By Charles Lear
The decade of the 1970’s was a strange one in America. The counter-culture of the late 50’s gained momentum through the 60’s and, by the 70’s, it had gone mainstream. Experimentation was everywhere in the arts, culture and politics of the era and the minds of the general population were open to possibilities that were, perhaps, beyond the capabilities of the science of the day to explain. It was a good time for UFOlogy and many documentaries on the subject started to appear in movie theaters that culminated in Steven Spielberg’s 1977 fictional treatment, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” The title of the movie comes from J. Allen Hynek’s system of sightings classification and CE3 designated a UFO sighting that involved beings. In 1973, CE3 sightings hit a peak and that year was designated, “The Year of the Humanoids” in a report published by the Center for UFO Studies, written by David Webb from files provided by Ted Bloecher. Both men were co-chairman for the Mutual UFO Network associated, Humanoid Study Group.
Webb wrote that from August into December of 1973, there were 70 reports in files available to him of humanoids associated with UFOs, with 55 of them being within the continental United States. These sorts of reports have always made up a small percentage of the overall reports and Webb acknowledged this. He went on to consider that, if one was to assume that UFOs are piloted extraterrestrial crafts visiting Earth, more could be learned about the visitors by studying them than studying the crafts. The first step, as he saw it, was to organize the sightings. Humanoids seen in association with craft were of primary interest followed by those seen in the proximity of UFO activity. Webb mentions contactee reports with caution, “monster” sightings and finally abduction reports. He distinguished humanoids from “monsters” and ape-like creatures such as Bigfoot, which he termed, “anthropoids.”
Webb then took a two-part approach where he organized information in a way that would be compatible with a computer database and compiled a numbered list, including date and location, of short narratives describing the documented cases. Included in the report are a number of tables, a map of the United States showing sightings locations, circular histograms showing time distribution, graphs, and drawings of humanoids based on witness descriptions. In part IV of the report, Webb lists the characteristics of the humanoids described including height, skin color and texture, eyes, appendages, uniforms and behavior. He drew heavily on the work of Jaques Vallée, a noted French researcher, who had worked on a 1954 wave of humanoid sightings in that country. Webb’s work produced a useful document that allows researchers to look at a very strange subject with a good degree of objectivity. It serves as an early model for someone seeking to find consistencies when pondering the nature of the humanoids and the possibility that they may be intelligent beings visiting Earth from other planets.
The consistencies noted by the author of this blog are wrinkled skin, silver suits, pointed ears, garbled speech in an odd frequency range and movement that is often robotic with limbs in awkward positions and an ability to suddenly cover large distances with a single step or leap. Abduction cases are recorded that involve examination, most often on tables, using scanning devices, with an accompanying loss of memory and time by the abductees. One case which occurred during this period is the October 11, 1973 “Pascagoula Incident” involving Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker. This case has remained a poignant one, not only among UFOlogists, but for many in the general public as well. In 2019, the Jackson County Historical Society and the city of Pascagoula worked together to place an historical marker commemorating the event near the location where it occurred. Hickson and Parker reported seeing a large, egg-shaped object with a blue light on its front while fishing. The side of the craft opened and three humanoids floated though the air towards them, paralyzed them and then floated them back to the craft where they underwent an examination. The men described the beings as having wrinkled skin, bullet-shaped heads with conical protrusions where the ears and noses should be, long arms and clawed hands.
The narrative reports span from August 9th until “Mid- December”. The stand out month was October with 36 cases in the United States. The following are just a few of the October highlights. On October 1st, three teenagers in Anthony Hill, Tennessee claimed to have seen a “huge” hairy creature that moved like a robot with its arms raised above its “large, round head.” This was in the vicinity of an egg-shaped craft. Perhaps related to the Pascagoula case, on October 11th, a three-year old boy in Tanner Williams, Alabama, told his mother he’d been playing in the backyard “with some old monster” that had gray, wrinkled skin and pointed ears. A woman in Lehi, Utah reported that she’d been abducted by three beings on October 16-17th, and taken to a craft. She was examined and saw 4-5 humanoids and 2 humans. She described the humanoids as being 4-5 feet tall, having fish mouths, orange hands, large, oval wrap-around eyes with big, black pupils and wearing fluorescent, silver and blue suits. A man, Clarence Patterson, claimed that on October 17th, near Loxley Alabama, he was driving a pickup truck when a large cigar-shaped craft “sucked up” the truck. Once inside the craft, he was pulled out by “about six robot-like beings that seemed to read his mind.” His next memory was being back on the road going 90 miles an hour. An exceedingly bizarre creature was reported to have been seen coming out of the top of a 50 foot diameter craft like “an inverted cup” on October 17th in Europa Mississippi. The “primary witness” described the creature as “catfish-like” with “gray fish-like skin, a wide mouth, one glowing eye, flipper-like feet, webbing between the legs” and “feather-like objects on its back which opened and closed when it moved.”
The variety of reported creatures is extraordinary and one can see how many researchers would be daunted at the prospect of fitting them into any sort of plausible extraterrestrial explanation. That Webb undertook the task of organizing the information for researchers to study is laudable. It’s understandable that when the abduction scenarios involving the “Greys” started being reported, researchers latched onto them while excluding the reports that didn’t fit into the usual narrative. Compared to the 1973 reports, the way the Greys were reported to have looked and acted was… kind of normal.