The Alien Abduction Files

The Most Startling Cases of Human-Alien Contact Ever Reported

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Contents

Missing Time in Colorado

It was a beautiful mid-August afternoon in Arvada, Colorado, and Denise and Ed Stoner were looking forward to a weekend trip to their free-standing mobile home on the Grace Acree Ranch near Buena Vista. The Stoners, Denise's parents, and 50 other families parked their trailers year-round under the watchful eye of the ranch owner, Grace Acree. During the summer months, the Stoners routinely took weekend sojourns to their home away from home 137 miles southwest of Arvada, a suburb west of Denver.

The clear blue Arkansas River lined with smooth, gray river rocks and jagged boulders, cuts through the property. It is known worldwide for its excellent whitewater rafting. To the Stoners, it was an inviting reprieve from the hustle and bustle of the metropolitan area where they made their home. Each year, they spent approximately 20 weekends at the ranch fishing, hiking, and visiting with family and friends.

Their trailer was the last in a line of campers close to the fields and Arkansas River. They had constructed their own fireplace, table and chairs, and privy away from the ranch house that sat on the property. Though they were not far from family and friends, beyond them there was only open sky, flaxen fields, high mountain peaks, and the sound of coyotes teaching their young to howl at the moon.

Not far from their camper and next to the river were the remains of an old cabin that had been occupied nearly 100 years earlier by the first inhabitants of this tract of land, a woman named Emily and her husband. Two small graves were sheltered behind a half-fallen black iron fence, hidden among the aspens. Local legend has it that Emily's young child drowned in the river, and overcome with grief, she followed shortly thereafter, swallowed up by the roaring river's grasp.

Denise and Ed loved walking for miles in the Colorado sun, looking for arrowheads and tools the Ute people had used for a summer camp in the area before European settlers occupied the land. A railroad crossed the property not far past the gate, and once or twice a day, a train would come roaring through on its way cross-country. It broke the silence in the serene setting steeped in Native American tradition and cowboy culture. It was to be a delightful weekend getaway.

Denise's parents, accompanied by a close family friend, had gone on ahead of their children to prepare the camp for a weekend of merriment, relaxation, and fishing at the headwaters of the Arkansas River. The Stoners were expected to arrive no later than 8:30 p.m. for a dinner that was being prepared by Denise's mother. Denise had loaded the car with food, clothing, and gear with assistance from her 14-year-old disabled daughter Dienna, while Ed tended to details of his job as operations manager at a Boulder flooring business before leaving for the weekend.

The trip to their camp had become part of their weekend routine. It was 5 p.m. on Friday afternoon, August 13, 1982, when the three family members and their 6-year-old dog, Ginseng, a pure bred Shih-Tzu, piled into their blue and white Ford Granada for the drive to their campsite. Ed gassed up the car and checked the odometer near his home in Arvada. The sky was clear and traffic was light on the back-roads. His eyes met a huge sign stretching across the highway that announced "Howdy Folks! Welcome to Golden — Where the West Lives." Traffic was heavier now, but he would soon pick up U.S. Highway 285, the route that led to Buena Vista. Finally, traffic thinned somewhat as they and others made their way to Conifer, Bailey, and Grant along winding mountain roads to Kenosha Pass, a 10,000-foot high cut that leads toward Jefferson and the South Park Valley on the eastern side of the Front Range. Beyond Jefferson, U.S. Highway 285 straightens, offering a more comfortable and relaxed journey across the broad basin.

Ed always stopped on Kenosha Pass for a breather and to take in the view of the South Park Valley and the town of Jefferson at the base of the pass. The scenic overlook is about 60 miles from their Arvada home. Considering the city traffic and mountain roads, it took almost 90 minutes driving time. They arrived at approximately 6:30 p.m. and stayed at the scenic vista for not more than 10 minutes. Denise decided to stay in the car while Ed and Dienna took in the beauty of the valley below. They returned to the car, Ed taking the wheel again. The sun was still strong in the western sky, as he made a right turn and a gentle, curving arch downward and to the left toward the valley floor below. Their drive across South Park Valley to Trout Creek Pass and their encampment 7 miles north of the town of Buena Vista would take an additional 90 minutes.

While Ed wheeled the car down Kenosha Pass toward Jefferson, Denise was busy watching the mountains and the vast expanse of the valley below, while Dienna was getting sleepy in the back seat. Ed and Denise were relaxed and talking, switching topics every few minutes. Visibility was crystal clear for miles. Denise was taking in the ranchlands to her left, barren except for one new home being built not far off the road. There were never many cars on this stretch of highway in the early evening, none on this particular night.

As the Stoners began to descend from Kenosha Pass to Jefferson in the South Park Valley, Denise heard Dienna's soft, evenly spaced breathing as she slept soundly in the backseat. Ginseng was pressed up against Ed's leg, his head nestled near his knee, sound asleep. Finally, they passed through Jefferson.

Glancing into the sky, Denise's eyes were drawn to two yellow-white lights that were increasing in size and seemed to be rapidly approaching. They were 4 miles south of Jefferson when the lights were over the car. Without warning, the Stoner's vehicle began to move sideways off the highway toward the desert floor, under someone else's control. They felt momentum, but nothing more.

As if only a moment had passed, the Stoners found themselves beyond the southern end of the Mosquito Range driving up Trout Creek Pass beyond South Park Valley. They had no memory of driving through the valley or the town of Fairplay, south of Jefferson, on the stretch of US 285 that led to Buena Vista. A moment before it was broad daylight, but now the blackness of night had blanketed the valley and a penetrating chill had fallen upon the interior of their car. Somehow 40 miles of their journey had simply vanished.

Ed was mystified. Why was it dark? Who had turned on his headlights? It wasn't him. The sun had been shining only a moment earlier! The hair on the back of his neck was standing on end. Denise spoke first: "What the hell just happened?" Immediately Ed pulled the car to the side of the road and checked his watch. Although moments before it was 6:55, it was now nearly 11. He was hyperventilating, disoriented, and perplexed. His fear increased exponentially when he checked his trip odometer. It read 74 miles: the exact reading that he had taken 4 miles south of Jefferson, hours earlier. There was a major discrepancy not only in time, but in travel miles. Somehow the stretch of highway that they always traveled from Jefferson to Trout Creek Pass had not registered on the odometer or in their minds. They had lost 40 miles on the trip odometer and more than three hours had passed. Ed and Denise sat on the side of the road in silence attempting to rationalize the discrepancy. They were stunned, shaken beyond words. There was no prosaic explanation for their lost time and the missing miles. Shaking his head in disbelief, Ed proceeded up Trout Creek Pass, taking in the starry night sky to Johnson Village and Buena Vista. Seven miles beyond that was their destination, the Grace Acree Ranch.

When Ed wheeled into the ranch, he and Denise were met by a surprising site. Their family and friends were standing in the road in front of their trailer, watching to see if the headlights coming down the driveway were theirs. The anxious expressions on their faces added an additional layer of mystery to the night. What had happened? Where had they been? It was going on 11:45 p.m., more than six hours from their 5 p.m. departure time.

Ed's father-in-law and his friend had become so concerned that they were entertaining the idea of using the phone at the ranch house to call the Colorado Highway Patrol. Ed checked his trip odometer again. This time it registered 97 miles from his house in Arvada to his destination seven miles north of Buena Vista. On every preceding trip they had taken that summer, the odometer registered 137 total miles. There was a 40-mile discrepancy and no simple explanation for what had occurred. How could they explain this without sounding irrational? They offered the best explanation they could come up with: the truth.

Denise's folks initially thought that their daughter and son-in-law were kidding when they explained that they didn't know where they had been and why they were late. They razzed and teased them in a joking manner, not believing a word they said, even though they could see they were still stunned. Denise's mother, especially, insisted upon a rational explanation. It took some time for the reality that they were telling the truth to set in. She was persistent, but after a while, she realized that Denise and Ed weren't lying. They really didn't know what had happened and they were a bit shaken by it, but not so upset that they pursued an answer at that time.

The Stoners returned home after their weekend sojourn, perplexed but none the worse for wear. Denise might have considered filing a formal UFO sighting and "missing time" report, if she had known of an investigating agency, but she didn't. The U.S. Air Force had shut down Project Blue Book, its UFO investigation branch, in December 1969. Without it, the Stoners knew of nowhere to report their sighting and missing time event. Denise's full-time job with the National Park Service and the care of her daughter did not allow free time to search for answers. Ed also worked long hours at his job. Computers weren't household items in 1982, the way that they are today, so a quick Internet search for help was impossible. Still, the perplexing event weighed on Denise's mind. She was determined to eventually find an answer, but it would be nearly 30 years before she asked me to assist her in solving her mystery.

Anything but Extraterrestrial

Had it not closed more than a decade before her missing time incident, Denise might have filed an official sighting report with Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force's (USAF) official UFO investigative arm, which operated at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base from 1952 until its closure in 1969. Its first predecessor, Project Sign, was placed under the jurisdiction of the Intelligence Division of the Air Force's Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, and was given the responsibility to collect UFO reports that might be a threat to national security and distribute them to concerned agencies. In 1948, it issued an assessment of the situation, which concluded that the flying saucers are structured craft under intelligent control that could out-fly and out-maneuver U.S. and Russian aircraft, and which were probably extraterrestrial in origin. The estimate of the situation was forwarded to the Pentagon, but was subsequently ordered destroyed by the USAF's Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, after he cited his opinion that the investigators had failed to produce physical proof of extraterrestrial visitation. Subsequently, Vandenberg closed Project Sign.

In early 1949, the Air Force announced that the name "Sign" had been compromised, so a new name, Project Grudge, was given to Project Sign's successor. Grudge's mission was to devote minimal time to recording, summarizing, and evaluating. When it obtained enough data to conclude that UFOs were not a threat to national security, the project would be closed. Future reports were to be handled on a routine basis and not given a lot of attention. Grudge achieved its goal six months later when 77 percent of its 244 UFO cases were explained away as being attributable to natural phenomena, misinterpretation, or psychologically motivated. It continued to function covertly for another two years with the goal of debunking UFO sighting reports due to national security concerns. It was feared that the American public might enter into mass hysteria if an enemy planted false rumors of alien craft in U.S. airspace.

Captain Edward Ruppelt took charge of Project Grudge in 1951 and breathed new life into the program by expanding and standardizing it. UFO reports were once again taken seriously, and a directive was issued to every USAF facility in the world to immediately send information on any UFO sightings to the Air Technical Intelligence Center. In 1952, the now well-organized group was renamed Project Blue Book.

Upon Ruppelt's retirement from the Air Force in 1954, Project Blue Book downsized and came under the direction of four additional project heads before it closed in 1969. It never again enjoyed the large staff and support that it had under Ruppelt's direction. Its focus changed from the systematic documentation and investigation of UFO reports, to explaining away as many reports as possible, by any means and without serious investigation.

In 1955, the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, evaluated 3,201 UFO reports to determine whether or not they represented technological developments not known to this country and to construct a model of a UFO based upon the data. Their study, the largest one ever done for the United States Air Force, under contract to the Foreign Technology Division of the USAF in Dayton, Ohio, was titled "Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14." Each case was evaluated on several criteria and categories, including Balloon, Astronomical, Aircraft, Miscellaneous, Psychological, Insufficient Information, and Unknown. "Unknown" meant that it defied explanation as anything originating from planet Earth. In the end, 79.5 percent of the sightings were assigned to the first six categories, indicating that they had a mundane explanation, and a significant 21.5 percent fell into the "unknown" category, meaning that despite every effort to identify the UFO, it defied prosaic explanation. The cases were evaluated for quality, witness reliability, witness observational experience, sighting duration, and the distance from the witness. No report could be listed as "Unknown" unless all four final report evaluators agreed that it was a true unknown. All other categories required the agreement of only two of the evaluators.

An evaluation of the data yielded the result that 31.1 percent of the "excellent" cases were assigned to the Unknown category, whereas only 3.9 percent of the Insufficient Information cases were "excellent." A full 62.5 percent of the best cases were classified as Unknown, whereas only 33.9 percent of the "doubtful" and "poor" cases were Unknowns. Clearly, the evaluators presented significant information that structured crafts for which there was no prosaic explanation were entering U.S. air space.

Despite this very significant conclusion, on October 25, 1955, the USAF issued a widely publicized official press release that contradicted the Battelle Institute's official report. Donald Quarles, the Secretary of the Air Force, stated, "On the basis of this study, we believe that no objects such as those popularly described as flying saucers have over flown the United States. I feel certain that even the unknown three percent could have been explained as conventional phenomena or illusions if more complete observational data had been available."

This claim was a direct contradiction of the study's findings and patently false. The evidence clearly indicates that 21.5 percent, not 3 percent, of the cases studied fell into the Unknown category, meaning that they could not be explained as conventional phenomena or psychologically generated illusions. The probability that the Unknowns were just missed knowns was less than 1 percent. Again, political expediency had overshadowed the truth. The Air Force had an "anything but extraterrestrial" agenda.

The controversy began once again in 1966, when 1,112 UFO reports were registered, and the Air Force was accused of incompetence or a cover-up. That same year, the Air Force awarded a contract to the University of Colorado for a 15-month study of the UFO problem under the Direction of Edward U. Condon, PhD, a physicist and theoretician at the University of Colorado. Condon was member of the National Academy of Sciences and had served as the Director of the National Bureau of Standards for the federal government. He named Robert Low, the Assistant Dean at the Graduate School, as his assistant and project coordinator.

Nearly from its inception, the project was plagued with charges of misconduct. Although Condon was ostensibly chosen for his eminence and his lack of any stated position on UFOs, it soon became apparent to overseers that he held a negative position on UFO reality. Critics alleged that Edward Condon avoided cases that warranted serious attention and clearly presented a negative tone in his statements to the media. His negative bias became clear as a bell when he presented the biggest crackpot cases of alien-human contact he could find, drawing uproarious laughter from his audiences.