by Timothy Good
“Boys, I don’t think you are crazy,” said Mr. Brooks. “I saw one of those things flying through the air without a sound. It was definitely some kind of airship. What I saw fits right in with what you have seen.” He was mystified, however, that the machine made no sound, such as produced by Zeppelins, for example.
“In those days, people did not even mention things like what we had seen,” Leo explained. “The talk was about the drought and the depression and the government and local doings. Many families went broke in those times and gave up, auctioning the farm to pay the bills and then leaving town. That is part of the reason Mike and I were not afraid when we first saw the ship and the men. I felt that they would do us no harm and might, in some way, help us out. I don’t know why I felt like that, but I was convinced we were safe with them….”
Although the boys visited the site repeatedly, it was weeks before they had another encounter. “One afternoon,” Leo recounted, “our persistence was rewarded and we again watched the ship come in for a landing. This time, we were about 800 feet from the spaceship when we encountered their invisible wall, the closest we had been to them yet. I still figured there must be some way we could get closer, and somehow get to talk to these men. We waved and hollered, but to no avail.”
Many return trips proved uneventful, though others brought insights about the strangers. The boys would check the actual landing area for signs of the landed machine, but found no markings of any kind. “The earth was completely undisturbed,” observed Leo. “I thought it was mighty strange that there was no sign of any heavy object having landed there [and that] surely those four mighty prongs beneath the ship would have left some holes in the ground.”
One afternoon the boys watched a jackrabbit bounce off the invisible “force field.” “The rabbit [then] nuzzled up against the ‘wall’ with what must have been a sore nose, moved along it one way and the other, and then just hopped off….
“We got a peaceful feeling from [the men]. Their movements near the ship were peaceful and purposeful. I got the feeling they probably were making a survey of some kind. We always thought of them as men, people, humans like us…. Neither of us could quite accept the fact that these people might be from a very distant planet, yet both of us were able to sit there and think about the possibility.”
Leo describes the departure of the spaceship. “There was no sound, but we could distinctly feel the earth vibrating,” he explained. “This vibration continued for long moments until we wondered what was going to happen. Then we heard a slight hum, and the vibration ended. It was the first time I ever heard anything like a mechanical sound associated with the ship. The outer shell of the ship started turning, rotating faster and faster with perfect smoothness. Then it suddenly started rising….
“Those four tremendous prongs, which were maybe four feet by eight feet, began receding into the body of this flying machine. Again the earth started vibrating and we heard this slight hum. It was not loud enough to draw attention for any distance at all. Then the ship started lifting higher, going straight up. A tremendous amount of colored light flashed out from the ship. It kept going straight up. The speed was so great that when it got about ten or fifteen feet off the ground, it completely vanished….”
“It is significant,” Barry pointed out to me, “that although the ship was literally as big as a barn, it did not exert enough force on the earth to leave ‘footprints.’ The four-foot eight-foot prongs would imply four contact points with earth, each the size of two coffins side by side. Perhaps the prongs served an electrical grounding function rather than providing mainly structural support. Vibration ended when the prongs left the earth.”2
Leo wished they could have taken photographs, but the cost of a camera, films, and processing was beyond most adults in those difficult times. Leo also expressed doubt that the unusual men would want any photographs taken. Attempts to obtain proof were further stalled when the boys failed to persuade some of their playmates to accompany them on their trips.
Another landing occurred toward the end of August 1932. On this occasion the brothers were a little closer than before. “As the ship approached the ground, we found ourselves immersed in the invisible field of force. It came over us like a flood of water that got thicker and thicker as the ship dropped lower and lower until we could not move. Always before, we couldn’t get any closer. Now we couldn’t get out. We were caught inside the shell of force and were unable to free ourselves, no matter how hard we tried….
“We were just sitting on the ground and watched the door open and the men appear again. The door was so different from any doors we had ever seen, and it opened in such a very unusual way, I have no words to describe it. Anything capable of traveling at such a great speed, I reasoned, would have to be very complex…. We thought if we could get close enough to them, we might be able to talk with them. I knew this wouldn’t be easy and I was a little scared to try it … but they held us in their forces. We could not get any closer to them [so] we just sat there keeping an eye on that ship. They had come here for some other reason than just advertising.
“Here we were, trapped maybe two or three hundred feet from the ship, fighting our feelings of panic. I wish I could adequately convey the way we were rapidly alternating from feelings of fear to safety, from doubt to curiosity, from wonderment to speculation. The great intensity of the experience is very memorable to this day…. They gave us the feeling that they were very interested in what was happening with the plants and creatures in the countryside. These impressions were entering our minds just like our own thoughts.”
Three days later, on August 28, at around eight in the evening, the craft returned to the valley. “As we approached the ship, moving carefully down the brushy, uneven hillside, we could see them moving about, strangely illuminated in the growing shadows. We again found ourselves blocked by that invisible force, but we were now far closer than we’d ever been. By this time, we had concluded the barrier was like a magnetic force that affected people and animals instead of iron and steel….
“Six men were outside the craft, all about the same build and size, between five and six feet tall, wearing a similar light coverall or jumpsuit. They appeared to be smooth-faced, with no sign of a beard or moustache. The men near the ship often bent down and touched the ground. From a distance of no more than forty feet, Mike began waving and yelling at them and shaking the bushes to attract their attention, which resulted in the invisible force-field preventing any further approach.”
Although convinced the craft was an airship of some kind, at no point did Leo and Mike think the operators were from another planet. “I had to agree with Mike that I didn’t think they were Americans,” said Leo. “Maybe they were Canadians, though most of the Canadians we had seen looked like ordinary North Dakota Americans to us.” However, once the ship had taken off with the familiar spectacular display of brilliant colored lights, and the boys were walking home under the stars, having been released from the force-field, they began to wonder what place the travelers called home.
The boys revisited the landing site the following day at dawn, hoping for another encounter, but nothing happened. They went home, returning to the site in the early afternoon. Again, nothing. But following a hunch, Leo told Mike that they should wait for a while. “After we spent only a short time on the hilltop, our ship approached,” said Leo. “We could not understand how, but we felt they had some way they could land the ship and depart again without being seen. We had experienced this before. When we watched them take off, the minute they got a few feet above the ground, we lost sight of them. They were just gone. The feeling was growing in us that they were instantly moving so fast that they were just invisible to us [and] if they could move out that quickly, they could certainly slow their ship just as quickly.”
As the boys tried to approach the ship, they were blocked as usual by the force-field—but this time while they were still ve
ry near the hilltop. Mike worried that the men might have lost some confidence because of the way he’d acted the previous night. “They did not want us any closer,” said Leo, “but again we finally managed to draw their attention. They raised their hands and then mostly ignored us. As we stood watching and speculating about them, we could feel them looking us over, examining us in some way I could not quite define. We felt they were definitely interested in us in a friendly way….
“Whatever it was they were doing, they were very busy about it, coming and going from the ship with small parcels and odd gadgets we couldn’t quite see. There could have been dozens of them inside, but we never saw more than six of them outside at one time. As before, they all wore similar clothing, the coveralls I admired. There were no visible buttons or even a seam in front that might be hiding the buttons….
“After a time, the activity near the ship died down until only one of them remained outside, wandering here and there with no pattern. He came quite close to us, maybe ten or twelve feet away. Whatever was holding us seemed to have no effect upon him. He looked directly at us and smiled in a peaceful and friendly way, raising his hand with the palm open toward us. Then he turned and walked directly back to the ramp and entered the ship. Although the ramp retracted into the ship and the strange door closed, nothing else happened.”
After the door closed, the boys were released from the force-field. Though tempted to approach the ship, they decided it would be unwise.
On arriving back at the farm—this time late for supper—so engrossed were the boys with the day’s encounter that they were unable to eat. “There was no thought of mentioning what happened to us that night,” explained Leo. “Our parents still thought we were imagining all these things and Mom was unhappy and worried because we did not eat….
“When I think back now, I know their huge ship was the key to our interest in them. As individuals, they were not all that much different from ordinary people. If you dressed them in ordinary clothing, you would pass one of them in a strange town without blinking an eye. We were quite convinced that if they could build and fly this amazing airship, they could do many other exciting things we could only imagine. By now, we had begun to suspect they could somehow control the weather,3 because the conditions were always calm and clear each time they landed … I knew that one day we would come into closer contact with them, but did not know if we would ever be allowed to enter that spaceship.”
One day, worried about becoming involved in some kind of serious situation with the men in the airship, the brothers felt compelled once more to tell their parents. “I am sure they noticed how we had developed knowledge they could not account for,” said Leo. “They listened to our excited words, but watching them, I don’t think they quite believed us.”
First Contact
Early one evening, following numerous unsuccessful trips to the site, the boys had another close encounter with the mysterious men and their flying machine. “As we started down the hill,” said Leo, “we found ourselves in quite a different situation than before. The magnetic force they used to keep us at a distance was behind us and we were free to walk cautiously up toward the landing site….
“As we approached the ship, these people were outside with smiles on their faces. They were very calm [and] just went about their exercises and made us feel welcome, like we weren’t in the way. We stopped our approach at maybe eight or ten feet from the nearest of them, and just stood there watching…. We could hear no sounds in the strange stillness so near the tremendous ship.4 This close, we were nearly overwhelmed by its huge dimensions….
“These men were so ordinary looking in one way and so exotic in another. I noticed that they had light brown hair that was cut much the same as Mom cut ours. Their complexion was very light beige, resembling a good tan. Their eyes were blue with a dark pupil. I would guess their weight to be about 140 pounds, since they were a little taller and more heavily built than my father…. All of them looked to me to weigh about the same and be about the same size and build. Their hands and feet were shaped like ours, but their shoes were totally unlike our own, without laces or soles.
“The fabric of their clothing was very unusual, with a subtle pattern visible only when the light was just right. The color and cut of the uniform was the same from a distance, but that subtle pattern was different from one to another of them. Their otherwise identical uniforms looked like they were neatly pressed, but did not have badges or any other insignia that might show rank, like our soldiers did. These men were as alike as peas in a pod.
“Now that we were up close to it, we found the color of the ship to be a light blue that blended smoothly into the color of the sky. When viewed against the sky, the ship was strangely difficult to detect, either close up or from a distance. There was sort of a haze to it. We just stood there and looked back and forth from the ship to the men. They occasionally looked at us and smiled, then continued with their exercises. I was able to talk German probably better than English at that time, although our tongues were tied and we just couldn’t speak.
“There were three of them, and they stood there and looked at us. They appeared to be very relaxed with that unusual smile on their faces. Their smile was like ours [and] maybe more gentle than any smile I have ever seen.”
When Mike tried talking (in a mixture of English and German) to the closest man, they all merely continued with their “exercises.” Two of the men walked back into the ship and another came out, walked over to the boys and said, in German, “I can speak your language,” and then, in English, “We speak all languages of all people on your planet.”
“We asked them some questions, not very deep questions, because we felt curiously tongue-tied,” explained Leo. “We had meant to ask a million questions, but in the end we asked very few. The conversation with him lasted for only a few minutes.”
Leo now noticed that the men were wearing thin, light-colored gloves. No women were on board. I asked Leo why this was so.
“There are women,” he responded, “but I never met them.”5
The brothers were hoping to be invited on board. But it was not to be. Finally, one of the men approached the boys and addressed them, in perfect German:
“You have had quite an experience with us [and] shown great determination in coming to visit us again and again. You have seen much, you have learned much, and you know more about us than most people in your world. No one will believe you when you tell them about us,” and, addressing Leo, “not until you are an old man…. In your own minds, you will always know the truth about what you have experienced and felt.” The man repeated this in English, then continued in German:
“We are very real and we are from another galaxy. We have traveled to your planet for over five thousand years. We are from a place far beyond your world by millions of years in time. We continue traveling to your planet because it is part of our responsibility. We are showing you a small part of what you can expect in the future. You cannot learn everything at one time without rest. You will see us again before long….”
“Leo used the term ‘galaxy’ very loosely,” Barry advised me. “I got the impression that, in his mind, the term would apply to the planetary system of another star or perhaps to a different dimension or time as easily as to another star cluster beyond the Milky Way. He often called the visitors ‘time-travelers.’”6
“I did not ask them any more questions and we did not get into the spaceship,” Leo continued. “When we wanted to know something, it was clear we had to be able to ask the right questions before we could get any answers. He stood before us for a few seconds more with that gentle smile on his face, then turned and joined the others….
“I was now certain that they were far older than anyone we had ever met before,” explained Leo. “They had very old, wise eyes in bodies that appeared to be young and fit. I decided that they must have far better methods to protect their h
ealth and must live in a much better environment than we do. They glowed with perfect health. I also knew they deeply respected our Earth…. This was why they didn’t leave rubbish about, why their area was always clean.
“I was now firmly convinced that these travelers from the spaceship could definitely read our minds. They responded to the questions, thoughts, and desires in our minds, and in turn were able to place their own thoughts, intentions and beliefs in our minds without using words….”
When viewed close up, the craft appeared to be constructed of one single piece of material without individual component parts. The ramp and supports beneath the ship appeared to join to the main body of the ship with no visible seams.
Another encounter occurred in the same valley, late in the day on September 19. Again, the boys were not prevented from approaching the craft. “I do not know why, but I had the impression that the force-field was still there, but they ‘tuned’ it somehow to allow us to pass through,” Leo asserts.
The craft did not reflect light like ordinary objects; rather, it seemed to absorb the light around it and produce its own subtle light of any color or pattern of shades. “Sounds did not echo off it like the wall of a barn or the face of a cliff. You could stand right next to it and not even notice it was there…. It was more like a living thing that watched and reacted to its surroundings, than a machine or building. Maybe they were putting on a show for us, because the appearance of the ship began doing the most amazing things.