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