12/17/21

1964 New Mexico Sighting


Socorro, NM, April 1964 
The sighting of an egg-shaped, white, object with an odd insignia on the side and sitting on tripod legs was reported by a local law officer. 


Sumner, NM, May of 1964
"The windows and *landing lights* looking from beneath appeared like the sketch below. Nothing was seen in the windows which were softly lighted. The round lights were very bright and prevented seeing the main body except as shaded."

 

12/16/21

Author Seeks Stories of Oklahoma UFO"s

 Oklahoma author and researcher, Marilyn A. Hudson whose 2020 book SOONER SAUCERS: OKLAHOMA UFO'S 1947-1969 is available on Amazon, is working on a volume 2 that will look at the post Project Blue Book years (1970-2021).   "I am seeking people who had experiences and are willing to seriously share what they observed or experienced. I am asking for as much details, especially, date, locale, time, and descriptions of direction, weather, and other details that will provide a better picture of the event. I would like to use names to make sure that it is as factual and scientific as possible. The topic of the work is a serious look at things for which people had no logical explanations," explained the author.

Her SOONER SAUCERS provided a detailed look at the reports found in Project Blue Book, the Air Force official project to study the unidentified flying objects for the state of Oklahoma. In light of the recent events that have made the study less a matter of open ridicule and once more a serious topic for science to explore, she adds, " Having more stories of substance will be a great contribution to the larger field of new science and understanding old mysteries."

Those wishing to share their own experience or sighting, please contact the author Marilyn A. Hudson and share your account in detail. "I want the second volume to be as fact based as possible to provide other researchers with important data."

Marilyn A. Hudson is on Facebook as well. 


6/27/21

TULSA'S MOTHER SHIP OF 1966

From the files of my book, SOONER SAUCERS, one of my favorite - and almost unknown stories of Oklahoma UFO's. Sept. 1966, Tulsa.

As I learned early in my research, one has to go deep - into the witness reports and associated data on a event in Project Blue Book. Read them and not the conclusions made by others. Some with the Project had little faith in people and so ignored everything they said anyway. Several, including Dr. Menzel, had presuppositions that belied adherence to an open mind and the potential for learning new things.

As a result, when the spin-doctors finished with this event, well to read the summary of this event, it looks pretty ho-hum.

Then when one digs deeper, scanning the sketch included by the witness and the parts left out of his statement by AF officials - it gets - interesting.

The witness saw the object officials would label a plane disappear into a vast dark mass of a craft....That part, however, never made it into the final public explanation of the event.


THE LATEST UFO/UAP Report

 UFO SKIES: Is It Disclosure? In a Manner of Speaking...

One of the great mysteries of all time: are we alone in the universe? The topic of UFO/UAP phenomena has been around for many centuries. Kenneth Arnold's famed sighting of June 1947 - days before the Roswell Event - appeared to coin a term for the objects: flying saucers. In reality, that term can be found in a North Texas newspaper of the 1870's when a farmer described the strange object that sailed past overhead at great speed.

The Roswell Event - where the Army released they had one of the "saucers" and then they promptly recanted that and buried the story beneath a hard-to-swallow tale that painted the local military personnel of Roswell (then the only base for planes carrying nuclear weapons) and the local people of Roswell as ignorant yokels. Digging the knife into any would-be witnesses and all those who had said they had seen something were top brass, talking heads, and newspapers all with one agenda: ridicule anyone who says they have seen one of these things! One top ranking military officer inferred the only state not reporting seeing things in the sky was Kansas because it was a "dry state."  Thus, if you see anything you have to be drunk.  Reputation ruined. Period. By the way, Kansas had its own reports as well.

It is truly amazing to see the shift in how news, governments, and others are speaking about this subject. After, decades of the mandatory tone being ridicule, this tone of acceptance and recognition of the topic as a science-worthy field of discussion is amazing. 

 Major news outlets that once led with tongue-in-cheek speak about "little green men" (which was a way of casting the subject in the same arena as little pink elephants and not a reference to any green aliens!) are sitting up, adjusting their ties and hairdos and looking serious and somber as they file the story under, "series news."  

Amazing.

So, while it may not be the tell all disclosure some envisioned what is happening, and hopefully, will continue to happen, is to bring the subject into the room for serious discussion. 

While the very brief report released to the public says little, it does say some powerful things. It says the UFO/UAP is a real object based on scientific equipment that tracked them, based on highly qualified witnesses who saw them, and video evidence they could not refute.

The task force was mandated to study the best cases and present a report. From those best cases they were able to identify only one.  Then the task force recommendations read like reports presented by Dr. J. Allen Hynek decades ago: better science, more rigor, more study, and the openness to learn and accept what is discovered.

Now - governments and private groups - should come together to discover more and share more with a public unafraid of what may be discovered.


 So the UFOs Are Real. Now What? (msn.com)

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Be sure and read Marilyn A. Hudson's book, SOONER SAUCERS: Oklahoma UFO's 1947 to 1969. Available on Amazon.

2/13/21

BILLIE SCHAFFER: 1959 MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE ENDS IN MURDER

Mrs. Billie Shaffer of Seminole, daughter of Judge W.A. McDaniel's also of Seminole, and wife of an Air Force captain assigned to Greenland, went to see a doctor for treatment of mild depression and loneliness as a wife at home with her husband oversees. Then she went shopping with a friend and attended a dinner party.  She called home to her mother, who was taking care of her two children, and told her to expect her back in Seminole anytime from 12:15 to 1:30 a.m.. It was February 21, 1959.  

She enjoyed a last meal with friends and she left, purchases in her car, and headed back to Seminole from Oklahoma City.  She never made it. She was reported missing February 21, 1959. 

Her car was found, minus woman, with her purse, purchases and keys in the ignition with the motor running. The 1958 Buick Sedan had been abandoned along a road NE of Oklahoma City. It was just south of NE 10th southeast of the general area of Choctaw Road, east of Lake Hiwassee Road, Later examination by Highway Patrol found her hat crushed in a ditch and a dent in her back bumper.


She was found far from where she would have been headed. An massive search was launched when her car was found deserted along NE 10 and Choctaw Rd with all items inside and the motor running. Several noted its presence among them the Highway Patrol. When she did not arrive home to her parents to retrieve her children, her father launched a search.

Theories abounded those first days: she had been disoriented by the anti-depressants given her by the doctor and suffered amnesia, she was neurotic and sought to flee her husband for some slight, and similar ideas were disussed and resarched.

Teams of servicemen from Tinker, local police, Boy Scouts, and volunteers scoured the area for clues and answers.  However, first heavy rains and then snow - often a foot deep - prevented adequate searching of many isolated pockets where a person might have stumbled or fallen.

Her body was finally found in early spring - March 28, 1959 - three miles away from where her car had been abandoned -  in an isolated area near the Hiwasee Lake damn. Some salacious early accounts said she was dressed in only a slip but she was in a brown suit with a white collar, her hose were torn and her skirt scrunched up over her knees. Her feet were bare but one shoe was close by the body and another one found further away.

An 18 year old local hunter, Homer Draper, was checking his traps and hoping to catch some rabbit, when he found an expensive ladies shoe. The area was not one where a car could drive to and hard to get to on foot. He glanced down and 60 feet below the damn he saw a woman's body, face up and arms outspread.  The day turned suddenly much colder than the recent deep snows as he stood there near the old damn, along a path sometimes used as a Lover's Lane by locals surrounded by isolated farm pasture.

Like other murders of the time period the body was placed far into a field or similar remote area.  The area was about three miles north of Choctaw (and NE 23rd) and about one mile east of Lake Hiawassee Road. There were no visible signs of violence or cause of death. 

A Dr. William Jacques, OU Medical School Department of Pathology, assisted a Sheriff Bob Turner in the investigation of the body. She was clad in some clothes but  but had a skirt and a slip on with other  clothes nearby. The skirt was shoved  up some but there was no sign of sexual assault and no signs of the clothes being torn or ripped. 

Her other shoe was nearby. One revealed serious scuff marks along the side but the soles were oddly lacking in wear - especially given the fact she was in the middle of a rough area of a field and at the time period of her disappearance would have suffered in some weather had she walked away from her running car three miles away.

 It appeared someone had to have carried her to the area of the field where she was found.

Although there were no signs of knife, bullet, or blunt object blows, there were three odd facts. She had a drop of blood on the inside collar area behind her neck. There were bruises consistent with compression bruises around her neck such as would be seen in a strangulation. Some apparent predation, however, of her check and neck prevented definite identification of that as bruising from strangulation. Also, there had been a nosebleed.  Combined it raised several questions. Dr. Jacques was reported to have noted that nosebleeds did not accompany strangulation except - and then he recalled some injuries seen in the war where the assailant had utilized a judo hold to inflict a "sleeper's hold."

In addition, she had a unique set of diamond wedding rings, engraved, and they were on the body when it was found. 

Autopsy report indicated she only had her normal medicines in her blood stream and small amounts of alcohol and since she had come from a holiday dinner that was not too surprising. 

Several avenues and theories were explored. One of the most interesting involves a known drug corridor that ran throughout the region of the interstates, the Seminole-Asher- Ada area and paths south into Texas and East into Arkansas. This corridor was known to be an active pathway of organized crime, for drugs and for prostitution. People all through those paths had a tendency to turn up dead because they knew something or merely had the misfortune to see something they should not have seen.

A minor acquaintance of the dead woman was found to be a nurse from Ada named Adeline Thomas. She was involved in some manner and degree with a narcotics ring. She decided to turn state's evidence and on the day she was supposed to testify she disappeared. She was found sitting in her car in a residential area of Ada and complaining of terrible throat pain. A few days later she died from her injuries. An autopsy revealed injuries incredibly similar to those on the neck of the airman's dead wife.

A madman at work? A crazed psychopath? Or someone who had the misfortune to be seen in the company of a person with ties to a narcotics ring - possibly one run by organized crime with far reaching tendrils. 

Did she perhaps intersect with the Thomas woman from Ada and that casual relationship was mis-interpreted by the narcotics ring?  Did Billie encourage the Thomas woman in some way so the nurse decided go to authorities and  tell all? There was never any evidence found of Billie being linked to the narcotics ring or any other criminal activities.

The scenario might be as simple as a woman driving home, seeing something, or being mistaken for someone else. Fingered and then followed, someone could have hit her bumper and then when she got out of her car, motor still running, she was attacked and killed. Then her body taken three miles away and disposed of in an area known by locals for its remoteness just as winter blizzard was expected that would hide the body for weeks. That fits the known facts. 

One other thing - the area where her body was found was one known most to locals - so her killer may have been someone in the area with an ear to the ground for out of the way, hard to reach, and suitable body dump sites. Billie Geraldine Schaffer was born  29 October 1920 and her grave marker reads her death was recorded as February 21, 1959.







Thanks to Oklahoma City reader Jeff Dees for bringing this 1960 issue of Master Detective to my notice. His mother had kept it and had assured him it was a very accurate retelling of events. 

1/5/21

LIVING UNKNOWN SOLDIER

 An amazing fact. In both WW1 and WW2 there were "living unknown soldiers." A couple made the news but one has to wonder if there were not others in those conflicts and other before or since? There was an old story, French I believe, of a man who returned to his home but was later identified as being another man entirely. That story did not end well. It seemed to set a trend for such - all too true - tales. In February 1945 a man was rescued and in the hospital was identified by the field identification as "Charles A. Jameson, 49; religion, Catholic; citizenship American, the Cutty Sark."

In a comma, he was examined, shrapnel wounds riddled his back and various other infections resulted. The military, the Merchant Marines, the Coast Guard, the Red Cross, other countries - everyone tried to locate some record of such a man. He could recall details of every steam ship company in the world. He recognized when shown photographs, the Royal Navy's gunnery school in Gosport, England. No records surfaced.

No crew photos revealed his face. Searches for a ship The Cutty Sark revealed no modern ship of that name; later memories of being a crewman aboard the Hinemoa conflicted as to the man's story of it sinking in the Atlantic (it had sunk in the English Channel).

Later research suggested he might have been a POW or a spy but evidence is scant. His tattoos revealed a mixture of American and British naval symbols and phrases (one seeming to read U.S. Navy). He seemed to remember ships and places from the turn of the century better than more recent events and so he may have been suffering from dementia (such Alzheimer's were older memories are fresher than recent ones).

Although a patient in the hospital for 12 years (due largely to a battle with those infected wounds) - no friend, relative, work mate ever visited him there. Apparently, to this day, just who Charles A. Jameson was, remains a mystery.


An excellent article on this subject of Charles A. Jamison or Jameson can be read on this site

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