by Charles Lear
In last week’s blog, we looked at a case that involved an encounter with a UFO occupant that didn’t fit the profile of the iconic Grey-type alien. There were many such cases reported in the press up until the 1980s. Then, the Greys, the Reptilians, and the occasional Insectoids seem to have pushed the others aside, but even these don’t show up too often in the papers. UFO occupants, especially those that don’t fit what has become the standard model, have become personae non gratae for most newspaper editors, and this seems to have created the impression that they haven’t been reported by witnesses.
From the 1950s into the 1970s, there are UFO occupant cases with extensive documentation including: newspaper articles containing first-hand witness accounts, affidavits, witness reports submitted to government and private investigators, police records, and sometimes medical reports when the encounters weren’t entirely friendly. The documents can be found in the files of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, the Center for UFO Studies, and other organizations that were open to such reports. The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, headed by Donald Keyhoe, was noted for rejecting most occupant reports.
APRO and CUFOS are no longer active organizations, and many others have disbanded. But, reports from as recent as this year (2021) can be found in the databases of both the National UFO Reporting Center and the Mutual UFO Network. What’s missing is news coverage and documentation beyond witness testimony . . . for most of the reports.
Researching this blog presented a particular challenge. A huge database specializing in humanoid encounters, which included UFO occupant reports, has disappeared from the web. The Humanoid Contact Database was a site created by Albert S. Rosales, who was a guest on a radio show as late as last year. He is not responding to emails (at least not from this writer) and any information would be appreciated. Fortunately, Rosales has published a series of books titled “Humanoid Encounters: The Others Among Us.” Each book covers a range of years starting with 1 AD-1899. His last book covers the years 2000-2009. He included his sources and some cases came from MUFON and NUFORC.
MUFON actually has an occupant case in the Jan. 2021 issue of the MUFON Journal. A witness reported that on July 2, 2020, at 3:00 a.m., he was in his car with a girlfriend in New Castle, Colorado. They were drifting off to sleep when a being almost too short to look over the car peeked in his window. The body was a few inches wide and the head was like “an old-fashioned iron.” It had oblong black eyes with a red strip in the center.
The witness looked over to the passenger seat and saw another apparently identical being sitting there. He reacted by punching the creature, and it disappeared leaving the witness with a sore hand as proof of physical contact. Having struggled against a paralyzing force throughout the encounter, the witness managed to overcome it, sound the car horn, and wake his girlfriend. Together, they watched a large bright light move across the sky. It emitted sparks as it moved, and they watched until it was out of sight. The case was closed by Colorado MUFON Field Investigator Richard Evans as “Unknown-Other.”
A MUFON case investigated less than four years ago actually got newspaper coverage. An article with the headline, “Alien in my Backyard,” written by Chabeli Herrera, was posted March 19, 2019 on the South Florida Sun Sentinel website. It tells the story of Trish Bishop of Kissimmee, Florida. She had just returned home from work when she noticed something strange in the woods near the edge of her backyard. A six-foot by eight-foot patch of air, 30 feet off the ground, was shimmering like water. She mused that it might have been a weather effect until it moved towards her. It then to moved to her left and stopped.
In a matter of minutes, a humanoid materialized on the ground below. He went from being transparent to solid, as he climbed up an invisible staircase pulling himself along with his hands on what seemed to be an invisible rope. He was muscular, between 6’3” and 6’5” tall. He had off-white alligator skin and was wearing a non-metal armor-like jumpsuit. What made Ms. Bishop think he was non-human were his eyes and jaw. His eyes were white with black pupils and bulging to the point that Bishop thought he might not be able to close them. Describing his jaw, she said, “If you compare a human jawbone to his, we would be a Chihuahua to a Pit Bull.” When he got to the top of the “stairs” he switched to a rock climbing movement, pulled himself up into the shimmering air, and disappeared.
Ms. Bishop reported this case to Florida MUFON four years later and gave the date of the occurrence as March 16, 2013. Her case file is 84886. MUFON advised Ms. Bishop to purchase a trail cam, which she did, and she sent them pictures, some of which they described as “unexplainable.”
Another case that got some newspaper coverage comes from England. Posted Oct. 19, 2009 on the Telegraph website is an article by Alastair Jamieson headlined, “UFO alert: police officer sees aliens at crop circle.” [sic] The case was investigated by Colin Andrews, after he got a call from the Wiltshire Police Constabulary from a police sergeant who wished to remain anonymous.
The sergeant was driving past Silbury Hill in Avebury early in the morning on July 6, 2009. Silbury Hill is the largest prehistoric artificial chalk mound in Europe and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site that includes Stonehenge. As one might expect, there was a crop formation in the area. As he drove by, the sergeant saw what he first assumed were three forensic officers dressed in white coveralls examining the field near the formation.
He stopped, got out of his car, and approached the figures. They appeared to be male, were all over six feet tall, and had long blonde hair. He heard a sound not unlike static electricity that seemed to come from all over the field. The hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood up. He shouted at the creatures, and they ignored him. As he entered the field, they looked up and then ran faster than any man he’d ever seen. He described that it was like watching a video in fast-forward mode.
Sometime later, the sergeant saw a large orange globe hovering near his home that then shot away as he observed it. The officer also reported poltergeist episodes and electrical malfunctions. Some readers may notice that the description of the creatures matches that of so-called “Nordics” that were reported as early as the 1950s.
The last case we’ll look at comes from Australia and was investigated by Bill Chalker. This case has remarkable similarities to an earlier pre-1980s report. A man told Chalker that at around 4:00 a.m. in the Sydney suburb of Coogee, he was walking down a street when he noticed a flash of light. Looking in that direction, he saw a spherical object sitting in the intersection at the end of the street. It was sitting on a cylinder projecting below it. The witness saw what looked like a little man in a window near the top of the object. The creature moved what looked like a lever, a shutter moved over the window, and the object took off at an incredible speed. The road surface where it had been had a white circle and a nearby tree appeared to have been burnt.
The description of the craft and occupant is almost identical to what was reportedly seen by a witness in Goffstown, New Hampshire in 1973. This case is reported in the Jan.-Feb. 1974 APRO Bulletin. 1973 was a big year for UFO occupants and was the year of the famous Pascagoula, Mississippi abduction of Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson. Unlike the post-1980s cases, the Pascagoula incident received international news coverage and is still discussed today.
So, reports of UFO occupants that don’t fit what has become the standard model are still prevalent and occasionally show up in the mainstream press. The illusion that they’ve gone away seems to be the result of reporting bias. UFOs that might possibly be of extraterrestrial origin have become more acceptable in the press these days than they were a few years earlier, but reports of occupants seem to cross the line. Throughout UFO history this has been a cycle, so maybe occupants will become more press friendly sometime in the future. It’s possible, because with UFO history, as with history in general, the more things change, the more they stay the same.