A San Antonio man claims he had a close encounter of the third kind with two occupants of a UFO.
He was driving his pickup truck just south of San Antonio when he "was approached, spotlighted and, nearly buffeted off the road by an unidentified craft," investigators report.
The 48-year-old sheet metal worker reported two short creatures with slit-like eyes inside a globular airship. "They weren't human beings like we see here," he said.
Almost three years later this incident and many others remain unexplained.
In the wake of renewed interest in UFOs spurred by tho movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," many people are realizing that San Antonio has long been a prime site for UFO spottings.
With "Close Encounters" smashing attendance records across the country, Unidentified Flying Objects are getting more publicity than at any time since the last big UFO flap in 1973.
As defined by Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who also served as technical advisor for the movie, a close encounter of the first kind is merely seeing something that cannot be explained.
A close encounter'of the second kind is when a UFO leaves some kind of evidence that it exists; such as burned rings on the ground or radar traces, Hynek says.
And a close encounter of the third kind "is when you actually meet them,"' as the movie explains.
Some UFO buffs have added a fourth kind of encounter to the list for those claimed instances when a UFO has actually kidnapped or interfered with humans.
Strange alien creatures and flying saucers have become dinner table conversation in just the few months since the movie came out.
A quick cheek of the magazine, rack at a San Antonio grocery store this week turned up at least 11 different magazines with "Close Encounters" on their covers.
NBC-TV started a new series 'Sunday called "Project UFO."
Jack Webb of "Dragnet" fame will produce the series which will fictionalize a different actual UFO sighting every week.
At least one local TV station is also jumping on the UFO bandwagon.
KMOL-TV, Channel 4, will screen a three-part UFO report during its evening news show this week. The report will be locally produced.
Channel 4 also has an hour-long locally done UFO special in the works, according to the news director.
Two UFO organizations in the San Antonio area are very active in investigating unexplained events,
The Mutual UFO Network, based in Seguin, made the report on the San Antonio sighting that began this story.
Investigator Gary Graber concluded that "the majority of events happened as related."
The occurrence took place on Mogford Road south of town shortly after 9 p.m., according to his interviews with the San Antonio man. The man was driving to a nearby store when he noticed a strange amber-colored object rise rapidly from a grove of trees about 900 yards away.
The object then streaked toward the pickup truck "at a terrific rale of speed" as the light on the front of [he vehicle changed from amber to bright, cherry red. "When the craft got directly over the top of my pickup the lights went completely out and the engine was dead," the man said.
"As I was trying to get out of the pickup I thought it was a chopper passing on top of me, at first," he said.
"Then when they hovered over the top of me and I got a good look at it. I knew it was no chopper. I thought to myself, 'that's got to be a UFO,"' the man reported.
He said the craft was globular with a sort of shelf-like projection encircling the transparent upper section.
The bottom of the vehicle was highly polished metal and had the cherry red light apparently mounted towards the front of the craft.
The UFO hovered over the truck for between 10 and 20 seconds and the man got a good look inside. The two creatures were not over five feet tall with tight, firm skin, he said
"They were bald, with long prominent ears and a long nose. Their eyes did not appear very plainly; they just looked like slits," he told the investigator.
The investigator speculates that the slits could have been lids or protective membranes to protect their eyes against glare.
Their skin "was not like our skin, it appeared to me to look sort of like sharkskin, sort of a grey color," the witness reported.
"There was no motor noise -during the time it was over my truck, just a whirring (shriek) of wind. It was very loud, it sounded to me like a cyclone." ho said.
When the craft left it "look off straight up. There was a terrible thrust that buffeted my pickup and then it vanished almost instantly," the man said. "II was just like turning off a light bulb."
He noticed a strong odor like burning copper or electrical wiring while the craft hovered over his truck. The odor lingered for several days, he said. '
The man also reported eye strain from the intense red light, the report notes.
"I feel like they got a look at me. and maybe got my picture or something," the man told the investigator.
The report notes that he was familiar with the type of aircraft seen in San Antonio and discounts any possibility of the craft being a helicopter or other conventional plane.
