This case was investigated by Richard Sigismond (for CUFOS) and details were presented in “Abduction in Western Kansas”, International UFO Reporter 1:1 (November, 1976) & 2:10 (October, 1977) & 2:11 (November 1977). Allan Hendry, The UFO Handbook, pp. 167-172. My own notes will follow the case summary which more than a few Ufologists have claimed to be “the first abduction case involving Michelin-Man entity types.
Above: the object sighted according to the drawings made by Joe (left) and Carol (right) –courtesy CUFOS
01:00 hours, on the 20th June, 1976, “Joe”, a 19 year old factory worker and his 18-year-old wife “Carol” and their 4-month-old son “Luke” (sleeping on the back seat) were in a car heading home along I-70, in western Kansas. Carol heard a hissing sound coming from the car speaker and outside she could see three orange-blue points of light performing antics in the sky: converging together and splitting apart. Further down the road four large oblong “stars” were seen and Joe, jokingly, remarked on how great it would be to go up in one of the UFOs. “If they could pick us up and use us, maybe they will fix our car for us!” As they continued further down the road down the road both saw what they described as a yellow rod with two bright glowing spheres at each end that sailed over the top and to the rear of their car. Joe decided to pull the car over to the side of the road and watch the object rise in the sky. This was just a UFO sighting after all. However, it was simply the end of their conscious memories.
In fact, Joe had pulled the car off the highway between mile markers 31 and 32 (Sigismond later checked this and apparently found it is impossible to do, because a fence runs the length of the road except for the occasional access road) and then drove over a field into the woods: this was a recalled under hypnosis by Carol but not by Joe. Ten minutes later Joe stopped the car in a clearing and they saw a giant UFO on the ground. Both were confused as they unbuckled their seat belts and stepped out of the car and then walked up the steps of the craft. Walking through the object’s door and saw a big, brightly lit room with flashing lights on the walls (“like computers”); there was a big window that provided a view of the trees outside and a large brown tube that extended from ceiling to floor. They also saw a big steel box at the back of the room and a metal/leather chair positioned in front of the window. Interestingly, Joe could not remember walking up the steps or seeing the first room as his memories under hypnosis began when he found himself alone in a separate room of the object.
Joe and Carol report that they both “understood” mentally that they had to walk down a dark hallway to separate rooms. Carol understood that she had to lie on a table on her stomach. Her wrists felt tightly strapped down while a long metal tube exerted pressure on her back. Then she was “willed” to go into another room.
Joe’s recollection began alone in a room and he was lying down in the dark and feeling a painfully hard pressure against his left arm and tightness up by his shoulders and found that he could not move his arm. He was feeling warm and light-headed, and his chest hurt. Unlike the rather sterile room that Carol described having been placed in, Joe noted that the one he was in had a shiny counter built into the wall. This and a shelf above him contained plastic tubes, canisters, and unusual instruments.
Carol, in the second room, was pacing around in the dark and crying that she wanted her child which shows that she was able to think freely. Perhaps because of her distress, one of the occupants, described as normal-size “Michelin men”, came into the room and brought Luke to her. Carol happily held her son and went to look out of the window but found that the view had changed. Carol claimed to have seen “stars shooting by” and the Earth receding in the distance until it became completely black outside.
Above: drawing of what the entities looked like according to Joe –courtesy CUFOS
The UFO apparently then landed back in the original clearing and the couple were “ordered mentally” to return to the main entrance room. Here Carol handed Luke back to one of the entities who reassured her telepathically that they were “good” and that she would only be held for a short while and would be unharmed. Two of the entities were described as bouncing Luke around and playing with him while Carol was once again instructed to lie down on a table: she was then tranquilized with a “shot” from a floating tube/box that seemed to act by itself. As she started to fall asleep, Carol could sense herself being picked up by one of the entities who then carried her down the steps of the ship.
In the meantime, Joe had “sensed” that he had to get up off of the table in his room and two of the entities, whom Joe described in similar terms to Carol but adding that the head (not described by Carol) was like a skull with sunken eyes, handed him his clipboard. This had previously had the log of their journey clipped to it: that was now gone empty. The entities took him by the arms and walked him down a corridor and Joe noted passing five rooms as he proceeded back to the main entrance room. He reported having seen Carol asleep and being carried bodily by one of the entities: before Joe left, however, a spinning converging spiral of light formed between him and the entity. Joe felt that his mind and the mind of the entity were being drawn out of their bodies toward the swirling energy where the two merged and Joe says that this experience made him feel happy.
The couple were now assisted back to their car and Joe observed Carol being placed inside the car and the entity fastening her seat belt and the locking her door. One of the entities was described as waving “goodbye”. The lights in the outside of the object were then seen to start moving around faster and faster until the object ascended silently into the sky and then disappeared into the distance.
Joe then drove back to the highway and it was from this point on that both regained conscious memory of their journey but were completely oblivious to the events aboard the object. The couple were puzzled about what appeared to be a twinkling star that followed them and they pulled into a roadside restaurant. They realised that it was dawn and yet they should have made it home by at least 02:00 hours –they could not account for some 90 miles of their journey.
Joe and Carol later discovered unusual marks on their bodies including rashes, what appeared to be strap-marks, needle punctures, bruises, and ripped skin. Worryingly, Luke also had red marks on his chest and small squares on his stomach. Most of these marks disappeared within two days but were seen by others but their minister and even Joe’s father frightened them with talk of the Devil. Carol could not sleep at nights, even with the lights left on and a Bible under her pillow and both mentioned several “paranormal experiences” taking place.
Above: drawing by Carol of the entities –courtesy CUFOS
This event was a traumatic one for the young married couple, as it might be for anyone and it proved necessary for them to obtain counselling as they were left with the disturbing impression that at any time in their lives they could be just “picked up, used, and dumped”. As I mentioned in UFO Contact?, some percipients in these encounters suffer what is similar to post traumatic stress syndrome and more than a few irrationally move home to a new city or state: in this case, Joe and Carol decided to move to another state.
The report reached the Centre for UFO Studies (CUFOS) through a call on its police Hotline in late June and they asked Sigismond, with a background in psychiatry and also the use of hypnosis to investigate. Sigismond established contact with the percipients within 12 days of the incident. After discussing what they remembered and noting the stress affecting the couple, Sigismond began hypnotic regression sessions from July to October, 1976. The couple were always hypnotized separately, never letting the other spouse listen and scrupulously avoiding directing them. They were not permitted to hear the tape recording until after the sessions were completely over and had culminated in more than 25 hours of recordings. Complete consistency was maintained over the 4-month period even if each time the story was told more details surfaced.
Personally, I am not over fond of hypnosis, however, so long as there is no cross-contamination it can be useful in research. For me, hypnosis should only be used if the percipient(s) are suffering severe stress or other mental health issues because of a time lapse: hypnosis should only be carried out by someone trained in psychiatry and who knows how to use hypnosis correctly. The mental and physical health of the percipient(s) is of paramount importance.
This case is known as “The Colby, Kansas encounter” and “Goodland Abduction” and I will go with Colby as this is the cited location by CUFOS in the HumCat (Humanoid Catalogue started by Ted Bloecher and David Webb) entry. There is, in fact, very little in the way of report details online and what there is has been added to, jumble up or seems almost designed to confuse a reader. To find these snippets you need to use the term “Michelin Men UFO cases”.
This brings us to the claim that Joe and Carol and little Luke (often not even named) were the “first to be abducted by theses “Michelin-Men” entities. If we accept that there are genuine UFO abductions then we have to consider that many have probably never been reported. There are very good reasons why percipients might keep quiet.
There is the fear of being considered a lunatic and that leads to losing a job, income and also being labelled as unreliable –as Calvin Parker found out after the Pascagoula incident he was, and still is, known as “that guy got kidnapped by aliens”. That fear can be added to at the thought of a newspaper getting hold of the story and spreading it far and wide. As noted in UFO Contact?, were it not for some Ufologists betraying percipient confidence, sometimes having cajoled them into cooperating in the first place and selling the story to newspapers such as the National Enquirer “pay for investigation costs” there are cases we would never have heard of. The same applies to people whom percipients trusted and who blabbed and so exposed the encounters.
The three percipients in the 6th January, 1976, Liberty, Kentucky abduction case –Louise Smith, Mona Stafford and Elaine Thomas— just wanted to forget about the encounter and get on with their lives. Had they done so then we would have never known something had happened. Had someone not blabbed then we might not have known of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker’s abduction at Pascagoula. Robert Taylor certainly did not want to say much about his encounter in Livingston but things were taken out of his control. There is case after case –including that of Betty and Barney Hill— that we would not know about. Reports of secondary witnesses involved who left quickly declaring that they wanted “nothing else to do with this” and that was it.
At Warneton it is possible that the discomfort the percipient felt as the entity seemed to open and close its mouth was an attempt at telepathic contact but it went wrong or the percipient was unsuitable. We simply do not know and no amount of theorising will really gets us anywhere as it will be based upon our own prejudices. Had the second car not appeared with a secondary observer would Warneton have become an abduction case and would the percipient have reported it?
The thing that the debunkers/sceptical Ufologists and regular Ufologists seem to forget –and yet it is the most important aspect— is that these percipients are regular human beings. However, no distinctions are made between hypnagogic cases, hoaxers and those who appear to have had a genuine encounter and suffer both physiologically and psychologically. Travis Walton is a hoaxer –why? He actually claimed to have been abducted by aliens. Betty and Barney Hill were hoaxers for the same reason. Hickson and Parker –again they were hoaxers. I could go on and on but all of these and other percipients have suffered because they were/are constantly under attack from every side and if they so much as rephrase something they said earlier it ‘proves’ they were hoaxers.
Everything and anything is used to discredit a report from using the term “Ufonaut”, which no one in this line of research has used seriously for thirty years. When I appealed for extra information on this case (I like to find as many sources as possible) I was even sent a newspaper clipping (undated) covering the finale of the TV series Falcon’s Crest where character Fallon Colby is abducted during a UFO incident. What relevance this had to the report I have no idea but it was sent with a summary of Joe and Carol’s encounter. The TV series character was named “Colby” –and the Kansas encounter was near Colby: was that to subtly prejudice me against the case because if it was then it failed because even I know that the show ran from 20th November, 1985, to 26th March, 1987 –it’s all on the internet so quite obviously TV had no influence. “Ufonaut” is commonly seen as a way of belittling the reports and researcher as in an attack on me by a UFO group in the late 1970s: “He’s a real Ufonut because he is into Ufonauts!”
Even with all we are supposed to have learnt this attitude continues into 2018 –while our own Insight probe has landed on Mars and making scientific tests. Anyone claiming UFO abduction is immediately labelled as a nutcase –Hopkins, Jacobs et al have not helped. So imagine the pre-internet 1970’s where, if you really need to, the only people you can tell are the police and then you would have needed to face their prejudices –hence CUFOS setting up its police hotline.
The minister and Joe’s father bringing the devil into the matter really would not help. I have talked to alleged abductees before and they turned to religion after an encounter: the Church seems to do well out of these as there have been enough born again Christians in the aftermath.
Looking at it now you have to wonder how many percipients have just gotten on as best as they can with their lives and whose encounter are known to only immediate members of their family.
The reader who is aware of the whole “Grey abduction phenomena” will note that there are distinct differences between those reports and that of Joe and Carol. Firstly, there is no beam of light drawing them up into a craft: Carol recalls that Joe pulled the car off the highway between mile markers 31 and 32 but when Sigismond checked he found that was impossible to do because there was a fence that ran the length of the road except for the occasional access road. Joe then drove over a field into the woods: this was a recalled under hypnosis by Carol but not by Joe. Considering that neither was fully in control of themselves and the location may be slightly wrong or it was something put in her head for some reason. Whichever, that the couple pulled up to the landed object and then got out and walked up the steps is interesting because, as with the car journey to the site, Joe could not recall walking up the steps into the object.
Carol is also the one who recalls the scene outside of the window changing which is odd because she appears to have under far less (seeming) control than Joe. Firstly, why would the entities need to shoot off into distant space since they had a safe location so we could speculate that Carol mistook a screen playing an image for a window showing what was happening outside Again: pure speculation.
The “Greys” tend to have no empathy and are described as having no interest other than doing what they do –or are told to do if we believed Jacobs. They have no understanding of emotional ties and are described handing “hybrid babies” to humans because we do understand. Yet we read of Carol, alone in the darkened room and crying and wanting Luke and…an entity enters and hands him to her, presumably to give her comfort as well as Luke. Then we have the part of the account where Carol needs to lie down again so two entities take Luke and try to play/amuse him. Even the message she receives that she/they will be unharmed –though familiar from abduction literature— seems to be designed to calm her concerns.
That sticks out like a ten feet high sore thumb with lights on it. However, we then have the entities not just returning Joe and Carol to their car but making sure that their seatbelts were on and closing the doors. One entity even gives a friendly “goodbye” wave. Then there is the odd twinkling star that they both noticed following them after the encounter –could that have been the entities insuring that the couple had no mishap after they were out of their control?
We could speculate on and on but the entities seemed to behave more like doctors running tests and taking care to make sure the person undergoing tests was okay. You could say they were quite empathic and kind to a degree –if you forgot that they had compelled Joe and Carol to drive to them and undergo examination and testing that, based on the marks, involved strapping them down. It reminds me more of what naturalists, field biologists and zoologists do when surveying fauna –trap/capture, in some cases depending on species size, tranquilising, take samples and talk reassuringly to the conscious fauna before release and, if they were tranquilised, keep an eye on them for a while to make sure they recover.
As with other reported entity types these “Michelin-Men” appeared, were active for a while and then…nothing. Yes, it is possible that they might still be here, but if no one talks or remembers all we hear about are the “Greys” and all the others conjured up by Hopkins and Jacobs. Our more interesting and informative (with limits) are the pre-1980s period.
Full account plus other cases from Germany can be found in Contact: Encounters with Extra-Terrestrial Entities?
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