Flying Saucers Fact Page

Carl Higdon Flying Saucer Occupant Encounter In 1974 Remains Unexplained After Decades Of Intense Investigation

The Tuesday, October 29, 1974 issue of the Rawlins (Wyoming) Daily Times carried Mr. Carl Higdon's account of his strange experience while elk-hunting on the north boundary of the Medicine Bow National Forest on the 25th of Ocotober. 

On Saturday, November 2, Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle, APRO's Consultant in Psychology, Mr. Rick Kenyon, art teacher in the Public Schools of Rawlins and Mr. Robert Nantkes, Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor at Riverton, Wyoming, spent four hours with Mr. and Mrs. Higdon, their children and several relatives, talking about Higdon's experience and their reactions to it. The pendulum technique and other hypnotic procedures were utilized to obtain more information from Mr. Higdon about his experience. 

Dr. Sprinkle was not satisfied with the results and decided to pursue the matter further at a future date. On November 17 another session was held and more information was obtained. Mr. Hidgon's experience is certainly strange, and might even be described as bizaare. At about 4 p.m. Higdon was hunting south of Rawlins when his "experience" began to unfold. 

"I walked over this hill and saw 5 elk," Higdon said. "1 raised my rifle and fired, but the bullet only went about 50 feet and dropped." He went over, got the bullet and tucked it into a fold in his canteen pouch. 'I heard a noise like a twig snapping, and looked over to my right and there in the shadow of the trees was this sort of man standing there." 

The "man" was 6'2" tall, and approximately 180 pounds. He was dressed in a black suit and black shoes and wore a belt with a star in the middle and a yellow emblem below it. Higdon also said he was quite bow-legged, had a slanted head and no chin. His hair was thin and stood straight up on his head (see accompanying drawing). 

The "man", Higdon said, asked if he was hungry, he replied that he was and the man tossed him some (4) pills and he took one. The pills were in a container much like a "Dristan" package (apparently the cellophane type as he said it was transparent). He put the container in his pocket. Higdon also commented that he didn't understand why he took them because ordinarily he doesn't even like to take an aspirin. 

The "man" had told him that the pills were "four day" pills, apparently to slake his hunger. Higdon said the man called himself "Ausso" and asked Mr. Higdon if he'd like to go with him and Higdon replied that he guessed so. The man pointed an appendage which came out of his sleeve and at this juncture. Mr. Higdon said he found himself in a transparent cubicle along with Ausso. 

He was sitting in a chair with "bands" around his arms (apparently holding him in the chair which resembled a high-backed "bucket seat") and a helmet-like apparatus on his head — somewhat like a football helmet except that it had two wires on top and two on the sides leading to the back. On a sort of console opposite his chair Higdon said he saw three levers of different sizes which had letters on them and which "Ausso" manipulated. 

Mr. Higdon was very unclear on the size of the cubicle. He said there was a mirror on the upper right in which he could see the reflection of the five elk which seemed to be behind him in a "cage" or corral. They were still, not moving, just as they had been when he first spotted them before he encountered "Ausso". He thought the cubicle was about 7x7 and couldn't account for the elk being there also. 

When Ausso pointed his appendage at the largest lever it moved down and the cubicle felt like it was moving. After they took off, Higdon said he saw a basketball-shaped object under the cubicle which he took to be the earth. There was another being in the cubicle who left, "just disappeared" when they landed. Ausso said that they had traveled 163,000 light miles. 

Outside the cubicle, Higdon said, was a huge tower, perhaps 90 feet high with a brilliant, rotating light and he heard a sound like that made by an electric razor. The light bothered his eyes considerably and he put his hands over them. 

Standing outside the tower were five human-appearing people — a gray-haired man of 40 or 50 years old, a brown-haired girl about 10 or 11, a blonde girl of 13 or 14 and a young man of 17 or 18 with brown hair and a blonde 17 or 18 year-old girl. They were dressed in ordinary clothing and appeared to be talking among themselves. 

Ausso pointed his "hand" and they (Ausso and Higdon) moved into the tower and up an elevator to a room where he stood on a small platform and a "shield" moved out from the wall. Ausso was on the other side of it. The "shield" was "glassy" appearing, stayed in front of Higdon for what he estimated to be 3 or 4 minutes, then moved back in the wall. 

Ausso then told Higdon he was not what they needed and they would take him back. The two moved out of the room to the elevator and then down to the main door. It seemed that all Ausso needed to do was to point his "hand" and they moved effortlessly. 

Next, Higdon found himself back in the cubicle with Ausso, who was holding his gun. He said the gun was primitive and wanted to keep it but wasn't allowed to and he gave it back to Higdon. Then he pointed at the longest lever and Higdon found himself standing on a slope. His foot struck a loose rock and he fell, hurting his neck and head and shoulder. 

At this point Higdon didn't know who or where he was and got up and walked past his pick-up truck which was sitting in a wooded area on a road with deep ruts. He walked along the track about a mile past the truck, then came back to the truck and heard a woman's voice. As he regained a little of his senses, he used the citizen's band radio to call for help. He told the woman he didn't know who he was or where. 

Authorities were notified and Higdon was eventually found about 11:30 that night. He was dazed and confused and had difficulty recognizing his wife. The search party had a considerable problem getting Higdon's 2-wheel drive vehicle out (it had to be towed as it could not navigate the rough road). 

Higdon was brought to the Carbon County Memorial Hospital in Rawlins at 2:30 a.m. on the 26th. Besides the sore head, neck and shoulder, his eyes were extremely bloodshot and teared constantly. He had no appetite on Saturday and his wife Margery had to force him to eat. On Sunday morning, however, he was ravenous and complained about the meager size of the hospital breakfast. 

This, essentially, is Carl Higdon's account of his time from 4:15 p.m. on October 25th 1974 when he first spotted the five elk until he called in on the CB radio. 

Some foundation for his story is found in the testimony of the search party who said Higdon's pickup truck could not have driven into or out of the area where it was found. Also, unidentified lights were seen near the area where Higdon was found before the searchers started driving out of the area so the lights of the vehicles could not have accounted for the unidentified lights. 

The bullet which was greatly mangled (see photo) was only the copper jacket, the lead slug was missing. This jacket was examined by Dr. Walter Walker, APRO's Consultant in Metallurgy who could only say that it had struck something extremely hard with great force. Higdon points out that the 7 mm bullet is so powerful it can completely transit a standard telephone pole. 

Other interesting details which Higdon recalled during hypnotic sessions: Before Higdon was returned to the ground, Ausso pointed at the pocket where Higdon had put the pills and they floated out and up and remained suspended in the air. Ausso had only 6 teeth — three above and three below. He said that on his planet there were no fish, that he could not tolerate the sun's rays as they burned him and that he was exploring and searching for food. 

He said they took animals back with them for breeding purposes. Last but not least, when the cubicle first took off, Ausso pointed at Higdon's truck and it "just disappeared." 

In conclusion we quote Dr. Sprinkle from his first (and preliminary) report: "Although the sighting of a single UFO witness often is difficult to evaluate, the indirect evidence supports the tentative conclusion that Carl Higdon is reporting sincerely the events which he experienced. Hopefully further statements from other persons can be obtained to support the basic statement." 

After the snow melts, an attempt will be made to locate the lead slug from the bullet and hopefully it will be able to add something to a very puzzling story. 

Wisconsin Flying Saucer Entity Case In 1974 Leaves Solitary Witness Scared

Farmer William Bosak, 68, of rural Frederic, Wisconsin (Polk County, Northwest Section), had what he termed as a hair-raising experience at 10:30 p.m. on December 2, 1974. Mr. Bosak had attended a Fanner's Co-op meeting in Frederic and was driving to his rural home southeast of Frederic when, about one mile from his farm, he spotted an object on the left side of the road ahead of him. He had been driving slowly because of patches of fog and his headlights reflected off the object so he slowed as he approached it.

"It had a curved front of glass and inside I could see a figure with its arms raised above its head," Bosak told reporters. When later interviewed by Field Investigator Everett E. Lightner, Bosak said that the newspaper account which appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer-Press was basically accurate except that the ears on the "human" he saw inside were placed higher on the head. (See drawing accompanying this article.)

The object was standing still and appeared to be between 8 and 10 feet in height. The transparent 'glass' area through which Bosak could view the occupant was bullet-shaped at the top, or tapered to a peak. He had slowed nearly to a stop when he came up to the object, but then fear took over and he stepped on the accelerator and left the object behind. He said that when he did so, the inside of his car became dark and he heard a swishing sound like branches of a tree brushing against the car.

The "human," as Bosak referred to it, had hair sticking out from the sides of its head with ears protruding out about three inches and they were shaped like a calf's ear. It had no collar or shirt with seam in front but appeared to be clothed in something tannish-brown in color and fitted (skin-tight) like a diver's suit. Both arms were extended above its head and hair stuck out from the outside of the arms. There was no beard, but there was hair or fur on the upper part of the body. The rest of it, from the* waist down, was not visible because of the fog. The object itself was not lighted, but reflected light from the headlights of Mr. Bosak's car.

Mr. Bosak returned to the location the next morning to search for any landing marks or evidence of its presence but found nothing. He said he was very frightened at the time but the look on the face of the occupant of the craft indicated that it was frightened too. Its eyes were very large and protruding.

Bosak kept the experience to himself for nearly a month, not even telling his wife and son but finally decided to divulge the incident. A later (that night) attempt to view the area where the incident had occurred from the vantage point of his house was unsuccessful due to the fog. "I was so goldarned scared I was afraid to go out at night for a few days," he told reporters later, and said he wished that he had had somebody with him in the car at the time.

After reflecting on the experience for a few weeks, Bosak said that he felt he did the wrong thing by speeding away from the object and "should have stopped and tried to show it I was friendly. I wish I could meet up with it again."

Bosak, who has operated a 450-acre dairy farm east of Frederic for the past 40 years, said that prior to his frightening experience in December he had been skeptical of stories about UFOs. "And I'm sure a lot of people are going to be skeptical after hearing what happened to me. But if people don't believe me, I'll take a lie detector test to prove this isn't just something I made up."

Mr. Lightner, who investigated the case, found Bosak to be sincere and a man with a good reputation in his community.

Flying Saucer With Occupants Hovers Over Truck During 1975 Texas Sighting

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.

Argentina Man Forced Into Flying Saucer By Entities During Heart-Stopping 1975 Abduction

Carlos Alberto Diaz is a 28-year-old married man, father of one child and born in Ingeniero White, a district of Bahia Blanca, Province of Buenos Aries, Republic of Argentina. His work record indicates that since becoming an adult he was a clerk in a central store and for 6 years was employed in the mechanical traction section of Ingeniero White.

During the past year he helped with the preparation of a football training school for the Huracan Club of Bahia Blanca and in his spare time augmented his income by working as a waiter at private parties. On the morning of January 4, 1975 he was finishing his shift as a waiter in the Holy Protective Society of the Naposta District in Bahia Blanca. Outside the door he purchased a "La Nueva Provincia" (The Province News) newspaper, then caught the bus to go home.

He got off the bus several blocks from his home and started walking. His route was through a large and desolate railroad yard. The sky was overcast so when a brilliant flash of light momentarily blinded him, he assumed it was merely lightning from the approaching storm. .Thunder did not follow, however, and he later described the light as not straight but "broken". After he regained his sight he was frightened and decided to run the rest of the way to his home which was now in sight but couldn't move — he seemed to have become paralyzed.

At that point Mr. Diaz heard a humming sound which he compared to the sound of rushing air or wind and his strange experience continued. Although he tried to resist, Dias was pulled off the ground and when about 3 meters (about 8 feet) off the ground he became unconscious. His vision faded before he fainted. When Diaz regained consciousness he was inside a smooth, bright sphere which appeared to be semi-transparent plastic.

There was no furniture or devices and the illumination seemed to come from the walls. Diaz said he was completely lucid and conscious, half kneeling and half lying on his side against several openings of about 3 centimeters in diameter (1-1/4 inches) in the bottom of the sphere through which issued air. He said he felt ill if he turned away from the openings and felt they served to keep him conscious. He estimated the "sphere" was 2-1/2 to 3 meters (about 7X8 feet) in diameter.

Suddenly, Diaz reports, three creatures resembling humans came sliding into the sphere. They appeared to be 1.75-1.80 meters in height (approximately 5 feet, 10 inches), their heads half the size of a human head and completely devoid of features - no ears, nose, mouth or eyes. The head was mossy green in color and the body which was rather thin, was covered with something Diaz defined as rubber - light cream colored and very soft and the creatures were completely hairless.

The arms were almost straight and very flexible and ended in "stumps" rather than hands and fingers. When the creatures came into the sphere, they immediately began pulling tufts of hair from Diaz's head. He didn't know how they did it, at first, not having hands or fingers, but each time they would reach out their arms would pull back and they would have some of his hair. This seemed to give them great pleasure for they would then jump up and down and wave their arms.

Diaz tried to resist the creatures but to no avail. During his struggles Diaz felt the softness of their bodies and ultimately noted they had "suckers" on their arms and assumed that was the method by which they removed the hair. One of them held him, another pulled his hair and the third apparently only observed. Diaz noted the fact that he felt no pain as they pulled at his hair, both on his head and chest. The creatures moved slowly but were very strong and seemingly tireless, he said.

After this ordeal was over, Diaz's sight began to wane gradually and he then fainted. He remembers nothing else of the experience. Several hours went by and Diaz woke up and found himself lying on the grass and had to close his eyes as the sun was high and shining into them. He was fully recovered and conscious and near a large, busy highway. Diaz looked at his watch which had stopped at 3:50, the time he last noted before his experience began.

Beside him was his bag containing his work clothes and the newspaper he had bought hours before. Diaz felt ill and this illness stayed with him throughout the day. A man appeared driving a car on the adjacent highway which was 30 meters (about 100 feet) from Diaz's location. The man thought Diaz had been struck by a car and stopped. Upon hearing Diaz' explanation of what had happened to him, he offered to take him to the nearest hospital (Railway Hospital), where they arrived 25 minutes later at 8:30 a.m.

It was when he learned the time that Diaz became convinced that he had been abroad an aircraft of unknown origin and in the company of extraterrestrials. For the next four days Diaz was confined to the Ferroviaro Hospital in Buenos Aires, Argentina where he was questioned and examined again and again by 46 different doctors. The hospital's Director informed the Federal Police who also questioned Diaz.

Diaz's wife and other relatives were notified by telephone at 9:20 a.m. They had been extremely worried because Mr. Diaz seldom arrived at home later than 4:00 or 4:30 a.m. They went to Buenos A i res that day, arriving at about midnight. It is 785 kilometers (423 miles) from Bahia Blanca to Buenos Aires. The examination of Diaz yielded no evidence of physiological or psychological alteration in Diaz, except the illness described as dizziness, upset stomach, the lack of appetite and the missing hair.

During the 5 th of January Diaz had only one cup of milk which had to be fed to him forcibly. We are immediately struck by three similarities in the Higdon and Diaz cases, namely: in both instances, the "creatures" had no hands or fingers and in both cases the witnesses suffered a loss of appetite after the experience and lastly, the entities in both cases "glided" rather than walking.

As we have pointed out in this Bulletin in the past, we must consider the possibility of deliberate confusion in these cases of absolutely bizarre (to us) creatures and experiences. It seems likely in Higdon's case that he was under the influence (both he and his gun) of something when he went over the crest of that hill and saw the elk. In Diaz's case, he was rendered unconscious before his experience with the humanoids began. Was he also under some kind of influence?

Obviously something unusual happened to him — the absence of hair in various spots on his head and chest attest to that. If we speculate that he pulled his own hair out, for whatever reason, we must then consider the fact that, outside of one interview with a magazine, he permitted no interviews with newspapers, radio or TV and was questioned by only one civilian UFO investigator — Mr. Romaniuk. He obviously did not thirst for publicity or notoriety.

Then we have the problem of how he got from Bahia Blanca to Buenos Aires in a matter of 4 hours and 10 minutes — a distance of 423 miles. In the United States, traveling on the best of the roads and breaking speed limits, the best that could be done would be something over 5 hours. Diaz does not own a car. We can rule out cars and of course, buses. That leaves only air travel. Did Carlos Diaz get a flight from Bahia Blanca to Buenos Aires?

This will have to be checked. We must also check to make certain that Diaz was on the job and left at 3:30 - as he claims. We must also verify that he was, in fact, on the city bus and did get off at a point a few blocks from his home. There have been alleged cases of transportation of humans by UFOs in the past, but Carlos Diaz's alleged experience appears to be one of the most credible of them all. The investigation is on-going and if additional information if procured it will be contained in the "Follow-Up" column of the Bulletin.

Flying Saucer Occupant Taps Terrified Japanese Schoolboy On Shoulder During Well Documented 1975 Incident

On the 24th, a sensation started in Yamashiro Elementary School in Kofu (the schoolmaster: Nobuyoshi Kaneko), when a UFO allegedly landed and a spaceman tapped a pupil on the shoulder. This pupil drew a picture of the alleged spaceman and explained what had happened, and his teachers were shocked very much. Soon, the school authorities made an inspection of the place with tape measures and other tools.

The pupils who saw the UFO were Masato Kawano (7 years old) and Katsuhiro Yamahata (7 years old) in the 2nd grade of the school. They say that first they found two flying objects glittering in orange color and crackling overhead at 7:00 pm on the 23rd, when they were rollerskating near the Hinode Housing Estate in Kamimachi, Kofu City. The bigger one flew away toward Mt. Atago, but the other went down between the props of the vineyard behind the Estate and landed on the earth.

They approached over toward the object, which was about 5 meters in diameter and 2.5 meters high. Very scared they were about to return home, when the side hatch of the saucer opened up and an occupant came out of it. He was about 1.3 meters tall, with no visible eyes nor mouth, but with three fangs, and his body glowing in silver color. They saw another smaller humanoid in the saucer.

The bigger humanoid walked away about a meter from the saucer with a long object somewhat like a rifle over his left shoulder, and put a hand on Yamahata's shoulder.

The boy was too scared to walk, so his friend carried him up on his back and ran away about 30 meters to his house. They reported the event to their mothers, went back there with them and found the glowing light again from a distance. The mothers say that the orange light kept glowing on and off for about 5 minutes in the vineyard, and then flew away while they turned their eyes away from it. The boys say the saucer had four illegible big letters on the hull of it.

Meanwhile, Ichiro Minegishi, who is also in the 2nd grade of the school (8 years old), reported that he saw a shining object flying toward the Hinode Housing Estate 30 minutes before the boys found the UFO, At that time, he was going by a car with his parents and their friends on the Kofy Bypass through Masutsudocho, Kofu City, very near the Estate.

It seems that when two concrete props were found almost fallen down next morning in the vineyard where the UFO had landed, the neighbors were alarmed again by the fact.

It was very fine that particular evening around the Kofu district. The authorities of Civil Aviation Bureau of Transportation Ministry say that an airliner often flies over Kofu between 6:00 and 7:00 pm and that, especially, the lights of YS-ll propeller plane which flies at an altitude of thousand meters, will be visible to the naked eyes.

When these two boys drew a picture of the humanoids and the saucer and put it up on the wall, all the pupils made a fuss about it.

"The landing took place near Kofu City, Yamanshi Prefecture, Japan. An occupant allegedly emerged and touched one child on the shoulder, temporarily paralyzing him. The occupant then walked around the craft and reboarded. The boys, in hysterics, ran home to their parents, who observed a large, orange-red light hovering over the vineyard."

"[There were] landing traces and ring pattern near broken concrete piles where UFO landed. A schoolteacher found radioactivity within the circular patch. Both boys were questioned in depth by UFO investigator Masaru Mori, and one child claimed that there was strange writing on the side of the craft.

Green Flying Saucer Entities Reported During Mysterious 1977 Incident In Washington State

Martha Cantu of Harrah said if her son ever tells her again to "come and look," she'll be sure to do it.

Last Wednesday when her agitated nine-year-old son Jose woke his mother up at about 6:30 a.m. asking her to explain the little "man" he saw outside she discounted his story and settled down to catch up on the sleep she'd lost the night before with a fussy baby.

Jose, who had been in the middle of preparing his breakfast, wasn't put off so easily.

He went outside to check for himself— and came back with an amazing story.

He told his mother he had seen two greenish creatures about three feet tall, who rotated on a base instead of having feet, and two "steely" crafts in which 2 other creatures were sitting.

He claimed that one craft rested in the back yard and the other on a flat section of the roof of the house. He told her he had hidden behind a washing machine stored outside next to a shed.

From that vantage point, he said he saw the two creatures join the other two in the crafts. He added that the crafts were brilliantly lighted inside, had "straight stairs" (much like a ramp) and a door that opened in "two parts, like a cross" to reveal the interior which contained two chairs with very tail bases. Jose said the craft in the yard rose from the ground and disappeared into something that resembled a cloud, steam or smoke.

When she heard the story, Jose's mother did what any mother might do in the same circumstances. She sent him to school.

At the Harrah Grade School, Jose repeated the story to Diane Gomez, an aide. "Jose is a serious boy. He's not one that tells stories or lies. What he told me, I took very seriously," Gomez said.

At 10:10, recess time, Gomez and another aide accompanied Jose to his home. There he showed them the places where he said the two creatures had been standing. In one location, where Jose said one creature had rotated on his base, Gomez said she saw two round marks in the gravel. At another place, where the creatures allegedly stood, there were two sets of three indentations.

After Mrs. Cantu spoke to the teacher's aides and they had returned to school with Jose, she called her neighbor, Irene Sanchez, to come to her home. Sanchez said they examined the back yard and found in the long grass a circular impression about 10 feet in diameter in which the grass in the middle was whirled up, and also observed the marks the aides had seen. The circle was easily visible from the window of the house next door, Gomez said, and added that her brother, who lives there, had seen it from that-distance. The circle was still clearly visible when Mr. Cantu arrived home that evening from work, he said.

On Thursday afternoon, when Bill Vogel of Toppenish and David Akers of Seattle, who is affiliated with the Center for UFO Studies, visited the Cantu home, the perfectly shaped circle and "footsteps" were still discernible. Akers examined the area with a Geiger counter and got no reaction.

On Saturday when this reporter visited the Cantu home only one set of "foot" marks could still be seen and only a faint trace of the circle remained.

Because the Cantu family is more at home with the Spanish language, this reporter took along a skeptical translator. After he questioned Jose, who answered his questions seriously and respectfully but asked to be allowed to return to his play, the skeptic concluded that "I believe he saw what he said he saw."

Vogel said he and Akers thought that Jose had "definitely" had an experience with a UFO.

If Jose did, he is in good company.

Barbara Brost, co-owner with her husband Earl of the Huba Huba Cafe in Toppenish, had a similar experience 20 years ago in southern Idaho on a ranch east of Blackfoot.

On a summer morning—about 6 a.m.— Barbara and her uncle were saddling horses and, as they left the barn by a rear door, they spotted an object "greyish white and as big as a boxcar" about half a mile away. Stunned, they watched it for about a minute. Barbara's aunt and Earl rushed from the house when the two called to them, but Earl was too late to see the cigar-shaped object which seemed to lift from the ground with a noise "like the transference of air," Barbara said. It disappeared so rapidly she couldn't tell which way it went, she said.

"When I see those rockets lift off now, on t.v., I just say to myself 'this thing was something else!'"

Another Toppenish resident, a man who prefers not to be identified, made a similar sighting eight years ago over a cornfield in Toppenish. The object that he, his wife, son and daughter saw from a distance of a quarter of a mile or less from their home was "not large. It was huge."

When asked to equate it to the size of a boxcar, he estimated it would be the length of three such train cars. He has described the object, which was off the ground and periodically beaming a light so brilliant that he was unable to look at it without squinting, to a Boeing employee who did his best to convince him that he had not seen the object and, if he had, that it was a helicopter. "I know what I saw," was his answer to that.

At the time he had a loaded Polaroid camera in his home but didn't even think of it, he said. The incident raised the "hair on the back of my neck," he said.

A more recent sighting happened in the late fall of 1958 or 1959, about 9 p.m. when Toppenish resident Ron Gardner was living in a rural area.

Gardner was about 14 years old at the time. He said he was watching television in the family's long and narrow living room with his back to a picture window in the room- A brilliant, bluish-violet light filled the room, he said. At first he thought it was "an electric arc light."

Turning to the window he saw the yard bathed in the purplish light and an object passing about 10 feet from the window.

The object, he said, was off the ground about three feet, was about seven feet high "tapering to real thin at the bottom," was engulfed in the light and the last four foot of "whatever it was" was disappearing behind a building.

Gardner said his father accused him of watching too many Flash Gordon pictures

and he never talked about it very much to anyone but "I know what I saw and I've never seen anything like it since."

Vogel, who seems to be the man in Toppenish to whom all the UFO reports are given, said that there has been many reports of brilliant lights over the Harrah area in the past six to eight months.

He said reports of a bright light over Harrah were made by many CBers the Tuesday night before Jose Cantu claimed to have seen the men and crafts.

A bright light has also been spotted over Toppenish Ridge by Mrs. Stan Johnson of Toppenish, who was Toppenish's Woman of the Year three years ago. She shared the experience with a friend, Judi Farquharson of Toppenish. They reported the lights to the Toppenish Police, who notified Vogel, who watched the light until it disappeared over Union Gap.

The Johnsons, who are area farmers, have seen the light often—and are still trying to explain how three holes, about four feet deep and six feet wide, appeared all in a row in a field in which they were growing sugar beets just south of Harrah.

Those who have seen the lights and mysterious objects all agree that they "know what they saw" but they aren't betting on convincing anyone else of it.