Empire unusual suggested

16 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA
it was a saucer, it spun and zoomed about ten feet off the ground
and up into the air and I could not even see where it went.
My lights suddenly came on. I started the car and it was all right.
I pulled up to that place, got out with a flashlight and walked over
to where it had been sitting. A large hole was melted in the snow
about a foot across and grass was showing on it. The grass was warm,
but nothing was dug up around there.
The lady, who met only with disbelief when she told her story
to her family, reported the case in a letter to Otto Binder when
his syndicated series "Our Space Age" began to appear in a number
of newspapers. 17
The most puzzling element in this account is not so much what
is described but the fact that such stories have become, since 1946,
rather common in all parts of the world. To a physicist, of course,
they appear unbelievable, just as the strange mannikin met by
St. Anthony would appear unbelievable to a biologist. And yet
there are several cases on record in which similar accounts arc
associated with traces that can hardly be questioned.
In the celebrated incident at Socorro, New Mexico, it was a
policeman, Lonnie Zamora, who reported seeing two small beings,
dressed in white, close to a shiny egg-shaped object, which rested
on four pads before it took off with a thunderous noise—only to
become perfectly silent as it flew away. The incident took place on
April 24,1964, and was the occasion for some interesting measurements
(by local police officials and a Federal Bureau of Investigation
man) of the traces left by the object, and of some even
more interesting deductions by William T. Powers 18 on the
possible mechanical construction of the landing gear. Here again
we observe an emotional pattern strangely reminiscent of the
medieval scene just surveyed: the witness in the Socorro case,
when he was about to be interviewed by Air Force investigators,
was so little convinced that he had observed a device of human
construction that he asked to sec a priest before releasing his report
to the authorities.
Then, of course, there is the report of the Kentucky family who
claimed to have been besciged by several "little men," whose appearance
was completely fantastic. The incident occurred on the
night of April 21, 1955, and was the occasion of many strange
VISIONS OF A PARALLEL WORLD 17
observations of the behavior of the "visitors." One of the creatures
was seen approaching the farmhouse with both hands raised.
When it was about twenty feet away, two of the witnesses shot at
the intruder. It "did a flip" and was lost in the darkness. Then it
appeared at the window when the men came back inside the house
and was again shot at. Another creature, seen on the roof, was
knocked over by a bullet, but instead of falling, it floated to the
ground.
The entities had oversized heads, almost perfectly round, and
very long arms, terminating in huge hands armed with talons.
They wore a sort of glowing aluminum suit, which is reminiscent
of the sylphs of 1491. Their eyes were very large and apparently
very sensitive. They always approached the house from the darkest
corner. The eyes had no pupils and no eyelids. The eyes were
much larger than human eyes and set on the side of the head. The
creatures generally walked upright, but when shot at, they would
run on all fours with extreme rapidity, and their arms seemed to
provide most of the propulsion.
On September 10, 1954, in Quarouble, a small French village
near the Belgian border, at about 10:30 P.M., Marius Dewilde
stepped outside and was at once intrigued by a dark mass on the
railroad tracks. Dewilde then heard footsteps in the night. Turning
on his light, he found himself facing two beings wearing very
large helmets and what seemed to be heavy diving suits. They
had broad shoulders, but Dewilde did not see their arms. They
were less than four feet tall. Dewilde moved toward them with
the intention of intercepting them, but a light appeared on the
side of the dark object on the tracks, and Dewilde found he could
not make a single move. When he regained control of his body,
the two visitors had rccntercd the supposed machine and flown
away.
This classic observation had a strange sequel, never before published.
French civilian investigators who studied the case were
cooperating closely with local police officials, but there were other
people on the site, notably representatives of the Air Police from
Paris. When an inquiry was made regarding the analyses performed
on some stones found calcined at the spot where the
saucer had been seen by Dewilde, it was discovered that even the