extraordinary%20encounters

discovered at some point in our near future to
produce fields around their craft that warp
space-time. By manipulating those fields, they
are able to traverse what we think of as space
and time as well” (Davenport, 1992). Davenport,
however, does not claim to have seen
any of these time travelers himself.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Atlantis; Lemuria
Further Reading
Davenport, Marc, 1992. Visitors from Time: The Se -
cret of the UFOs. Tigard, OR: Wild Flower Press.
Goldberg, Bruce, n.d. “Time Travelers I Have Met.”
h t t p : / / w w w. d r b ru c e g o l d b e r g . c o m / Ti m e Tr a ve lers2.htm.
Tin-can aliens
Four miles east of Long Prairie, Minnesota, at
7:40 P.M. on October 23, 1965, a young radio
announcer named James Townsend was
rounding a curve when suddenly he saw something
in the road and slammed on his brakes.
It was a rocket-shaped UFO resting on thre e
fins. The car skidded to a halt only twenty feet
f rom the device, which stood thirty to fort y
feet tall and was ten feet in diameter.
In a circle of light beneath the UFO,
Townsend observed three objects or entities
that looked like beer cans on tripod legs and
with three matchstick arms. Even though they
had no eyes, he was certain that they were
staring at him. When he stepped out of his
car, they came toward him. After what seemed
an eternity, they scooted under the ship and
disappeared into the light circle. The UFO
shot off with an ear-splitting roar.
His outlandish story notwithstanding, lawenforcement
officers and civilian investigators
believed that Townsend, a devoutly religious
man, was not perpetrating a hoax.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Jansen, Clare John, 1966. “Little Tin Men in Minnesota.”
Fate 19, 2 (February): 36–40.
Tree-stump aliens
One of the most bizarre close encounters of
the third kind ever took place on the evening
Tulpa 245
of April 5, 1966, in Newport, Oregon, during
a nationwide UFO wave. Though such reports
overwhelmingly describe human or humanoid
entities, two teenaged girls claimed to
have seen aliens that looked like tree stumps.
As they told the story, they were walking to
the house of one of them—Kathy Reeves—
when they sensed that someone was following
them. At a turn in the road, they looked behind
them to see something like a “flashlight
with a cover over the end.” Assuming it was a
prankster trying to scare them, they threw
rocks toward the light. But when they did so,
other, bigger lights suddenly switched on.
Frightened, the girls started running. Their
dash home was interrupted, however, by a
bizarre sight: three shapes moving across a
pasture apparently heading toward the lights.
They looked, Kathy Reeves later said, like
“three little tree stumps” walking on legs that
resembled a tree trunk’s tap roots. They had
no heads or arms. They were clad in multicolored
clothes, “orange, blue, white, yellow, and
watermelon-colored” (Brandon, 1978). The
sight set the witnesses screaming homeward.
The resulting publicity brought investigators
and curiosity-seekers to the Reeves residence
over the next few days. At least two of
them, including Deputy Sheriff Thomas W.
Price, reported seeing strange moving lights.
There were no further reports of aliens, treestump
ones or otherwise, though.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Brandon, Jim, 1978. Weird America: A Guide to
Places of Mystery in the United States. New York:
E. P. Dutton.
Tulpa
“Tulpa” is a Tibetan term for an entity created
by mental concentration. Such an entity is believed
to take on at least a quasi-physical form
and to be visible to others besides its creator.
The most famous tulpa account appears in
Alexandra David-Neel’s With Mystics and Ma -
gicians in Tibet, originally published in 1931.
David-Neel, an adventurous French woman