Some of the Most Bizarre Alien and UFO Encounters at U.S. Air Force Bases

There are all manner of UFO and alien encounters within the realm of ufology, coming from a wide variety of witnesses from all walks of life. There are those in rural areas, suburban areas, at airports, urban areas, and everywhere in between, but one type of case that really catches the attention are those that have supposedly gone down at military installations. Here we have highly trained observers who have made themselves ready for a lot of things, but not for something like this. A lot of these reports are even more bizarre than most, and here we will look at a handful of extremely weird alien and UFO encounters at Air Force bases in the United States. 

On May 1, 1952, a Major Rudy Pestalozzi was out an airfield with an airman at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base (AFB), in Tucson, Arizona on duty when they noticed something very odd about the B-36 bomber that was flying overhead. According to the witness, two shiny metallic discs sped in out of nowhere to overtake the plane and then move into positions on each side of it, after which they paced it for a time before suddenly tearing off at an angle of 70-80 degrees from the flight path of the B-36 and shooting off out of sight. The crew of the B-36 was apparently so unnerved by the whole experience that they performed an early landing, after which they were heavily interrogated by Pestalozzi on what had happened up there. They would explain that each of the discs has measured an estimated 20-25 feet in diameter and had remained silent when the plane attempted radio contact. What were these objects and what did they want? Who knows? 

Another very bizarre event was mentioned in the book They Knew too Much About Flying Saucers, by Gray Barker, and allegedly took place In April of 1954, at Edwards AFB, formerly Muroc AFB, in the Palmdale/Lancaster area of California’s remote Mojave Desert, California. The bonkers report begins with 5 crafts approaching the base; 3 disks and 2 cylinders, each one about 30 feet in diameter, which the Air Force wasted no time in firing upon with live ammo. The blistering assault allegedly had no effect on the objects, and they proceeded to land near one of the large hangars. After some time of just sitting there freaking everyone out, the objects then disgorged a procession of diminutive humanoids, which were about 3 feet tall, without helmets and with large heads and eyes, typical “grey aliens.” These aliens could rather creepily turn themselves invisible at will and spoke English through some sort of translator devices on their silvery suits, and rather than express any anger over having just been fired upon, they had quite the tale to tell.

They supposedly explained that they were from a dying world and that and that they also had a genetic disorder, and therefore needed Earth’s help to provide underground bases for them to live in peace for a time and try to find a cure. They promised that in exchange for this they would provide various technologies to the human race, and that they would leave behind one of their flying saucers. An agreement was reached and the saucer was then moved to one of the hangars, where it proved to be very light and able to turn invisible. It would allegedly be kept at Muroc for some time before being placed underground at the North Edwards base for many years. Rather surreally, the then President of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, was at the base at the time and supposedly witnessed everything, and after convening a meeting of world leaders the aliens were allegedly given an island in French Polynesia as a base on Earth, after which numerous projects were funded to build subterranean bases for the Greys. This would supposedly kick off a long term exchange with these aliens that the government has kept a secret and which all began that day in 1954 at Muroc AFB. Pretty strange stuff, indeed.   

From 1975 we have a another case from Edwards Air Force Base. On October 7 of that year, 12 luminous UFOs allegedly came right down low and just over a secure military runway, and were clearly observed by both witnesses on the ground and on radar. The alarmed Air Force scrambled several jet fighters, worried about the threat to the nuclear materials stored at the base, but the planes were never able to follow or even hope to match the extreme maneuverability and speed of the crafts. Then, just as the base was considering a more significant military response, the objects all flew off in formation to places unknown. The film producer and ufologist Samuel M. Sherman would claim that he had managed to cobble together the lost tapes of what he says were about 40 hours of recordings that were made of the incident, and he says of it all (caps not mine):

What makes this historic intrusion and visit so important is that the US Air Force thoroughly documented it and even gave it a code name: “The Incident.” The entire incident was additionally documented with written reports, radar photos, and AUDIO TAPES made by Air Force personnel while they were actually SEEING the objects, FLYING AFTER the objects, and considering taking SERIOUS MILITARY ACTION against what they might imply as a threat. 

From my calculations at least 40 hours of recordings were made (a five hour event recording from at least 8 locations). However, only six hours of tapes were de-classified many years ago as a mass of noise and unclear voices, which truly defied interpretation. They had SCRAMBLED the tapes into what they felt was a hopeless jumble of random pieces of conversation utterly out of sequence and logical progression. When I realized what had been done, it presented a challenge which made me determined to find out what was hidden within that chaotic mass of sound. After many months and countless hours of laborious research, cataloging, and editing the snips and pieces of the audio tape, I was able to organize the sound so the conversations could be understood. The resulting reconstructed tapes are now ironclad documented proof of the existence of extraterrestrial UFO visitation to this planet.

I have sent copies of my finished product directly to a number of major Government Agencies and have received NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS! Not a single Official Agency has tried to debunk or discredit the event, or my presentation of the tapes. Furthermore, The CSETI organization has used my tape presentation in meetings with members of Congress with the aim of having our government tell the public the truth of ET involvement on the Earth. And yes, the plane spotters at Edwards KNEW that UFOs or UFOBs, as they called them then, were not our “black” projects, Soviet bombers, or any known aircraft – they were unknown, fabulously high-tech craft with capabilities beyond any known technology.

What to make of all of this? Very odd. Edwards AFB has often been the center of strangeness like this, and yet another incident supposedly happened there in 1971 that is every bit as bizarre. In the summer of 1971, A small mushroom-shaped craft allegedly actually came down to crash close to Edwards AFB, and was described as being metallic with greenish lights, with no windows or seams and seemingly molded out of one piece, but what was even weirder than this was that there were apparently three grey alien humanoids in the craft, two of which were dead and one that was alive but badly injured. Making it even more bizarre still was that there was also found a human woman in a tight-fitting pink body suit, an apparent abductee by the name of Lorraine Dvorak Cordini, who was also alive but injured. 

Cordini would supposedly later claim that although her memories of what had happened to her were fuzzy, she remembered travelling aboard the craft from a massive “mothership” in space, and the next thing she remembered was being in the wreckage and being arrested by military personnel. As she was being led away, she also recalled that there had been the image in her mind a “Captain,” who was a different type of alien that was tall and dressed in white robes, who apologized to her that they could not be helped. She was then led away to a hangar and ufologist Anton Anfalov has written of what happened next:

Lorraine was then thrown into the backseat of a black limousine. Her next memory was what surfaced in the hypnosis session. Lorraine was lying on a cold metal table in a hangar. Three military persons stood to the left of the table. One may have been an officer because he had a different cap than the fatigue uniforms of the other two persons. Another uniformed military man was at Lorraine’s head and to the right and to his left was an alien whom Lorraine described as having a pumpkin-shaped head. He had appeared in a childhood experience that previously surfaced during the same hypnosis session. In the childhood experience he was in a spacesuit… Lorraine’s child’s mind saw him dangling outside the window in a deep sea diver’s suit. This alien was about 4 ft tall, his body bulbous and brown. His head bulbous and pumpkin like. Lorraine “heard” the alien thinking how great he felt about himself and how proud he was to be in the service of the earth military men… he had a smug attitude and the military man next to him showed contempt towards the alien. She was very confused and disoriented. Her next memory was of being yanked off the table and being dragged outside the hangar. There she saw many flashing red lights and screamed, “My God, that isn’t a space ship that is the police, my God it is the police.” The military men then sat her on a bus and she ended up in San Francisco stranded and lost.

Very strange, to be sure. Moving along into 1976, there is a rather intense report from the Cannon AFB, which is located a few miles outside of Clovis, New Mexico. In January of that year, four bright saucer-shaped objects, each one estimated as being at least at least 30 to 50 feet in diameter, allegedly dropped right down from the night sky from out of nowhere and started darting around in a threatening manner above the base, which was enough for the Air Force to scramble jets to send up to engage. Brian Vike, Director HBCC UFO Research, has said of what happened next:

The jet aircraft began trying to intercept the objects. As the aircraft got close to the vicinity of the unknown objects, the objects, at an incredible rate of speed, would shoot across the sky making 90 degree turns leaving the fighter aircraft trailing way behind as they just weren’t able to keep up with the strange craft. As the objects made unusual turns a plasma type glow could clearly be witnessed by the group of people watching the event. The cat and mouse chase between the objects and jets went on for approximately 45 minutes. Because the witnesses were on one of the tallest buildings in Portales, New Mexico, they could clearly see the flight-line at the Base. One of the men had brought a 150 power telescope which enabled the fellows to see the objects fly at a low altitude over the flight-line. As the objects passed over the lights running down the flight line, all the lights went out. Eventually the objects shot up and were gone in a second, or so, and the F-111’s were recalled back to the Base and landed safely.

According to Vike, a journalism student called “Bruce” was there at the time, and actually managed to take some photos of the incident, but that he had a disturbing experience not long after appearing on the Jeff Rense national radio program about what had happened. Vike explains of the spooky incident:

It was around 1:30 a.m., Bruce and his wife had turned in for the night and were sound asleep when his cell phone started ringing. Knowing that he had his work cell phone turned off he knew it was a call from one of his children, and of course being a parent, he worried as he grabbed for the phone. Bruce answered with a hello and a voice spoke back saying, “Mr. Bruce (last name). Bruce said there was a very professional sounding gentleman on the other end. The man said he needed to talk to him about a matter of utmost urgency! Bruce still half asleep asked the man who he was, what was this call was all about, especially at this hour of the morning. The fellow said this is about your recent radio appearance and discussion about some photographs that you took back in New Mexico.

At this point in the conversation Bruce said to the man,”you have to be kidding me,” thinking this had to be some kind of hoax, asked who was this. The man said there is no need for you to know who I am. He went on to say, “it would be in your best interest to discontinue this line of discussion and do away with those photographs. Destroy them!” Bruce at this point is in shock about this man. He looks on the cell phone to see what phone number is displayed and it shows “number not available”. The man told Bruce that “this is no joke and ‘we’ feel that this would be in your best interest, and for the sake of your family, that all of this go away.” Bruce told the man that if he wasn’t willing to reveal himself then the conversation would be terminated. The man then went on to tell Bruce what his children were involved in, meaning their daily activities, where they lived, etc.., what Bruce’s wife was doing, such as personal activities within the family, etc… and said that he could fax Bruce his life’s history within a few seconds. That was it, Bruce hung up and that ended the call with the stranger.

After this incident took place and some weeks had gone by, a neighbor of Bruce’s caught up with him outside one day and told him that they had been seeing alot of traffic in and out of Bruce’s property. Cars would pull up and stay for a while and then drive off. Other times the cars would pull into the driveway, stop, and men would get out and walk around the home. Then they got back into their cars and drove off. These cars that were coming and going had government license plates on them. One other interesting fact to this story is that Bruce put together a package for me, Jeff Rense, George Filer and Peter Davenport. In this package there was a copy of the photo he had taken over the AFB. Bruce mailed out the packages to us all and not one of us have received the information. Bruce says he is going to try again and send it through a different means.

Pretty sinister, indeed. From the following year these is a bizarre incident from Ellsworth AFB, located around 7 miles southwest of Nisland, South Dakota. On the evening of November 16, 1977, two security personnel were dispatched to investigate an alarm activation at one of the warhead storage facilities on the base, and as they approached they observed a bright light shining vertically upwards from the rear of the fence line. One of the men stayed in the vehicle while the other went to check out what this strange light was, and as he approached he would report seeing “an individual dressed in a glowing, green metallic uniform and wearing a helmet with visor.” The security officer ordered the mysterious trespasser to stop, and when he did not he aimed his weapon at him. As the weapon was trained on him, the stranger produced some sort of object that emitted a “bright flash of intense light” that disintegrated the weapon and caused severe burns to the guard’s hands. 

When his partner arrived to help, they then saw two more intruders dressed in the same uniforms, who seemed to phase through the fence and walk completely through it. When their orders to halt went unheeded, they fired at the intruders with an M-16 rifle and both fell to the ground. They didn’t stay down long, however, and the two base personnel had to take cover as the intruders fired beams of light at them. The two figures then proceeded to hurry off to a nearby hill, where a saucer shaped object bathed in green illumination appeared, which picked them up and then climbed vertically upwards and shot off over the Eastern horizon. Rather strangely, an examination off the site would show that the nuclear components of the warhead had gone missing. Were they stolen by those enigmatic strangers? Who knows?

If a shootout with aliens sounds strange enough as it is, our final case here is perhaps the most spectacularly weird of all, involving an alien allegedly killed by base personnel. The incident supposedly happened at Fort Dix/McGuire AFB, New Jersey, on January 18, 1978. At around 3 a.m. that morning, a Jeffrey Morse had been on patrol as a security policeman for the base when he was notified about UFO activity over Fort Dix, which is an army base that adjoined McGuire AFB, and there were calls for assistance from a Ft. Dix MP who was pursuing a low flying object which had then hovered over his car. Morse would explain of the incredibly bizarre series of events:

He described the UFO as oval shaped, with no details, and glowing with a blueish green color. His radio transmission was cut off. At that time in front of his police car, appeared a thing, about 4ft tall, grayish, brown, fat head, long arms, and slender body. The MP panicked and fired five rounds from his .45 Cal into the thing, and one round into the object above. The object then fled straight up and joined with eleven others high in the sky. This we all saw but didn’t know the details at the time. Anyway, the thing ran into the woods towards our fence line and they wanted to look for it. By this time several patrols were involved.

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AF OSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but it wasn’t constant in the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more was said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court martialed.

Morse would go on to claim that all witnesses to the event had been interrogated and sent off for duty at other bases. UFO investigator George Filer would claim that he had been summoned to the base that evening, and had witnessed strange red lights on one of the disused runways. He also alleged that he had heard chatter among the base personnel that an alien had been killed and that UFO activity had been picked up on radar at both Fort Dix and McGuire AFB. It is just one more case to throw on the pile of very odd encounters that have supposedly gone on at Air Force bases. What were these entities and what did they want? Where did they come from? Were they ever even really real at all? The answers remain unclear.