The Field Guide to….

Extraterrestrials: A complete overview of alien lifeforms – based on actual accounts and sightings by Patrick Huyghe, Illustrated by Harry Trumbore [Avon Books, NY, 1996].

This 136 page book, by the Anomalist creator, is one of my favorites pieces of UFO literature.

It provides pithy UFO accounts (by Huyghe) and intriguing interpretive illustrations (by Trumbore) of creatures or things reported by persons who say they’ve had a UFO or flying saucer encounter.

Classic cases are provided, along with little-known or obscure UFO cases.

This one on Page 110 is particularly interesting, to me:

In July 1951, a man named Fred Reagan [from Gordon Creighton’s, Healing from UFOs in Flying Saucer Review magazine, Vol. 15, No. 5, 1969, pp.20-21] was flying a small plane when, he said, his light aircraft was struck by a lozenge-shaped UFO. [Since this happened in 1951, the reference should be to a flying saucer, I think.]

As the plane plummeted to Earth, Reagan felt he was being drawn upward by a “sticky, clinging force.”

He found himself inside the UFO [flying saucer], in the presence of small glistening beings, about three feet tall and looking like “huge stalks of metallic asparagus.”

The beings spoke to him in English – the episode occurred in The United States – and apologized for the accident.

They gave him a medical examination and found cancer, which they removed for the trouble they had caused him.

The beings then deposited him, without a bruise, in a farmer’s field near the wreckage of his airplane, which was embedded six feet into the ground.

Less than a year later, in May 1952, Reagan died at the Georgia State Asylum for the Insane, a news report writing that his death was the result of “degeneration of the brain tissue due to extreme atomic radiation.”

[This account, reiterated by Mr. Huyghe from the Creighton article, sat for a decade in the files of Flying Saucer Review; the reason for its prolonged archival situation is not explained.]

There are several intriguing things in this account:

The beings (and their craft), of course.

Their appearance, in particular.

The diagnosis of cancer by them, and its alleged cure.

The remarkable status of Mr. Reagan after his airplane’s crash.

The death of Mr. Reagan, by neurodegeneration of the brain, attributed to atomic radiation.

Is this an authentic event, reported as such by Mr. Reagan in 1951, or is it a confabulation by Mr. Creighton for his FSR article?

Mr. Creighton was a respected and honored member of the British Foreign Service, at one time, and a most credible UFO researcher according to the sources I accessed, so a bogus story by him seems unlikely.

Were the newspaper and media accounts of Mr. Reagan’s story vetted thoroughly at the time (1951-1952)?

We cannot know for sure, now, but let’s assume they were accurate or fairly so.

What really happened to Mr. Reagan and his piper cub airplane? (Any photos of either?)

Was the death certificate seen by others (reporters or family)?

Was the atomic radiation of Mr. Reagan’s brain intuited by him (for the UFO diagnosis of cancer and his account)?

(Paresthesia is a tingling sensation that some people feel when parts of their body are afflicted; neurodegeneration being an extreme form of paresthesia.)

Did Mr. Reagan have a biophysically induced hallucination, of the kind that Oliver Sacks delineates in his book, Hallucinations?

Did this cause Mr. Reagan to black out, losing control of his plane, something like that of Thomas Mantell?

Or did Mr. Reagan really encounter asparagus-like, metallic beings, who cured his cancer ( or perhaps caused his brain illness)?

Or is the whole episode a wish-fulfillment by Mr. Reagan; an hallucinated cure for a disease that he knew, somehow, he had?

[Copyright 2013, InterAmerica, Inc.]

RR 

A 1977 UFO Photo, looking for provenance....

Spanish UFO researcher Jose Caravaca found this 1977 photo in his files:



Provenance anyone?

RR

A Strange Flying Sphere from ?

Our colleague Spanish UFO researcher Jose Antonio Caravaca sent us this:

January 19, 1967. In Dunbar, West Virginia, at about 9:05 pm, Tad Jones, businessman with an electronics store was driving his vehicle on Route 64 when he saw something in the middle of the road.

As he approached that something, he saw that it was a metal sphere, about 7.5 meters in diameter with two antennae and a small window of about 22 cm.

The sphere floated 1.20 meters above the ground.

As the witness's vehicle approached the mysterious sphere, it flew away at high speed.

According to the description provided by the witness, the object appeared to be made of aluminum, had four legs ending in something like "wheels."

At the bottom was a propeller rotating at high speed at takeoff.

The sighting lasted about 2 minutes.

Tad reported the sighting to the police and the press reported the strange episode.

The day after the story appeared, the witness received a strange anonymous note at his home:

“We know what you have seen and we know that you have talked. You’d better keep your mouth shut.”

Señor Caravaca ties this to his “Distortion Theory.”

That is, an external agent – neither we nor señor Carvaca know exactly what or who that might be (yet), but it is the thing which, according to Jose’s “theory” interacts with persons, inserting or providing elements into UFO observations that are intertwined with their personal life or occupation(s).

The "external agent" interacts with the observer using the connective (mental?) associations.

In this instance, the witness has an electronics store, thus his “encounter” involves an electronic-like gadget.

A more prosaic explanation would be that the witness, Tad Jones, was hallucinating.

(One would like to know whether Mr. Jones had had anything to drink or eat that might cause him to see what he saw. Or was he under any kind of duress?)

The note left at his home may be considered a prank.

JAC/RR