By Charles Lear
One of the most famous early abduction cases is that of Travis Walton in late 1975, which received a lot of attention and still fascinates many people to this day. Walton’s case was investigated primarily by the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization. In the midst of that investigation, APRO was contacted by Johnny Sands, a country western singer who claimed he had encountered two humanoids in the desert outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. It is perhaps because of the attention given to the Walton case, that Sand’s case has all but been forgotten. I might also be because it’s seriously weird.
According to Sands, in his report to APRO and in subsequent interviews with researcher Timothy Green Beckley, he was in Vegas to promote a new record with some live shows. He had been visiting the towns surrounding Las Vegas to see how much his record was being played on local radio and how many jukeboxes it was in, and on January 29, 1976 (Sands didn’t recall the exact date with Beckley), he had been in Pahrump, Nevada.
Sands left Pahrump at around 10:00 p.m., and was headed back to Vegas on Blue Diamond Road. At around 10:30 p.m., he noticed an object in the sky about 1000 feet above him that he described as being shaped like a Goodyear™ blimp. He said it was around 60 feet long and had a ring of portal-like windows in the middle that he estimated were ten feet in diameter and five feet apart with a light in the space between them. The object was “rusty brown” and there were flashing red and white lights at each end.
As Sands drove, the object seemed to be following him. Then his car sputtered, quit, and drifted to a halt. Sands got out and walked to the back where the gas cap was. He removed the cap, shook the car, and determined that he still had gas by its sloshing around.
Sands then walked to the front of the car, opened the hood and removed the air filter. As he was doing so, he was aware of the object hovering over him. There was a flash of light and then he saw two figures walking towards him. He tried to move but couldn’t and attributed this to either shock or something the creatures might have done to him.
One of the figures stopped 3 feet in front of him and the other remained 5 feet beyond. Sands described the creatures as wearing black uniforms with silver belts and shoulder straps (colors in artist rendition are reversed according to Sands), that they were 5’7’’ to 5’8” tall, and about 140 pounds. They were pale-skinned, hairless, had small mouths, “flattened” noses, and black eyes with white pupils. Giving them a distinctly non-human appearance were what looked like gills sticking out just above their jawlines. In contrast to their youthful, fit-looking bodies, their faces looked old and Sands got the impression that the beings were between 300 and 400 years old.
The creature closest to Sands began asking questions, and as it did so, Sands tried to figure out where its voice was coming from because it didn’t move its mouth. The creature asked him what he was doing in the area and Sands answered that he was an entertainer who was in Las Vegas to do a show. The creature asked why there were so many people in Las Vegas, and Sands explained that it was a place where tourists came from all over for entertainment. The creature asked by what means Sands communicated and Sands said he didn’t understand the question. The creature became irritated and said, “Answer the question!” and Sands said again that he didn’t understand.
The creatures looked at each other for what seemed like two or three minutes and then the creature in front of Sands brushed Sands’s left hand with its left hand and said: “Don’t say anything about this meeting. We know where you are and will see you again.”
When he got back to Las Vegas, Sands called the police to make a report. The police gave him the phone number for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Nellis AFB. He called and was told that the Air Force no longer investigated UFOs and that he should call APRO. Sands did so and spoke with APRO Director Jim Lorenzen, who listened to Sands’s story and put him in touch with APRO Field Investigator John Romero.
What happened after that is described briefly in the March 1976 APRO Bulletin, but Sands goes into detail in the video and audio interviews, over 30 years after the events, with Beckley, who had interviewed Sands earlier in 1976.
According to Sands in his interview with Beckley, he was in a roped off public area at the Sahara hotel, where Romero was the director. Sands was describing the creatures to a sketch artist Romero had brought in and the artist asked why the creatures would have both noses and gills. Sands says that at that point two men dressed in “not up-to-date” black suits and with slicked back black hair walked up, and one of them explained that the creatures came from a planet near the “planet” Sirius that was “an aquarimous-type planet.” The planet was very hot, so the creatures lived part time on land, breathing through the nose, and part time underwater, breathing through the gills. The man then said that he had to leave and added “We’ll see you soon.”
Sands says that he had a friend who was an ex-cop, John, along for protection. John noted that what the man had said was similar to what the creature had said and suggested that the two men should be followed. According to Sands, a security guard walked out behind the men as they left the building and when he came out to an empty street, they were no where to be seen.
Sands describes being driven back to John’s house, where he was staying, by John, who took a circuitous route to avoid being followed. In spite of this, when they arrived, a black limo pulled up with the two men from the hotel in the back seat and another man driving. The windows on the driver’s side were open and the two men from the hotel leaned out their window, looked at Sands and his friend, and then all the windows were rolled up, and the limo drove off.
Sands then tells of being contacted by Dave Dunn, who said he was with a production company. Dunn said that he wanted to make a documentary about Sand’s encounter and a meeting was arranged. The APRO report describes what followed as serving to “muddy the waters considerably.”
According to Sands, after a week of meetings with Dunn and others in a lavishly furnished apartment, he and John went to a hotel where they were to meet with Dunn and his people to be taken to the site of Sands’s encounter. The parking lot was crowded and they were forced to park far away from the hotel. Just as they were worried about being late for their meeting, a limo that somehow managed to find them pulled up with Dunn and others inside. Sands and John were given cocktails as they got into the car and were then driven towards the site.
They passed the site and Sands alerted Dunn and the others but no one spoke. The car then did a U-turn and stopped. The men from the “production company” got out, a large number of lights came on, and between 25 and 30 figures dressed in black stepped forward. An argument ensued between the men from the car and someone who seemed to be the leader of the group in the desert, and in the course of it, Sands heard the “leader” say, “He knows too much.”
Sands went to get out of the car, and he saw what he described as a fuzzy creature like Cousin It from the Addams family. The creature ran at him and he shut the door and went to get out on the other side where another similar creature ran at him, forcing him to stay in the car.
Sands and John were then driven back in silence. The next day, they went to the apartment and found that there was no one living in it and that the furniture was gone. According to Sands, there wasn’t enough time for them to have been able to get it out.
Sands said his friend John was killed during a robbery so this case comes down to whether or not one believes Sands’s story. As strange as his story may seem, APRO reported that Sands did pass a lie detector test arranged for by the organization.