Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

y the mysterious little men. In story after story, from North and South America and from Europe,the creatures are seen alighting from their shiny craft, picking up plants, and taking off again beforeamazed witnesses. Such behavior is well designed to make the investigators of such stories assumethat the visitors are gathering samples with all the care and precision of seasoned exobiologists. Arewe not, after all, designing robots that will continue analysis of the Martian surface begun when theViking probe reached that planet? In a few cases, the visitors even take the time to interview thewitnesses at lenght concerning agricultural techniques! Such was the case in a 1964 landing that,curiously enough, took place in Tioga City, New York, on the very day of the Socorro landing,about ten hours before Officer Zamora observed the egg-shaped, shiny object so familiar to usnow.Gary T. Wilcox, a dairy farmer, was spreading fertilizer in his field. Some time before 10:00 A.M.,he stopped to check a field surrounded by woods, about a mile away from his barn. He wanted tosee whether ground conditions would allow plowing. As he approached the field, however, he saw ashiny object that he first took to be a discarded refrigerator, then a wing tank or some other aircraftpart. When he drew closer, he realized that the object was egg-shaped and about twenty by sixteenfeet, had the appearance of durable metal, and did not look like anything he had ever seen before.He touched it. It was not hot.He observed no door or hatch of any kind. And yet two human-like creatures suddenly appeared.They were about four feet tall and wore seamless clothing, with headdress and a full-face hood thatdid not allow Wilcox to observe any facial features. They appeared to have arms and legs. Theytalked to him "in smooth English," but their voices did not come from their heads, as far as Wilcoxcould tell, but from their bodies."Do not be alarmed, we have talked to people before. We are from what you people refer to asplanet Mars," they said.In spite of Gary's conviction that "someone must be playing a gag on me," the strange conversationcontinued. The two beings were interested in fertilizers and expressed considerable interest in theiruse. They stated that they grew food on Mars, but that changes in the environment were creatingproblems they hoped to solve by obtaining information about our agricultural techniques. Theirquestions were quite childlike, and they appeared to have no knowledge of the subject whatever.Each one carried a tray filled with soil."When they talked about space or the ship, I had difficulty in understanding their explanations.They said they only travel to this planet every two years and they are presently using the WesternHemisphere," Wilcox reported.They explained that they landed only during daylight hours, "because their ship is less readilyvisible in daylight," and they said they were surprised Wilcox had seen their craft. They alsovolunteered information about space travel. Our astronauts would not be successful, they said,because their bodies would not adapt to space conditions. Finally, they requested a bag of fertilizerbut, as Wilcox walked away to get it, the craft took off, disappearing from sight in a very fewseconds. The witness left a bag of fertilizer at the place; the next day it was gone.In many of the South American landings, entities have been described walking away with soilsamples, plants, even boulders. Everything in their behavior seems designed to make us believe inthe outer-space origin of these strange beings and their craft. And, indeed, such absurd incidentshave greatly influenced the researchers, including myself, who have seriously thought that theUFOs were space probes sent by an extraterrestrial civilization.On November 1, 1954, Mrs. Rosa Lotti-Dainelli, forty years old, was going to the cemetry atPoggio d'Ambra, Bucine, near Arezzo, Italy. A devout Italian woman, she was carrying a potcontaining flowers. Her mind at that moment must have been far from science fiction speculation,yet what happened to her in the next minute constitutes perhaps the strangest of the entire wave of1954 incidents. As Mrs. Lotti-Dainelli walked past an open grassy space, she saw a vertical,torpedo-shaped machine with pointed edges – a machine, in other words, shaped like two coneswith common bases. In the lower cone was an opening through which two small seats were visible.The craft looked metallic. It did not resemble anything the witness had seen before.