The Alien Cyclops of Sagrada Familia

sagrada2

Comic book depiction of the Sagrada Familia Cyclops, an alien encountered by three boys in Brazil in August 1963.

On August 28, 1963, 7-year-old José Marcos Gomes Vidal went to play with his friends Fernando and Ronaldo Gualberto at their home in Sagrada Familia, a poor neighborhood in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. Around 7 PM, after eating dinner, the boys went out to the backyard to wash a coffee strainer. While Fernando stood a small distance behind him, José dipped his head and arms into a barrel to collect some water. (I believe Ronaldo was hanging around the side of the house, away from the other two boys.)  Suddenly, Fernando noticed a glow coming from the top of an avocado tree. When he looked up, he saw a UFO hovering above the tree’s branches.

The craft, which was spherical and had a pair of antennas on top, was completely transparent. It held four human-like passengers sitting inside, one of whom sat in front of a machine that appeared to be a control panel. The passengers were about six feet tall and dressed in spacesuits. They all four had only one eye. Three of them were thin and bald, while the other looked like an overweight woman with blonde hair.

sagrada3

As Fernando gazed at the sight in awe, the UFO shot out two rays of yellow light. One of the cyclopes then appeared between the lights, slowly floating down onto the ground. Once his boots touched the earth, the creature began to walk toward José, who was completely unaware of what was happening since he was still collecting water. Worried that the cyclops was going to abduct his friend, Fernandos panicked and tackled José. José fell to the ground, and Fernando got back up and faced the cyclops. Now all three boys were aware of their visitor.

Instead of moving any farther, the cyclops moved his head and made hand signals. Its mouth moved and spoke a few sounds that was nothing like the boys ever heard before. The creature then turned around and stared back at the UFO. Fernando, spotting a brick on the ground, picked it up and aimed it at the cyclops. The cyclops suddenly faced the boys again and shot Fernando’s hand with a yellow light from a triangular crest on his chest. Fernando dropped the brick, and all three of the boys became calm and frozen.

fernando

A newspaper photo of Fernando using a stick to show how tall the cyclops was.

The cyclops spent the next few minutes talking to the boys in his language. The boys didn’t understand anything that the cyclops said, but he sounded like he was serious. After pointing one of his fingers at the moon, the cyclops began to walk back toward the UFO. (One source places Fernando’s attempt to hit the creature with a brick at this later point.)

As the cyclops walked away, José asked if he would ever come back. He shook his head affirmatively, plucked a plant from the ground, and then waved his hand at the UFO. The UFO shot out two rays of yellow light again,  and the cyclops slowly floated back up into the vehicle. As the boys continued to watch, the UFO flew eastward and disappeared out of their sight.

After the UFO was gone, a wave of fear settled over the three boys. José ran into the Gualbertos’ house and hid under a bed. Fernando and Ronaldo were also badly spooked, and told their mother María José about what happened. She sent a neighbor girl to fetch her husband, Alcides, from the bar. When Alcides returned home to check the backyard, he found large footprints, like those of a boot, near the water barrel. José and his friends reportedly never saw the cyclopes again. While the case was at one point investigated by a Brazilian ufologist, it has remained mostly unknown to the wider world.

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Was There a UFO Crash in Missouri Six Years Before Roswell?

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Reverend William Hoffman told his family in 1941 that he saw a crashed UFO and three dead alien bodies in Cape Girardeau, Missouri.

The Roswell UFO Incident of 1947, whether you believe it anyway, is usually considered to have been the first UFO crash in the United States. In the vast and zany annals of American UFO lore, however, there is an earlier case in Cape Girardeau, Missouri that also involves alien bodies and a government cover-up. Unlike Roswell, the 1941 Cape Girardeau Incident has never been the subject of mass media interest, or even a stand-alone book.

The story didn’t surface, in fact, until five decades after it allegedly took place. It was first reported in 1991 by Leonard H. Stringfield,  a ufologist who included it in his book UFO Crash/Retrievals: The Inner Sanctum, the sixth addition of a seven-part series he wrote about UFO crashes. Stringfield’s source was Charlette Mann, a woman who claims that her grandfather William Hoffman was a witness at the crash site.

Hoffman, a pastor of the Red Star Baptist Church, was called up by local police one night in the spring of 1941. They told him that there had been a plane crash, and asked if he could come to minister the pilot’s last rites. After Hoffman said yes, he was picked up by a car, and then taken to an area about a dozen miles away from Cape Girardeau.

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Scene from a documentary about the Cape Girardeau UFO Incident. I

When Hoffman got to the crash site, he found the place swarming with police officers, firefighters, and soldiers. The “plane” turned out to be a small metallic saucer. He saw three dead bodies, each about four feet tall, lying outside the craft. The figures were evidently non-human; they had large eyes, no hair, and only three fingers on each hand. The creatures’ ship had crashed and caught fire, but their bodies showed no sign of being burned.

Due to damage from the crash, the interior of the craft could be seen from the outside. When Hoffman got up closer, he saw that it contained a single metal chair and some gauges and dials. He also noticed a strange script, which he thought looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

After things calmed down a bit and Hoffman finished giving the creatures their last rites, two police officers picked one of the bodies up and held it between them for a photograph. Before he left, Hoffman was told to keep what he had seen a secret. He was warned that what he saw was a matter of national security, and that it couldn’t be told to anybody.

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A reconstruction of the lost photo allegedly taken in the Cape Girardeau UFO Incident. This picture was drawn from memory by Charlette Mann.

Of course, Hoffman did just the opposite and told his entire family about what happened as soon as he came back home.  About 2 weeks after the alleged crash, Hoffman received the alien picture from the man who had taken it, possibly a local photographer (and friend of Harry Truman) named Garland F. Fronabarger. Hoffman was said to never have mentioned the crash again, although he did pass the picture off to his son Guy.

Guy showed the picture to his friends and children, including his daughter Charlette Mann. In the mid-1950s, Guy gave the picture to a skeptical photographer friend named Walter Wayne Fisk. This was apparently the last anybody had seen of it. Long before Fisk’s death in 2012, both Charlette Mann and ufologist Stanton T. Friedman tried contacting him with little success.

Aside from Charlette Mann and her sister, nobody else can confirm that the picture existed. Everything we know about the case comes from Mann, and she had gotten the details from her grandmother, who had told it to Mann on her death-bed in 1984. There’s a total lack of witnesses here, and the exact date and location of the crash have never been determined either. I’ve heard that Mann hopes more witnesses will eventually show up, but after so many years, who could possibly still be alive to vouch that it happened?

 

The Kofu UFO Incident

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A drawing of the UFO and alien seen in the Kofu Incident. 

On February 23, 1975, second-graders Masato Kawano and Katsuhiro Yamahata were rollerskating in Kofu, Japan when they spotted two UFOs glowing orange in the sky. One of the UFOs took off northward, but the other one landed in a near-by vineyard. When the boys went to investigate, they found a large circular craft resting on three legs in the middle of the vineyard.

After the boys observed the craft for about five minutes, a door on the left side of the UFO slid open and a ladder descended out of the opening.  A brown human-like creature emerged and walked down the steps, while a similar-looking creature stayed inside. The creature, which stood at about 4 feet in a silver suit, had rabbit-like ears and three fangs. Its face was heavily wrinkled, and it appeared to have no eyes, nose, or hair.

The alien approached the boys and patted Katsuhiro two times on the shoulder. It was said to have made sounds that sounded like a tape-recorder being played backwards, although some sources report that the alien asked “Are you Katsuhiro?” in Japanese. Katsuhiro was so shocked that he couldn’t speak. He lost his balance and fell down out of fright, and the alien then walked away. Masato, who had watched from a distance, carried Katsuhiro on his back and ran home.

 

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Once they got home, the boys told their mothers about what happened and brought them back to the vineyard. The UFO was now hovering in the sky, glowing a bright orange light again. As it glowed brighter and brighter, it hovered in the air for about 2-3 minutes, until finally taking off in great speed.

Both Masato and Katsuhiro seemed very disturbed after the encounter. They refused to be outside alone, and Masato was so upset that he cried that night. The next day, the boys told their classmates and teacher about what happened.  During a lunch break, their teacher checked out the spot where the UFO landed, but found nothing out of the ordinary.

A later search of the landing site carried out with the help of a local newspaper found two broken concrete posts and several holes in the soil. Another teacher discovered that the soil was slightly contaminated with radiation.

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Masato and Katsuhiro show the spot where they saw the UFO and alien. 

 

The Japanese authorities, of course, were skeptical. Other than Masato and Katsuhiro, their mothers, and Katsuhiro’s younger brother, a classmate of the boys reported that he saw the UFO about a half-hour before his friends did. Later witnesses, including a janitor and a woman driving in the area, also said they saw the UFO.

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A toy of a villain in Ultraman that resembles the Kofu alien.

 

Critics believed that the sightings were a misidentified plane. They pointed out that only Masato and Katsuhiro had seen the alien itself. They thought it suspicious that the creature resembled an alien from the popular sci-fi show Ultraman. Finally, as the boys’ teacher had noted, there was nothing much out of the ordinary about the landing site. While there might have been some broken posts and a few holes in the ground, the vines in the field were completely fine. The radiation discovered, contrary to some reports, was low and probably natural.

 

The Gnome of Girona: A Real-life Smurf Hoax

The preserved remains of the Gnome of Girona. (Image credit/source here.)

The preserved remains of the Gnome of Girona. (Image credit/source here.)

Sometime in September 1989, two couples named Añaños and Pujals went camping in a forest near the Spanish city of Girona. While the four friends were barbecuing and listening to music on a cassette player, a strange creature suddenly walked out of the bushes. The “Gnome of Girona”, as it was later called in Spanish media, was a small rabbit-like creature that had glowing red eyes and bluish skin. Apparently attracted by the music, the Gnome walked up to the cassette player and stood as the campers watched.

When one of the men turned the music up, the creature let out a loud laugh like an old man’s, and tried to run away. To prevent its escape, the campers threw a blanket over it and placed the Gnome in a birdcage. It smelled like sarsaparilla and had very soft skin. Aside from three pieces of hair found on the back of its neck, the Gnome was hairless. Its height was measured at 12 centimeters (4.7 inches). It made no protest about being captured, but refused to eat. After four days in captivity, the creature died.

Drawing of the Gnome of Girona. (Image credit/source here.)

Drawing of the Gnome of Girona. (Image credit/source here.)

The campers decided to save the creature’s remains in a coffee jar filled with formaldehyde, and it was later sold to Angel Gordon, a Spanish parapsychologist. Gordon paraded the remains around the media, appearing on the Spanish TV shows Otra Dimensión (“Another Dimension”) and En los Límites de la Realidad (“In the Twilight Zone”). Some speculated that the creature was an alien, but Gordon himself said that it was an elf, the same sort from German folklore which inspired The Smurfs.

Gordon’s bizarre story attracted growing skepticism after he gave conflicting accounts of how the Gnome was found. He couldn’t specify where in the forest the campers saw the Gnome, and nobody could locate the campers either. (He could assumedly neither explain why anybody would go camping with a birdcage.) In 1991, pictures taken of the Gnome were examined by Dr. John Altschuler, an American pathologist interested in UFOs and cattle mutilations. Altschuler was not convinced that the remains were of an extraterrestrial origin, dismissing it as an animal fetus, possibly a cow or pig.

Angel Gordon displaying pictures of the Gnome of Gerona remains. (Image credit/source here.)

Angel Gordon displaying pictures of the Gnome of Gerona remains. (Image credit/source here.)

In a move to defend the Gnome, Gordon appeared on a Spanish TV show along with Dr. Luis Linares de Mula, a medical doctor and fellow parapsychologist. Mula claimed that the Gnome of Girona was an abnormal animal unknown to science. The campers who caught the Gnome, the Añaños and Pujals, also appeared on the show and gave a first-person account of the story.

Biologists from the Barcelona Zoo later investigated the Gnome and came to the conclusion that there was nothing extraordinary about it. Its legs, they noted, were underdeveloped and couldn’t possibly have been able to walk. The “Gnome”, in fact, was very likely a deformed three-month-old calf fetus.

Pictures of the Gnome of Gerona. (Image credit/source here.)

Pictures of the Gnome of Gerona. The remains have become yellowish over time. (Image credit/source here.)

Any hope that the Gnome of Girona really was a blue little elf was extinguished when a man named Manuel Tello came forward and told a different story about how the Gnome was found. According to Tello, one of his neighbors had found the Gnome dead while walking in the countryside. He thought it was a rabbit fetus, or possibly some rare animal. After Tello took some pictures of the thing, Angel showed up and bought it. Tello began to see Angel touring the media circuit with the camper story a few weeks later.

As another skeptic would later uncover, the Añaños and Pujals turned out to be actors hired to promote Gordon’s camper story. There are, of course, some believers who still insist that the Gnome of Girona is either an extraterrestrial/real-life Smurf/elf corpse or the fetus of an unidentified animal, but this story has been thoroughly debunked as a hoax.

The Aliens that Waved Back

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Picture of Rev. William Booth Gill from a TV interview available on Youtube.

On the evening of June 26, 1959, an Anglican missionary named Rev. William Booth Gill was walking out of his house in Boainai, Papua New Guinea when he noticed a bright sparkling object in the sky. For the next four hours, Rev. Gill took notes and watched the light with more than 30 other witnesses. When it disappeared after 45 minutes, it came back with three smaller objects an hour later. This “mothership” flashed a blue light from the center of its deck, and the object was so close that Rev. Gill and the other observers could see four figures on top of it. By 11 PM, the ships had vanished, and a heavy rain began to fall from the sky.

The next night, Rev. Gill and some other missionaries saw the mothership near the same location of the first sighting, along with two other smaller UFOs. The four figures on top were again visible, and when Rev. Gill waved to one of the them, the figure waved back. Ananias Rarata, a native schoolteacher, began to wave too, and all four of the figures waved back for the next couple of minutes until they decided to go below deck. After a half hour, Rev. Gill left to go to dinner, and the other observers left to go to church. Nobody saw the UFOs for the rest of the evening, although there was an inexplicable explosion sound heard around 10:40 PM.

(Picture source/credit here.)

(Picture source/credit here.)

Rev. Gill’s sightings caused a lot of excitement in Australia. The Victorian Flying Saucer Research Society thought Rev. Gill’s detailed reports were final proof that UFOs existed. The members of Australia’s federal parliament all received copies of Rev. Gill’s report, and the government launched an investigation to determine what exactly Rev. Gill had seen.

The official conclusion was that Rev. Gill was a “reliable observer”, but that the incidents were probably nothing more than “natural phenomenon coloured by past events and subconscious influences of UFO enthusiasts.” Doubters thought that the objects were Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars, and the “human shapes” were explained as “various cloud densities”.

(Picture source/credit here.)

(Picture source credit here.)

Others thought Rev. Gill had made the story up entirely. Dr. Donald H. Menzel, a Harvard astronomer and notable UFO debunker, accused Gill of manipulating the testimony the “uneducated” natives had given. He also thought Rev. Gill wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time, and claimed that the position of Venus was left unmentioned in Gill’s reports. J. Allen Hynek, another astronomer and the head of the Center for UFO Studies, rebuked Menzel, and noted that Rev. Gill was wearing his glasses at the time and had, in fact, identified Venus in his reports.

Before his sightings, Rev. Gill initially considered himself a skeptic. There had been sightings of strange lights across Papua New Guinea since the past year, some of which had been reported by missionaries. In a letter written the day before his first sighting (but never seen sent), Rev. Gill told his friend Rev. David Durie that he believed UFOs were “more likely some form of electric phenomena- or something brought about by the atom bomb explosions etc.”

After a lifetime of teaching and traveling, Rev. Gill passed away at the age of 79 on June 13, 2007.

Elizabeth Klarer and Her Handsome Alien Lover from the Planet Meton

The sort of people who claim to have had sex with aliens typically aren’t respected very highly (go figure), but one of the earliest claimants, South African Elizabeth Klarer, was actually a rather accomplished woman. After studying music and meteorology in England, Klarer served as a pilot in the South African Air Force during World War II. She later became an agent for Royal Air Force Intelligence.

Born in 1910 to a wealthy family, Klarer grew up fascinated by the Zulu folklore told to her by the family’s native African workers, and she was especially intrigued by the stories of sky gods going up into the sky and vowing to someday return. After reading some books by alien contactee George Adamski in the early 1950s, Klarer apparently remembered some UFO sightings she experienced during her childhood. On two separate occasions, she saw a giant flying disc in the sky. After the second sighting, a ball of light floated into her house.

In the mid-1950s, Klarer spotted more UFOs and reported that she was in telepathic contact with a pilot named Akon. Akon and his co-pilot, both of whom were astrophysicists, eventually let Klarer board their spaceship. They told her that they came from Meton, a planet in the galaxy of Alpha Centauri. Klarer became friends with the aliens, and they continued making visits to her.

After a time, Klarer felt a great attraction toward Akon, and doubtlessly unable to resist the opportunity of kinky intergalactic space sex with an attractive extraterrestrial species, took him as a lover and became pregnant. Akon then took her to live on Meton, where she gave birth to a hybrid son the couple named Ayling.

According to Klarer, Meton was a utopia free of crime, greed, and poverty. The inhabitants of Meton looked just like humans, but they were kinder, taller, and better-looking. Metonians could live for thousands of years, and were even able to reincarnate after death. They dressed in beautiful silk clothing and ate only natural food. They didn’t care for sports, but loved art and music. They never married or divorced and had large families. The Metonians adored children and were fond of keeping pet birds.There was no need for schools or books because communication and learning were all done through telepathy.Technologically and spiritually, the Metonians were thousands of years ahead of earthlings.

As much as she liked Meton, Klarer had difficulty living there because of the atmosphere, so she went back to earth after four months. Occasionally, she would receive visits from Akon and Ayling, the latter whom followed in his father’s cosmic footsteps to also become an astrophysicist.

In 1980, Klarer published an account of her experiences in a book called Beyond the Light Barrier. While there were only some family members to back her story, and no documentation of her alleged pregnancy, Klarer insisted that her story was true up until her death in 1994.

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The 1965 Maurice Masse UFO Incident

Maurice Masse.

Maurice Masse.

On July 1, 1965, at approximately 6 AM, Maurice Masse was getting ready for work on his farm in Valensole, France when he heard a strange noise coming from his lavender field. Masse assumed it was one of the military helicopters that would sometimes land on his property. Worried that the helicopter might be crushing his lavender, he made his way over to the field and intended to tell the pilot to park someplace else. Rather than a helicopter, however, Masse stumbled upon an egg-shaped vehicle about the size of a car. It stood on six thin legs, sitting about 200 feet away from him. He noticed two small boys, about four feet tall, standing near the craft, apparently observing the lavender.

Picture by Michael Buhler of the Maurice Masse UFO encounter.

Picture by Michael Buhler of the Maurice Masse UFO encounter.

As Masse began to walk closer to confront them, he realized that the two figures weren’t boys. They weren’t even human. Dressed in green one-piece suits, the creatures had abnormally large and bald heads, no lips, pointed chins, pale skin, and small hands. One of the creatures suddenly turned around and pointed a small tube at Masse, blasting him with a light that paralyzed him. They stared at Masse for about a minute, communicating with one another by low, guttural grunts. A door then slid open across the craft, and the two mysterious beings disappeared into it. After the door closed, the craft took off into the sky, out of Masse’s sight.

Lavender farmer Maurice Masse encounters a landed UFO and its occupants on his land early in the morning ; they paralyse him by pointing 'ray- guns' at him - Date: 1 July 1965

Masse was paralyzed for 15 minutes before he could move again. After checking to inspect the marks the craft’s legs had made on his lavender, he rushed to town and told a cafe owner what had happened. It wasn’t long before the story hit the media and authorities, and Masse’s farm soon became infested with tourists. UFO investigators took samples of the lavender and soil allegedly touched by the craft, and Masse freely talked to them about his experience.

Picture of where the craft is said to have landed.

Picture of where the craft is said to have landed.

He said that he wasn’t afraid at all during the encounter and paralysis, and believed that the creatures had no desire to hurt him. Masse did, however, refuse to elaborate on the psychological and physical effects he felt afterward. He did admit to feeling extremely sleepy during the first few weeks, sometimes sleeping up to 12 hours a day. In particular, there was one big detail of the encounter that he refused to discuss with anybody.“Nobody will make me tell it,” he is reported as saying. His wife later said in an interview that he constantly thought about the creatures, and “considered his encounter with them a spiritual experience”. Whatever else he saw, Masse took it to the grave with him, dying on May 14th, 2004.

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Sources:

https://books.google.com/books?id=w5giAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA133&dq=maurice+masse+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEgQ6AEwB2oVChMIosP4q5qbxwIVQ1c-Ch3yHQ9a#v=onepage&q=maurice%20masse%20ufo&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=c9zABAAAQBAJ&pg=PT61&dq=maurice+masse+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBmoVChMIosP4q5qbxwIVQ1c-Ch3yHQ9a#v=onepage&q=maurice%20masse%20ufo&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=OBAFLYcVQ_gC&pg=PT68&dq=maurice+masse+ufo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAGoVChMIosP4q5qbxwIVQ1c-Ch3yHQ9a#v=onepage&q=maurice%20masse%20ufo&f=false

https://books.google.com/books?id=BnQU2Q65lWsC&pg=PA39#v=onepage&q&f=false

The Two Men Who Went Missing Looking for a UFO

Wilbur Wilkinson

Wilbur Wilkinson

On November 11, 1953, electrical engineers Karl Hunrath and Wilbur J. Wilkinson paid an hour of rent time for a small plane from Gardena Airport in Los Angeles, California. They submitted no flight plan. Hunrath, despite being only an amateur pilot and having little familiarity with the area, flew the plane. The day before, he called up some acquaintances and told them he was going on a trip. He believed a UFO had landed near-by, and he and his friend Wilkinson were determined to find it. They thought it would take them to another planet, possibly Venus or the home world of the Maserians, an extraterrestrial race Hunrath allegedly communicated with by radio. Whether or not they were taken to Maser is unknown, for the two UFO enthusiasts were never seen again.

The fact that their plane and bodies never showed up anywhere inspired the UFO community in Los Angeles to proclaim that, yes, they really did make it off the earth. A tabloid paper called the Los Angeles Mirror ran an article giving credence to the abduction theory a week after their disappearance. Reporters interviewed Wilkinson’s wife, who explained that her husband and Hunrath believed the end of the world was at hand. The Maserians, Wilkinson had told her, were plotting an invasion of earth. Wilkinson was obsessed with UFOs, and had his den covered in UFO pictures and strange pictographs that were supposedly written in an interplanetary language. He had only moved to California back in June, lured to the state by his old friend Hunrath. Hunrath claimed that he could show Wilkinson a flying saucer, so Wilkinson promptly left his job  in Racine, Wisconsin and moved his family 2000 miles away to Los Angeles.

Some of the pictographs found in Wilkison's home.

Some of the pictographs found in Wilkinson’s home.

According to George Hunt Williamson, a UFO researcher active in the 1950s contactee scene, Hunrath was a mysterious man who would frequently spread false rumors about other researchers. He had developed an interest in UFOs after meeting what he believed was a “spaceman”, and moved to Los Angeles after having a fall-out with cult leader George Adamski in Palomar Gardens. Williamson, who insisted that the Maserians were actually a benevolent people from the Moon, suggested that UFOs had nothing to do with Hunrath’s and Wilkinson’s disappearance. He thought, whether alive or dead, they were somewhere on earth.

And this, coming from a man who believed he could contact UFOs by ouija boards, is probably the more rational explanation. There were rumors that the two men had flown to Mexico, but this would have been impossible, since they only had a three hour supply of fuel. Rather than land somewhere, they easily could have crashed and died. Hunrath hadn’t flown a plane in a long time, and he was an inexperienced pilot to begin with. As Williamson noted, “the down-draft and illusive qualities” of the near-by Big Bear mountain range “could have doomed the small plane.”

Sources:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/otof/otof16.htm

http://ufobc.ca/kinross/planeMishaps/hunrathAndWilkinson.html

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