extraordinary%20encounters

they began to get nervous. Besides that, there
was no evidence of guano. Still curious, they
decided to plow ahead and kept walking for
another mile or two. Then, with the aid of
their flashlights, they made an amazing discovery:
the floor was worn smooth, and the
cavern walls and ceiling seemed cut artificially.
What had seemed a cave now looked more
like a tunnel.
A light flashed, and three men confronted
Fields and Joe. The men were of normal appearance,
seemingly around fifty years of age,
dressed in jeans and flannel shirts. Only their
shoes, with their unusually thick soles, looked
out of the ordinary. One of the strangers
asked what they were doing there, but he
acted as if he did not believe the two men’s answer.
Two more strangers showed up. The
guano-hunters were badly frightened, convinced
that they had fallen into the hands of a
criminal gang in hiding. Their fears only rose
when one of the band told them that they
should accompany them deeper into the cave.
About two miles later, they came to a spot
where the walls expanded. There they encountered
a strange device that looked like a toboggan
with a seat and a control panel. It gave off
a buzzing sound. The group sat on the wide
seat and flew off at a “terrific” speed. After a
journey of some considerable distance, they
saw a similar machine approaching them.
Suddenly acting nervous, they maneuvered
their machine to a stop. It landed two feet
from the other one. The crew of the first ship
leaped out and tried to run away, but the crew
of the second, who were carrying pencil-like
weapons, shot them down, killing all of them.
Certain of their imminent doom, Fields
and Joe watched as the new group approached
them. One member asked if they were “surface
people.” After telling him that they had
come from there just recently, the stranger
went on to say that they were lucky they had
been rescued. “You would have also become
horloks, and then we would have had to kill
you also.” The man spoke in a friendly manner,
giving Fields the confidence to ask what
was going on. All the man would say was that
Mount Shasta 181
surface people “are not ready to have the
things that the ancients have left. . . . However,
there are a great many evil people here
who create many unpleasant things for both
us and the surface people. They are safe because
no one on the surface believes that we
exist.”
Ralph and Joe were flown back to the surface
and warned never to return. Fields says,
“We had been told just enough for me to believe
that down there somewhere there were
and are things that might baffle the greatest
minds of this Earth. Sometimes I am tempted
to go back into that cave if I could again find
it, which I doubt, but then I know the warning
I heard in there might be too true” (Commander
X, 1990).
It may be worth noting that H. G. Wells’s
famous science-fiction novel The Time Ma -
chine (1895) features a race of violent subterranean
humans known as Morlocks.
See Also: Brodie’s deros; Hollow earth; Mount
Shasta; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Commander X [pseud. of Jim Keith], 1990. Under -
ground Alien Bases. New Brunswick, NJ: Abelard
Publications.
Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta in northern California, near the
Oregon border, is the scene of occult legends
that go back to the nineteenth century. Even
before white settlers arrived in the region in
1827, however, local Indian tribes believed
that giant creatures, apparently of the
Sasquatch variety, lived in caves on the mountain.
The giants were feared because of their
habit of capturing individuals and taking
them to their caves, where they would squeeze
their victims to death. Another race of beings,
small, usually invisible entities akin to fairies,
also called Shasta their home, according to
tribal traditions.
But it took Frederick Spencer Oliver of
nearby Yreka, California, to put the mountain
on the mystical map. In the mid 1880s,
Oliver, then in his teens, produced a novel, A
Dweller on Two Planets, which he claimed an