Some Strange and Obscure Cases of UFO Crashes

One spectacular and often discussed corner of the UFO phenomenon is that of these mysterious crafts coming down to crash to Earth, as well as the conspiracies of military intervention and cover-ups that inevitably follow. Such stories often play out like something from a movie, and they are simultaneously the most intriguing and also the most bizarre and eyeborw-raising reports of UFO activity, generating much discussion and skepticism. A lot of people know about the Roswell, New Mexico alleged UFO crash, but this area of the phonomenon goes much deeper than that, with a surprising amount of such accounts, and here we will look at some equally bonkers cases that have for one reason or another been mostly relegated to the shadows to remain obscure.

One very early report of a relatively little-known UFO crash supposedly happened on August 20, 1949, in California’s Death Valley. According to an edition of the Bakersfield Californian, two prospectors by the names of Buck Fitzgerald and Mace Garney had been out in a remote, dusty area of Death Valley when they saw a UFO measuring approximately 24 feet in diameter come falling from the sky to plummet into the moonscape of desert wasteland not far away from their position. The astonished men drew closer and could see that it was a metallic, disk-shaped object, but no normal plane or any kind of aircraft they had ever seen before. It had obviously been badly damaged in the crash, and as they looked on some sort of hatch opened and two 3-foot tall “dwarf-like” humanoids allegedly climbed out and jumped down to the desert below, after which they ran towards a nearby dune. The men allegedly tried to give chase, but the extreme heat on that day, estimated as having been around 138 degrees Fahrenheit at the time, prevented them from getting very far and they succumbed to exhaustion to lose the entities behind the dune. The case is quite odd in that there seems to have been no follow up on the story, and it is uncertain what became of the alleged wreckage or the creatures, or whether this was just a piece of fake news for a slow news day.

From the 1950s we have another very strange case from the area of Ely, Nevada. On August 14, 1952, a Mr. Claude House, the Sheriff and his deputy, along with several other witnesses, allegedly saw a bright object descend to light up the area as it emitted a low humming sound, and it apparently came down behind a nearby hill but never appeared again. Word soon spread that the UFO had actually crashed out there, but when curious locals went to investigate they found that the entire area had been cordoned off by the military and no one was allowed in. Nevertheless, some witnesses claimed that they had seen around 16 dead alien bodies strewn out on the ground, and according to one local woman a close friend of hers working as a security guard at the time at a local copper mine had seen the UFO actually crash, after which the military had quickly descended upon the site. The report comes from a book called Weird Las Vegas and Nevada, Your Alternative Travel Guide to Sin City and the Silver State, by Joe Oesterle and Tim Cridland, and since there is not a lot of further detail it is hard to know what to make of this obscure case.

A couple of years later, on October 13 1953, a witness by the name of Cecil M. Tenny was on vacation camping near Dutton, Montana when he noticed smoke drifting up from a nearby mountain. At first he thought it was perhaps a forest fire, and when it did not seem to spread he just sort of went on with his day. The next morning, as he was leaving the area in his vehicle he claims he saw a “pulsating cigar-shaped object flying at very low altitude, about 200 feet above the ground” near where he had seen the smoke the day before, and that it gave the impression that it was methodically moving about searching for something on the mountain below. After hovering there for around 7 minutes, the object sped off and Tenny would report the incident to the Montana state police and just sort of put it behind him, but things were about to get very strange, indeed.

The following day, Tenny was allegedly contacted by Malmstrom AFB, in Great Falls, who told them that he was to come meet them right away. When he arrived he was greeted by a group of somber military officials who purportedly led him to a “stockade-like building” situated away from the main base, with no windows and an intimidating high fence around it. As they walked, he was told to not look around, and when they arrived inside the building he was taken to a room and interrogated on what he had seen the day before. During the following interrogation he claims that he saw some men carrying two large laundry bags that appeared to be very heavy, as the men were straining under the weight. One of these bags apparently dropped to the ground, and for a moment Tenny could very briefly glimpse what appeared to be a humanoid body inside.

As he was then led through the building he claims that they passed a disk-shaped craft, about 40-50 feet in diameter, with a dome on top, and it appeared as though the craft was heavily damaged. Even more shocking was that he got a good look at the mutilated bodies of two humanoid entities lying nearby, around 7 feet in height, with high and broad foreheads, very long blond hair, elongated Asian-looking eyes, small noses and mouth, thin lips, and pale, alabaster skin, as well as very slender, human-like hands, absolutely flat feet, and small toes. The two bodies had apparently been very badly damaged, with noticeable horrific injuries. Tenny was apparently not supposed to see this, as he was forced to sign a gag order and was then rather forcibly ejected from the base. According to ufologist Leonard Stringfield, whistleblowers at the base would later claim that the alien bodies and the wreckage were later transported by airplane to Chicago University, where a preliminary study was done of them, and the aliens were supposedly examined by French biologist Dr. Leon Visse. After this it is unclear what happened to the craft or the bodies, and it remains a very strange and not very well-known case.

Moving along to 1973, on October 2 of that year several witnesses reported seeing strange unidentified flying objects in the vicinity of Rainbow Lake, New Hampshire. Most of the witnesses described the objects as being disk-like and around 3 to 4 feet in diameter. One of the objects was seen by at least three witnesses to fall from the air and splash into the lake as the other flew off, which spurred a response by authorities to search the murky water for whatever it was. A report in The Derry News would say of the mysterious incident:

The witness told police that he was driving along the Bypass when he saw a bright object in the sky, hovering over Rainbow Lake. He went in closer to investigate and heard something crash into the lake. Several persons who live by the lake were outdoors at the time, and say there were two objects moving in the air. The two objects descended towards the lake, according to the witnesses. Then one of them fell straight down and splashed into the water, creating ripples on the shore. The other soared upwards and vanished. two divers descended into Rainbow Lake Friday afternoon in an attempt to resolve reports of an unidentified flying object that three witnesses claim splashed into the lake on Oct. 2. Two divers from the East Derry Fire Rescue Squad swept the silty lake water with powerful searchlights, but their vision was impaired by the murky water, and they could not see more than a few inches ahead at any time. Said one of the divers, “The only way they’re going to get anything out of that lake is if they drag it. The Chief of Police said he has no plans to drag the bottom and considers the matter closed.

Even more recently is a weird case from May 14 2008, when in the early morning hours a houseboat resident at Topock Arizona was surprised to see a large, bright “fiery object” burning a vivid blue and green streaking across the sky towards the Colorado River area, described as being oval-shaped and “as big as a 10,000 gallon tank truck.” The witness thought at first that it was perhaps a plane coming down. He then saw it hurtle towards the earth to evidently hit the ground, bounce off of it, and careen back off into the sky spewing off yellow sparks and arching out of sight. Oddly, the thunderous crash he expected to hear never came, only a “thump sound.” It would later turn out that another witness had seen all of this too, a retired former Superintendent of Operations and Police Chief at Los Angeles International Airport by the name of Frank Costigan, who also heard no sound and would say:

I thought I might hear something when it hit the ground because if it was as close as I thought it was and as big as it was, I thought I would hear something. But I did not hear anything. And it went out of my view before it hit the ground.

As odd as all of this was, he nevertheless still thought it was a plane that had crashed, and so he immediately used his satellite phone to call for help, but all he got was a busy signal. As he was doing this, the witness claims that he heard the sound of helicopter and looked to see that it was flying with some sort of hook apparatus, upon which was attached the very same object that he had seen crash, still glowing brightly. Another witness would also later claim that he had seen “very unusual vehicles” with black and white U.S. government license plates driving through the area at around the same time, apparently in a real hurry to get somewhere and nearly running him off the road.

These are some pretty strange treports that seem to have mostly slipped under the radar and have been less discussed than some of the other high-profile accounts out there. Why should this be? Were they just more successfully covered up or is it just because there wasn’t much to them to begin with? The thing to take away here is that there are way more reports of UFO crashes out there than many may suspect, which seems a bit odd considering these entities’ supposed advanced technology, but it is what it is. What is going on in these cases? No one really knows.