Lonely Planets

  ies, one from the inside and one from the outside. I saw eager clusters

  of bright young stars just leaving their nebular nest and entering galac-

  tic life, and tired, old red giant stars taking one last lap around the

  galaxy, preparing to blow their guts back out into the stellar reincarna-

  tion chamber. I saw enormous clouds of dark, obscuring dust drifting

  down the Milky Way. I saw stars that we now know have planets cir-

  cling them, and many more that surely must have planets. Closer to

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  home, I saw Jupiter and Mars promenading through the starscape. I

  also saw several good meteors, including one brilliant, slowly moving

  fireball that lit up the valley and left behind a lingering glowing trail.

  And I saw many satellites speeding along and winking out when they

  fell into Earth’s shadow, and occasional high-flying aircraft, each flash-

  ing its own distinctive rhythmic stripe across the sky, the silent songs of

  mechanical birds. Low clouds drifting between the ranges revealed

  themselves as migrating voids, black on near-black pockets of negative

  space in an otherwise brilliant starscape.

  It was all there, except no UFOs. Ordinarily I wouldn’t complain

  about such a sky, but I was hoping for something else. I had been read-

  ing The Mysterious Valley, a book by UFO investigator and Crestone

  resident Christopher O’Brien, which chronicles UFO sightings, cattle

  mutilations, and other reports of the “high strange” occurring in the

  San Luis Valley. O’Brien had collected so many stories of glowing and

  strangely moving lights and bizarre aerial phenomena that I thought I’d

  have at least a reasonable chance of seeing something. I was determined

  to watch attentively without preconceptions, expectations, or excessive

  skepticism. I didn’t want to fail to see something extraordinary because

  I was not prepared to see it. Conversely, I wondered if I could have

  made myself see something if I was too well prepared.

  I N V I T A T I O N O N L Y

  After weeks of careful watching and listening, I started to question

  whether I was observing the same sky as everyone else. One night at

  the springs some people I met were matter-of-factly discussing UFO

  sightings and even telepathic contacts with aliens. I told them that I

  had been trying every night but had not yet seen any highly unusual

  sky phenomena. I asked for advice. One woman who had experienced

  many sightings told me that the most important thing is that you have

  to invite them. They will not show up for just anyone, in just any state of mind. I asked if she could tell me anything more specific about how

  you invite them. She said that you go to a very dark place and focus on

  inviting them, on receiving them, on wishing them to be with you, and

  you try to communicate to them that it is safe to come. After a while

  spent meditating on these themes, sometimes they show up—lights in

  the sky that hover, pause meaningfully, and seem to communicate with

  you.

  Have You Seen the Saucers?

  347

  Late the following day I was back on the porch of the Willow Spring

  Bed and Breakfast, watching the last red rays of sun helping the Sangre

  de Cristo Mountains live up to their name, when suddenly I saw a for-

  mation of seven bright lights flash on simultaneously across a fifty-mile

  stretch of the mountains. They lit up in unison, and trust me, they were

  far too bright to be lights on cars, houses, or any conventional terres-

  trial, nonclassified vehicles. They flickered for about ten minutes and

  then faded suddenly. Could this be the work of some mysterious intelli-

  gence? Possibly. But my mind, always demanding an explanation, got

  the old hamster spinning and quickly found a plausible scenario. The

  setting sun far behind my back was just a few degrees above the hori-

  zon. When it hit just the right angle, it caused the windows on any

  building within a certain altitude range in the mountains to bounce

  direct reflections right at my spot on the valley floor, causing my retina

  to jump and shout, my optic nerve to tell tall tales, and my mind to

  wonder.

  Maybe I just have the wrong sort of mind. What if instead of invent-

  ing a physical explanation for these lights, I had simply invited them in?

  Would they have accepted? I suppose with my bad attitude it might be

  impossible to extend an honest invitation. The sad thing is, they are

  probably telepathic interdimensional mind readers, in which case there

  is no way to fool them with feigned credulity. They’d see right through

  me, immediately discovering my impure heart and my weak faith. They

  are never going to talk to me.

  I really tried watching the sky from the perspective of someone who

  believed many conscious entities were up there (hey, wait, I do believe

  that). What might I see if I could just get into the right frame?

  Is it possible to make yourself believe something? I always wonder

  about people who change religion for reasons of convenience. Can you

  really just decide like that? I was definitely getting the impression, more

  than ever, that when it comes to visible signs of intelligence in the sky,

  “believing is seeing.” If part of “trying to see” is “trying to believe,” it’s

  easier said than done.

  W H E R E ’ S T H E B E E F ?

  Stories of strange, unexplained, and often grotesque livestock deaths in

  the San Luis Valley go back to the famous case of Snippy the horse.

  Everyone in the valley knows some version of the story of poor Snippy,

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  whose real name was Lady, who was found dead on September 7,

  1967, with strange, fresh wounds. His* skin and flesh had been cleanly

  cut from his neck all the way back to his shoulders, leaving nothing but

  a skeleton where the front of the horse should have been. There were

  no tracks, and no blood on the ground. Strange markings that could

  have been caused by the landing pads of a flying saucer were found

  nearby. A neighbor reported that she had seen something pass over the

  ranch house on the day that Snippy had died. Lady’s owner, Mrs. Bertie

  Lewis, told one local paper, “Flying saucers killed my horse!” And thus

  a legend was born.

  Most of the victims have been cattle. They are usually found with

  various parts removed with surgical precision—most often the tongue,

  the brain, other soft tissues in the face and upper body, and the genitals

  and anus. All of the blood has mysteriously been drained from the bod-

  ies, and flies, which usually can’t resist a carcass, stay away from these.

  There is sometimes a medicinal smell like embalming fluid. There is

  never a trace of the perpetrator, no footprints or tire tracks—almost as

  if they dropped out of the sky.

  The cattle mutilation phenomenon is not unique to the San Luis

  Valley. Similar mutilation epidemics have been reported in Nebraska,

  South Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Kansas, and northern New

  Mexico. Investigators have also reported mutilations in South America

/>   and Europe.

  Skeptics, naturally, debunk these stories, chalking them up to hoax-

  ing, credulity, and some faulty reporting and distortion of cattle deaths

  by lightning strike or predators. The missing soft tissues, they say, have

  been eaten by scavengers. The debunking arguments often resort to the

  “why don’t these aliens behave as we think aliens should behave” line

  of reasoning.† Much of what is written about the mutilations is sarcas-

  tic, and unfortunately some of the ridicule has an obnoxious, elitist

  twang—“Those dumb farmers are so unsophisticated that they believe

  in things we ivory-tower academics can easily explain away without

  ever having to go near a dirt road or a tractor.”

  The ufology community is divided over whether cattle mutilations have

  *Yes, as far as I can tell, Lady was a boy horse.

  †One Encyclopedia of Skepticism, asks, “Why would the aliens take only parts of the cattle, and not the whole animal? Why would they leave incriminating evidence behind, or at least disguise their activity better so that nothing appeared out of the ordinary?”

  Have You Seen the Saucers?

  349

  anything to do with aliens. Some believe they result from experiments that

  the government is conducting in secret collusion with extraterrestrials.

  They claim that the cattle deaths are often associated with appearances

  of mysterious helicopters or other less identifiable craft. Others angrily

  denounce the mutilation theorists for damaging the credibility of real

  ufology.

  Like UFOs, cattle mutilations are in the air in the San Luis Valley.

  Even people who deny that there’s anything to it are aware of it as a

  local issue or myth, sort of like a famous haunted house or witch.

  Everyone knows some version of the story of Snippy the horse and can

  tell you an anecdote or two about the mutilations. A mistrust of gov-

  ernment and central authority, common in rural Western areas, has

  merged with UFO conspiracies in some people’s minds. Some ranchers

  suspect ETs, although others think that’s a bunch of manure.

  Steeped in the interpretations advocated in skeptics’ magazines, I was

  prepared to be unconvinced. I am much more comfortable with the

  debunkers’ view that mutilation stories all result from mass hysteria,

  sloppy reporting, and misinterpretation. But since I got out of my arm-

  chair, knocked on some farmhouse doors, listened to stories of muti-

  lated animals, and viewed snapshots with the ranchers who took them,

  I cannot dismiss the impression that something strange, twisted, and

  hard to understand has actually happened here.

  I spoke to a young sheriff who had been first on the scene at one of

  the mutilations. The cow had fallen on fresh snow and was precisely

  carved, but there were no tracks and no blood. He’d never seen any-

  thing like it and has to this day heard no explanation that makes any

  sense. I believed that he was simply telling me exactly what he’d seen.*

  One of the most interesting people I met is a seventy-two-year-old

  rancher named Virginia, who, with her daughter, runs a large cattle

  ranch in the valley. Virginia is sharp as a tack, opinionated, and warm

  once she decides she likes you. She is not obsessed with or enthralled by

  cattle mutilations—clearly, she would rather that the topic had never

  entered her life. She is more concerned with running her ranch and her

  work with the local historical museum. But when the subject comes up,

  *Then he proceeded to regale me with stories about all the times he’s found couples having sex in cars at night around Crestone. He found this topic very entertaining and it was definitely less unpleasant to picture than cattle mutilations.

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  she doesn’t shy away from it. Virginia has the dubious distinction of

  owning the ranch where one of the most famous and well-documented

  cattle mutilations occurred, in 1980.

  She invited me into her kitchen and made some coffee, lit a cigarette,

  and we got acquainted. The second time I visited her she confessed to

  liking me more than she expected to, based on our initial phone conver-

  sation when I called and asked if I could come and meet her. I don’t

  know what she expected, but I definitely wasn’t pumping her for infor-

  mation for an article in either Enquirer, National or Skeptical. She did tell me that she is tired of BBC film crews showing up and wanting to

  interview her about her damn bull. When we got around to the topic of

  cattle mutilations, she showed me her snapshots of the dead animal.

  My eyes were unavoidably drawn to the smooth incisions where the

  poor beast’s missing genitals had once been. It was carved up in a way

  that looked careful and deliberate—and sick.

  Virginia has heard all the debunking arguments and thinks they’re all

  bunk. She knows cattle better than most people know people. This

  rancher knows what dead cattle look like in various states of decay. She

  knows what a lightning burn looks like. She knows how a carcass

  appears after it’s been gnawed by predators. She knows her bulls and

  she knew that this particular one was alive two days before it was dis-

  covered. Nothing will keep flies away from a dead bull, but Virginia

  assures me that even the flies wouldn’t touch this carcass for days.

  We didn’t dwell on the topic of the mutilations. I didn’t need to make

  her go through all the gory details. I had satisfied myself that she and

  her story were for real, and that was enough. I did ask her if she had

  ever seen a UFO in all her years working out of doors in the valley. Not

  a one. She has, however, seen many mirages and strange reflections,

  and she speculated at length about optical and psychological phenom-

  ena, sounding like one of the sharper writers for the Skeptical Enquirer.

  I left Virginia’s ranch completely convinced that there have been mys-

  terious, unexplained cattle deaths. The actual number of animals

  affected is no doubt much smaller than that reported by the investiga-

  tors who have made a cottage industry out of cattle mutilations and

  other anomalous phenomena. When people start to write books and

  build careers out of this sort of thing, the numbers tend to swell as new

  reports, whatever their origin or details or degree of similarity or valid-

  ity, get added to the mass of confirming evidence. No doubt a lot of rot-

  Have You Seen the Saucers?

  351

  ten meat is heaped together in the cattle mutilation bin, but there is also

  something strange and unexplained.

  Virginia doesn’t know what killed her bull and would welcome a

  new idea that made sense. Some of her best photos, however, were

  “borrowed” by a well-known investigator who distorted her story in

  his popular book, changing many details to fit his alien conspiracy the-

  ory. She doesn’t seriously entertain the notion that aliens were involved.

  The closest she can come to a possible explanation is some sort of per-

  verse cult ritual, but she cannot explain the complete lack of vehicle

  tracks or footprints, or several other bizarre details. Mostly she just

  chalks it up as a
genuine mystery.

  After talking to the sheriff and Virginia and a few other folks, it seems

  to me that these events are not as easy to explain away as the debunkers

  would like to believe. The skeptics may even be doing something they

  often accuse their “opponents” of: avoiding the truth out of fear of the

  unknown. You can come up with a rational explanation for anything.

  This doesn’t mean that your theory is correct, but its mere existence can

  be comforting. In the case of the cattle mutilation phenomenon I am not

  convinced by any of the “rational explanations.” Yet I see no reason at

  all to link cattle mutilations with extraterrestrial life.

  There are some mysteries. Are we being unpatriotic to the flag of sci-

  ence if we admit there are some mysteries?

  W H O G O T T H E B U N K ?

  Some ufologists do attempt to apply rigorous methods to documenting

  strange phenomena seen in the sky. But they are up against an awful lot,

  including the rest of ufology, and we scientists don’t usually talk to them.

  Many of us have had bad experiences with aggressive ufologists accusing

  us of all kinds of nasty things for not taking their ideas seriously.

  If we are being honest, then our scientific attempts to debunk UFOs

  must contain caveats. This doesn’t mean that debunking false reports is

  not worthwhile. Indeed, it is essential if we are ever going to be able to

  recognize the real thing. But sometimes we forget that we don’t really

  know much about aliens. Unfortunately, the skeptics’ attitude toward

  UFOs often has a moralizing tone, justified by a concern that the

  masses will turn back to medieval darkness if we don’t wake them up

  by shining the spotlight of science right in their faces.

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  One of our defenses against dealing with UFO claims is to lump them in

  with all the newage* drowning modern culture, seeping from the ground

  in places like Boulder and Sedona. I used to keep a file of especially flaky

  New Age literature. My favorite was an article in a Tucson rag by some guy

  waxing rhapsodic about the universal vibrations in electricity, which

  vibrates everywhere with a frequency of sixty cycles per second, demon-

  strating an important global harmonic something-or-other. I found it hilar-