by Charles Lear, author of “The Flying Saucer Investigators.”
In October 1970, the publishers of the British magazine Flying Saucer Review put out the first issue of FSR Case Histories. Editor Charles Bowen explains at the beginning of that issue that readers had “suggested that FSR should be a monthly journal.” According to Bowen, the FSR staff worked in their spare time to put out the magazine, and while putting it out monthly wasn’t possible, it was possible to put out a supplemental journal in between the main issues. Other reasons Bowen gives for putting out a supplement are: to provide space for cases that might otherwise go unrecorded, to translate stories from foreign journals, to encourage readers to become part-time investigators, and to have “a vehicle to carry important re-investigations of old cases.” The February 1974 FSR Case Histories, Supplement 18, was the final issue and Bowen and Assistant Editor Eileen Buckle explain in that issue that this is due to “lukewarm support and the shocking rise of costs and postage.” A case from that issue that caught this writer’s interest is an example of a case that was translated from a foreign magazine, in this instance, from the December 1972 issue of the Spanish magazine, Stendak.
FSR CoverThe article (page 3 of pdf), translated by Gordon Creighton, titled “Alfalfa Crop Report From a Small Planet,” was written by J. Macías and Angel Barrigón “based on an investigation by Enrique Bueno, Santiago Mella, and J. Macías of Charles Fort Group Vallidolid.” Creighton informs the reader in a sidebar that he “re-titled” the article.
The article begins with a description of what the primary witness claimed to have seen on the night of August 16, 1970. She is identified as “C. R.,” a 22-year-old “domestic employee in the farmhouse of Sr. Don Luis deDiego at Puento de Herrera in the Province of Valladolid,” and the description is in her own words.
According to “C. R.,” she was watching television when she heard an “intense whistling noise.” As she got up to investigate, she noticed there was interference with the television signal. She tried to adjust the set, but was unable to fix the problem. Since it was, in her words, “almost time for the TV to close down anyway,” she turned it off and went to look outside.
On the entrance road, she saw “a weird thing” with lights on it. She said there was a man near it looking at the field of alfalfa. Scared, she went back inside. “After a while,” she heard the whistling again. She said she looked out a window and saw that “it had disappeared.” According to the writers, after she told her story “without interruption,” they put questions to her to get more details.
Pix from FSRThe next two pages consist mostly of the transcript of the questions and answers. When asked about the object, she described it as being about 4 meters wide and 2 1/2 meters tall, with about 60 cm being taken up by the “feet” and the rest by “the frame and cupola.” She drew the craft for them and they describe it as ellipsoid-shaped, standing on supports, and “surmounted by a hemispherical cupola.” She described the object as silvery and the cupola as “Like crystal. Almost transparent.”
The witness said there was a slowly revolving, bluish-white light on top of the cupola. According to her, it would turn, stop, then turn again, and when it slowed down, the light would fade, but it never went out.
The witness was asked if there were lights on the body of the object and she said there were lights of various colors lined up in a row around it. She remembered seeing purple, white and yellowish lights.
When C. R. was asked how many supports the object was sitting on, she said she couldn’t remember, and when she was asked if she had seen a door or steps, she said she hadn’t.
When the witness was asked how many “occupants” she saw, she said she only saw one that was standing about 3 or 4 meters from the object.
Q: Could you describe him?
A: He seemed to me to be a man of about 1.80 metres (about 5 ft. 10 inches) in height. He was dressed in a dark tight-fitting garment, black or dark blue. His head was covered by a close-fitting helmet of the same colour as the rest of his clothing. Round his wrists and ankles he had shining white things like bracelets. Also, in the middle of his waist, he had a square buckle – I think it would be the buckle of the belt – of the same colour as the things on his wrists and ankles.
The witness was unable to describe the face of the humanoid other than its possibly having been light-colored. She said it was standing and looking at the alfalfa and then walked to the “saucer” taking big, long strides. She said she didn’t see the creature go into the object because she had closed the door.
She was asked about any traces or marks that might have been left by object and the humanoid, and she described the area where the object had been as “shining with a uniform glow.” She said that the next morning she saw several black, boot-shaped footprints with oblique lines on the soles. According to her, the footprints took several days to disappear and glowed at night.
Q: Did you find any circular marks?
A: No. During the day, all that could be seen were the black footprints. And at night the ground shone. But not in patches, but all of it.
After the transcript, the writers describe the witness. According to them, she was illiterate, lacking even a primary school education, and “ignorant of the most basic matters.” They describe her becoming full of tension and anxiety as she recalled details throughout their conversation. According to them, members of her family informed them that after they left, “she had a hysterical reaction with much weeping and much protestation to her brother-in-law for having told our Centre about the happening.”
Glowing areas associated with UFOs have been reported before, most notably in the 1969 Delphos Ring case, and one similar to that described by the witness in the Spanish case was described in a 1973 case in Pennsylvania involving bigfoot-like creatures. The primary investigator of the the Delphos ring case, Ted Phillips, wrote a report (page 6 of pdf) that was published in the February 1972 FSR Case Histories, Supplement 9, and Berthold Eric Schwartz of Ivan T. Sanderson’s group, the Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained, wrote a report (page 4 of pdf) on the Pennsylvania case published in the July 1974 FSR. While the supplement had a short life, it existed during one of the most interesting periods in UFOlogy.
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