralia Daily Chronicle on April 1 is unknown. However, since Thompson was not blessed with a return visit from the Venusians, we might correctly assume they were hardly cheered by his decision to blow the whistle on their actions.

There is an interesting sequel to this odd affair: after Thompson’s story hit the headlines, none other than Kenneth Arnold interviewed Thompson. He concluded that Thompson was not a purveyor of fakery. Rather, he believed the man had undergone some form of psychic experience – “whatever that actually means,” as Jerome Clark wryly commented.

Many people would simply relegate Thompson’s odd, and frankly unbelievable, tale to the garbage-can, and maybe their actions would be justified. Yet, such similar tales literally abound within the domain of the Contactees. Sensational, controversial and outrageous? Yes! Truth? Fiction? Hallucination? Wishful-Thinking? We’ll probably never know…

In early July 1947, something very unusual plunged to earth on the Foster Ranch, located in the wilds of Lincoln County, New Mexico, not far from the now-infamous town of Roswell. The event has been the subject of dozens of books, official studies undertaken by both the General Accounting Office and the U.S. Air Force, a plethora of television documentaries, a Hollywood movie, and considerable media scrutiny.

The admittedly-odd saga has left in its wake a near-mountain of theories to explain the event, including a weather balloon, a Project Mogul balloon secretly utilized to monitor for Soviet atomic-bomb tests, an extraterrestrial spacecraft, some dark and dubious high-altitude-exposure experiment using Japanese prisoners-of-war, a near-catastrophic atomic-bomb-based mishap, the crash of a V-2 rocket with shaved monkeys on-board, and an accident involving an early “Flying-Wing”-style aircraft, secretly built by transplanted German scientists who had relocated to the United States following the end of World War Two.

And, as I’m sure many of you will be aware, last year yet another theory for the Roswell affair surfaced. The latest story appeared in Annie Jacobsen’s Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base. The book included details of a sensational story suggesting that the Roswell craft and bodies were, in reality, the diabolical creations of a near-Faustian pact between the notorious Nazi (and “Angel of Death),” Dr. Josef Mengele and Soviet premier, Joseph Stalin.

The purpose of this early Cold War plan, so the book told it, was to plunge the United States into a kind of War of the Worlds-style panic (echoing the Orson Welles affair of 1938) by trying to convince the U.S. Government that aliens were invading. And how would the plan work? By placing grossly mutated children (courtesy of the crazed Mengele) inside a futuristic-looking aircraft designed by the brilliant aviation experts, the Horten brothers, and then try and convince the U.S. of the alien origins of both.

Unfortunately for Stalin, the plot failed when a storm brought down the craft and its “crew” in the wilds of New Mexico, an event that did not lead to widespread panic, but that instead was hastily covered-up by U.S. military authorities.

Is the story true? Was Jacobsen duped? Is it a blend of fact and fiction specifically weaved by government insiders to even further confuse the true nature of what did, or did not, happen outside of Roswell back in the summer of 1947? The questions are many, but definitive answers are less so. But, there’s something else I want to talk about; something that is highly relevant to this particular saga.

The angle of insiders with links to Area 51 being told that Roswell was a Soviet hoax (involving genetically-altered human beings) is an intriguing one. Now, just so there can be no misunderstanding, I don’t mean that because it’s intriguing I believe it’s the answer to the puzzle. I certainly don’t think, at all, that this is the answer to Roswell. However, here’s the important thing: the scenario of Area 51-linked people being told such a story does not begin and end with Jacobsen’s informant.

In late 2010, my book, The NASA Conspiracies was published and included a whole chapter that told the tale of a man who had worked at Area 51 in the early 1970s, and who had heard a very similar story to that told to Jacobsen and which appeared in her 2011 book. It’s a strange and convoluted saga involving a man named John who was exposed to a series of weird and controversial files that told astonishing tales of alien visitation and UFO crashes in the early, formative years of the Flying Saucer era. But, were those files real? That’s the crux of John’s revelations, as you will now see.

As I note in my book, The NASA Conspiracies: “John stressed that although the documentation at issue certainly looked genuine, he was never able to entirely dismiss from his mind the possibility that his exposure to the files could have been a part of some large, and very curious and convoluted, mind game on the part of NASA and the intelligence services, such as the CIA, Air Force Intelligence, and the National Security Agency.”

I continue in the book as follows: “Since his work at Area 51 and his access to the files surfaced as a direct result of his FBI contacts, John speculated that his superiors may have exposed him to totally bogus materials at Area 51, and then watched his every move to see if he spoke out of turn, and to those without security clearances. The fact that John never did speak out of turn in that twelve month period, and was thereafter considered utterly trustworthy, led him to be rewarded with a near decade long career in the private security sector. It was a career that saw him move, practically effortlessly, within highly influential circles in the world of U.S. Intelligence that were totally unconnected to UFOs.”

To me, at least, this is all very refreshing. Whistle-blowers are generally extremely keen to have their story believed; but John noted to me from the absolute outset (and as the above extract clearly demonstrates) that the nature of the data to which he was exposed should be addressed very carefully, and not accepted uncritically at all. Maybe, as John noted, the documentation was entirely bogus, prepared by disinformation specialists to test his reaction and response.

But, there’s more. John related an aspect of the story to me, that was published in my NASA book, and which dealt with one specific set of papers that, today, we can see is highly relevant to the account provided to Jacobsen. I described it in the pages of my 2010 book like this:

“…John did assert, however, that there was a brief collection of documents dating from July 1947 speculating that this might have all been the result of a very ingenious hoax on the part of the Soviets – until, that is, it very quickly became acutely apparent to one and all that not even the Soviet Union would have had the required expertise to successfully pull off such a fantastic ruse, much less biologically alter, or mutate, a number of human beings into something very different.”

To me, this is important, as we have old files seen and read by John (that ultimately found their way to Area 51 – they did not originate there) discussing the two central points of the story told to Jacobsen: (A) the idea that Roswell was a Soviet ruse; and (B) the theory that the bodies found at the crash-site might have been biologically altered or mutated by the Russians.

The story told by John, and published by me in late-2010, is astonishingly close to the one provided to Jacobsen and that appeared in her 2011 book. The big difference, of course, is that Jacobsen’s Area 51 source believed the Russian theory, while the originators of the files read by John at Area 51 – and John himself, too – clearly did not accept it as having any validity at all.

But, that such files did apparently exist at Area 51, and did refer to both the Russian hoax angle and the issue of genetically altering human beings, does make me think that this Russian-themed story/theory was indeed in circulation amongst Area 51 personnel at some point decades ago.

And maybe some of those people who were exposed to the files, to the rumors, and (as John speculated as a possibility) to some weird loyalty-testing mind-game, came to accept the Russian story as being utterly genuine (such as Jacobsen’s source), when in reality the truth, as John noted, may have been very different.

This controversy, I suspect, is far from over…

One of the most bizarre, not to mention flat out terrifying, mysteries of the modern age concerns the enigmatic deaths of nine Russian mountaineers whose cross-country skiing trip ended in a tragedy so ghastly and perplexing that it has mystified experts for over half a century.

Excursions into nature can be serene for some and exhilarating for others, but for an unfortunate few these sojourns into the untouched wilds of our world can be tragic. Still other such journeys into the unknown end in such unfathomably frightening circumstances that they become the stuff of legend. Such is the destiny that befell nine ill-fated skiing enthusiasts in the late 1950s.

Unlike so many of the most intriguing mysteries of the 20^th Century — including the fate of the crew of the Ourang Medan or the whereabouts of the missing Anjikuni Villagers of Canada — What makes the so-called “Dyatlov Pass Incident” so fascinating is the fact that there is absolutely no doubt that these events actually occurred… and dreadfully little doubt that one of the last sensations experienced by these poor souls was one of abject terror.

The proof of this tragedy exists not only in the plethora of photographs that have been preserved, but also in the extensive records (many of which are still allegedly classified) of the Soviet military who investigated the odd case and were manifestly unable to reach any definitive conclusions despite an overwhelming amount of physical evidence. In fact, the investigators tasked with solving this case were eventually forced to attribute the whole peculiar affair to: “a compelling unknown force.”

But, before we go any further; like any good mystery we must begin at the beginning…

TEN LITTLE SKIERS

On January 25, 1959, one ski instructor, three engineers and seven students from the former Soviet Union’s Ural Polytechnic Institute, located in the city then known as Sverdlovsk, boarded a train and embarked on a journey to the nearby Otorten Mountain range, which is nestled in the northern Urals, for a strenuous cross-country skiing expedition.

The leader of the excursion was an enthusiastic 23 year-old by the name of Igor Dyatlov — for whom the notorious Pass would eventually be named — who had assembled a crack team of male and female skiers with the intention that this arduous trip would serve as a training exercise for a future expedition to the more difficult and treacherous Arctic regions.

As the group of seasoned skiers left the train station and hopped a truck headed toward their very own “Alpine in the Urals,” one of the team members, Yury Yudin, fell ill and was forced to remain behind at the settlement of Vizhai, which was the last outpost before the Otorten range.

Yudin hugged his comrades goodbye and with envy watched them leave… scarcely could he imagine at the time that he would the lucky one.

Later in life Yudin would claim that the one thing that had haunted him the most over the years was not being able to discover what kind of diabolical force stole the lives of his friends; a fate he would have shared were it not for his unexpected illness. According to Yudin:

 “If I had a chance to ask God just one question, it would be, ‘What really happened to my friends that night?’”

Two day after embarking on their adventure, the nine remaining athletes — including engineers Rustem Slobodin, Georgyi Krivonischenko and Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel, as well as students Yuri Doroshenko, Zinaida Kolmogorova, Lyudmila Dubinina and ski instructor and guide, Alexander Zolotarev — all followed Dyatlov toward the first stop on their long and grueling journey, the Gora Otorten mountain.

The date was January 28, 1959. The team would never make it to their destination… and none of them would ever be seen alive again.

THE SEARCH BEGINS

On February 11, 1959, The Dyatlov Ski Team was supposed to arrive in Vizhai. Among their first orders of business, following a hot meal and a stiff drink, were to send their loved ones telegrams announcing the success of their mission.

When no telegrams were received, most of the team’s family members were not concerned, realizing that journeys like this rarely end on schedule, but when over a week went by with no word from the skiers, their relatives began to demand that the Ural Polytechnic Institute organize a search and rescue operation, which they did posthaste.

Within days it became clear that the institute’s ground based initiative would not be able to produce any results on their own and that was when both military and civilian authorities got involved in the search.  Military planes and helicopters were swiftly dispatched to the area and it was on February 25, that a pilot first spotted something curious on a mountainside below.

A MYSTERY IS BORN:

The next day the search party — including fellow Polytechnic student Mikhail Sharavin — made their way up to an abandoned encampment on the eastern slope of a mountain listed as “1079.”

The foreboding peak is better known to the indigenous Mansi tribesmen as “Kholat Syakhl,” which (prophetically perhaps) translates from their native tongue as the “Mountain of the Dead.”

The would-be rescuers discovered a badly damaged tent and a plethora of footprints made by what appeared to be at least eight different people radiating out from the devastated tent. Sharavin then described the state of the large tent that the skiers all shared:

“We discovered that the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty, and all the group’s belongings and shoes had been left behind.”

The search party members quickly realized that the tracks consisted of either bare or sock clad feet and, in one case, a single shoe. Two sets of prints led down a slope toward a densely forested area, but the tracks were covered by snow roughly 1,500 feet away from the tent.

Sharavin followed the trail and found the remains of a fire beneath a looming, ancient pine… and with it something much worse.

Near the long dead fire were the frozen remains of team members Doroshenko and Krivonischenko. The searchers noted with utter bewilderment that even though the men were well within range of the now ravaged tent both men were naked and shoeless, save for their underwear. The investigators also saw that the branches of the old pine had been snapped off up to a height of almost 15-feet.

Forensic tests later confirmed that traces of skin were found embedded in the bark, indicating that the pair had frantically attempted to climb the tree, snapping off branches until their hands were mass of pulpy flesh.

At this point the searchers no doubt began to wonder what manner of “beast” could scare these men so much that they abandoned their clothes, despite the freezing cold, and tore the skin from their palms in a desperate attempt to get to safety. The fact that there were no evident animal tracks and that they had the time to try and start a fire, combined with the fact that the bodies of the men remained untouched only heighted the searchers puzzlement.

Not long after the party found the bodies of Doroshenko and Krivonischenko, they stumbled across the corpse of team leader Dyatlov nearly 900-feet away from the other cadavers, but somewhat closer to the tent. Dyatlov was on his back; one hand was clinging to an undersized birch tree branch while his other hand, locked in ice and rigor mortis, appeared to be protecting his head from some unknown assailant.

Half buried in the snow not far from the tent was the body of Rustem Slobodin, which rescuers found lying face down in the snow. Slobodin’s skull bore a deep fracture nearly 7-inches long; nevertheless medical experts later determined that the most likely cause death was hypothermia, which only compounded the befuddlement of the volunteer and military search party participants.

The carcass of Zinaida Kolmogorov was turned up the furthest away from the group. Traces of blood were found near her corpse, yet it was not revealed if she was its source, although that conclusion would seem likely. The rescuers could not understand why there was no evidence of a struggle.

The party continued their efforts to locate the rest of the team, but a lengthy search for the remaining members turned up nothing. The men on the site could not comprehend why a group of experienced skiers would dash half-naked into the bitter cold of the forest in the black of night. Nor could they fathom the kind of terror that must have inspired these young people to act so recklessly.

Even more perplexing was the fact that the searchers, after inspecting the severely damaged tent, came to the conclusion that the material had been torn from the inside, as if its occupants had been frantic to escape from something that was already sealed in the tent with them or were in such a rush that unclasping the tent from the inside was not an option!

Amidst the broken wood, shredded canvas and debris of the ravaged tent, investigators discovered rolls of undeveloped film and the journals of a few of the expedition members, but rather than helping to illuminate the truth, these finds would only add more layers to this already dense mystery.

MAY 4, 1959:

After two months of fruitless searching, the spring thaw finally set in and the weather let up enough to reveal the corpses of the missing team members in a ravine situated some 225-feet from the pine that served as an arboreal memorial to Doroshenko and Krivonischenko.

The four lost skiers — instructor Alexander Zolotaryov, engineer Nicolas Thibeaux-Brignollel and students Alexander Kolevatov and Ludmila Dubinina — were discovered buried beneath 12-feet of snow and ice. All had apparently succumbed to brutal internal injuries. Unlike their friends who had perished above, these victims were all fully dressed.

As in the case of Slobodin, Thibeaux -Brignollel’s skull showed evidence of having been struck by a heavy object. Zolotarev and Dubunina’s chests had been crushed inward, shattering several ribs and causing massive internal damage. Strangely there were no indications of what may have caused this severe trauma and, even more bizarrely, the corpses showed no signs of bruising or soft tissue damage.

Doctor Boris Vozrozhdenny, who inspected the bodies, stated that the force with which these corpses were hit exceeded that capable by man and went on to claim that the damage: “…was equal to the effect of a car crash.”

The searchers were startled to observe that Dubinina’s head was tilted back; her stretched mouth wide as if emitting a silent scream. Upon closer inspection the rescuers realized that her tongue had been ripped out by the root.

They also noted that at some point these poor individuals had either exchanged or stolen the clothing off their comrades as Dubinina’s foot was swaddled in a tattered piece of Krivonishenko’s wool pants and Zolotaryov was found wearing Dubinina’s faux fur hat and coat. The searchers were unsure if this was the result of dressing too swiftly in a dark tent or a case of scavenging articles of clothing from deceased teammates.

At the funerals that soon followed the discovery of the bodies, many family members claimed that the skin of the deceased bore an unnatural orange color and, even more disturbingly, most reports insisted that their hair had lost its pigmentation and was a dull shade of grey. Skeptics claim that the orange skin was caused by exposure and that the hair had not lost its color, but it’s interesting that so many of the bereaved relatives took the time to notice these strange features.

As if all of this were not odd enough, some of the articles of clothing found on the bodies were measured as emitting higher than normal levels of radiation.

THE INVESTIGATION:

The compounding enigmas surrounding this fantastic case, combined with the youth and popularity of the victims, sent Soviet investigators into overdrive.

The first thing they did was to try and reconstruct the series of events that led to the Dyatlov Ski Teams shocking demise with the help of the journals and film rolls discovered at the scene.

The primary mystery that faced them was why Dyatlov and his team would have chosen to make camp on an exposed mountain face when a detour of less than a mile would have afforded them some shelter from the harsh Russian elements.

It would be Yudin — the only team member to survive thanks to a timely illness — who would shed light on this question:

“Dyatlov probably did not want to lose the distance they had covered, or he decided to practice camping on the mountain slope.”

The photos developed from the rolls of film found in the tent revealed that the expedition members had set up camp on February 2, at approximately 5:00 pm. on the slope of Kholat-Syakhl, in order to get out of the inclement weather. The group had cleared the tree line and was a mere 10-miles from the first destination on their long trek, Gora Otorten. In the photos they all looked healthy and jovial.

Investigators came to the conclusion that sometime around 7:00 pm. the team ate a meal and not long thereafter members began to settle down for the night. The temperature on the slope was less than five degrees Fahrenheit, which has always made investigators wonder why it was that so many of the skiers were in a state of undress. Whatever their reasons may have been, most researchers agree that at this point everything was relatively normal.

Forensic pathologists later estimated that the events which ultimately led to the untimely deaths of the skiers must have occurred somewhere between 9.30 and 11.30pm. They based this speculation on the undigested food found in the stomachs of the victims. At this point military investigators began piecing this puzzle together to the best of their ability. What follows is, in their best estimation, what occurred:

THE TIMELINE OF A TRAGEDY:

The investigators speculated that sometime before midnight on February 2, the skiers were frightened by an “unknown event.” Members of the team managed to cut or rip through the fabric of the tent in a frantic attempt to escape whatever might have been attacking or approaching them and in their haste they burst out into the icy night mostly unclothed and in a state of sheer panic.

Being experienced skiers and mountaineers, the group must have been fully aware of the fact that they would not be able to survive long in the frigid wastes without protection. This indicated to the investigators that the team must have been convinced that they were facing mortal peril and had opted to flee for their lives.

The generally bare tracks found in the deep snow implied that the team had initially scrambled outward in all directions, but that they managed to rejoin one another down the incline about 900-feet away from the now shredded tent. Investigators then surmised that the group then huddled for safety beneath the large pine that Doroshenko and Krivonischenko tried so desperately to climb.

At this point the investigators speculated that an attempt was made by teammates to share clothes, but the states of undress that so many of the victims were found in would seem to indicate otherwise. Still the evidence suggests that the group, obviously terrified by the prospect of returning to their tent, manage to gather enough kindling to start a fire.

The agents on the case then begin to wonder of if Doroshenko and Krivonischenko’s efforts to climb the tree were a futile attempt at escape or if they might have been trying to gain a better vantage point to see if their tent, which was much higher up on the slope, was still under siege by whatever unknown menace had compelled them to take flight.

At some point during the night investigators proposed that Doroshenko and Krivonischenko likely had succumbed to exposure. It was then that three members of the team — Kolmogorova, Slobodin and Dyatlov — determined that braving whatever it was that had apparently infested the tent was preferable to dying of hypothermia. Resolute (and almost certainly terrified) the exhausted trio attempted to make their way back up the slope — none of them would make it.

With their young leader out of sight one can only assume that the remaining team members Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignollel, Kolevatov and Dubinina hoped for the best, but expected the worst. Likely terrified beyond belief the four remain survivors strip whatever they can from the corpses of their comrades… and almost certainly pray for daylight.

Fearing that their friends are all dead, investigators hypothesized that Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignollel, Kolevatov and Dubinina decided to move nearer to the forest in hopes of finding some kind of shelter. Somewhere along this journey and eventual descent into a nearby ravine the remaining teammates would sustain their fatal internal injuries, but investigators could not find an obvious cause.

The first to perish, according to forensics reports, was Thibeaux-Brignollel. Within hours he was followed by Kolevatov and Dubinina. Zolotarev would be the last to expire from a combination of internal trauma and hypothermia. It was not clear if the removal of Dubinina’s tongue occurred postmortem or if it contributed to her demise.

When all was said and done, the final survivor died less than eight hours after the initial event. As with everything else in this case, the discovery of the missing team members offered more questions than answers, and the most important one was…

WHAT HAPPENED?

While investigators were able to piece together much of what happened that terrible evening from the physical evidence left at the scene, the primary questions remained unanswered; firstly what could have possibly have frightened these athlete caliber skiers so badly that they were willing to freeze to death rather than confront it… and secondly, what (if anything) lethally injured the remaining survivors?

Despite the popularity of the region, for 3-years following this harrowing event the pass was closed to outdoorsmen, hikers and skiers. This was, presumably, to avert the same terrifying fate from befalling anyone else.

This proves how seriously authorities took this case, but after months of dead ends and disappointments the case was closed and the files were sent to what many allege was a clandestine Soviet archive, but even though the final official word on the event was that the skiers fell to: “a compelling unknown force,” that does not mean that there weren’t plenty of theories floating around. The first supposition that the investigators proposed was that they were murdered by…

MANSI WARRIORS… AND GHOSTS:

The first theory offered up as grist for the rumor mill regarding the fates of the nine skiers was that they had unintentionally run afoul of some Mansi tribesman by trespassing into their territory and that these legendarily harsh Siberian natives had dispatched them accordingly. The theory goes something like this…

Mansi natives enraged by the intrusion of the team tear their way into the communal tent and force the mostly disrobed skiers down the slope, where they build a fire.  After Doroshenko and Krivonischenko perish, Dyatlov, Slobodin and Kolmogorova desperately try and make their way toward what’s left of their tent. Slobodin’s skull is crushed by the butt of a rifle or some other heavy object, knocking him cold. He and his friends then succumb to the elements.

Following the deaths of their compatriots, Zolotaryov, Thibeaux-Brignollel, Kolevatov and Dubinina are compelled to balance on the steep precipice of the ravine wherein their bodies were found the following spring. Thibeaux-Brignollel is wounded with perhaps the same blunt instrument that claimed Slobodin’s  life and Dubinina’s screams prove to be so annoying that one of the Mansi throws her to the ground, breaks her ribs with his knee and forcibly removes her tongue to prevent her from shrieking.

They are both thrown into the ravine, followed by Zolotarev and Alexander Kolevatov. At this point the Mansi leave the interlopers for dead… or so this admittedly dubious theory goes anyway.

Military investigators were swift to dispel this rumor, stating that the damage done to the corpses were inconsistent with an attack by a human being. Some modern day researchers have suggested that the Soviets may have concealed evidence of a Mansi attack in order to avoid a distracting and potentially costly confrontation with the Mansi on their own oil rich soil, which they hoped to exploit.

To even the armchair investigator — a clan of which I am a proud member — it would seem that the total absence of bullet wounds in the victims, combined with the utter lack of footprints, essentially rules out the Mansi as potential suspects in this heinous crime.Add to this the fact that the groups’ provisions were left untouched and we can all but totally dismiss the circumstantial case again these aboriginal hunters

As if that weren’t enough evidence to exonerate these native Siberians, there is conclusive proof that the Mansi assisted in the hunt for the missing skiers. Regardless of how sound the Soviet’s motivation may have been for covering up a Mansi attack, the evidence simply does not bear out this hypothesis.

Intriguingly, Mansi legend has it that Kholat-Syakhl received it’s ominous name after nine Mansi warriors had mysteriously perished on the same peak years before. This has led some investigators to surmise that the region might be cursed or infested by ancient and malicious spirits, but for the most part the mountain was not considered to be a particularly sacred region by the Mansi.

So if we rule out the indigenous human culprits as well as undead ones, then perhaps we should (like so many before us) look to the skies and wonder whether or not the Dyatlov Team might have fallen prey to an…

ALIEN ATTACK:

Like all classic 20^th Century mysteries involving groups of missing persons or enigmatic deaths, someone, somewhere is bound to blame strange flying saucers and their insidious occupants for the crime and this case proved to be no different.

According to archived reports, Lev Ivanov, the lead Soviet investigator on the case, collected a report from a group of hikers suggesting that something extraterrestrial might have resulted in the Dyatlov Team’s tragic demise.

The hikers were camping in an area about 32-miles south of Kholat-Syakhl on the night in question when they spied a series of “strange orange spheres” in the northern sky.  It’s worth noting that during the next month and a half other residents of the area report similar anomalous aerial phenomenon.

Ivanov himself believed that these spheres might have been involved with the unusual deaths. In a 1990 interview, Ivanov claimed that he had been ordered to close the case and classify the findings as secret.

He stated that officials were worried that reports of U.F.O.s in the area by multiple eyewitnesses — including members of both the military and weather service — could result in some unnecessary speculation. In an interview with a small Soviet newspaper, Ivanov was alleged to have stated:

“I suspected at the time, and am almost sure now, that these bright flying spheres had a direct connection to the group’s death.”

Ivanov speculated that one of the skiers might have spotted the U.F.O.s and that his or her cries might have panicked the other team members into rushing out just as one of the vehicles exploded above, sending them all fleeing in terror. He even speculated that the concussive blast may be what had cracked Slobodin’s skull. I feel compelled to add that the removal of the tongue is one of the most common features in cattle mutilations, but that seems to be a sketchy link at best.

Other “evidence” that researchers claim is evidence of alien interaction is the allegedly orange flesh and grey hair found on the victims — a point which is hotly debated — and the fact that some of the team members were wearing clothes contaminated with a low level of radiation.

While it’s certainly impressive that the head of the Dyatlov investigation supported this theory, and the anomalous radiation readings are intriguing, it seems as if we might be yet again casting unwarranted aspersions upon our intergalactic brethren. While there can be little doubt that there was some kind of bizarre object soaring in the skies above the Urals that night, perhaps it was not from out of this world, but an all too terrestrial…

MILITARY EXPERIMENT GONE AWRY:

This conjecture supposes that the Soviet government was conducting a highly classified test of an unknown weapon on the secluded slopes of Kholat-Syakhl and that — either by intention or accident — the ski team fell prey to this monstrously powerful weapon.

One of the biggest proponents of this theory was the only surviving member of the team, Yudin. Yudin believed that his friends inadvertently entered a covert military testing ground and had paid for it with their lives. He speculated that this was why the military had been so secretive about the investigation and that it also explained his comrades’ irradiated clothing.

After all of the evidence had been collected, the searchers asked for Yudin’s help in identifying who the objects found at the site belonged to. He said that he saw in the mix of his friend’s possessions a torn swathe of fabric that resembled a piece of a soldier’s coat as well as a pair of glasses and skis that had not belonged to any of the team members.

This proof — combined with the fact that Yudin testified to seeing documents that indicated the actual investigation had begun two weeks before the camp’s “official” discovery — compelled him to claim that the military had discovered the camp before the volunteer search party arrived. Yudin also claimed that he knew for a fact that: “there were special boxes with their organs sent for examination,” but this was not reflected in any of the papers that were released.

Be that as it may, the fact remains that the search party found no indication on any explosion on or near the campsite at Kholat-Syakhl. There is also no record of any missile launches in the region, but even in the 21^st Century records of clandestine Soviet military operations are still few and far between.

But if we’re dealing with a hazardous unidentified weapon there’s no reason to assume it was explosive. Perhaps there was a bacteriological or chemical spray released that resulted in their panic and eventual demise. A few have even suggested, due to the haphazard method they used in building the fire, that they were blinded by a bright flash, but most researchers do not agree with this assumption

There are also some who believe that it might have been some kind of experimental sonic weapon that employed Infrasound, which has been known to cause feelings from dread to outright panic in humans. Since this sound is inaudible in a classic sense, many people who have been subjected to Infrasound experiments claim to feel that some manner of paranormal force is at work.

This would frankly explain a lot, but that doesn’t change the fact that there’s absolutely no proof to support this assumption. Bringing this back down to Earth… literally… there are those who feel that the team may well have surrendered to…

AVALANCHE PARANOIA:

The eastern face of Kholat-Syakhl is a potentially disastrous avalanche zone and while these intrepid mountaineers chose to brave the slope rather than retreat to the safety of the forest, it seems indubitable that they were keeping one ear open for any tell tale signs of an avalanche.

While there is no evidence supporting the theory that the skiers were caught in even a small avalanche, there are a few who suspect that they might have heard a strange rumbling sound during the night, which led them to believe an avalanche was imminent and in their haste to escape they cut their tent and ran half-naked into the 3-foot deep snow drifts.

While this is a distinct possibility, one would envision that the manifest lack of falling rocks and snow would be enough to compel the team to return to their torn tent to patch it up and bundle up in the clothing they left behind. Investigators have reported that the base of the pine tree where the group gathered was just out of sight of the tent, but I find it difficult to imagine that these seasoned skiers would run that far and never look behind them.

Beyond that, “avalanche panic” doesn’t account for the extensive injuries suffered by so many team members. Still, the one element of this mystery that is universally agreed upon is that the frenetic condition in which the  team members ripped, then abandoned their tent indicates that they were genuinely afraid. The biggest question has always been “what caused this fear?” and some have suggested that the Dyatlov crew might of had a nasty run-in with a…

VICIOUS SIBERIAN YETI:

Although the evidence for this supposition is scant to say the least, there are some who have proposed that the skiers fell victim to the notoriously territorial wild man of Siberia, known to locals as the Almas. They speculate that the terrifying roar of the beast might have sent the team into a panic, resulting in their poorly prepared escape into the snow.

The two primary reasons for the existence of this theory are the seemingly inexplicable impact wounds found on the skulls and torsos of nearly half of the corpses and an as yet unverified piece of paper that was allegedly discovered near the campsite which read:

“From now on we know there are snowmen.”

While the crypto-dork in me salivates at the idea of lumbering, ape-like beasts dwelling in the dark and forested nether regions of our ever shrinking world, the evidence in this case simply does not support the involvement of hairy hominids. The first and most obvious point is that amidst all the manmade tracks that the searchers found, there is no way a pair of gargantuan, bare prints would have gone undetected.

Secondly, while a punch from a Bigfoot-like beast could most assuredly shatter ones ribcage, why would these commonly gentle giants choose to attack some in the group, while allowing others to succumb to the elements? It might be suggested that they were hurling large rocks from a distance, as these creatures are sometimes known to do, but if that were the case then where was the debris when the searchers arrived? Finally the existence of the note itself is highly debatable and most researchers dismiss the entire theory. I’m inclined to agree.

A LEGEND IS BORN

In 1967, journalist Yuri Yarovoi wrote a novel about this enduring mystery titled: “Of the highest rank of complexity.” Yarovoi had served as the official photographer for the Dyatlov Ski Team search party, so he was privy to inside information. Nevertheless, many modern investigators think that due to the fact that the book was published in an era when Cold War tensions were running high and secrecy was the rule rather than the exception, the likelihood that this book told the full story was not very good.

Regardless of how revealing Yarovoi’s book may actually have been — and he conceded that it was a “dramatization” of the actual events, with a much more happy ending — it did manage to lay the groundwork for the legend that would eventually creep its way past the Iron Curtain and into the outside world.

Yarovoi’s colleagues would later reveal that he had written alternative (and ostensibly more authentic) versions of the novel, but his first two attempts were scratched by Soviet censorship. Sadly, following Yarovoi’s death in 1980, his photos, diaries and manuscripts were, conveniently perhaps, lost.

In 1990, author Anatoly Guschin had been granted “special permission” to study the original files of the Dyatlov inquest for a book he wanted to write about the incident. He later reported that scores of pages had been removed from the files, including an “envelope” mentioned in the evidence list. What this envelope was supposed to contain (or if it ever really existed) remains just one of the many mysteries surrounding these events.

In his book: “The price of state secrets is nine lives,” Guschin speculated that the team had fallen victim to a “Soviet secret weapon experiment.” While his theory was just as controversial as the rest, Guschin’s reintroduced this mystery to a brand new generation of curiosity seekers and the floodgates were thrown open with literally hundreds of articles and documentaries following in its wake, including a 2011 segment on the History Channel’s hit program “Ancient Aliens.”

CONCLUSION

So what really happened to these nine poor souls? For over half a century forensics experts, scientists, military officials and amateur investigators have scratched their collective heads over this eerie enigma… and it doesn’t seem as if any answers are forthcoming.

On February 2, 2008, an investigative conference was organized by Ural State Technical University and the Dyatlov Foundation. The six surviving members of the original search party as well as 31 technical experts assembled in Yekaterinburg, Russia, to look at the evidence and determine the actual fate of the Dyatlov Ski Team. After much deliberation the panel concluded that their deaths were likely the unintended result of a secret military test. Needless to say there are many who disagree with this conclusion.

Regardless of the fact that the victims’ grey hair may be an exaggeration or that the radiation readings might be dismissed due to mild exposure to Radium or Radon in one of the Polytechnic Institute’s many laboratories, the fact is that nine experienced hikers were thrust into such a terrified state that they literally doomed themselves in an effort to escape a fate that they believed would be even more horrendous that freezing to death on an icy mountain slope… what could do that?

In the end we must never forget that this is first and foremost a tragedy in which nine young lives were tragically cut short, with little more than a memorial stone and a rusted plaque to commemorate the terrible loss. Almost as sad is the fact that none of their families were offered the dubious consolation of knowing why it was there loved ones had perished in such a frightening fashion.

There are many who would attribute this mystery to little more than a mundane series of unfortunate mishaps that resulted in nine sorrowful deaths, but these were experienced skiers and it seems unlikely that they would all follow such a foolhardy path. Now, despite generations of effort to debunk and demystify this extraordinary event, the “Dyatlov Pass Incident” remains one of the great mysteries of the 20^th Century…  and one of the most frightening true life campfire stories I’ve ever encountered.