Injured by the UFO

by  Charles Lear

Starting in 1947, UFOs seemed to be engaging humanity in a step-by-step process. In the first few years, only the UFOs were reported. Then, there were accounts of occupants showing themselves during what has become known as the 1954 French Wave. An intimate encounter was described by Brazilian farmer, Antônio Villas Boas, in 1957, and Betty and Barney Hill reported that, in 1961,they had been abducted. So far, no one was hurt during any of the encounters, but that would change in 1964.

On Tuesday, June 2, 1964, an eight-year-old boy named Charles was playing in a lot behind his grandmother’s laundromat. What happened next was described in the Nov. 1964 APRO Bulletin. Across an alleyway, a black, top-shaped object, which he described as being half as tall as he was at the time, appeared over a building.

According to Charles, he got the impression that it knew he was there. He moved to the left and it moved to the left. He moved to the right and it moved to the right. He crouched behind a block of concrete and then stood up and moved to the right. Once again, the object mirrored his movement. The object then shot towards him, causing him to brace for impact, but it moved up and hovered over him. According to Charles’ grandmother, as she watched through the door of the laundromat, flame came down from the object that completely engulfed him. The object then flew off and Charles ran towards her with his hair on fire.

   A nurse was doing her laundry at the time and she helped the grandmother put out the fire. Charles was then taken to the hospital where he was diagnosed with second-degree burns to his face and ears. His ears looked like hamburger and were turned inside out and his face was so swollen that his nose reportedly disappeared.

Skin samples were taken and sent to the FBI along with his t-shirt and his grandmother’s apron. Charles was hospitalized for two weeks and took a further four weeks to recover at home. Strangely, despite the severity of his burns, Charles reported no pain and, after healing, showed no evidence of scarring. He experienced a loss of hearing in his right ear and needed to wear glasses for the rest of his life thereafter, but these were the only permanent consequences.

Another top-shaped object was reported in Georgia not long after. On Tuesday, June 30, Beauford E. Parham was driving between Carnesville and Lavonia around 1:00 a.m. He then saw what he thought was a meteor coming down at him at a 45° angle. He thought he “was gone” and then the object stopped five feet in front of his car. It was one foot off the ground and maintained its distance, keeping pace with the 60 mph speed of the car. Parham was transfixed by the object and continued driving as if in a trance. He described it as an amber-colored top, six feet tall by eight feet wide. It had an internal white glow that was seen through numerous portholes on the bottom and a band in the middle.

The object came over the car and then left “in a bright red glow.” There was a “momentary stifling heat,” and an oily substance covered the car and burned Parham’s arms. There was a smell like embalming fluid and the sound of “10,000 hissing snakes.”

The object then came back and resumed its place in front of the car. To Parham, it seemed as if it was refueling itself from his headlight beams. His motor started missing and he turned off his headlights. The object glowed bright red and then left. In accounts to news reporters and Federal Aviation Administration officials, Parnham described the object coming over his car on three occasions and this has become the preferred version.

With his arms burning, Parham drove to Anderson AFB in South Carolina to report what had happened. He spoke to two F.A.A. personnel, Albert Myrick and Dean Carpenter. They checked the car for radiation, found it to be radioactive but didn’t disclose to what degree. In addition to the radiation, it was reported that the car’s hood was warped and the paint had bubbled up. In a newspaper interview, Parham said that his radiator was “eaten away” and his water hose “was collapsing.” Myrick and Carpenter reportedly told him that they knew “these things” existed, that he shouldn’t shoot at them or spread his story. The Air Force officially looked into the case. The Project Blue Book evaluation is “ball lightning” and the date is wrongly listed as June 28.

An intriguing case comes from the following year. It received only local news coverage and was ignored by Project Blue Book. On March 17, 1965, James Flynn, a 45-year-old rancher from Fort Meyers, Florida, walked into a local ophthalmologist’s office. The area around his eyes was swollen and his right eye looked like a “bloody marble.” His wife was called and he was taken to Lee Memorial Hospital where he stayed for five days. Jim and Coral Lorenzen, of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, gathered information about the events leading up to his hospitalization through conversations and correspondence with Flynn and his physician, Dr. Harvey Stipe. Their report appears in the May-June, 1965 APRO Bulletin.

On Friday, March 12, Flynn set out for the Everglades on a hunting trip. He was driving a swamp buggy and had four dogs with him. That Sunday night, three of his dogs took off after a deer. After they failed to respond to his calls and whistling, he went after them at around midnight. He was driving the swamp buggy with the remaining dog in a cage with him, when he spotted a bright light above the cypress trees a mile away. It moved back and forth and then descended. It remained hovering about four feet off the ground and Flynn got out his binoculars. By this time he was about a quarter mile away. He turned off the lights of the buggy and got a good look at what he could perceive was a craft of some sort.

He described it as a cone-shaped object with a rounded top. Based on the surrounding cypress trees, he estimated it to be around 30 feet tall and twice as wide at the base. It seemed to be made of pieces of metal, four feet square, held together by rivets. Eight feet from the top was the first of four rows of windows, two feet by two feet, from which emerged a yellowish light. An orange-red glow was underneath.

Flynn watched the object for about a half-hour, and then started up the buggy to get closer. He got to within a few yards of the lit area and turned off the motor and lights. The dog was distressed and began tearing at the cage. He walked to the edge of the light and waved to the object. He got no response so he walked a couple yards further and waved again. It was then that a “short beam” of light shot out from below the windows. The light hit him in the forehead and knocked him unconscious.

He came to around 24 hours later, though he wasn’t aware it had been that long at the time. The dog had nearly destroyed the cage and he saw marks around the buggy indicating that he had crawled around it, though he had no memory of having done so. There was a circle of burned ground cover where the object had been and the tops of some of the cypress trees were burned as well.

Flynn made it back to Fort Meyers, in spite of the fact that he was blind in his right eye and had blurred vision in his left. It took him until 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday to arrive and it wasn’t until he went to the doctor’s office that he realized it was 24 hours later than he thought it was.

Stipe had known Flynn for 25 years and he stated in a letter to APRO that he considered Flynn to be “a reliable, emotionally stable individual.” Stipe had gone to the site with Flynn and confirmed in the letter that there was a circular burned area as Flynn had described. He added that there were scrape marks on two trees that “were as if a heavy object in a straight line had slid down the trees about two feet and there stopped.”

Stipe included a medical report as well. According to him, Flynn experienced no mental confusion or hallucination. There was hemorrhaging into the anterior part of his right eye. Above and medial to that eye was a thickening with a slightly abraded depressed center about a centimeter in diameter. There was also bruising above the right eyelid. He was physically fit but some of his reflexes were absent. He was missing deep tendon reflexes of the biceps, triceps, patellas, achilles, abdominals and plantar. All except his abdominals returned gradually within a week. Obviously, this was another encounter with ball lightning.