Nevada L.O.W.F.I

Posts Tagged ‘las vegas’

by guest blogger Skylaire Alfvegren

In the wacky world of UFOs, few events are harder to explain away than those of the night of April 18, 1962. Within a span of 32 minutes, an object was reported in the skies from Oneida, New York, all the way to California. Over 1,000 witnesses reported seeing the object over Utah, Montana, Idaho, New Mexico, Wyoming, Arizona and California.

From New York, it was described as a glowing red ball heading west. Over Utah, it was described as either a blue light, or as an incandescent, white-yellow ball with a bright yellow flame trailing behind it. Many witnesses claimed it was accompanied by loud, explosion-like booms. Its brilliant, fiery trail was tracked by The North American Air Defense Command, and Air Force bases were put on alert across the country.

Bob Robinson and Floyd Evans ducked under their pick-up truck south of Eureka, Utah, before it touched down nearby with a brilliant white flash. Robinson claimed he could make out small windows on the object through its almost blinding haze. The object knocked out power in the area, and parts of Utah and Nevada were briefly lit up bright as day. A search party was sent out in Eureka, but no debris was found.

Eureka sheepherders who witnessed the crash were visited by none other than J. Allen Hynek (of Project Bluebook fame). Project Bluebook tried to chock up the object as a rare, exceedingly bright type of meteorite known as a bolide, which seems impossible when you look at the facts. It was tracked by radar and scrambled jets in two locations. (Meteors don’t show up on radar.) It traveled across the night sky at around 4,500 miles an hour, slower than your average meteor. The pilots of at least two airplanes reported the object traveling beneath them. No meteor could sustain such a flight path for thousands of miles!

Captain Herman Gordon Shields was questioned at Hill Air Force Base in Utah, and reported that his “cockpit was illuminated from above… the light intensity increased until we could see objects [on the ground] as bright as day for a radius of five to ten miles. It was bright as daylight.” When the light decreased, the pilot saw “…this object which… was illuminated. It had a long, slender appearance comparable to a cigarette in size, that is, the diameter with respect to the length of the object. The fore part, or the lower part of the object was very bright, intense white such as a magnesium fire. The second half, the aft section, was a clearly distinguishable yellowish color.”

Here the story gets even weirder. That same night, reports of a blinding light traveling west to east were reported in Nevada. According to the Los Angeles Times, Reno residents described seeing a “vivid greenish light that flashed across the skies and then disappeared over the mountains traveling from west to east.” Reno resident Homer Raycraft described it as “a big fireball.” It was also described as a dazzling white which changed to green, orange and red. Sometime after the explosion, witnesses in Reno, 560 miles west of Eureka as the crow flies, saw an object which made a “sweeping turn to the south” towards Las Vegas. Meteors and fireballs cannot change their trajectory!

The morning after the sightings, a Las Vegas Sun headline screamed BRILLIANT RED EXPLOSION FLARES IN LAS VEGAS SKY. The Sun reported, “a ‘tremendous flaming sword’ flashed across the night sky and heralded the start of a search for a weird ‘unidentified flying object’.” The newspaper and the Sheriff’s office were deluged with calls. Some residents believed an atomic bomb had been detonated. The object seen, according to the Sun, was “traveling almost northeast of Las Vegas until a final explosion and column of brilliant smoke rose from the direction of Mesquite,” where it scrambled jets and disappeared off Nellis Air Force base radar at 10,000 feet. The object apparently exploded in mid-air over Nellis. The Clark County sheriff’s office led a search for wreckage, first by jeep and then by air. Nothing was officially recovered. It’s conceivable that whatever debris might have been strewn about was quickly recovered by the Air Force.

The meteorite theory was again offered. A Nellis spokesman told the Las Vegas Sun, “There’s only one problem with that. A meteor cannot be tracked on radar. And this object was.”

Author Kevin Randle debunks dozens of reported cases in his book, A History of UFO Crashes. The Las Vegas crash is one of the very few he deems positively authentic. In print he has called it “the best evidence” of extraterrestrial craft visiting earth.

One of Randle’s anonymous Utah witnesses claimed to have seen the object return to the air. In A History, Randle says, “I talked to a man who was in Eureka the night the ‘meteor’ fell. He was driving through town and watched the glowing orange ball. He saw it close to the ground, but then saw it take off again. It knocked out the lights all over Eureka, before climbing out again. He was close enough to the object to see an oval shape and to hear a quiet whirring noise. It took off toward the west, heading into Nevada.”

The data points to a singular object, intelligently controlled, which traveled west over the U.S., touched down in Utah, returned to the air on a southern trajectory, and exploded over a U. S. military base. Randle concludes, “The air force offered a series of explanations ignoring the facts. They ignored the information that didn’t fit with the bolide theory. But the witnesses know the truth. They saw something from outer space, and it was not a meteor. It was a craft from another world.”

This is one of Skylaire’s original articles written for the book, Weird Nevada

by guest blogger Skylaire Alfvegren

Charles Hall enlisted in the Air Force in 1964. After completing weather training school, he was sent to Nellis Air Force base in March of 1965. During the two years he was stationed there, he says, “I spent most of my time as the duty weather observer at the gunnery ranges up at Indian Springs. And while I was up there, I discovered that there was a base that the U. S. government maintains for a group of aliens that I call the Tall White Aliens.” Hall details his encounters in a three book series entitled Millennial Hospitality.

Hall claims that from Indian Springs, if you look straight north up the Indian Springs Valley, and a bit to the east, you’ll find their main base in those mountains. (The location is known as Area 54.) From the same vantage point looking west, the other set of peaks contain the Tall Whites’ living quarters. “They live underground and the entrances to their living area are a set of tunnels.” Hall claims. The location is so secret “that in 1965, I had a map put out by the U.S. Geological Service, and all it would show for that place was a white spot marked ‘unexplored territory.’” The map didn’t even contain the mountains!

“There came a day where the aliens and the government formed a committee and decided that they would just send one weather observer, Hall says. His orders allowed him to travel through Dreamland, which is Area 53 and 54, “and the area I call the desert southwest game range, which includes Dogbone Lake.”

A double security perimeter rings area 54 and the aliens’ mountain; humans guard the outer perimeter, while Tall Whites protect the inner perimeter. “And then everything inside the inner perimeter is treated like it’s the embassy for the Tall Whites.”

“Every month on the night of the full moon, at or near sundown, the deep space craft arrive, coming in over Dogbone Lake. They pull into port, into the main hangar, where they repair and they refuel and they refurbish. On the night of the new moon, they go out to Dogbone Lake and take off. They use the base in the same way the U. S. Navy or the U. S. Air Force would use a base, say, on an island in the Pacific.”

Basically, they use Earth as a stepping stone. “Most stars have another star within two light months of them,” Hall says. “But with the sun, there’s a huge bubble of emptiness, like ten light years across. In that bubble, there are only a few stars: the sun, the three stars of Alpha Centauri four light years away, and Bernard’s Star. So for the Tall Whites, it’s kind of like island hopping across the Pacific, except they’re hopping from star to star.”

The Tall Whites don’t have a message of celestial brotherhood, nor do they wish to harm us. “They are not here to save us from ourselves. The base they have here on earth is very important for repairing and refurbishing their space craft. They’re just ordinary creatures like you or I, they’re not supernatural, they didn’t come here from another dimension, they’re not hybrids,” Hall says. “They never gave me any message.”

“They have family groups, they have men, women and children, just like humans do. As the weather observer, I was out with pretty colored balloons, which have lights on them. The children enjoyed watching me release them, and looking through my theodolite, so that was one reason they would interact with me.

“Another reason is that the Tall Whites and the U. S. government have a technology exchange program. They did not come here to teach us anything, but for those things where there’s an advantage for them, they’re willing to exchange technology. Imagine we had a base on an island in the Pacific. It would make more sense for the Air Force to buy electronic equipment locally than to ship it out from New York. So for example, they were willing to exchange technology on things like radios and high grade titanium, but they weren’t willing to show the U. S. Air Force how to build craft that moved faster than the speed of light. (They have the titanium black craft, the deep space craft, which clearly travels faster than the speed of light, and then they had their scout craft which were white, and were clearly assembled here on earth, too small to make the deep space crossing.) If you were dealing with them the way I was, if you were giving them an advantage, the terms could be as simple as the children have fun playing while I work.”

Contact with the Tall Whites terrified Hall for his first six months at Indian Springs. “And it’s that way for them too, when they first come around humans. For the new arrivals, I was the first human they’d ever seen. A few nights after the deep space craft had landed, the tall whites who maintained the base, who were always there and were used to being around humans, would get together groups of newly arrived Tall Whites and bring them around to where I was, just so they could overcome their fear of humans prior to talking with the military brass.”

“They typically didn’t say hello when they came or goodbye when they left, unless it was someone I had become unusually friendly with like Range Four Harry, or the Teacher–those were their CIA names,” Hall says. Each being took on a human name to facilitate communication. “The Walker, the Hiker, the Captain. But if there wasn’t an actual reason for them to talk, they might not, they might just come and stand around and watch what I was doing purely as their way of overcoming their fear of humans. And then when they felt that they had made progress, they would leave.

These extraterrestrials live to be 700 years old, and they’ve been based in Nevada for eons. “One of the tall white ladies who took on the name of Pamela said she had been born in Indian Springs Valley when James Madison was president.” For most of their adult life, the Tall Whites stand around six feet tall, but when they reach the equivalent of middle age, “they become quite tall. I remember one night one of the older men, who was still perfectly functional, was standing next to the control tower that used to be out at range three. And I noted where his head was even with one of the cross beams. The next day I went out there with a yardstick, and I measured it and he was eight and a half feet tall.”

“It was quite common for those regular staff members–who weren’t too old, who were only five and a half or six feet tall—to disguise themselves as humans and come into the casinos in Las Vegas. A common place to see them was at the old Stardust back in 1965. They used to love it because the motif used to be what it would look like if you were out in space, and they found that really entertaining.” A common time for experienced Tall Whites to bring newbies in was 4am on Monday morning. Hall claims the CIA used to staff the Stardust when they were expecting a visit from the Tall Whites. “Then the CIA team of at least one pit boss and at least three or four dealers would come in there. And one night I came in there and I counted more than five CIA guys, one on the dice table, three on the blackjack table, one on the roulette wheel and so on.”

The Tall Whites also frequented the Showboat, the Tropicana and the Four Queens, where CIA dealers would shadow them, just to be safe. “If the Tall Whites ever got in trouble, there would always be a few friends around, and at any time, they could make the phone call to the Pentagon, the Pentagon could make the call to the governor… I remember one night I was standing outside the Four Queens when a group of them came through, they had six CIA guards, four men and two women on an outer perimeter, spread real wide, and then three or four tall white guards, with The Teacher and Pamela escorting a group of new arrivals. They really enjoyed coming into Las Vegas. Being out in the desert was as boring for them as it was for us.”

The Tall Whites never divulged their place of origin. “One night I asked the Teacher, ‘where do you come from?’” he says. “And she smiled and asked me if I knew the names they used when they talk about the stars? I said of course not, and she said so even if we told you, you still wouldn’t know.

“But one night I mentioned the star Arcturus, which is 36 light years away, and all the Tall Whites around me got real nervous, like I had touched a nerve.” Hall notes that in ancient Greek mythology dating to 972 B.C., Arcturus was given the name ‘the watcher star.’ “The ancient Greeks claimed when they were camping on warm summer nights, a group of tall white Gods would ascend from Arcturus, and just stand beyond the campfire and watch them.”

Hall, who resides in New Mexico, believes the Tall Whites maintain the Indian Springs base as well as a number of scout craft hangars around the world. They use the scout craft the way we use cars, to travel around Earth, or to the moon or Mars–just for short trips. “There is the legend of the ‘Ghost of Doña Ana County.’ Just north of Las Cruces, there’s a place where the Rio Grande bends to the west, and there’s a set of mountains to the northwest of that, south of the Sierra Ladrones, near the little city of Reserve. I note that the earliest Spanish explorers were told by local Indians that ghosts would emerge from those mountains, stand just beyond the range of the fire light, and watch them. According to local police, campers continue to report seeing the so-called ‘Ghost of Doña Ana County’ to this day.”

Hall believes the Tall Whites’ base is still in operation.

“I feel quite certain of it,” he says. “When you look at Indian Springs from space, it has a perfect location for them, and if they come from Arcturus, they’d want a base in the northern hemisphere. They like it hotter than we do. I recall back in 1965, when it got past 100, you’d see them in their shirtsleeves, playing with their children. They can’t take the cold, at 70 degrees they have to dress warmly.” Southern Nevada still plays host to these beings: A friend of the Halls claims to have seen a group of Tall Whites at the Tropicana at 3:00 am in 1990.

It would all make for a great early ’70s TV movie starring Gloria Swanson if it wasn’t so damn scary. Apparently, Africanized honey bees in Las Vegas swarm-stung a guy after he accidentally broke open their 50-pound underground hive. We’re talking more than a thousand stings here, people.

It happened late Saturday morning when the victim was digging a trench in the backyard of his son’s home off Spencer and Eldorado Drive. The man, operating a backhoe, moved a large boulder exposing a giant hive underneath. The man jumped from the backhoe, trying to escape by running into a vacant yard, but was brought down by the stinging horde.

Firefighters encountering the attack were forced spray the man down with a fire hose to halt the attack. The man was rushed to St. Rose Dominican Hospital-Siena Campus where he was listed in stable condition, but undergoing painful removal of the estimated 1,000 stingers, one-by-one.

I remember watching plenty of fictional and non-fictional TV shows dedicated to the impending attack of killer bees, including this one:

Learn more about “assassin bees” here.

And remember: Never jump into a pool to escape a swarm. They will simply wait for you to surface. Always try to outrun them, because they are slow.

There are, in fact, a few virgins left in Vegas.

The Weeping Virgin stands proudly in the driveway of a residential home on the edge of North Las Vegas. Eyes askew, immaculate in her blue-green robes, she inhabits what looks like an old phone booth, its white paint flaking off. The booth is webbed in Christmas lights; a video camera is perched at the top.

A gold curtain frames Mary. There’s a picture of Saint Lucy with her trademark dish, upon which rest two plucked eyeballs. A ceramic Noah’s Ark burdened with animals. A black Saint Martin statuette posing with his broom. Flowers, dead and fake, surround the Weeping Virgin. Grocery-store prayer candles line a makeshift votive altar. Chairs and benches are arranged for visitors.

The driveway is covered by a crisp blue tarp. Everything else, though, seems a bit untidy. The dusty yard is completely devoid of grass and full of junk: Rusty AC unit. Charred grill. Shattered foosball table.

The neighborhood, predominantly Mexican, is a little on the loud side. Cars blast by on I-15 and someone nearby persists in lighting firecrackers in mid-August. A jet from Nellis Air Force Base screams overhead.

Otherwise, it’s the perfect prayer space.

Why would anyone want to pray here? Well, Our Lady of Guadalupe is originally from the Basilica in Mexico City. A man named Pablo Covarrubias brought her with him to North Las Vegas in 1991. According to Pablo’s friends and family, it’s true the statue was almost destroyed by U.S. customs. They assumed it was full of heroin. But Pablo prevailed, placing his personal Mary on a stone pedestal in the backyard of his home in North Las Vegas.

Two years passed before Pablo’s daughter Martha saw the statue weeping real tears. Pablo contacted KLAS-TV Channel 8. Video cameras were dispatched. But reporters insisted the statue be removed from its pedestal — just in case there was, you know, a water source hidden beneath? Pablo complied. Mary cried on cue.

At least that’s how Pablo’s people tell it. KLAS no longer has the tape, and Pablo took his copy with him when he returned to Mexico in 2004. According to religious Internet sites, the footage clearly shows tears falling down the plaster statue’s face.

But that’s not all that’s special about the Weeping Virgin. Her tears, when absorbed by cotton balls, have healing powers. They’ve remedied troubled pregnancies, corrected bad vision, and cured cancer. Also, the angel (that carries the moon Mary stands on) sweats a rose-scented oil. Over the years, other miracles have supposedly occurred — visions of Mary herself, crosses appearing on the statue’s forehead — but since the statue was moved from Pablo’s backyard to its current home in North Las Vegas in 2004, the miracles have come to a halt.

“I’ve never seen her cry,” says Juan Serrano, whose family now cares for the Weeping Virgin, “so I can’t say. But you never know. People come here from all over — Denver, Phoenix, L.A. — and for them it’s just enough to be in her presence.”

Juan maintains that he and his family dance for the Virgin on the Day of the Dead, and on Dec. 12, the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Juan is a mestizo (a person of mixed Spanish and Amerindian blood), for whom dancing is a beautiful and sacred rite.

“We dance out of respect for Mary,” he says. “We dance out of happiness. We dance in celebration. And we dance so that Mary won’t feel so lonely.”

Juan doesn’t just dance in his front yard. He dances at the Winchester Cultural Center in Las Vegas with other mestizos at the Day of the Dead fiesta each year. The dancing involves the hypnotic rhythms of Indian drums, wild costumes and masks. Very intense.

Pablo transferred ownership of the statue to Juan and his family last year before moving back to Mexico. Juan invites kind and respectful people who wish to pay their respects to Mary to drive to 2809 Samantha Court (between Basin and Darby) on the Northwest end of the Community College of Southern Nevada’s Cheyenne campus.

Bring tissues. Just in case.