extraordinary%20encounters

At this point the beings—whom Shaw presumed
to be from Mars—tried to carry him
and his friend away, but weighing as little as
they did, they lacked the strength. So they
turned around and flashed lights in the direction
of a nearby bridge. The two men then
perceived an airship, some one-hundred fifty
feet long, hovering twenty feet over the water.
The three Martians floated with a swaying
motion toward the craft. A door opened on
the side, and the trio disappeared inside. The
ship flew away and was seen no more.
Concluding his letter, Shaw blasted other
airship stories as “clumsy fakes” that “should
not be given credence by anyone”—presumably
with tongue buried deeply in cheek. Besides
being the first known alien encounter in
America to see print, Shaw’s was also the first
of many hoaxes to come in the months ahead,
as newspaper columns were filled with outlandish
tales of airships and their occupants,
extraterrestrial and human.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Allingham’s Martian;
Aurora Martian; Brown’s Martians; Calfrustling
aliens; Dentons’s Martians and Venusians;
Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga; Lethbridge’s
aeronauts; Martian bees; Michigan giant; Mince-
Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians; Smead’s
Martians; Smith; Wilcox’s Martians; Wilson
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnold’s Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.
Sheep-killing alien
In early 1968, according to a Bolivian newspaper,
a farm woman near Otoco went to her
sheep corral early one evening to discover that
a strange net had been placed over it. A humanlike
figure, four feet tall and wearing a
bulky-looking spacesuit, was busy slaughtering
sheep with a tubular, hooked instrument.
After killing the animals, he would dump
their entrails into a bag.
The woman shouted at him and hurled
stones in his direction. The alien strolled over
Shiva 227
to a boxlike instrument with a wheel at the
top. As he twisted the wheel, the net was
withdrawn into the box. As he was so engaged,
the witness had picked up a club and
was about to use it on the intruder. In response,
he threw his weapon at her. Each time
it returned to his hands like a boomerang, and
each time it passed the woman, it cut her.
Gathering his tools, the alien then floated
noisily upward and was lost to sight.
The local police colonel counted thirtyfour
dead sheep. Each had had some of its digestive
organs removed.
See Also: Calf-rustling aliens; Close encounters of
the third kind
Further Reading
Galindez, Oscar A., 1970. “Violent Humanoid Encountered
in Bolivia.” Flying Saucer Review 16, 4
(July/August): 15–17.
Shiva
Shiva is usually known as a major Hindu god,
associated both with destruction and chaos
and with wisdom and meditation. But in February
and March 1994, Shiva—“the blood,
the muscle, fur, bone, and spirit of animals”—
communicated through Sedona, Arizona, psychic
Toraya Ayres. He spoke from and for the
animal point of view. He described himself
once as having the physique of a bear, another
time calling himself only a “body of energy”
and denying that he had any physical body.
Shiva said that human beings need to reexamine
their destructive relationship with animals.
Humans should not see animals as inferior
to them but as equal but different
spiritual beings. Animals do not have a concept
of God, but they do have a profound understanding
of their place in nature’s order.
“We do live in an eternal now of loving cooperation
within nature, which we recognize
without words as a divine force, and as many
divine energies working together for the
greater good.” Like humans, animals evolve
and move into higher dimensions “in a different
vibrational range.”
“The physical world that you know is only
a tiny part of reality,” according to Shiva.