by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
The first two years of the 1970s seems to have been a slow period for UFO reports, if the 1970 and 1971 UFO Chronology hosted on the National Investigations Committee on Arial Phenomena website is any indication, with the 1970 chronology consisting of 5 pages, and the 1971 consisting of 8 pages. As a comparison, the 1966 chronology page count is 35 and the 1967 count is a massive 85. This might have been expected after the conclusion by Edward U. Condon in his report that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” This prompted the U.S. Air Force, which had funded the study led by Condon at the University of Colorado, to shut down Project Blue Book in 1969. There is a comment to this effect in the 1971 chronology: “An apparent lull in sighting reports may be the result of the closing of Project Blue Book and the media coverage of this for several years, and may not reflect the actual situation.” By 1973, things would pick up in a big way (35 pages in that chronology) with high-strangeness cases dominating the headlines. In 1972, however, there was a report that seems to have presaged the things to come.
In the January 21, 1972, Redding, California, Record Searchlight, there is an article (page 2 of pdf) by Alan R. Berry headlined, “They saw the ‘Something’ and it Scared Them Plenty.” According to Berry, four teenage boys, John Yeries, 16, James Yeries, 14, Darrell Rich, 16, and Robbie Cross, 15, were out in a car on Wednesday night (January 19) “after dark, in the rain and the mist, to ‘fish’ at Battle Creek, they said.” The boys reported seeing a bright glowing object fly over their car, and then, after parking the car at Battle Creek Bridge, hearing “a strange noise and a scream in the brush, just off the road.” John Yeries is said to have described it as “blood curdling.”
John Yeries is quoted as saying “I threw the light over in the bush and there was this weird thing.” Described as “hunched over” and around 50 feet away, it is said to have turned and run. According to Berry, the boys described it as about 7 feet tall, brown or dark green, with a hairless body covered in lumps “like pouches in a flight suit.”
Rich is quoted as saying, “I was wondering what it was, and at the same time I was turning to get out of there.” The younger boys reportedly said they were already running.
The car is said to have been locked as the panicked group got to it. They apparently got in and had to resort to push-starting the car after failing to start it with the ignition. Once it was started, John, who was driving, got it turned around and headed north. According to Berry, “They said they had a strange feeling they were being watched and followed.” Rich reported that he saw what looked like “firecrackers popping” on the road when he looked out the rear window, but heard no noise, and John Yeries said he saw the same thing in the rear-view mirror.
According to Berry, they then saw blue, white, orange, and red “fiery objects” that were “moving erratically along the road in the open fields on either side.” Rich said he saw two “glowing balls” come together and one shoot up and disappear. Two of the boys said they saw a glowing humanoid shape along the road as well.
The boys reported seeing no more lights once they reached the intersection of Deschutes and Dersch roads. According to Berry, they took Robbie Cross home because, in their words, “he was pretty scared,” and went to Rich’s house to tell his father, Dean Rich, what they had seen.
Dean Rich is said to be the operator of a welding shop in Anderson and to be “considering running for the Anderson City Council this year.” According to Berry, the senior Rich got a pistol and went back to the scene with his son and the two Yeries. He is quoted as saying, “I thought maybe they were pulling my leg, but they seemed very scared.” He said they walked into a walnut orchard and heard a weird “commotion” in front of them from out of the darkness. According to him, “It sounded like a real deep growl. It was a real weird sensation. It was something, a meaning, I’ve never experienced before. The boys ran. They left me alone, and I got the hell out of there too.”
Rich is said to have imitated a “long, spine-tingling” growl (“eeeeeaaaaghhrrr”) that he said continued, along with “the commotion” as he “backed up kinda sideways” all the way to his car 100 feet away. He said “It could go bad on my name verifying something I didn’t see, but it was not a peacock, a bear, a mountain lion, a bobcat . . . or like anything I’ve heard before.” According to Berry, Rich and the boys felt that whatever it was, it was trying to scare them away from the area, and Rich added, “It succeeded.”
According to Berry, Rich and the boys “went to the Anderson Police who in turn called for a Shasta County sheriff’s deputy” who investigated and found nothing unusual. An Anderson policeman said to know two of the boys is quoted: “They seemed completely sincere. There was no hint of the funnies or something else. They were really scared.”
The case was investigated for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization by William M. Murphy and described in the article headlined “Multiple Witness Case in California” in the March-April 1972 APRO Bulletin. The boys are said to have described the first light they saw as a “bright, oval, blue-white light” and estimated that it was six feet high and three feet wide. Darrel Rich is quoted saying it passed in front of their car “as fast as a jet and at our telephone pole height.” He is said to have told Murphy “It was very bright (emphasis in the original) and lighted the countryside and the inside of the car.” It is noted that Murphy stated that there were no other reports in spite of there being houses widely scattered throughout the area.
According to the article, “they heard a ‘peculiar’ screech and saw a tall figure running from them in a stooped position.” The description of the creature is the same and it is said to have been 30 feet from them when they first saw it. It is pointed out that some people had suggested that the boys were planning on “an illegal salmon take” and were scared away by a game warden.
The lights they reported seeing as they drove away are described as “orange balls” and “‘flare-type flashes’ both ahead and behind them.” The rest of the story is the same as the one from the newspaper and Murphy’s conclusion is “Neither the newspaper reporters, nor I nor the boys’ parents nor local ranchers think it is a put on.”
A noteworthy aspect of this case is that Anderson, California, is in Shasta County, and a little over 70 miles south of Mt. Shasta, which can be seen from Anderson. Mt. Shasta has a long mystical and paranormal history and has a Wikipedia entry, “Legends of Mount Shasta” devoted to its strange history that includes UFO and Bigfoot sightings.
As for creatures other than Bigfoot, there is an article by Jessie Ropers about a creature even stranger than that reported by the group in Anderson. According to Ropers, in the article headlined “Batsquatch!” posted March 19, 2020, on the Pacific Sentinel website, the first Batsquatch reports came during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It is said to have been reported by a group that was hiking on Mt. Shasta in 2009, and is described as having “an apelike body with large, leathery wings and a pair of glowing red eyes.” A witness who said one landed on his car hood in Pierce County, Washington, in 1994 described it as nine feet tall and having blue fur.