I Love Weird Old UFO Cases

 Like these two, interestingly both involving "Men in Black" like encounters--

The Danny Gordon sighting and harassment in Wyethville, VA.

On October 21 (1987), Gordon and a friend, Danny Hall, drove to the area where most of the reported UFOs were said to have been seen, which was south of Wytheville. They had two cameras with them: a 35 mm still camera and a video camera. After seeing nothing unusual during a two-hour skywatch, they headed home at about 8:45 p.m. 

As they were approaching Wytheville on Route 21 South, Gordon, who was driving, spotted something strange off to his left. Gordon pulled over and both men got out of the car. Gordon describes seeing a large craft coming towards him that had no wings, a dome on top, and a multi-colored strobe light on its right side. 

Danny Hall, a former commercial pilot, estimates that it was 1000 feet away from them at an altitude of 1000 feet and that its diameter was at least two football fields. Hall says that there were what looked like three huge picture windows lit from inside on the back of the craft. According to Gordon, a red ball of light approached the craft from the left and “docked with the craft” as the craft disappeared into some clouds. He compares what he witnessed to watching images in a video game. After the craft was out of sight, both men realized that neither one of them had managed to get footage of the object. 

The next night, however, they did manage to get pictures, and with the pictures not yet developed, organized a press conference. The conference was held on October 23, 1987, and Gordon says that during the night before, he received a phone call from someone who told him that the CIA was very interested in the UFOs being reported in Wythe County. He says he continued to receive anonymous calls from people discouraging him from continuing his investigation and telling him it wasn’t his place to be interfering with “defense matters.” 

Gordon reported that his house had been broken into after the press conference and he suspected that someone had been looking for the photos, which when developed, showed indeterminate streaks of light. He then got a chance to take some better pictures on December 2, when he, his wife, and daughter were walking to the family car in a mall parking lot. A large object came into view in front of several witnesses and a school bus full of kids, and Gordon grabbed his camera. According to Gordon, the single object became four “flying disk shapes” that disappeared as soon as they were photographed. Four photos that Gordon presents show four distinct shapes going from teardrop to ball to flying disk to egg-shape. By the end of December there were over 1500 sightings reports. 

Reports include multicolored carousel-like objects and objects that seemed like a cross between a helicopter and a plane with no noise. Gordon says he called the Pentagon and talked with a defense spokesman who told him: “We do not deny UFOs exist. The government confirms they exist, but we deny they pose a threat to the populace of Wythe County.” Gordon says he asked how they knew there was no threat and was told, “I can’t tell you, but there is no threat to you.” 

While it seems the UFOs may not have posed a threat to the general populace of Wythe County, it seems someone posed a threat to Gordon specifically. Gordon reported that on March 18, 1988, as he was preparing to leave for a broadcaster’s conference where he would be speaking about the Wythe County UFOs, he received a phone call from “a retired military intelligence officer.” The man told him that he should tape the conversation they were about to have so that if something were to happen to him, there’d be proof he’d been warned. On a tape provided by Gordon, a man is heard telling Gordon that, because of his own investigations into UFOs, “they” had given his son leukemia, which proved to be fatal. The man said that he had information that the government was not happy with Gordon’s investigation and that they might use “skin contact chemicals” to cause harm to him or his family.

The Johnny Sands close encounter--

(In 1976) Sands left Pahrump (NV) at around 10:00 p.m., and was headed back to Vegas on Blue Diamond Road. At around 10:30 p.m., he noticed an object in the sky about 1000 feet above him that he described as being shaped like a Goodyear™ blimp. He said it was around 60 feet long and had a ring of portal-like windows in the middle that he estimated were ten feet in diameter and five feet apart with a light in the space between them. The object was “rusty brown” and there were flashing red and white lights at each end. 

As Sands drove, the object seemed to be following him. Then his car sputtered, quit, and drifted to a halt. Sands got out and walked to the back where the gas cap was. He removed the cap, shook the car, and determined that he still had gas by its sloshing around. Sands then walked to the front of the car, opened the hood and removed the air filter. 

As he was doing so, he was aware of the object hovering over him. There was a flash of light and then he saw two figures walking towards him. He tried to move but couldn’t and attributed this to either shock or something the creatures might have done to him. 

One of the figures stopped 3 feet in front of him and the other remained 5 feet beyond. Sands described the creatures as wearing black uniforms with silver belts and shoulder straps (colors in artist rendition are reversed according to Sands), that they were 5’7’’ to 5’8” tall, and about 140 pounds. They were pale-skinned, hairless, had small mouths, “flattened” noses, and black eyes with white pupils. Giving them a distinctly non-human appearance were what looked like gills sticking out just above their jawlines. In contrast to their youthful, fit-looking bodies, their faces looked old and Sands got the impression that the beings were between 300 and 400 years old. 

The creature closest to Sands began asking questions, and as it did so, Sands tried to figure out where its voice was coming from because it didn’t move its mouth. The creature asked him what he was doing in the area and Sands answered that he was an entertainer who was in Las Vegas to do a show. The creature asked why there were so many people in Las Vegas, and Sands explained that it was a place where tourists came from all over for entertainment. The creature asked by what means Sands communicated and Sands said he didn’t understand the question. The creature became irritated and said, “Answer the question!” and Sands said again that he didn’t understand. 

The creatures looked at each other for what seemed like two or three minutes and then the creature in front of Sands brushed Sands’s left hand with its left hand and said: “Don’t say anything about this meeting. We know where you are and will see you again.” 

When he got back to Las Vegas, Sands called the police to make a report. The police gave him the phone number for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at Nellis AFB. He called and was told that the Air Force no longer investigated UFOs and that he should call APRO. Sands did so and spoke with APRO Director Jim Lorenzen, who listened to Sands’s story and put him in touch with APRO Field Investigator John Romero. (snip) 

According to Sands ... he was in a roped off public area at the Sahara hotel, where Romero was the director. Sands was describing the creatures to a sketch artist Romero had brought in and the artist asked why the creatures would have both noses and gills. 

Sands says that at that point two men dressed in “not up-to-date” black suits and with slicked back black hair walked up, and one of them explained that the creatures came from a planet near the “planet” Sirius that was “an aquarimous-type planet.” The planet was very hot, so the creatures lived part time on land, breathing through the nose, and part time underwater, breathing through the gills. The man then said that he had to leave and added “We’ll see you soon.” 

Sands says that he had a friend who was an ex-cop, John, along for protection. John noted that what the man had said was similar to what the creature had said and suggested that the two men should be followed. According to Sands, a security guard walked out behind the men as they left the building and when he came out to an empty street, they were no where to be seen. 

Sands describes being driven back to John’s house, where he was staying, by John, who took a circuitous route to avoid being followed. In spite of this, when they arrived, a black limo pulled up with the two men from the hotel in the back seat and another man driving. The windows on the driver’s side were open and the two men from the hotel leaned out their window, looked at Sands and his friend, and then all the windows were rolled up, and the limo drove off. 

Sands then tells of being contacted by Dave Dunn, who said he was with a production company. Dunn said that he wanted to make a documentary about Sand’s encounter and a meeting was arranged. The APRO report describes what followed as serving to “muddy the waters considerably.” According to Sands, after a week of meetings with Dunn and others in a lavishly furnished apartment, he and John went to a hotel where they were to meet with Dunn and his people to be taken to the site of Sands’s encounter. The parking lot was crowded and they were forced to park far away from the hotel. Just as they were worried about being late for their meeting, a limo that somehow managed to find them pulled up with Dunn and others inside. 

Sands and John were given cocktails as they got into the car and were then driven towards the site. They passed the site and Sands alerted Dunn and the others but no one spoke. The car then did a U-turn and stopped. The men from the “production company” got out, a large number of lights came on, and between 25 and 30 figures dressed in black stepped forward. An argument ensued between the men from the car and someone who seemed to be the leader of the group in the desert, and in the course of it, Sands heard the “leader” say, “He knows too much.” 

Sands went to get out of the car, and he saw what he described as a fuzzy creature like Cousin It from the Addams family. The creature ran at him and he shut the door and went to get out on the other side where another similar creature ran at him, forcing him to stay in the car. Sands and John were then driven back in silence. The next day, they went to the apartment and found that there was no one living in it and that the furniture was gone. According to Sands, there wasn’t enough time for them to have been able to get it out. 

Sands said his friend John was killed during a robbery so this case comes down to whether or not one believes Sands’s story. As strange as his story may seem, APRO reported that Sands did pass a lie detector test arranged for by the organization.