by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
In 1980, The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore was published that told the sensationalized story of a forgotten 1947 report by the U.S. Army Air Forces that they recovered a “flying disk” on a ranch in New Mexico, north of Roswell Army Air Field. This was also the year of the Rendlesham Forest Incident, which is sometimes referred to as “Britain’s Roswell” (December 26-28), and the Cash-Landrum Incident (December 29). The Cash-Landrum Incident is significant because the witnesses, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and her grandson, Colby Landrum, showed symptoms of what seemed like radiation poisoning after they reportedly saw a large craft, seemingly in distress, being escorted by as many as 23 Chinook helicopters. While all of the above cases continue to be discussed and continue to fascinate, a case that got a lot of attention that same year has been largely forgotten. It is interesting to note that it also involved what seemed to be the effects of radiation on the witnesses prior to the Cash-Landrum incident.
In the September 11, 1980, Anderson, South Carolina, Daily Mail, there is an article (page 8 of the pdf) by Louise Ervin headlined “Jerry McAlister saw ‘something strange.’” Ervin, begins her article asking, “Did a vehicle from another world pay a visit to the Broadway lake area this morning?” According to her, “Jerry McAlister of Parnell Road” wasn’t sure, but was “positive he saw something strange in his back yard” at 4:20 that morning, and since then, “the news media has beaten a path to his door.”
McAlisterErvin describes McAlister being “kept busy” telling his story on the phone for live broadcasts on radio stations in three states, and people in television camera trucks wandering the country roads asking directions to McAlister’s home in a remote rural area (Ervin actually wrote that the trucks asked directions).
According to Ervin, the witnesses included McAlister, his wife and four daughters, his next-door neighbor, and four Anderson County deputies. McAlister is quoted saying he heard “an awful racket” he thought was “a helicopter fixing to crash.” He described it as “a shrieking noise that actually hurt my ears.” He said that when he looked out his window, he saw his back yard lit up by a “terrific light,” that was so bright, it hurt his eyes.
McAlister says he “punched” his sleeping wife with his crutch (Ervin explains that he has an injured leg) and that “she got to the window in time to see the light and hear the noise.” He is said to have described the object as “thick as a two-story building,” 70 feet long, and round. He is quoted as saying, “All around the edges of the big object were big bright lights, and across the center of it was a row of square windows that were lighted up too.” According to him, as his daughter, Shirley, got to the window, “it turned sideways and swished sideways over those pine trees.” Ervin describes him pointing with his crutch at “a clump of trees at the edge of his yard.” He said that, before it took off, it hovered at what he estimated was 25 feet above his yard for about three minutes. According to Ervin, “McAlister compared the action of the saucer-like object to a plate whirling on a stick in a balancing act.”
McAlister is said to have called the Sheriff’s Department to report his sighting and is quoted as saying, “At first I think they thought It was a prank . . . But when they got here, one of them said: ‘Mister, we’re sorry,’ and they stayed out there for over an hour looking at it too. All morning I’ve felt like bursting into tears. I’m so thrilled that I got to see something so great.”
According to Ervin, a telescope was set up in the backyard, and someone found some binoculars. Faye McAlister is quoted as saying, “I couldn’t believe it. We all took turns looking at the thing, and we could plainly see the windows when we looked through the telescope, but we couldn’t see them with our bare eyes.” She said it was “beautiful” and that the last moment she saw it was when she was taking her kids to school. She said, “Believe me, our kids were excited. I cooked grits and eggs, and I can’t remember if anyone ate or not. When the kids hit the school yard, they started yelling to their friends that they had seen a flying saucer.”
Ervin names another witness, Mrs. Martha Lollis of Cheddar, who said she and her daughter saw a round, reddish object “moving slowly towards Greenville.”
An article (page 7 of the pdf) by Steve Biondo headlined “Investigators Report UFO Sighters Have ‘Radiation Burns’” was published in the September 16, 1980, Anderson, South Carolina, Independent. Biondo begins the article describing Jerry McAlister as “the Anderson man whose UFO sighting last week made news around the world.” According to Biondo, McAlister said it had not significantly changed his life. Biondo adds, “If you ignore the radiation burns.” He quotes McAlister: “The investigators told us we had mild radiation burns. My neck glands were swollen up, and my wife and I both had some eye problems, but we feel great this morning.”
According to Biondo, the McAlisters were visited by Jim Fillow, a former New Jersey policeman and co-founder of the Scientific Bureau of Investigation. Fillow is quoted saying they “recorded a very slight jump on the counter (Geiger) when we checked them out.” He added that it “should dissipate in a few days.” He is also quoted saying they had found “slight indications of conjunctivitis, which is not unusual.”
According to Biondo, on Monday, a team of four investigators “from MUFON, Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network, Inc., of Sugin, Texas,” showed up. McAlister is said to have described the group as “more brusque and skeptical than Fillow and his partner Pete Mazzola had been.” He is quoted as saying, “They didn’t think we was on the level.” and is said to have laughed.
A spokesman for the state’s Department of Environmental Control’s Radiological Bureau is quoted as saying, “We would investigate if someone asked us to do it, but it would have to be an official request. We have no procedure for going and checking for UFO sightings.”
Curt Collins has written extensively on the Cash-Landrum case on his blogspot.com site, Blue Blurry Lines, and notes the radiation tie-in between that case and the McAlisters’ in his July 25, 2012, posting headlined “An Interesting Precedent.” According to Collins, the McAlisters’ case was profiled in the Globe, the National Enquirer, and the prime-time TV show, That’s Incredible! He includes the articles and points out the “strange coincidence” of the film crew from That’s Incredible! being in Anderson on “Dec. 1980, just before the Cash-Landrum sighting.”