Eupora, Mississippi

Eupora, Mississippi    17th October, 1973

   Unbelievably, US investigators simply did not bother -even when their top man on CE3Ks, Ted Bloecher stated that it was a case that needed investigating-  they said because "it was probably a hoax".  Well, yes, like the Moon landings.  Utter lazy and totally unscientific attitudes that still persist.  "Why bother looking into it. Probably a hoax". 

   A multiple witness landing of an object and sighting of an AE on a US Highway -with an unidentified car driver coming from the opposite direction stopping, turning and speeding away on seeing it. 

   Now why on earth would that be a priority case?

   What is  -or was-  seen as the best recorded and most significant UFO wave of sightings world-wide is, to many, just unknown. J. Bernard Delair of the old Contact UK produced a very detailed edition of The UFO Register summarizing what was known.  This was based on reports from newspaper as well as UFO periodicals

   Let us suppose that you read that issue of The UFO Register in 1974, or later, and from all the cases cited there are a few lines detailing an alleged UFO landing and entity being seen, but an entity the description of which is unique. We were always told look for rare, seemingly genuine events where non-humanoid entities were reported. This was such a case.

For the past four decades this is the account cut up, re-edited and added to :

   “Night time (no exact hour).  Two UFOs were observed near the above
   location (Eupora), by several witnesses in a car.  One object hovered in the
   sky overhead while the other landed on the highway just over 100 yards
   (103 m) from the car ; the car lights and engine now died.

   “An AE now appeared from the landed object.  This AE had to hold on to
   a handrail.  It had a wide mouth, flipper like feet and what appeared to be
   webbing between the legs.  Even more strange were the feather-like structures
   on its back which gave the impression of opening and closing when the AE
   moved.

   “The AE now re-entered (?) the object which took off ; the car’s electrics
   then began to function again.”

   My note in the file reads: “This case really must be gone into in more detail.  Did investigators talk to the witnesses? Is there missing time?”

    Between 1974-1980,  I wrote to the people who were supposed to have looked into this case.  No responses. Any and every new book or article (very rare) dealing with that period or AE / CE3K cases is checked. Same lines. No new details. I have scoured thousands of these reports that I have on file and checked many other sources. Nothing similar so the "craft" description and entity description.  They are totally unique.   But case details were far too vague.

   In 2015 I finally got in contact with the Centre for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and Dr. Mark Rodeghier told me that, yes, they had the case on file and even provided me with the file.  I would like to thank Dr. Rodeghier for this.

   No investigation had ever taken place. Why? Even Ted Bloecher  states in the file that the case was deserving of investigation. The reason nothing was done?  No one could be bother -"It might turn out to be a hoax" based on the fact that the description and notes made by someone at a radio station at the time just didn't "do it" for someone.

   I checked everywhere I could, even on the internet, once I got the percipient's name. No claims of a hoax or a joke –no one had exposed the case as such at the time nor since. Nothing. Just constant cut and paste of the same lines describing the incident.   However, the whole point of investigation is to disprove or prove a case. A joke? Fair enough. At least investigators learn something more. But if seemingly genuine?  I leave that up to you.

   Ted Bloecher made a transcript of the interview by Jack King of the radio station  --King was the only person who talked to Patterson and he believed him.  I am going to quote the entire transcript as to cut and edit will not give the reader that feel of how genuine it all came across. We really ought to thank Jack King of WROB.

Patterson is not, obviously, well educated and he is grasping at words to try to explain what he has seen, something he has never encountered before and the only thing he can do is use examples of things he knows so the UFO is a “capsule” because he has seen on TV that the capsule is where astronauts make their journey.  He is, obviously, still quite shaken up by what he has seen.  He even tries to explain this to King – “I’m talking crazy to you, but I can’t talk no better”  It is very ungracious to write in a transcript others will see “God help us –TB.” Not everyone gets a good middle class education.

   Again, Patterson says “No –I take that back” a number of times which is an indicator of someone trying, as best they can, to draw on something they know to try to explain something they are totally unfamiliar with.  The flying squirrel example to explain the AE had a membrane between its legs is a good example.

   And what he saw was not “an alien” or “space man” it was “this man –or whatever it is” and the whole account is so devoid of Ufological terminology that it really stands out.  We see that Patterson and his friends even went to the Eupora police to report the incident but were not treated seriously.

   A number of witnesses are named by Patterson and there was, at the time, the possibility that an appeal might have had the driver who did the U-turn and drove off when he saw the UFOB get in touch.  What of witnesses around the Highway?

   No investigators bothered to do their job.  CUFOS put me in touch with a veteran investigator who told me that, based on his “vast experience”, it was a hoax.  Why?  Because, based on his “vast experience”, it was a hoax.  He had, he told me, some great cases from 1973 that he had forwarded to MUFON.  The man seemed to not even be interested in seeing if Patterson did live in Eupora or still lived there or what could be found out –there are odds in favour of more than one of the witnesses name still being alive.  I have a suspicion why the report was ignored.

   On 14th  June, 1975, Ted Bloecher, then the US leading expert on CE3Ks, wrote to WROB, no doubt sensing things were going wrong.  He notes in the letter to Jack King that he had written to but not heard from the investigator and that the Patterson incident was one of possibly eight (8) CE3Ks on the night of 17th  October, 1973.  Bloecher  seriously felt this case needed investigation.

   Then, on the 7th  July, 1975, the local investigator wrote that   "I agree that the Early Patterson case should be followed up. I will make plans to visit that area sometime in the near future and talk to Patterson, plus any of the witnesses I can locate.  I will tape the conversations and forward a copy to you. If you have any specific questions I will be glad to include them."

   When Bloecher retired  from Ufology all of his files were donated to CUFOS and these show nothing further from either investigator involved. Had it not been for the radio station we would not know of the case.  Bloecher tried to get things rolling but those in place obviously had their prejudices which seems evident. 

   With Eupora the blame for the mess lies firmly with the Ufologists.  That there was a lot of “UFO” activity that day is clear.

17th October

c. 14:00 hrs  Watauga, Tennessee
   A copper hued circular object hovered just above ground level while a 6 ft tall entity reached out of a doorway and tried to grab 2 children nearby. AE had claw-like hands and eyes that blinked. (8) Also note on 15th John Lane claimed that a blue coloured object landed by a road at Gulfport, Miss., and that a crab clawed entity tapped on one of his car windows. Could this be what Patterson referred to? (9)

20:00 hrs  near Powhatan, Louisiana, 10 observers watched 3   multicoloured lights at a very low altitude.

20:48 hrs unusually shaped object observed over Fisher, Waldenburg and Weiner communities of Arkansas

21:57 hrs  Jackson District, Miss.: 11 observers watch an object with 6~8 lights.

23:00 hrs  nr Athens, Georgia.  Paul Brown had to swerve his car and make an emergency stop as a cone shaped object landed on the road ahead of him. From beneath the object emerged two 4 feet tall AEs with reddish faces and white hair.  The AEs re-entered the object which took off with a whoosh ~possibly due to the fact that Brown fired several shots at it with no apparent effect.

   The story is, obviously, somewhat more detailed.  Brief details were given in the NICAP Investigator and the Flying Saucer Review  (10 & 11) and the main news source appears to have been the Christian Science Monitor (12 & 13).

   Paul Brown, a preacher and car dealer was headed home near Danielsville on U.S. 29 listening to the World Series when suddenly his radio stopped working:

   “Everything lit up, I could see the road and the fields lighted up all around me. My first impression was that it was a small airplane trying to land.”

   However, this “plane”  began to pace his car before quickly landing on the road in front of Brown.  He was forced to stop. He could see that the object was 6 feet high and 15 feet in diameter. At that point a bright light was cast upon him, the round beam blinding him.

   “I realized if I don’t stop I’m going to hit it. So I came to a screeching halt.   “I don’t know why I did it, but I opened the car door and managed, frightened as I was, to get one foot on the ground.”

   Two beings now appeared:

    “Where they came from I don’t know. I couldn’t see a flap, a drop door, or anything. When I finally got my vision clear I could see a clearance underneath, so it was not belly-landed; it had some kind of landing gear. And they came out, and they had on the most beautiful outfits I’ve ever seen-silver, blousy, come down to where your wrists are, then they had what appeared to be white gloves. Very tight around the neck, like something a priest would wear. Down to the feet, like a jumpsuit. It looked like if you pulled a gun and shot it, it would glance off, yet it moved. They could move, yet it looked like it was heavy, because of the way they walked, very slow. I estimated them to be four to five feet tall.

   “They just started walking down the road toward me, very slow. I could see a face, you know, place where eyes would be, ears. The faces were reddish. Hair was almost like cotton, no discoloration, which leads me to believe maybe it was a mask of some kind. I never got close enough to really say-closest I ever got was 150, 200 feet away, which is not too far away when you’re there by yourself.”

   Brown, carried a pistol for protection and when he produced the weapon:

     “They turn around, walk very slow back behind the shadow to the bright light. All of a sudden they disappear behind the light, and I try to see where they go, if they go in a hatch or what, but I couldn’t”

   The entities re-entered the object and the lights were extinguished then, according to Brown:

   “Took off at an angle and made a sound I would describe as like a million fans,  or like golf balls coming by my ear.  Almost stood my hair on end.”

   Brown then immediately drove to a police station and reported the incident. By  daylight deputies had found Brown’s tyre skid marks and noted that roadside grass was “fan swept.”

   According to Mark Rodeghier: “I expect that the case was never investigated properly, like so many in this intense (1973) wave”. 

   17th/18th  00:00 hrs  nr. Loxley, Alabama.  Clarence Patterson (no relation to Early Patterson) claimed that he and his pickup truck were sucked up into a huge, cigar shaped UFOB  and that he was pulled from the vehicle by 6  robot-like entities that seemed to read his mind. Next thing he recalled was being back on the highway with his vehicle going at 90 mph. Incident may have lasted up to 30 minutes (14-17).

   Again, we have an alleged abduction and decades later we know no more about it. Just how ridiculous does this all appear to Science?

   17th (unspecified time)  Nr Hartwell, Georgia.  A UFOB allegedly landed and a white haired entity was seen for a short time.

   17th  (unspecified)  Elgin AFB, Florida. A UFO was recorded on radar equipment by fully trained personnel.

   17th  (unspec. Time) Alton Park, Tennessee. A UFOB was sighted and said to have landed.

   17th  (unspec. time) Crowley, near Lake Charles, Louisiana. 2 witnesses observe an oblong, luminous object.  Local power cut at the same time.

   These are just a few reports in a small geographic portion of the US that seem to show that there was some unusual activity taking place on the 17th/18th and in some cases details match regarding entities – crab-like pincers or white haired AEs.  If one looks at Contact UKs  The UFO Register then it is quite clear that in the United States alone there was a great deal of activity deemed "UFOs" –details in some cases are vague and the power-cut at Crowley could be down to any number of causes.

   But even if 95%  of the cases on record can be listed as misinterpretation, hoax or whatever, then we have a percentage that cannot be so easily dismissed.

   The UFOB and AE incidents are clear –as Bloecher noted to WROB, there were at least 8 alleged CE3Ks that night –  but how detailed were the investigations?  In the cases of Early Patterson, Paul Brown and Clarence Patterson and other witnesses in CE3K events there were no investigations.  A multi-witness report of a UFOB landing on a US Highway in which an AE was seen but ignored by Ufologists is incredible. 


Note: "UFOB" refers to what appears to be a solid, constructed craft rather than "something" in general -a UFO.

CE3K is a Close Encounter of the Third Kind -the sighting of a UFOB and alleged entities associated with it.