CLOSE APPROACHES

CALIFORNIA: Two brothers, both businessmen in Orange County, California, had a terrifying encounter in the Nevada desert on the 14th with six UFOs, which apparently took control of their truck and, flanking it on three sides, floated it slightly off the ground, disrupted its electrical and mechanical systems, and guided it to a halt. One of the craft was seen landed on the road ahead on Highway 93, the others in the air. The two were driving a 23-foot U-Haul truck loaded with furniture and were located north of McGill, Nevada when the driver looked out of the left window and observed a round, orange object that appeared to be 10 feet off the desert floor. He then looked out the right window and saw three more smaller objects.

The truck was moving at about 55 miles per hour, and suddenly it felt like they had been hit by a blast of wind. The lights on the truck flickered on and off and the engine started to miss. Then the driver lost control of the truck and couldn't steer it. Before they could stop, the transmission selector jumped out of drive into neutral, and the truck coasted to a stop in the middle of the road. As they sat in the road with the motor running, they observed a huge silver metal ball with a dome on top and sharp wings, standing still over a hill to the left. It was pulsating. Then they spotted a huge light on the road in front of them about a mile away. The driver then got out of the truck and looked under the truck to discover the drive shaft turning. Fearing for his life the driver got back into the truck, and they both kept watching the light as it appeared to be moving closer. They felt that they were in a vacuum of some kind and isolated form the rest of the world. This lasted for about 20 minutes then it seemed to disappear and it was over.

Just then a car or whatever it was zoomed past us so fast we couldn't tell what it was. Another car stopped and took the brother's into McGill where they got another U-Haul truck. After unloading the disabled truck they had to shove it off the highway, as the back wheels would not move.

Lewis Sandberg, owner of the U-Haul outlet in Ely, said that the entire rear end of the witnesses' U-Haul truck had to be replaced -- the tires, the rear axle, the outside housing, and the gears, "which were all messed up. The rear end was beyond repair. The back axle was twisted right off. When our two trucks lifted up the back of the truck, the rear wheels just fell right off. Those men stopped that truck just in time." The driver of the damaged truck said that when the truck had been hit by the blast of air, he felt that the truck had been lifted off the ground. "It was floating slightly off the highway in the air," he said. "None of the wheels were touching the highway." When the transmission selector skipped into "neutral," the truck swayed in the air, he said, and the vehicle came smoothly to a stop without skidding.

NEW ZEALAND: "There I was alone in the middle of the night on the 17th on a very lonely road with this thing following me," Eric Marks said. "It was like a flat plate with a bell-shaped dome on it. I was nervous...terrified to be more exact. The bell shape of the UFO glowed like a million car lights and it appeared to be suspended on many pencil rays of bright white light beamed towards the ground. I was going down a steep hill near Warkworth (New Zealand) but it felt as though something was holding the car back," Marks explained. "I put my foot flat to the boards but the car wouldn't go over 45 miles an hour. The UFO must have been exerting some type of force field... but at he bottom of the hill I was able to accelerate away at top speed.


Clay Knight was the only witness to a series of three landings and takeoffs by what he described as a silvery object with flashing red or orange lights. The landings began about 4:30 a.m. on the 28th while the rest of his family was asleep, and the object made a "high-pitched whistling noise." Knight, a dairyman, was getting his herd out for the first milking of the day at that time. The UFO frightened his cattle, causing them to scatter. It caused their milk production to fall off about 100 pounds. In the series of three takeoffs, Knight said the UFO first rose straight up from his pasture, landed after traveling a short distance, took off and landed once again, and then "went straight up in the air and disappeared."

MINNESOTA: On the 19th an astounded policeman tailed a meandering, flame spewing UFO along the outskirts of Rochester, Minnesota as dozens of motorists pulled off the road in bewilderment. "I followed the object and kept it in view for above five miles," said Officer Jim Preiss. "I continued to chase the UFO and it started to zoom away. It climbed very rapidly and within six seconds it was out of sight." The bizarre pursuit began shortly before midnight as the 28-year-old patrolman was cruising along Highway 52. "About 1000 feet in front of me I saw this mysterious object with jets of fire coming from underneath it. I got out of my car for a better look, and saw the object moving above the road without making a sound. It was about 100 feet off the ground when it started to slowly move away and I decided to chase it."

After following the UFO for a mile, Preiss pulled off the road to where Jim Kuhlman had parked his truck to gaze at the object. "Kuhlman looked a bit shaken and said that the craft had passed right over him," said Preiss. "I almost pinched myself to make sure it was happening," said Kuhlman, 27-year-old owner of a tow truck service. "As it passed over my head, I could clearly see that it had a square base with a dome on top. The craft was about the size of three tow trucks and was traveling about 20 miles an hour. The strangest thing of all was that it had five rows of what appeared to be afterburners like those on jet planes. Six jets of very bright orange flames were spewing out of each row. When it passed about 100 feet over me, it made no noise at all."

These reports are from February 1974.

THURSDAY'S CHILD