UFO SIGHTINGS TRANSFIX RESIDENTS OF SAN LUIS VALLEY

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From:ISCNIFlash@aol.com
Title:UFO SIGHTINGS TRANSFIX RESIDENTS OF SAN LUIS VALLEY
Source:Gazette Telegraph
Date:January 07, 1996


By D'Arcy Fallon, Gazette Telegraph

SAN LUIS VALLEY -- Tim Edwards is a jumpy man these days. Some might say he's

an ordinary guy reacting to an extraordinary experience. Others might say

he's seen too many "Twilight Zone" reruns. Puffing nervously on a Marlboro,

Edwards, binoculars around his neck, paces back and forth on the front lawn

of his Salida home and gestures to the mountains above him. Up there. He

gazes at the sky with palpable longing. "There are so many weird things up

here," says Edwards, 42, a quiet man who runs a popular family cafe with his

wife and father.

Edwards swears he saw a UFO in August from his back yard, and he's still

shaken up about it. "I don't look outside no more. I don't get no sleep."

He's probably not alone.

Steeped in history and folklore, the San Luis Valley has long been a UFO

hotbed. As long ago as 1917, the residents of Salida told of mysterious

"vehicles of the air" flying about the night sky, according to a 78-year-old

edition of The Salida Record.

Many American Indians considered the valley's Mount Blanca to be the Sacred

Mountain of the East -- a doorway for the emergence of the Star People, often

described as "arriving aboard flying seedpods," according to an article in

Spirit magazine.

But Tim Edwards says he didn't see a flying seedpod on August 27. He

describes it as a silver cigar-shaped spacecraft. Like Richard Dreyfuss in

"Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Edwards exudes an aura of nervous

intensity as he talks about the sighting. It happened on a Sunday morning

when Edwards was working outside on his house with his daughter, Brandy, 6,

at his side.

Brandy, worried that it might rain, looked upward and said, "Daddy, there's

something up there in the sky," Edwards recounted last week. He brushed off

his daughter's comments, but when she kept insisting he look up, Edwards said

he realized she was right. There was something in the sky. He grabbed his

video camera and for more than a hour shot footage of the disc shaped or

cigar-shaped object. It had oscillating lights that appeared to rotate from

left to right, and it darted back and forth just above the morning sun.

During subsequent sightings, Edwards shot videotapes showing small, white

spheres emerging from the object. Edwards' first tape was shown in November

on "Sightings," and was analyzed by Village Labs, a digital video technology

company in Tempe, Ariz. Village Labs president Jim Dilettoso said the tape

wasn't a hoax or an optic aberration. He said it appeared to contain

legitimate footage of a very large, solid, possibly three-dimensional object

flying at high altitude.

Whether one believes Edwards saw a UFO or simply an odd-looking plane, he

swears he's a changed man. "They put some feelings in me I've never had

before," he said. "When I was looking at the main craft, I got, like, an

electrical impulse through my body. It was very important for the world to

know the truth. Now I'm convinced we're not alone." The UFOs are buzzing the

Earth because they're concerned about its inhabitants, much like humans are

curious about whales and dolphins, said Edwards. And how should earthlings

respond? With "brotherhood, universal love, and get rid of the nuclear

stuff," Edwards said. "Not since Jesus was here has something so major come

down," he added. "Most people are terrified that something could be out

there." Or fascinated.

On the eastern edge of the huge valley, on a windswept hillside near La Veta,

two sisters, Jeanne Shaw, 49, and Loni Smith, 53, talked about their cosmic

encounter. Before launching into her side of the story, Shaw explained she

had always seen herself as "a bit of a skeptic" when it came to the

paranormal. "Just because I see a little light in the sky, doesn't mean it's

a UFO," she said. Shaw's sister, a property manager in La Veta, is the same

way. In fact, neither of the sisters -- who grew up in Colorado Springs --

seemed quick to jump on the UFO bandwagon. And yet both are unshakeable in

their explanation about what they saw one night this past fall. It wasn't a

Black Hawk helicopter, as the Walsenburg police suggested to them when they

phoned in alarm. Not a plane. Not a dream or an hallucination. It was a UFO.

Here's their story: On Sept. 23, about 8:15 p.m., as Shaw, her two children

and Smith sat at the kitchen table after dinner, they heard a strange humming

outside their mobile home in the Navajo Ranch Resorts subdivision, located

between La Veta and Walsenburg. "I heard, no, felt this humming noise," said

Shaw, who moved to the La Veta area last spring after she got tired of life

in Denver. "I felt something huge coming up the back of my lot."

Smith: "It was a vibration, although the windows weren't rattling." They

looked out the window and say they saw a slow-moving, rectangular-shaped

spacecraft skimming the tops of the pinon trees. It had yellow and white

oscillating lights in front and two red lights in the back, like a

Cadillac's. They estimated it was as wide and long as a football field.

Shaw: "It was huge."

Smith: "It was monstrous. It was the mother ship."

The sisters' words leapfrogged over each other as they attempt to explain

their reactions to the sighting. Tumbling out of the mobile home, they

stared, incredulous at the thing.

Smith: "Our mouths were open to our navels. I felt like I was looking up at

the bottom of a barge."

Shaw: "My knees buckled. I screamed. It was in our face." As the object

slowly moved away from them, Smith waved her arms after it, yelling, "Here we

are! Here we are!" Shaw, petrified, slugged her sister on the arm. "Shut up!"

she said. "They'll beam us up!"

Shaw's son, Robert, 27, ran behind the spacecraft as it flew down the arroyo,

trying to catch up with it. Shaw estimates it took about 20 minutes before it

disappeared.

Two miles away in the subdivision, another resident, Joan Newland, was

getting ready for bed. She, too, heard a low humming noise and figured it was

a helicopter. But the sound persisted, and her dogs were going wild. She

looked out the window and gasped. Like Shaw, her knees buckled. "It was huge.

I saw it going over the trees. It was a shock to see something that big. I

thought, holy..., what is that?"

Shaken and frightened, Newland decided to keep her observation to herself.

Then she got a call from Shaw, asking if she'd seen something strange out her

window. The women compared notes and decided it must have been a UFO. "What

else could it have been'?" asked Newland plaintively. "There's nothing that

could fly that low without making any draft or wind."

Since that night, neither Newland nor Shaw has seen the spacecraft. Not that

they've stopped looking.

Newland: "We keep our eyes to the sky now."

Shaw: "Only about 20 times a night."