Empire unusual suggested

46 PASSPORT TO MAGONIA THE GOOD PEOPLE 47
on April 21, 1897, by one of the most prominent citizens in
Kansas, Alexander Hamilton. In an affidavit quoted in several
recent UFO books and journals, Hamilton states that he was
awakened by a noise among the cattle and went out with two
other men. He then saw an airship descend gently toward the
ground and hover within fifty yards of it.
It consisted of a great cigar-shaped portion, possibly three hundred
feet long, with a carriage underneath. The carriage was made
of glass or some other transparent substance alternating with a
narrow strip of some material. It was brilliantly lighted within and
everything was plainly visible—it was occupied by six of the strangest
beings I ever saw. They were jabbering together, but we could not
understand a word they said.
Upon seeing the witnesses, the pilots of the strange ship turned
on some unknown power, and the ship rose about three hundred
feet above them:
It seemed to pause and hover directly over a two-year-old heifer,
which was bawling and jumping, apparently fast in the fence. Going
to her, we found a cable about a half-inch in thickness made of some
red material, fastened in a slip knot around her neck, one end
passing up to the vessel, and the heifer tangled in the wire fence.
We tried to get it off but could not, so we cut the wire loose and
stood in amazement to see the ship, heifer and all, rise slowly, disappearing
in the northwest.
Hamilton was so frightened he could not sleep that night:
Rising early Tuesday, I started out by horse, hoping to find some
trace of my cow. This I failed to do, but coming back in the evening
found that Link Thomas, about three or four miles west of Leroy,
had found the hide, legs and head in his field that day. He, thinking
someone had butchered a stolen beast, had brought the hide to
town for identification, but was greatly mystified in not being able
to find any tracks in the soft ground. After identifying the hide by
my brand, I went home. But every time I would drop to sleep I
would see the cursed thing, with its big lights and hideous people. I
don't know whether they are devils or angels, or what; but we all
saw them, and my whole family saw the ship, and I don't want any
more to do with them.
One more case, and the circle will be closed. And it will serve
to take a case that has been widely reported and discussed among
UFO students though it has passed practically unnoticed in the
national press.
A horse named Snippy, missing for two days, was found on
September 15, 1967, six miles from the main highway near the
Great Sand Dunes National Monument, in Colorado. No flesh
remained on the head, neck and shoulders, the hide was peeled
back to expose the skull, and the vital organs were gone, according
to Snippy's owner, Mrs. Berle Lewis, and her brother, Harry
King. When they went to the site, they also observed what seemed
to be fifteen circular exhaust marks covering an area about one
hundred by fifty yards. A chico bush had been flattened, and close
to it there were six identical holes, two inches wide and four
inches deep.
As the horse lay about a quarter of a mile from a cabin owned
by an eighty-seven-year-old lady, Mrs. Lewis and King went to
interview her, and she said that she had seen a large object pass
over her home at rooftop level on the day Snippy was last seen.
She added that, without her glasses, she had been unable to determine
what the object was.
Alamosa County Sheriff Ben Phillips declined to visit the site,
stating the horse must have been killed by lightning. A pathologist
who did go to the site, however, said that "this horse was
definitely not hit by lightning." A Forestry official who checked
the area with a gcigcr counter found high readings in the vicinity
of the burns, but lower readings as he went away from them,
toward the horse.
The reactions to the report and its sequels have been fairly
typical. The University of Colorado, where Dr. Condon was conducting
a $500,000 study of UFO's for the U.S. Air Force,
sent someone to take a look at what was left of Snippy, who had
been dead for a month. "I find nothing unusual about the death
of the horse," he said.
In Ray Palmer's magazine, Flying Saucers, an American ufologist
asked in anger:
He finds nothing unusual? Perhaps the razor-sharp, clean incision
around the horse's neck was the work of a mountain lion? The huge,
circular indentation and several smaller ones—was that a mon-