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URECAT - UFO Related Entities Catalog

1947, New Mexico, USA, a man:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

The well-known US border sciences physicist Hal E. Puthoff reported in 1997 that he interview a possible Roswell witness on January 7, 1993.

The witness did not want his name to be publicized because he did not want to be known as a "whistleblower." Puthoff interviewed him at a location an hour and a-half south of Austin, Texas, USA.

The man told him that in 1947, he was 18-year-old, a civilian, pilot since a few years, and had been hired to survey some area looking for a "Lost Dutchman" mine for a client. He had been flying his TaylorCraft L2 in the area for days, when eventually at a place Puthoff thinks was the Roswell incident alleged crash site or the one of the Plains of San Augustin, reflections from metal scattered around a field caught his eye.

He thought he also saw some bodies and assumed he had come upon an airplane crash. He circled around and landed in a nearby field, walked toward a rancher's house, told him of the apparent crash. He, the rancher, and the rancher's young son started out for the site, but when he then told the father about the bodies, they brought th boy back to the ranch before taking the walk to the site again.

He said material was scattered all over, but there was enough of the front end of the craft intact that he could tell that it was "egg-shaped," with the narrower end being the front of the craft.

There were three dead bodies in what was left of the front end of the craft. They were only 4 feet tall, had oversized heads, no hair, large black eyes with no pupils. He said he pulled back an eyelid to see if there was "a white" as in ours, but there was none, although it was lighter colored.

Their clothing was elastic-like, he pulled it at the neck and it snapped back. There were no buttons or zippers. When asked about the skin color, he answered it reminded him of some American Indian coloring which has a slight bluish hue to it. He said he thought at the time that this coloring might have been due to lack of oxygen for example; that he wasn't sure this was their natural coloring.

He described the inside of the craft as plain, there was no food, no toilet, and no buttons, levers, or instrumentation, only a bench seat.

There was, however, a part of the wall which jutted out like a smoothly-connected table, slightly discolored, with several simple symbols on it, and above it, a slightly discolored part of the wall. Later, when he saw computers touch-screens, he thought that maybe that was what he had seen, but he did not recognize it at the time.

He said he saw no wiring, but thick plastic-like threads were hanging from torn sections of the craft's wall. He could not recognize it then, but later realized they were like optical fibers. These fibers could not be broken by hand, but could be cut. There seemed to be a wiring path of these threads between the roof of the craft, down through the wall, and to a set of six coffee-cup-sized, gyroscope-like devices, evenly-spaced around the floor of the craft, at wall's edge. These devices were mounted in gimbals that could rock in all directions. Six "threads" came to each mount, with two continuing on to the movable element.

On the roof of the craft, there was a slight discoloration area with a row of dots, and a symbol beside each dot. He likened it to a solar panel.

He said the craft's walls appeared to be a porcelain-like material, one-inch thick, with 0.020", 20 mil, (20 millimeters? 2 millimeters?) metal foil on both the inside and outside. This material, including the "porcelain" was so light it seemed to hardly have any weight at all. He also said that the metal could not be torn or burnt, and when deformed, returned to its original shape. It could be bent about like a 1/16th-inch steel plate. He found it amazing that even when placed in a vice, it would not show any scratch or surface mark at all after being worked.

At some point, "others" showed up to take command of the situation. When he said that he wanted to go home, they told him he would have to stay around until at least the next day. At some point the next day, he was surrounded and harassed about what he saw until he said that he simply wished to be left out of it, and as far as he was concerned, he didn't see anything and just wanted to go home. This is when they let him go, stressing the secrecy of the situation.

When Puthoff asked him about his personal, psychological response to the event, he said, first, that he felt like he was watching his life from a far hill, it all seemed so unreal to him, until the authorities brought him back to his senses with their questioning. Secondly, he had feelings of deep regret, the way one would if one comes upon the scene of a massive accident and knows there is nothing that he can do to help.

He also mentioned that he spent some time at the Roswell hangar where they were putting the material into a C-54 for shipment somewhere, and saw the three bodies laid out on a blanket by the door.

Puthoff indicates that he understood MUFON also did an interview with the man around the same time frame, but to his knowledge there has never been any follow-up to check by anyone into the veracity of the claims.

Puthoff noted that his aviation career was in evidence everywhere, as his farm had several airplanes in various stages of repair; there were newspaper articles about his aviation involvement in scrapbooks; and old photographs of him at various points of his life with vintage aircraft, etc.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. hp1:] HAL PUTHOFF:

[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:

Albert Rosales indicates in his catalogue that in rural New Mexico, on January 7, 1947, at an unknown time, a Texas man reported encountering the wreckage of an egg-shaped craft in a desert area.

Inside it was the bodies of three humanoid beings with oversized heads and large, black eyes.

Soon a military team showed up and warned that that he should not discuss what he had seen.

Albert Rosales indicates that the source is H. E. Puthoff, Report of crash and recovery of craft and humanoid.

He comments that he found no independent confirmation of this report, one of many such reports in 1947 and 1948.

Points to consider:

Hal Puthoff:

Stanford Research Institute physicist Hal Puthoff, aka Harold Puthoff, was a NIDS member, allegedly an NSA member, and even rumored to be part of rumored "government secret UFO research groups such as "the Aviary." He had a long-term interest in "remote-viewing" with Ingo Swann and Russell Targ, including for a Government-sponsored research project, "Stargate", to investigate "remote viewing" as a technique for spying, and wrote a number of science paper about his theories on gravity and its relation to the electromagnetic field. He is listed in Who's Who in Science and Engineering, Who's Who in the World, and is a Fellow of the Fetzer Institute.

The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine:

The "Lost Dutchman Gold Mine" is claimed to be a very rich gold mine hidden in the Superstition Mountains, near Apache Junction, Arizona, east of Phoenix, in the United States, and not in New Mexico near Roswell or in the San Augustin plains. The distance gap is more than 500 miles.

Rumors:

See: "Myths and legends abound in Arizona", from the Arizona Central website at:
www.azcentral.com/relocation/valley101/myths.html

In June 1947, a prospector named James A. Cravey made a much-publicized trip into the Superstition canyons by helicopter, searching for the Lost Dutchman Mine. The pilot set him down in La Barge Canyon. Cravey failed to show up again, a search found his camp, but not Cravey. The following February, his headless skeleton was found in a canyon a good distance from the camp.

A story (file later in this catalog) says that in January 1947, one "W.H." of Yucca valley, California, while still serving in the U.S. Navy, was on leave with one "C.C." who was just out of the Army. While looking to buy some desert property, they came north of the rugged Superstition Mountains, west of Globe, Arizona, and on some a dirt trail, they came upon a group of military personnel guarding a crashed saucer buried in the sand. It was described as disc shaped with a dome top; about 30 feet in diameter; two rings on its outer edge; which seemed to have windows between them. There was no evidence of an encampment or heavy equipment.

In 2006, David Lynn Golemon, a former US Special Ops member, wrote the science-fiction thriller book "Event". "Event" is a team of Special Ops guys, founded under Abraham Lincoln, some sort of "X-file" team dealing with all sorts of mysteries. The book also references the Lost Dutchman mine and its discovery in the Superstition Mountains, and the Roswell Incident of 1947.

See "Event", by David Lynn Golemon, St. Martin's Press – Thomas Dunne Books, USA, 2006.

The story:

Albert Rosales wrote that the case was on January 7, but this date in Puthoff's text is the date of the interview, not of the alleged observation.

As no verification was attempted, as Mr. Puthoff put it, which is very unfortunate, the anomymized testimony remains entirely anecdotic.

Like several testimonies of the same conditions, it provides a story that may of may not be related to the infamous Roswell incident, and provides a story that conflicts in several details with the other stories.

The least credible feature in the story, possibly a sign of falsity, is that the witness said he was 18 when the incident occurred. He also said he had several years of pilot experience. Whereas piloting planes at age 18 was not impossible in the US in 1947, having several years of piloting experience at 18 is more doubtful.

Left: No particular problem with the TaylorCraft L2 plane the witness said he used. The plane was used during WWII, some were sold after the war, it was fit to land in unprepared terrains.

Another problem is about the eyes. The man says he pulled a black eyelid to check if there is "white" as in our eyes underneneath. He says there wasn't. But he also says the color was bright and there was no pupil. This appears a weird formulation, possibly a sign that it is made up.

Finally, it is quite hard to believe, to me, anyone finding aliens from a crashed UFO would be bold enough to just touch them, test their suits, pull back their eyelids, when the creatures are obviously not from our planet, when there is no way to be sure that they are dead, when they might be dangerous, when "contamination" comes in the mind.

This is why, until proven otherwise, the story is probably a hoax to me. Not a proven hoax, but a probable hoax

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Possible hoax.

Sources references:

* = Source I checked.
? = Source I am told about but could not check yet. Help appreciated.

• [mu1] ? Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), USA.
• [hp1] * "Puthoff 1993 Interview With Roswell Witness", posted by Glenn Campbell, on the UFOmind ufology mailing list, USA, July 25, 1997, at www.ufomind.com/misc/1997/jul/d26-001.shtml
• [ar1] * "1967 Humanoid Reports", compiled by Albert Rosales, circa 2001, at www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1967.shtml

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This page was last updated on January 11, 2008.