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URECAT - UFO Related Entities Catalog

JULY 22, 1978, GREEN RIVER, WYOMING, USA, MICKIE ECKERT AND KATHY ECHART:

Brief summary of the event and follow-up:

Tabloid editor Timothy Green Beckley told what follows in in 1992 book "Strange Encounters":

Mickie Eckert's experience is totally unique in the annals of flying saucerdom. Her story does not seem to fit in with any existing pattern and yet the sincerity shows on her pretty face as she relates a bizarre tale that defies explanation.

Looking at me with bewildered eyes it was obvious that Mickie, a young woman in her mid-twenties, was seeking answers. She was confused about what had happened and was anxious to find out the reasons she was selected to have a close encounter that goes beyond anything previously recorded.

It was July 22, 1978. Mickie, along with her best friend, Kathy Echard, were driving along Interstate 80 East. They were headed towards Nebraska near the Wyoming border, when they saw what they thought was an accident on the side of the road.

"We turned to get a better look and saw these white lights bobbing up and down. In order to get a better look we pulled over to the shoulder of the road and aimed our car headlights in the direction of the crash."

It was apparent that Mickie wanted to talk about what transpired that night. We were seated around a large table, in a private conference room at the Royal Quality Inn in San Diego, California. Mickie had come to the privately-sponsored UFO conference (promoted by veteran newsman Hal Starr) mainly because she wanted desperately to talk with some of the top names in the field who are supposed to be trained in the handling of such matters. In attendance on the podium that day were such leading UFO illuminaries as Jim and Coral Lorenzen from APRO (since deceased), Walter Andrus, director of the Mutual UFO Network, and Dr. James A. Harder, Associate Professor Engineering at the University of California (Berkeley). Maybe it was because of their tight speaking schedule, but none of those present seemed to be able to find the necessary time to speak with Mickie Eckert. It was only after she was introduced to me by John DeHerrera (a practicing hypnotist who has been involved in the investigation of several contactee cases, (most notably that of Brian Scott) that Mickie found someone who would listen intelligently to what she had to offer.

Going back to the evening in question, Mickie maintains that the sun had just set as they drove on a desolate and very isolated stretch of road eight miles north of Whelock, Nebraska. "Our spotlights were trained on what we thought to be a mishap, but all we could see was three round circles hovering a few feet above the ground."

At the time neither of the two young women realized that they were headed for a journey to a Twilight Zone more real than any TV program about the supernatural could ever hope to be. "In front of our eyes these lights turned into two sports cars that were coming toward us." One moment they had been confronted by the mysterious presence of airborne lights and the next thing they were aware of was two automobiles speeding in their direction. To say the least, they didn't know what to make of this transformation.

"We wanted no part of what was happening so we took off in the opposite direction. As we turned the car around to leave, in back of us we saw this whole bunch of lights. We backed up on the Interstate and now there were two trucks that had appeared out of thin air. On the trucks were teeny little lights. The trucks were following us, of this I'm sure."

The two tractor-trailers kept a steady pace on the highway in back of the girls. It was as if unseen eyes were watching their every movement, perhaps seeking an ideal spot to overtake them for some fiendish purpose.

"For some reason, Kathy asked me to stop and she got out of the auto and stood in front of the car. It was then that we saw all these other cars parked along the side of the road. They were just stopped there. When Kathy got back into our vehicle she wanted to drive and so I let her take the steering wheel. To her it felt as if something - some force - was trying to take control of our car. She got scared and eventually turned the driving back over to me and I too felt this strange pulling."

Putting as many miles behind them as possible, the two girls sped on through the night anxious to get back to their home in California. "As we were passing through Salt Lake City, we stopped off at a Safeway store to get some gum and cigarettes." Mickie makes no bones about the fact that they were still shaken but says they were trying to pull themselves back together again, not having seen anything unusual on the road for quite some time now.

"As we were about to leave the Safeway supermarket, I noticed a reflection on one of the large windows coming from either inside our outside. Initially, I just assumed the reflection was caused by either the store lights themselves or from some street light nearby."

"Out in the parking area I discovered this was not at all the case, for directly across the lot was this little light about the size of a basketball just sitting near the ground."

There seemed to be so much that Micki had to say that the words wouldn't come out fast enough. Several times I had to slow her down so as not to miss any part of her narrative.

Totally freaked out by what was transpiring all around them, Micki's friend was anxious to push on as quickly as possible. "As we entered Wyoming we stopped again to get some bottled water. We were in a pretty good-sized town called Evansville, and it was still pretty early, but there wasn't a light on in the entire city. Everything was closed. None of the houses had lights on either. I looked out of the window on the driver's side of the car and there were these two ships hanging there. One was orange, the other yellowish-white. We continued on toward Green River and the objects passed through the trees on the side of the road. At this junction in time we lost control of the car once more. No matter how fast we put our foot down on the gas pedal the car refused to accelerate past a certain speed."

In the middle of nowhere the car died completely. With this, a light came into the auto passing right through an open window. The light touched Kathy Echard and for no explainable reason, Mickie began talking to that light. "Come on, little light, why don't you touch me, too," one remarked, despite the fact that everything up until this point had frightened her.

No sooner had it appeared than the light inside the car vanished. "All of a sudden we didn't see the ship anymore, but we started seeing trucks. Northwestern, American - and other big-named rigs. They were traveling in both directions, up and down the northbound and southbound lanes. The only way I can describe it is as a caravan of big lights going back and forth. This one particular truck stopped directly in front of us and we knew something was wrong. It was freaky - the trucks were now ships; dome-shaped, 3 sided ships about the same size as a compact automobile, and they were no longer on the road, but traveling about six feet off the ground."

Micki admits that she was too bewildered to be an excellent observer. She finds it hard to estimate the number of trucks or dome-shaped ships but she does know that the car they were in got pushed forward about 20 feet as if it had been lifted by a terrific force from underneath.

Despite their accelerated heartbeats, the girls decided to get out of their car to have a look, to see if anything might have gotten caught underneath their wheels which might account for the sudden tug forward. There was nothing there that would offer a solution to the puzzle, and so they climbed back into the relative safety of their vehicle.

"Soon there was this other car that pulled up directly in back of us and Kathy said she wanted to get out and see who was driving it." It was quite apparent from Micki's comments that the girls were anxious to seek help from any other companion of the road they might find driving so late at night.

"When Kathy got back into the car I was anxious to know what she had said to the individuals in the car behind us. She just looked me straight in the eye and said, 'turn around and tell me what you would have said to them.' There was this black dog, tail curved up and two red eyes blazing just outside our car door."

The girls were understandably terrified by this new development.

Cowering in fear, Micki happened to glance into the rear view mirror. What she saw only added fuel to a fire of panic that was so near to bursting out of control within them. "I saw what appeared to be a kid with his arms bunched together on the back seat." The girls got out of the car in an attempt to escape this potential menace. Luckily the dog-like creature they had seen was nowhere in sight. However, directly behind them were two bright lights which were joined by several other duller-looking lights. After several minutes they all blended into one light. "As the light went past us, it was no longer just a light - but a ship. We heard this rumbling sound and our hair stood on end. Our skin was covered with goosebumps."

At this point is seemed as if Micki and Kathy had been transported to another dimension, another sphere of reality, for all at once things started looking peculiar, totally out of whack. "Then the sun started to come up, but only it was an orange ball and it was coming toward us. And then it was not orange anymore, but its color turned suddenly to gray, and it was about 100 feet across, just enormous. And people started to appear out of nowhere, walking across the freeway carrying tubes or pipes. We didn't actually see them come out of any ship because the sun - or whatever it was - had landed in a valley out of our immediate viewing range."

The beings - or whatever they were - were standing in the middle island that separates the north and southbound traffic. "There were these bunch of blue lights and we knew something was going to happen. We were terrified. We felt like we were going to be taken to another planet and would never be heard from again."

Without warning the car started up. "I got mad at Kathy because I thought she had slammed on the brakes and I hit my head on the dashboard. We saw this ship coming down the Interstate and we also saw an 18-wheeler truck towing one of the sports cars we had seen earlier in the evening. Something pushed us from behind but we couldn't get the car to run of its own accord."

From out of nowhere a man appeared and asked the girls where they were headed. "He said he was heading toward Chicago and we said that's where we were going too. I'd have gone to Timbuktu just to get out of the spot we were in."

From what I was able to gather, the man did not know anything was happening. He seemed totally unaware of the frightful state of the girls' minds caused by a terror that was real enough to them even if nobody else was able to perceive what was transpiring around them.

"I was so scared that I crawled all over the driver. He stopped at a truck stop to get coffee and we got out and walked to a nearby motel. We didn't have very much money. But we had about $35 and so we got a room. We unlocked the door and turned on the light and the TV went on by itself. Also this little teeny light flittered around the room and we knew we hadn't escaped."

Realizing that they were being observed, the girls tried to intimidate the light that was buzzing around their room.

"Kathy, did you mail that letter telling about the flight pattern of the UFOs to my lawyer?" I asked with a purposeful slowness. She said she had, playing along with the game.

"We called the police and finally, at 5 o'clock the next afternoon, they came and took us back to the spot where we had abandoned the vehicle. As it turned out, the car wasn't where we had left it. And when we went back to the valley where the ship had been, the area wasn't the same. There was no little road on the side of the road. The freeway railing wasn't even the same. There was a sign MOUNTAIN ROAD 189. There is no Mountain Road 189 in all of Wyoming. We had a full tank of gas and we were about 250 miles into the state and there wasn't a gas station anywhere."

It was like they were driving without consuming fuel.

The one item of interest was the corpse of a cow and a sheep off in a nearby field. The cow was all bones and the sheep had all of its skin peeled off, which made it look like a blanket lying there."

Micki says that the police made them fill out a complete report. "After they had finished hearing our entire story they shrugged and told us we'd seen swamp gas!"

Moving the tape recorder closer to Micki, she reported that both her life as well as her friend's have been drastically altered because of the events of that night. "Kathy is only 31 years old, but she's been in the hospital at least 20 times since this happened. It's hard to explain, but somehow I feel we are the same people, but then again we aren't. Kathy had always been a slob and I have always been neat and clean. Now my house looks like the wreck of the Hesperus, and Kathy's is really neat, tidy, and very well cared for. Before I had always been the type to make my kids breakfast, lunch and dinner, while Kathy believed her children should prepare their own meals. It's just the other way around now. It's almost as though we've somehow exchanged personality traits. In other words, I'm still me, but it's as though I'm having my personality altered - taken over. I have always been a reader, but instance, and now I'm reading much more. I'm reading as much as I can on UFOs, that's the one subject that fascinates me the most."

Under hypnosis, Micki was made to draw what she had seen. When it came to sketching the trucks that had appeared on the highway, she rendered a skeleton-type being instead of a moving vehicle.

"Is it possible that they altered your whole thinking process that night?" I asked the witness. Micki admitted that this is what might have happened and that what really transpired could be entirely different from what she perceived. For some unexplainable reason, Micki and her friend, Kathy, have grown farther apart in their friendship. "Before the experience we had been the best of friends for 17 years. Now we speak to each other only once a week, tops."

Micki is anxious to undergo further hypnosis. She wishes to find out what really took place on July 22, 1978. She is not satisfied just forgetting about the incident. The whole episode is a true puzzle. Taken as a isolated encounter, most UFOlogists would probably do their utmost to doubt the word of those individuals who were personally involved. The rule of thumb seems to be, "If you can't explain it, or it doesn't support existing evidence, brush the whole affair under the carpet." If we were to do this, we wouldn't be any better than the government agencies who have tried so hard to hide the very existence of UFOs from the public.

Basic information table:

Narratives:

[Ref. tg1:] TIMOTHY GREEN BECKLEY:

[Ref. ar1:] ALBERT ROSALES:

Albert Rosales indicates in his catalogue that near Green River, Wyoming, on July 22, 1978, in the afternoon, two women, Mickie Eckert and Kathy Echard were driving on Interstate 80 and reported encountering different type of phenomena including mysterious lights and objects that followed their car and hovered over the area. At one point they saw numerous large trucks that turned into domed disc shaped objects that flew off. On another occasion they saw a bizarre black dog like creature with blazing red eyes next to their car. Next, one of the women saw a short child like figure in their back seat. Finally their vehicle seemed to have been transported to another dimension, the sun turned a strange gray color and became abnormally large. Then several figures wearing white spacesuit-like outfits and carrying tubes and pipe like objects were seen standing on the middle of the roadway walking back and forth. Then bright blue lights appeared and everything seemed to disappear. There is a possibility of missing time in this case.

Albert Rosales indicates that the source is "Sean Devaney, Unsolved UFO Sightings Fall 1994."

[Ref. ud1:] "UFODNA" WEBSITE:

The website says that on 22 July 1978 at 15:00 in Green River, Wyoming, USA, "Two women, Mickie Eckert and Kathy Echard were driving on Interstate 80 and reported encountering different type of phenomena including mysterious lights and objects that followed their car and hovered over the area. At one point they saw numerous large trucks that turned into domed disc shaped objects that flew off. On another occasion they saw a bizarre black dog like creature with blazing red eyes next to their car. Next, one of the women saw a short child like figure in their back seat. Finally their vehicle seemed to have been transported to another dimension, the sun turned a strange gray color and became abnormally large. Then several figures wearing white spacesuit-like outfits and carrying tubes and pipe like objects were seen standing on the middle of the roadway walking back and forth. Then bright blue lights appeared and everything seemed to disappear. There is a possibility of missing time in this case."

The source indication is a broken link.

Points to consider:

"Sean Devaney", alleged to be the source by [ar1], seems to be a film director; "Unsolved UFO Sightings" is probably a documentary he directed. But the primary, earlier source is [tg1].

Timothy Green Beckley started a UFO newsletter called "Interplanetary News Service Report" at age 14, and was the prolific editor of numerous crime, horror, sex and violence trash magazines and tabloids in the 1970's, who also edited "UFO Magazine", "UFO Review" and others in which all sorts of often totally made up stories were published. He was also a contributing writer to such magazines and tabloids such as Beyond, Fate, Saga's UFO Report, Front Page Disasters, Violent World, Adult Cinema Review, Hustler, Sluts and Slobs, Beaver, The National Tattler, Globe, Unsolved UFO Sightings, Conspiracies and Coverups, UFO Universe.

The lack of credibility here is thus obvious, with a true possibility that all the story is made up.

However, let's imagine it isn't. What "Mickie" tells rather makes me think of another kind of explanation: a schizophrenic young woman, used to attend "UFO meetings" and telling these nonsensical things, simply greedily collected by Tim Green Beckley - the story is in no way an investigation report, it much more is one of these "breathtaking" stories typical of the productions of this author.

If someone had taken care to dif into the affair - and the disinterest of "famous" ufologists that Green Beckley fustigates could be explained if they had in fact heard the young woman and understood that there was a psychopathology issue here which they did not hink worthy of publication - what could have been discovered?

Perhaps that not a signle soul on the road that night would have confirmed anything of Mickie's claims, no "sun changing into a grey UFO", no stop in any motel etc. Isn't investigation the mandatory starting point of ufology? How could the belief in the story be justifed without the least effort for investigating, checking things out?

Perhaps, it would have been found that this "change of personality", this "exchange of personality" actually, with her friend, is about double personality, with an imaginary friend? Come one, one is named "Eckert" and the other "Echard"... Who knows, who checked into this? Whereas there are clear signs that relate to psychpathological featuers, nobody even tried to check if the friend actually existed.

Paraphrenia comes me to mind: it is a delirious state, a nondissociative chronic psychosis, where an intense delirious activity is limited to certain fields of the intellectual life, and coexists with an otherwise normal life. Paraphreny does not invade all the fields of the psychic and social life, the person who suffers from it can be well adapted to reality, have an ordinary social life, a job, etc., except that he/she is delirious on a certain subject or precise field.

Many ufologist stick to the old claim that "the witnesses are not crazy", but how on earth could it be possible that not even one psychotic person ever told something that would approach at least a little the usual "UFO sighting report" or "close encounter of the third kind"?

Thus, what is the validity of the assertion that this story would "truly" show what the UFO phenomenon is, in opposition to the many, many other, more "classic" cases? We have here on the contrary, once again, the "credo quio absurdum" practised by certain ufologists of "new age" orientations, "I believe in it because it is absurd", and his sequel "if it is not absurd enough to me I'm not interested"...

Lastly, while [ar1] classes the case as an "hmanoid encounter", nothing in the original story really permets this. Who would be hthe humanoids, or the occupants of UFOs here? The dog, the child, the man? Why would they be UFO occupants? And if one wanted to consider that they are illusory but real creatures "manufactured" by the "UFOs" - themselves changing from earthly vehicles into "ships" - how to classify with any insurance this story as a "close encounter of the third kind" as originally defined by J. Allen Hynek?

List of issues:

Evaluation:

Possibly psychopatological.

Sources references:

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

• [tg1] * "Strange Encounters: Bizarre and Eerie Contact With UFO Occupants", book by Timothy Green Beckley, Inner Light - Global Communications publishers, USA, 1992.
• [---] ? "Unsolved UFO Sightings", by Sean Devaney, Fall 1994.
• [ar1] * "1978 Humanoid Reports", compiled by Albert Rosales, circa 2007, at www.ufoinfo.com/humanoid/humanoid1978.shtml
• [ud1] * "22 Jul 1978 - Green River, Wyoming, USA", web page by the UFOdna website, circa 2010, at thecid.com/ufo/uf19/uf4/194929.htm

Document history:

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This page was last updated on February 10, 2012