Brent Swancer July 27, 2021

Alien abductions come in all shapes and sizes. They range from the odd to the full-on absurd, and everything in between. Yet one assumption that many people might have is that the aliens always get their person, and this is simply not true. Through a series of missteps and and other forces of chance, it would seem that at times these aliens fail in their missions to abduct human beings. While rare, here are some of the more spectacular such accounts.

A very strange account comes to us from the year 1964, from California, in the United States. On September 4, 1964, 28-year-old Donald Shrum and his friends went out bow hunting at Cisco Grove, in Placer County, California, and at some point, he would become separated from his group. Since nightfall was approaching, he decided to sleep in a tree for the night and catch up with his companions the following day, but sleep would not be easy for him on this night. As he drifted in and out of a half-sleep daze and daydreams, his attention was captured by a bright white light zigzagging through the dim darkness of the trees, which he at first took to be a helicopter but would soon prove to be anything but when the mysterious light approached him to begin silently hovering nearby.

Shrum tried to stay out of sight, but it was obvious that it had noticed him, and not only that, three strange beings could be seen on the ground approaching the tree. He would describe two of them as humanoid in general shape, but the other as looking like some sort of outlandish robot, and he was startled when they began shaking the tree with great force, seemingly in an effort to dislodge him and make him drop out. As this was going on, the robot apparently exuded a white mist from its mouth that caused him to fall asleep. When he awoke not long after, the strange creatures were still seemingly trying to get him out of the tree, and he fought back by dropping lit matches on them, which caused them to back off a bit but did not stop them. He then resorted to shooting at them with his bow, noticing that his arrows caused sparks when they bounced off the robot.

As the night wore on, more of the robot-like creatures appeared, and the humanoids began trying to crawl up the tree towards him. Shrum claims that he shot arrows until he ran out, after which he began hurling anything he could find at the strange entities. At one point he was gassed again by that white smoke, but he would snap out of it again to find the creatures still unsuccessfully trying to reach him. He claims that this happened until sunrise, after which they finally gave up and left him alone. Somewhat corroborating his story is that his hunting companions would also later report having seen strange lights in the area at the time.

From 1967 we have an equally harrowing encounter, this time from the vicinity of town of Ririe, Idaho. On November 2, 1967, two Native American boys by the names of Guy Tossie and Will Begay were driving south on Highway 26 when they claim to have seen a small, glowing domed object appear in front of them in a flash of light, about eight feet wide and with humanoid entities of some sort observed within the transparent dome. As the two witnesses looked on in astonishment, their car suddenly came to a stop, the engine dying for no reason, after which the dome of the bizarre craft opened as if on hinges. After this, one of the entities within exited and floated to the ground as if defying gravity, and at this point the witnesses could see that it was only about 3 feet tall, with large black eyes and a hairless head.

This creature then apparently walked right up to their car and let itself in, taking a seat behind the wheel while pushing them out of its way, after which the car began to move forward towards the UFO, which was still hovering there about 5 feet over the road. The car then veered off-road into a field of wheat as the object followed it, the terrified witnesses unable to really comprehend what was going on. When the car rolled to a stop in the field, Tossie made a run for it, heading for the farmhouse of a local farmer named Willard Hammon. The whole way he was followed by the UFO, but it gave up and headed back to the car, where Begay was still with that enigmatic being at the wheel. The creature apparently turned to him to spew forth a barrage of unintelligible sounds “like a bird,” perhaps upset that Tossie had escaped, and then left the car to go floating back up to the waiting craft, which sped off in a zigzag path.

Tossie would later bring the farmer back to his friend, and they would both file a report with the police. Although authorities at first didn’t put much stock in the story, they would find several other witnesses who described seeing strange lights in the sky and their livestock acting bizarrely. Both of the witnesses would insist that these aliens had been trying to abduct them, and that Tossie’s break for freedom had probably saved them from an inscrutable fate. Coming to 1973 we have the od case of Lyndia Morel, who was a masseuse at the Swedish Sauna in Manchester, New Hampshire. On the evening of November 2, she finished a late shift at 2:45 AM and headed towards her home in nearby Goffstown, about eight miles west of Manchester. As she drove, she intermittently saw a strange light in the sky that flashed between yellow, blue, and green colors, but she at first thought it was either an aircraft or a planet. However, it kept blinking and moving about, appearing to get brighter as she drove along. At one point, it appeared right in front of her, so close that she could se that it was a glowing orb covered in hexagonal shapes “like a honeycomb.” At this point, her head was filled with a high-pitched squeal, and she found that she could not remove her hands from her steering wheel, even as her car began moving by itself towards the object. She could see through a window on the side of the object “a smallish humanoid figure standing behind a console of some sort,” which seemed to be trying to send her a telepathic message to calm down and not be afraid. She started to feel a sense of calm come over her, a sleepiness that she couldn’t resist.

It seems that she then suddenly snapped out of a sense of calm that had come over her and managed to regain control of her car, veering off to go speeding off towards a nearby house. She would stop the car and run to the residence to pound on the door even as the UFO hovered nearby as if watching her, that high pitched shriek still assailing her ears. When the residents of the house opened the door and saw the terrified woman, they let her in and called police. It was at this time that the mysterious craft gave up trying to get her and disappeared into the night.

A very spectacular case which may or not have been an attempted abduction, but which still seems worth mentioning, is that of an incident that allegedly went down at the Alsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota in 1977. On November 16 of that year, a security alarm was received at the base, which resulted in an A-1C Jenkins & A-1C Raeke dispatched to investigate the disturbance. When the two arrived at the location of the alarm, they spotted a bright light hovering over the fence line, and Raeke went to investigate. As he climbed a low hill towards the light, he then saw “an individual dressed in a glowing, green metallic uniform and wearing a helmet with visor,” who Raeke commanded to halt and surrender. The trespasser apparently ignored these commands, upon which Raeke aimed his M-16 and once again ordered the strange to stop. This entity then pointed some sort of object at Raeke and a beam of light allegedly struck the M-16 to disintegrate it and severely burn the airman’s hands.

This was an unambiguous sign of aggression, with Raeke taking cover and radioing for backup, and Jenkins soon came to his aid. Jenkins would see two further figures approaching, and he too ordered them to stop, but they came right towards them, prompting him to fire off two rounds from his own weapon. One of the bullets allegedly struck one of the intruders in the chest, while another hit its companion in the helmet, but this did not stop them. One of the figures emitted a beam from an object in its hand, which Jenkins dodged while taking cover. The two intruders then moved off and could be seen getting into a disc-shaped object measuring around 20 feet in diameter, after which they sped off. Raeke would later be found to have suffered second and third degree burns to his hands, as well as levels of radiation found on his person.

A more recent case was given to me personally by a witness who does not want to be named. This individual told me of a surreal experience that started off as just a night drive home from work one evening in an unspecified rural area of California. The story follows some familiar beats with this sort of case, with the car’s radio going haywire and the engine dying. It was at this point he saw a glowing disk around 50 feet in diameter bloom out of the night, and simultaneously felt numbed and paralyzed. He says there was a flash of light, after which he found himself inexplicably outside of his car in the desert night, with two large-headed entities dragging him towards the object. At this point, things would get very odd. He says:

One of these things was doing most of the dragging while the other had some sort of device trained on me. I had the suspicion that this was what was keeping me paralyzed and under control, and then something funny happened. I suddenly felt sensation returning to my limbs, and this creature looked surprised. It then started inspecting its device, and I kid you not, actually smacked its hand against it like you might do with a wonky remote control. I used this moment to kick out at them, knocking one to the ground, and I ran back to my car. The two creatures then seem to have given up. They just looked at me, went into their UFO, and sped off into the night. Although I was terrified at the time, in retrospect it is kind of funny that an alien should have an equipment malfunction like that.

Although the witness in this case provided me with the details very seriously, it is unknown how much veracity it has, and all attempts to get more information have failed. Nevertheless, it seems to belong here, and the thought of an alien having its equipment malfunction is too good to pass up. All of the cases such as these and others like them serve to show that these alien entities might not be as infallible as they are made out to be. Perhaps they are just as lost and at the whims of the fates as any of us, and that is perhaps a comforting thought the next time strange entities come for you in the night.

MU*