by Charles Lear
Back in the days before aliens took on the form of the standardized “Grey” model, they came in all shapes and sizes. UFOlogists called them “humanoids,” and there was a wave of them in France in 1954. In 1955 they started popping up in the United States and worldwide. Many UFOlogists, who were trying to convince the scientific community that the mystery was worth studying, tended to reject humanoid reports. Some, such as Coral and Jim Lorenzen of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, kept an open mind as long as the humanoids didn’t talk. If a witness reported they had had a conversation and were taken to another planet, that case was tossed into the contactee pile. However, there was a case in the seventies that made the Lorenzens and a lot of other researchers rethink their position.
On Oct. 25, 1974, Rawlins, Wyoming resident Carl Higdon decided to take the day off from his job as foreman for an oil drilling crew. One of his “key men” was sick with the flu and he didn’t think anything would be accomplished that day. It was the peak of elk hunting season, and he had just bought a 7mm Remington Magnum rifle, so he probably didn’t have to think for too long about how he would be spending the day. He loaded up his company’s two-wheel drive pickup truck and headed for McCarty Canyon in Carbon County.
According to him, he came to a fork in the road leading into the canyon and saw some fellow hunters having battery trouble with their truck. He stopped to give them a charge, and they started talking. Higdon told them he was headed into the canyon, and they told him that the hunting was better in a remote section of Medicine Bow National Forest. He changed his plans and headed east. The area they told him about was in the northern section of the forest, 40 miles south of Rawlins.