Fact or Fantasy? Springfieldian seeks validation of UFO
encounter 43 years ago.

Written by: Mike O'Brien


ALSO NOTE: the actual newpaper article shows a scene of the UFO crash
drawn by Gerald Anderson and also a sketch of a creature he believes
was a visitor from another galaxy.

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To a 5-year-old kid from Indianapolis, the mountains and mesas and vast
scrubland surrounding Albuquerque seemed an alien world.

"I was in awe" recalls Gerald Anderson of his arrival in New Mexico
with his family in July 1947. "I was in the wild frontier. There were
real, live Indians out there."

Then says Anderson, on his second day in the Southwest he bumped into
real,live creatures from a truly alien world.

There were four -- two dead, on dying, one apparently uninjured. The
creatures were about 4 feet tall, with heads disproportionately large
for their bodies by human measure and almond-shaped, coal black eyes.
They huddled in the shadow of 50-ft-diameter silver disk - a "flying
saucer" that had crashed into a low hillside on the rim of what locals
call the Plains of San Agustin.

Anderson, a former police chief at Rockaway Beach and Taney County
deputy sheriff who now works as a security officer in Springfield, is
adamant about events on the hot midsummer day so long ago. "I saw them.
I even touched one of the creatures. I put my hand on their ship. And I
wasn't alone - my dad, my uncle, my brother and my cousin all saw the
same things. And so did a lot of other people. But they aren't talking.

Anderson is talking, pubicly, after 43 years of silence.

Among those listening most intently are some of the foremost
researchers into unidentified flying object (UFO phenomena. These
experts say Gerald Anderson appears to be an important link in a
frustratingly fragmented chain of evidence concerning the most famous -
or infamous - chapter in UFO annals: the so called "Roswell Incident."

No one denies that "something" happened in July 1947 in central New
Mexico, cradle of U.S. nuclear and rocket technology. However, military
authorities insist reports of strange craft in the sky and bizare
wreckage on the ground were traced at the time to an errant weather
balloon and other manmade or natural circumstance.

Nonetheless, over the years, persistent whispered rumors grew into
published articles and books, even movies, which fanned speculation
that what actually occured was a visit by creatures from another planet
- an intergalactic expedition that turned to tragedy on the high desert
and then into a massive coverup in the highest circles of the U.S.
government.

Anderson says he was unaware of ongoing fascination and controversy
over the strange episode from his childhood until one evening this past
January when he was flipping through channels on his television set and
stumbled across the popular program "Unsolved Mysteries."

"I wasn't looking for any unsolved mysteries - I have enough mysteries
in my life that are unsolved, and I don't need any more," Anderson
jokes. He is a burly, barrel-chested man standing 6-4 and carrying a
muscular 250-plus pounds, with reddish hair and a rudy complexion
creased from easy laughter.

"But, bingo! On comes this story, and everything was wrong," Anderson
recalls of the TV show. On sudden impulse, he dialed an 800 phone
number that flashed onto the screen. "I guess I figured that if people
were still interested in this thing, they might as well get it
straight" is the only explanation he can muster for speaking up after
years of keeping mostly mum on the matter.

"These people don't know what they're talking about," Anderson told the
operator on the other end of the long-distance line. "The shape of the
craft is totally wrong. 'And how do you know that, sir?" she asked. ' I
saw it, I was there,' I told her. "Whoa!" she said. "Thee are some
people who will want to talk to you...'"

Anderson's phone soon was ringing with calls from UFO researchers
around the country. One in particular, Stanton Friedman, a nuclear
physicist and popular lecturer who had advised the "Unsolved Mysteries"
producers, was struck by correlations between Anderson's recollections
and obscure details Friedman uncovered while sleuthing for a book to be
published next year.

Friedman, who lives in Canada, contacted John Carpenter, a Springfield
professional therapist who in his spare time serves as a director of
investigations for the local chapter of Mutual UFO Network, a
nationwide orgainization of UFO researchers. At Friedman's request,
Carpenter conducted extensive in person interviews of Anderson,
including sessions under hypnosis.

The results excited Friedman. "Powerful stuff!" he exclaimed upon
hearing interview tapes. Friedman arranged airline tickets for Anderson
and Carpent to join him in New Mexico to pinpoint the crash site.

Anderson says the flight was his first return to New Mexico in more
than a quarter-century. After poining the pilot of a chartered
helicopter to a spot in the desert 75 air miles southwest of
Albuquerque, Anderson gazed at a hillside, strewn with boulders the
size of Volkswagens and dotted with a few gnarled pinion trees, that he
says he saw in the summer of 1947..... A NEW HOME

The Anderson family arrived in Albuquerque from Indiana on July 4,
1947. they took up temporary residence at the home of one of Gerald's
uncles, Guy Anderson. Gerald's father, Glen, was about to take a job as
a master machinist involved in nuclear weapons design at the super-
secret Sandia base on the outskirts of town.

The next day, another uncle, Ted, struck up a conversation with
Gerald's older brother Glen Jr., who was on leave from the Marine
Corps. Glen Jr. was a rockhound, and his uncle piqued the young
Marine's enthusiasm with talkes of gorgeous stones just waiting to be
collected in the desert.

" Ted told my brother, ' I know where there's plenty of moss agate.'
So we all piked into a 1940 Plymouth - Uncle Ted, my cousin Victor
(Ted's 8 year old son), my brother, Glen, my dad and myself. We went
out into this area where the moss agate was supposed to be - followed
two ruts into the desert, bounced along out there for a while, and
ended up on top of a ridgeline. We parked the car and started to walk
down an arroyo (gully) and dry creek bed and out onto the plains. A
STRANGE DISCOVERY

"But we came around a corner and right there in front of us stuck into
the side of this hill, was a silver disc. There were some remarks
like"There's a crash up here! Somthing's crashed up here! And then
someone saying 'That's a goddam spaceship!"

"We all went up there to it. There were three creatures, three bodies,
lying on the ground underneath this thing in the shade. Two weren't
moving and the third one obviously was having trouble breathing, like
when you have broken ribs. There was a fourth one next to it, sitting
there on the ground. There wasn't a thing wrong with it, and it
apparently had been giving first aid to the others.

Anderson animatedly acts out the fourth creature's reaction when the
family members approached. "It recoiled in fear, like it thought we
were going to attack it," anderson recounts, covering his face with
crossed arms. The adults tried to repeatedly to communicate with the
frightened creature, Anderson says, but there was no audible response
to greetings spoken in English and Spanish.

A few minutes after the Anderson clan happened upon the bizarre scene,
six other people arrived - five college students and their teacher.
They'd been working on an archeological dig around cliff dwellings a
few miles away and had decided to hike over after seeing what they
thought was a firey meteor crashing the night before. The professor, a
Dr. Buskirk, tried several foreign languages in unsuccessful attempts
to coax a verbal response from the creature, Anderson says.

The sun had climbed to a midday peak by this time and recalls anderson,
"to a kid from Indiana, it was hot brother, let me tell you." He
chugged a chocolate flavored soft drink an hour earlier and the sweet
soda pop was churning uncomfortably in his stomach. so he sought
shelter in the shadow of the spacecraft.

"It was 115 (degrees) out there that day. But around the craft, when
you got close to it, it was cold. When you touched the metal, it felt
just like it came out of a freezer."

SOMETHING WASN'T RIGHT

Anderson also touched one of the creatures lying motionless on the
ground - and it, too was cold. In his child's mind, he had thought the
figures looked like dolls. But when he felt the colk skin, " I knew
something wasn't quite right. Yuck!.

Anderson says he ran to the crest of a nearby knoll to take stock. A
pickup truck arrived on the ridge, and a fellow whom researchers
believe was a civil engineer named Barney Barnett joined the curious
audience. "I remember thinking he looked like Harry Truman. In 1947,
every kid knew what Harry Truman looked like," Anderson says.

After a few minutes, Anderson summoned the courage to agin creep close
to the strange saucer. It was then more chilling than the surface of
the craft of the skin of the corpse; The upright creature turned and
looked right at me and it was like he was inside my head - as if he was
doing my thinking, as if his thoughts were in my head."

Anderson remembers a mental sensation of falling and tumbling end-over-
end. "I felt that thing's fear, felt its depression, felt its
loneliness. I relived the crash. I know the terror it went through.
That one look told me everything that quickly," he says with a snap of
his fingers.

Other things began happening quickly about this time, Anderson says. A
contingent of armed soldiers suddenly appeared. The creature, which had
calmed down after its initial fright, "went crazy" at the sight of the
soldiers. Thinking back on the creature's plight today brings on the
"awfulest, horrible feeling," Anderson says.

"His situation was hopeless. He knew it. He'd just lived through a
nightmare that most of us wouldn't be able to psychologically stand.
He'd watched two of his crew, his friends or maybe even his family die.
He's watching another one die. He knows there's no chance of rescue,
because the military is here and his people aren't going to be able to
get him.

"God only knows how far away from home he was, and he knew he was never
going to see - if they have loved ones - his loved ones again. He was
totally alone on a hostile planet, and the only people who where
showing him kindness were being run off by the military at weapon-
point.

"As a kid, I was aware of what being afriad of the dark was like., and
the feeling I got from him was that feeling multiplied a million times.
It was scary. It was terrifying.

SOLDIERS ON THE SCENE

Anderson says he lost sight of the creature as the soldiers swarmed
over the site. The civilians were brusquely shoved from the craft.
Anderson remembers shouts and threats. His uncle Ted threw a punch at
one of the GIs. "Things got very tense, very dangerious," Anderson
says. "The soldiers ushered us out of there very unceremoniously. Their
attitude, to describe it at best, was uncivilized."

Anderson has an especially vivid memory of a tough-talking red haired
Army captain and an equally gruff black sergeant. "They told my dad and
my uncle, who also worked at Sandia, that if they were ever to divulge
anything about this - it was a secret military aircraft, they said -
then us kids would be taken away and they'd never see us again." It
seems an outrageious threat in hindsight, Anderson concedes. But at the
time, he reminds, "These people had machine guns and you listened to
what they said."

Another recollection strikes Anderson as odd today: The soldiers didn't
appear surprised about the otherwordly craft and creatures. they didn't
gawk, slack-jawed and awestruck as the Andersons had done. "The
soldiers weren't saying, 'Gee, look at that!" They were very cognizant
of what they were looking at. They knew what it was.

And it soon became apparent, Anderson says, that the Army knew what it
wanted to do with the find. "there was a battalion of military, a real
invasion force, when we got back up on the hilltop. Thee were trucks,
there wre airplanes - they had the road blocked off and they wre
landing on it. They had radio communications gear set up. There were
ambulances, and more soldiers with weapons."

In the days that followed, all of New Mexico was abuzz with talk of
strange lights in the sky, strange echos on radar, strange doings in
the desert. On July 7, new reports told of remnants of an unidentified
aircraft found by a rancher near the town of Roswell, N.M. about 150
miles east of the hillside where the Anderson's stumbled upon the
saucer.

Although several witnesses said it was like nothing they'd ever seen
before, military officers insisted the metallic pieces came from an
ordinary weather balloon.....

A WEATHER BALLOON?

Forty three years later, Anderson smiles wryly when reminded of the
Army's pronouncement, "A lot of people wondered why, if it was just a
weather balloon, the military put the pieces under armed guard and flew
them in a B-29 to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio," he
observes.

Anderson believes the wreckage scattered near Roswell and the barely
damaged saucer on the Plains of San Agustin are connected. "There was a
gash in the side of the disc we saw, like it had been crushed in," he
says. "The contour of the craft would fit into that gash perfectly -
like another one of these things had hit it. I think two of these discs
had a mid-air collision. One exploded and feel in pieces near Roswell,
and the other crash-landed where we found it.

With all evidence confiscated and the military steadfastly sticking by
the weather balloon explanation, the story faded from the news by
July's end. And Gerald Anderson says he tucked away the memory as he
grew into manhood. "I learned you just don't go up to the average
person on the street and say, "Damn, know what I saw?" The guy will go,
"Get away from me, fool! Are you crazy?" In later life, he didn't
mention it even to his wife until a few years after their marriage.

Anderson joined the Navy in the late 1950s and served a dozen years in
posts around the globe. He lived for a few years in Colorado, working
as a parmedic and working toward a college degree in microbiology. In
1979, he moved to Missouri to better raise his daughter away from what
he terms the "druggy" atmosphere of Denver. In addition to his law
enforcement posts, Anderson has worked for two southwest Missouri
trucking firms as a driver and instructor.

Anderson also has been active in the Episcopal Church. He recently was
elected to the vestry at Ascension Episcopal in Springfield and is
studying toward becoming a deacon.A gold crucifix - a cross complete
with a figure of the martyred Christ affixed to it - suspended from a
chain around Anderson's neck is testimony to his faith.

NO CONFLICT IN BELIEFS

Although he concedes his account might make some fellow churchgoers
uncomfortable, Anderson sees no conflict between what he saw with his
eyes and what he believes in his heart: "When you're talking about the
concept of God, you have to be talking in the context of a universal
situations, a deity that built the whole universe. And why should we
assume that this speck of sand in the backwater of space would be the
only place that an all-perfect, almighty God could create life?"

In fact, Anderson says he "wouldn't be one bit surprised to find out
that, wherever this creature came from, there they have a very strong
concept of a supreme being. Because of my contact with the creature
showed a high degree of civilized sophistication, gentleness,
compassion - all of the things we hold as ideals."

Of the five anderson men who ventured into the desert that day in 1947,
only Gerald is still alive. Age, illness and accidents claimed the
other four in recent years. But not only andersons were at the scene,
Gerald says, and he hopes his decision to come forth, albeit belated,
will encourage others to tell what they know and spur official
revelations about the captured craft and creatures.

"I want to see the government stand up and say, 'Look, we're not alone
in the universe.

Let's make a 'Star Trek' really happen. Let's do go out there and
explore the universe. That may be our only salvation. Because with
what's doing to this Earth, we're not going to make it much past the
year 2000.


Robert,
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