Many encounters occurred while we were driving down a remote country road or on a main highway. Most were what you would call an abduction, in the fact that we sometimes experience a loss of time and couldn’t recall what happened…i.e. until my 1986/1987 “flood of recollections.”

As an example, the following encounter provided my companions and me an opportunity to inspect the craft up-close and personal. The narration below is part of Chapter Six of the book To Earth From Heaven. As I recall, it occurred in the Fall of 1954 when my friends and I were seniors in high school. It took place north and a little east of Waverly, Nebraska while we were hunting pheasants.    

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A wonderful cool autumn day, my friends, Dewi and Barry, and I drove the flat gravel roads of eastern Nebraska. We were hunting the illusive colorful fowl, the pheasant. It was a hazy day. Glistening dull brown, yellow, red and orange, on exotic patches of prairie plant leaves, heightened the display of Nebraska’s flatland to its viewable best — as it was cast artistically against the mundane filtered golden gray of a hazy sunlit sky. Dewi drove as Barry and I sat in the back seat of my awesome coal-black, turtle-back 1949 Ford limousine. Barry and I held shotgun shells in one hand and our shotguns in the other. We anticipated at any moment, in the textured rolling fields of partly harvested crops, or in the adjacent road-ditch weeds, the shocking sight of an exotic pheasant. I knew, because of my past hunting experience, the first glimpse of a pheasant, just before the primitive kill, would become one of the most exciting moments of my life.

On the one hand, this day seemed to be an enchanting place in time and space. On the other hand, especially I felt weary, a little tired and bored, because we had yet to bag a pheasant. Besides this, our battle of male egos, including my own, seemed pointless. Competing about who was the best shot, let alone the best among us at anything or everything, stirred silent undercurrents of estrangement. The macho male self in all of us enriched my desire to go home. Mid afternoon, it seemed as if the enraptured day had been lost to our intrinsic egoism. Little did I know I would soon learn another significant lesson of life, not modesty nor harmony, but to simply be open — among several other practical lessons in a hidden out-of-this-world madness.

I could tell Dewi and Barry were also weary, tired of riding in the car since morning. We typically didn’t remember the several encounters we had experienced with mysterious UFO craft this same day — and this, I’m sure, contributed to our irritability. Dewi eventually put the gas peddle to the car’s floorboard metal, streaking the colorful landscape past our windows — i.e. until Barry screamed in dire panic. “Dewi, stop. What in the hell is that,” he yelled.

“What in the hell is what,” I said.

“That across the mallow field,” he responded, pointing out over the prickly harvest stubble, toward what appeared to be a vehicle of some sort enshrouded in a small volume of light haze and fog. Dewi braked my turtle car to a turtle’s pace.

“It looks like a combine to me,” I said, as I observed a light gray-white flat-roofed structure with two narrow vertically elongated windows, one in the front facing us and one in the back immediately behind it. I could see the landscape through the windows.

Bringing the car to a dead halt, Dewi piped in, “It has to be a combine.”

Barry shot back, “No it isn’t. Don’t you see the air around it. Something very strange is going on here.”

I looked at the object closer and saw the air around it slightly fluctuate, magnifying a part of the trees behind it. Barry said, “Maybe we had better check it out.” Dewi and I agreed, so Barry and I got out and loaded our shot guns, as Dewi pulled my low-class car off the lonesome road near a small steel bridge, a few yards down the road.

Crouching down, shot guns in hand, Barry and I began to creep toward it –whatever it was. As we approached within a few yards of it, ready for anything to happen at any moment, it appeared stranger and stranger, even though the air around it now seemed to be completely natural. It appeared as if no one was in or near it, so we stood up straight. Standing frozen and somewhat speechless, Barry whispered, “It’s the strangest piece of farm equipment I have ever seen.”

Throwing a few whispered comments back and forth for a few minutes, about what it was, we heard Dewi boldly come walking through the mallow stubble, loudly asking questions. If someone was inside of the bizarre object, they surely knew we were now approaching. When Dewi got a closer look at it, he got so shocked, he insisted our situation might be dangerous and that we should return our shotguns to the car. The piece of equipment seemed so intriguing, I wasn’t about to return to the car and neither was Barry. So Dewi gathered the three guns into his arms and took them to the car, while Barry and I moved up close to what seemed to be the exotic piece of farm equipment.

Walking out in front of it, I noticed it had a vertically long white round cabin-like structure mounted on top of two shallow inverted cones, the upper of which appeared to be bright shinny metal — like zinc or nickel. The cabin top seemed to be flat and the surface of the cabin seemed like pure, smooth white painted plastic or metal. For all the world, the entire contraption, standing approximately 12 feet high, gave me the impression of a giant bell.

Seeing a white screen mesh covering the thick glass window on the inside shocked us; we knew we had seen through the front and back windows from the car. This indisputably meant someone was indeed inside. Someone had to have put the screen on the window and most probably, at this very moment, was staring out at us. Barry and I cautiously moved up close, but we couldn’t see through the white screened window. About this time Dewi joined us.

I touched the top of the top cone. It felt smooth. When I touched the cabin, it seemed to be lightly textured. Bending down to observe the bottom cone, I saw what appeared to be the charred medium brown, randomly black surface of several round concentric ribs, like joined rings, extending from the cone’s top outside perimeter to the cone’s lower point. It seemed strange that the surface of the bottom cone, most likely, at some time, had been very hot.

Dewi came over and looked at the bottom cone. We both agreed that the previously hot bottom must have been a part of the strange vehicle’s propulsion system. He got so concerned, he warned me not to touch it. He said it just might be radioactive. (We were studying physics and chemistry at the time.) Yet, I believe I did touch it, regardless of Dewi’s warnings, with no harm done.

Standing in front of the bell, I wondered how it could remain upright without being supported. So Dewi pointed out a thin sloping rod extending from the bell’s outer perimeter to the ground in front of me. I got confused because I hadn’t seen it before and my vision distorted for a time before I could focus on the rod.

Again, completely focused, I moved around the bell to my left where I saw another rod. Momentarily touching the top cone, I noticed an identical vertically elongated white screened window on the side of the cabin. When I got behind the bell, I saw the screened rear window.

It seemed a little strange that the bell sat perched at the very edge of a deep creek bank. The long branches of tall trees hovered over it, casting a delightful array of leaf pattern shadows upon its surface. For a moment or two, I felt that wonderful oneness with the beauty of nature, an overpowering oneness with everything. To get a better look at the bell from the rear, I moved a short distance down the creek bank.

Suddenly, but very subtly, I felt confused. And it strangely seemed as if I might have lost some time.

Working my way back up the creek bank, I noticed a strange pipe-like mechanism now attached to the upper cone of the bell at the rear. I hadn’t noticed it before and this disturbed me. The pipe extended straight up, about 16 feet, where, near the tree branches, it turned down, from a knee-like joint, to penetrate the ground behind the bell, a few feet down the creek bank. It seemed as if “they”, whoever “they” were, were taking soil samples. About this time, Dewi and Barry came toward me saying that something very weird had just occurred up beside the bell in the mallow field. They convinced me I should forget the strange water pipe mechanism and come see what they had seen.

Still puzzled about the pipe, still feeling a strange emotional residue of being disoriented, and a little ill, I move a few feet on up the steep slope and began walking beside the bell. I at first didn’t completely notice a somewhat large, but obscure object now resting off beside the bell.

When Dewi and Barry told me to turn around, I saw what looked like another piece of farm equipment. It was within two or three feet of me. I knew it hadn’t been there before and this again disturbed me. It appeared to be a dull blue-brown-gray container of some sort, like a large weird coffin.

Standing so close to the strange coffin my belly could have touched it, I suddenly got even more confused. The air surrounding the coffin began to distort, magnifying my view of it, as well as my view of the surrounding weeds and grass. Yet, the bell for some mysterious reason didn’t seem much larger. What was even more strange was that, during the magnification, I felt a little more disoriented — yet, I could see the texture of the bell’s surface more clearly. It appeared to be a mixture of metal, ceramic and fiberglass. I saw, through varying degrees of magnification, what might have been the strands of fiberglass randomly mixed with a variety of smoother, lightly textured areas of gray, brown and blue. Dewi and Barry told me the coffin had mysteriously appeared there in some way they didn’t understand. At this point, the entire experience began to have a more shocking effect on all of us.

Completely puzzled about the coffin and how it had gotten there, I moved in front of it and began to observe all of its features more closely.

The top surface of the coffin, hanging an inch or two over the sides, appeared to be a lid. I moved back to the side and, regardless of Dewi’s warnings, moved my hand out to touch it. Dewi grabbed my hand, yelling that I might be hurt if I touched it. I don’t remember if I did touch it, but I do remember I wanted to lift the lid. Yet I don’t remember if I actually tried. If I did try, I couldn’t move it.

I moved back to the front and noticed the coffin was being held just above the ground by two thin metallic legs. Dewi mentioned legs on the rear of the coffin, so I moved to the rear and noticed two similar longer legs. All of the legs were different lengths, the thickness of the coffin varied from corner to corner, and the height and width varied from end to end. I got a little confused because nothing about the coffin seemed to be flat, parallel, symmetrical, level or plumb.

Dewi and Barry eventually convinced me the coffin was not important and that we should try to see who might be inside the bell. We tried to peer through the bell’s side window,
but couldn’t see through the whiteness of the screen. Barry and I tried to crawl up on the smooth sloping surface of the top cone, so we could get a closer look through the window, but it was so slick, it wouldn’t hold us. It seemed as if the only way we could peer through the screen was for two of us to hold the other one up to the window. We all, especially Dewi and I, wanted to try, so we flipped a coin and Dewi won. Barry and I grabbed him and held him up to the window. He peered through the window for several moments, then yelled, “My God, what are they? Let me down — let me down now!!!”

Barry and I couldn’t imagine what he had seen. Dewi just stood there in silence beside the bell for a time and wouldn’t tell us what he saw through the window. He finally said we wouldn’t believe him if he told us — that we would think he was making it up. After an intense interrogation, he said he had seen small lizards or alligators moving around inside the bell, standing on their hind legs — about seven of them. After more questions he told us, “I saw a small control console at the outside wall.” We wanted more details, but all he could tell us was that the control console stood only a foot to a foot-and-a-half above the floor. It was about the right size for the small lizards or alligators. We at first thought he was teasing, but he eventually got so serious, we began to believe him. If he indeed had seen small weird creatures, we imagined we might be harmed. We imagined they might have come to earth from another place we couldn’t imagine.

Even so, Barry and I wanted to see inside the bell. So we flipped another coin and Barry won, much to my chagrin. Dewi and I held Barry up to the window, but he could see nothing but the small console. When they held me up, I could see nothing but a circular console under the windows, extending around and against the exterior wall. I noticed the front and back windows and another window on the far side. All of the windows appeared to be the same size and all surfaces on the bell’s interior seemed to be the same color and texture as the outside walls of the cabin. I also saw a paneled area extending from floor to ceiling just left of the window. Because Barry and I hadn’t seen the little creatures, we especially wondered where they might have gone. If Dewi had told us the truth, they simply seemed to have disappeared into a mysterious nowhere. It seemed unlikely they were hiding in the paneled area…because, it seemed, there was not enough space.

Everything seemed so strange and threatening, we decided we should leave the area. But before we could take but a step or two, a cloud of distorted misty gray atmosphere began to develop around us. I tried to leave, but I couldn’t seem to move my arms or legs. I heard Dewi and Barry grunt and yell beside me. As the foggy dank air around me got denser, I began to feel stranger in my stomach, chest and head. When the fog got so dense that I couldn’t see but a faint outline of the bell, I began to feel ill — so ill, I thought I might throw up. We all three talked back and forth for a short time, but I can’t really recall what we said.

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This UFO story goes on and on… We eventually were taken inside the Bell and flew around the local area receiving biological information about the plants and trees, etc. The departure of the bell and coffin was totally shocking!

The rest of this true story is in Chapter Six of the book To Earth From Heaven.