UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

It was a hot and humid evening on August 19, 1952, and hardware store clerk and Boy Scout Scoutmaster Dunham Sanborn “Sonny” DesVergers was driving a group of Boy Scouts home on a coastal highway near West Palm Beach, Florida, that winds right alongside the vast swamp wilderness of the South Florida Everglades. As he made his way down a darkened side road towards the home of one of the boys, his attention was captured by a bright flash in the sky out over the gloomy swamp near a dense grove of palmettos. His first thought was to just keep on driving, but then it occurred to him that an airplane had possibly gone down out there in the wilderness, so he turned back, stopped the car, and after some moments of thought peering into the dimness of the swamp he decided to grab a machete and start hacking his way through towards where he believed the accident to have occurred. And so would begin a strange odyssey that has remained one of the weirder UFO encounters on the books.

DesVergers told the Boy Scouts to stay behind, and if they did not hear from him in 15 minutes they were to make their way to a farmhouse off the road and fetch help. He then gripped his machete, hoisted his flashlight, and began penetrating the murky, snake and alligator infested wilderness. As he progressed through the choking brush he allegedly noticed an unpleasant smell in the air, which got steadily worse as he progressed. He continued hacking his way through the vegetation and thickets through the fog of stench that pervaded the air until he reportedly came to a clearing, where he signaled to the boys with his flashlight and then turned to notice what he would describe as an intense heat, as if an enormous oven door had suddenly opened to belch forth its fire. Disoriented, he looked up to see something blocking out the sky above, which he claimed was a large disc-like object measuring around 30 feet in diameter and ringed with glowing lights, and when the beam of his flashlight hit it he could ascertain that it was smooth, metallic, and had a concave bottom. This is where things would get really weird.

As the frightened scoutmaster started backing up in a growing panic, he claims that he heard a grinding sound like metal upon metal, which he soon realized was a hatch of some sort opening on the side of the unearthly craft. From within emerged what he describes as an intense red light that approached him and then transformed into a red mist, which engulfed him and caused him to instinctively cover his face. According to him, he then lost consciousness. Back at the car, the Boy Scouts, who had been tracking their scoutmaster’s progress by watching the glow of his bouncing flashlight beam in the gloom, purportedly saw a “big red ball of fire” through the trees, as well as “a series of red lights … a lot like flares.” That was when they decided to go for help.

Police arrived on the scene not long after, and were about to launch a search through the swamp for DesVergers when he came stumbling out of the thicket in a kind of daze, disoriented, mumbling incoherently and quite obviously very shaken, to the point that deputy sheriff Mott Partin would later say, “In all my 19 years of law-enforcement work, I’ve never seen anyone as terrified as he was.” Closer inspection of the man showed that his skin seemed lightly burned and the hair on his forearms singed, as well as a strange series of three burn marks in his scoutmaster’s cap. Making it all even odder still was that when some of the officers went to the clearing that DesVergers had come from they found his flashlight lying on the ground and a flattened ring of grass they could not explain.

DesVergers would be brought back to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office and that was when the case would attract the attention of Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who was at the time part of the U.S. Air Force Project Blue Book, which was with investigating and analyzing UFO-related incidents in the name of national security. Ruppelt, who would later call it “one of the weirdest UFO reports that I came up against,” took his team to Florida in order to interview the witnesses and investigate the area of the alleged UFO encounter. Talking to the Boy Scouts he learned that they stood by their story of seeing bright red lights, and DesVergers also seemed very sincere, which impressed Ruppelt at first and of which he said he had the “immediate impression he was telling the truth.” The team also were able to find anomalous singed grass in the clearing where it had all gone down, which lab tests were unable to find an answer for, especially since in many instances the samples showed burned roots but intact upper leaves. Nor was there any conventional medical explanation for the victim’s singed hair, slightly burned skin, which was determined to have been caused by a “flash heat source,” or his damaged cap, thought to have been the work of “sparks of some kind,” all of which made it all even more promising, but cracks would slowly start to reveal themselves.

Red flags started going up when DesVergers began drumming up media attention for his alleged encounter, even going so far as to hire a press agent, and the story got more and more exaggerated the more he told it, adding in details such as that he had seen alien beings and even fought with them. A little digging into DesVergers’ past also brought up some warning signs, as he was found to be an insufferable teller of tall tales and as well as having gone AWOL during military service and also a convicted car thief. In other words, honesty was not really his thing, and although dishonest people can still potentially have a strange UFO encounter, Ruppelt was starting to get suspicious. Although there were certainly many oddities that could not easily be explained, and he couldn’t see how they could have been faked, Ruppelt would nevertheless eventually label it “the best hoax in UFO history.” He would go on to write of the account in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, and as much as he liked to think of it as a hoax, some of the aspects have never been satisfactorily explained, such as the weirdly singed grass roots and physical evidence, and so the debate has remained open as to whether it really happened or not, with one researcher Jeffrey Wilson saying:

Something unusual happened to the guy, and the physical evidence backed him up. That’s why I put the effort into checking this out. Why would you go to the trouble of faking something like this?” Why, and how, would he stage that? It doesn’t make any sense.

The case is still quite remarkable for the physical evidence left behind and the assertion by the witness even in later years in the face of withering criticism that this was all real. Regardless of whether DesVergers was a known liar or not, there seems to be a lot to unpack here, and it is important to remember that strange phenomena do not always necessarily happen to the most honest or reliable of people. What are we to make of his burns or the scorched grass, or the corroborating reports of the Boy Scouts he was with at the time? Was this perhaps a real event that he merely embellished and took advantage of over time, or was it merely the rantings and scheming of a known liar? The case was certainly enough to catch the attention of Project Blue Book and other researchers since, still unexplained, and whether it is real or not has managed to lodge itself firmly within some of the more curious and puzzling UFO cases there are

(Illustrated by Nicholas Eveleigh)

THE CLAYTON SOUTH UFO ENCOUNTER

Amysterious event takes place, in a land considered “far away” by most. Hundreds of children witness something they cannot explain, but no one believes them. The few adults present, teachers no less, are coerced into silence. Students vanish into thin air. The presence of a foreign unknown military force. An idealistic American scientist travels to the under side of the world looking for answers, eventually disgraced, he takes his own life. UFO sightings fluctuate, a man reports a UFO sighting and unusual experience, claiming that his car is being sucked into ethereal lights on an isolated road. Three days later, a fatal car accident occurs at the exact location where the strange event took place. You might be thinking I’m describing the events of some sci-fi drama series, only a great many individuals, to this day, would attest that all, if not most of these claims were entirely true. The least disputed detail of all the strangeness, is the sighting of an unidentified flying object, a flying saucer.

It was 11:00 am, Wednesday, April 6th, 1966, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. What no doubt may have presented itself as an ordinary day at Westall High school, would have drastically changed the moment voices began to shout, “look up in the sky, it’s a flying saucer!”

Immediately, a sense of frenzy, fear, wonderment and exhilaration resonated among the students, because as many eyewitnesses will tell you, as they looked to the clear blue morning sky, there was a silver flying saucer performing aerial feats beyond the capabilities of the (publicly known) aircraft of the day.

As hundreds of students charged toward an area nicknamed ‘The Grange’ where a paddock converged onto a grove of pine trees (today a nature reserve) beyond the edge of the school, numerous eyewitness reports claim that the flying saucer actually lowered into the tall grass. Causing a circular impression that remained after the UFO ascended, some noting also a swirling inner pattern. The UFO was not alone in the sky, according to many eyewitnesses, a number of small airplanes (claims as high as 5) were tailing it. (Though there were no reports of any unusual activity made by Air traffic control or the Royal Australian Air force. To this day, the alleged ‘5 pilots’ have never come forward).

There have since been claims that children, one girl identified only as “Tanya” and others that were closest to the unidentified object when it made its descent, passed out and lay unconscious on the ground around it. Eyewitnesses make the claim that even an ambulance attended the scene to see to the students seemingly suffering physiological effects of the experience. It is claimed by one eyewitness, that “Tanya” was never seen again, after succumbing to some physiological effect from the experience, never returning to school after the event on April 6th.

All up, it is believed the aerial chase, the landing and high speed escape/disappearance happened within a window of approximately 20 minutes. 20 minutes, according to most of the vocal eyewitnesses that has profoundly effected their lives.

(Dr. James E. McDonald)

In interviews conducted by American Physicist/Ufologist, Dr. James E. McDonald roughly one year later, he managed to speak with science teacher Andrew Greenwood who was there that fateful day. Greenwood upon realizing the frenzy sweeping up outside among the students, headed outside to get a look at what they were reacting to. Andrew Greenwood described the UFO as a “round, silver object about the size of a car with a metal rod sticking up in the air.” He then remarked that one of the first things to occur after the event took place, was the headmaster instructed all students to return to their classrooms, after which Greenwood said “he [the headmaster] gave the school a lecture and told the children they would be severely punished if they talked about this matter and told the staff they could lose their jobs if they mentioned it at all.”

From there, according to those who tried to speak out about the event, an element of secrecy and suppression arose. Military vehicles were seen around the area, the site was under total lockdown. Ironically, exactly as virtually every film surrounding such an event would have you believe. Men in camouflaged uniforms were reportedly seen by dozens of the eyewitnesses still vocal on the issue now more than half a century on. The unusual thing about men in camouflage is that in Australia during the 1960’s, neither the Australian nor the British had incorporated it into the military uniforms. Suggesting a possible involvement of either a group, outside of a national government, or even the U.S government which did/does have a presence on Australian soil.

There is talk of suppression of information surrounding this incident. I don’t know how things were managed at the time, perhaps due to the nature of news in the 1960’s it simply did not receive the coverage it might if it occurred today. Though, anecdotally, I would have to agree that something does seem unusual about the records. In researching the event through the usual channels, archives of Australian public newspaper records, the entire year of 1966 in Australia seems oddly slim. Searching terms like “UFO”, “Westall”, “Flying Saucer” were actually proving fruitless. So then I changed the search purely based on date.

In Melbourne, 1966, possibly by coincidence, 1966 draws a blank. So then I started checking other states, in case stories made it to further away Newspapers. When I looked up ‘The Canberra Times’, checking through dates around early April I didn’t find any mention of the Westall UFO event (though perhaps I was just lazily looking in all the wrong places). I did however, find this story, reported in Canberra, about a story that happened in Victoria, approximately 2 hours NW from the Westall incident, mere days after the UFO was sighted at the back of the school:

“MELBOURNE, Monday. — The current world-wide spate of sightings of flying saucers was brought closer to home today by a report by a Maryborough man. Mr Ronald F. Sullivan, a 38-year-old builder of Victoria Street, Maryborough, said he had seen an unidentified flying object on the Bendigo to St Arnaud Road last Monday. Three days later a youth was killed when his car ran off the road at the place where Mr Sullivan said he had seen the object.

Mr Sullivan said, “the headlights on my car were suddenly diverted to the right, for no apparent reason. And if I had followed them I would have run off the straight stretch of road. The fact that I am an experienced driver, and know the district well, saved my life. I managed to stop before I crashed.

Then I saw a display of gaseous lights in all colours of the spectrum in a nearby paddock. The object rose about 10 feet in the air. It later disappeared”, Mr Sullivan said.

Mr Sullivan said he drove on to Wycheproof where his headlights were checked and found to be in perfect order. He went to the crash scene with police on Friday. “We all noticed there was a depression about five inches deep in the freshly ploughed paddock, about 50 feet from the fence. It was about five feet in diameter.” Mr Sullivan said. Police at Maryborough, Castlemaine, Bealiba and Newstead said today they had all heard reports of flying saucers in the area. They have not been able to find the cause of the accident in which the youth, Gary Taylor, 19, of Carnegie, died.”

—THE CANBERRA TIMES, TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 1966

It’s also claimed that the chemistry teacher at Westall High, Barbara Robins, had access to a camera and was hastily snapping photographs of the UFO during the 20 minute frenzy. There are a great many photographs claiming to be taken during this event, but when I cross referenced them (reverse google search) every single one was linked to other UFO sightings, though that is common in many news stories, surrounding issues even outside of the paranormal. It’s been suggested that Barbara Robins had her camera and film confiscated and was coerced into silence.

Ultimately, in my opinion, this is more a story about suppression than anything else. It has endless possible explanations, but these are the top four I could come up with.

Mass Hysteria, somehow something potentially non-existent has been blown way out of proportion. Disingenuous recollections of a misinterpreted reality. This is actually the least likely scenario, in my mind.
Extraterrestrial or Ultraterrestrial life with access to highly advanced technology, presented itself to hundreds of Australian schoolchildren. For whatever reason, some “agency” (government or otherwise) wants to keep it a secret, suppressed knowledge.
Certain groups on this planet have access to technology that far surpasses what is currently available to the masses. Information is power, and the power is being kept from the general people. Those that rule the world don’t want individuals to be self-sufficient and able to thrive off of the nipple of “the system“.
The whole thing was setup. The entire experience was orchestrated. “They” wanted to test how a group would react to something like this, then how they could suppress it.

Some estimations to the total number of witnesses of UFO phenomenon (of varying levels and vicinity of encounters) in Victoria around the 6th of April, 1966 are approximately 300 individuals. 300 individuals that saw “a flying saucer” at a very low altitude. This wasn’t a craft people were squinting to see through the clouds, this was something narrowly avoiding telegraph poles (as one witness claimed). All said and done, in this account of strange events, there is one major thing to ask yourself. Someone in all of this is lying, that much is certain. The question that only you can truly ask yourself is, who? Did the students decide to create some charade? For the fun of it? For fame? They didn’t achieve any, the story barely got out. Or is the reason that seemingly “military” types were involved almost instantly, liaising with the powers that be, because certain people know certain things, that the rest of us are not allowed to understand.

If you think time will reveal the answers naturally, that the truth will rise to the surface on it’s own accord, like cream, remember this event happened over half a century ago. Many of the eyewitnesses have spent their entire lives waiting to make sense of what they saw, like something would emerge from the woodwork and link the pieces together. That day, unfortunately, has yet to come. Unless something changes, something gives out, the secrets will remain secrets, dormant and unknown.

According to UFO-Hunters.com as of the year 2020, there are over 200220 sightings reported and that number expected to continue to grow as more people around the world continue to more avidly monitor and record the activity of the skies.