New Developments Part 1

File: UFO187

The following was taken from a newspaper from Springfield, Missouri, dated Sunday, December 9th, 1990. The name of the newspaper I think, is the NEWS-LEADER and article is in the section called Ozarks Accent.

TITLED: NOTED EXPERT FINDS ACCOUNT CONVINCING. BY: Mike O'Brien

What sets Gerald Anderson appart from the thousands of other American's, including scores of Ozarkers, who say they've seen UFO's or even insist they've been kidnapped by creatures from outer space?

Why are Gerald Anderson's childhood recollections stirring international interest among UFO researchers whose reputations have been built on healthy skepticism and willingness to debunk hoaxes?

Because of little things he has to say and how he says them. Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who has lectured on more than 600 college campuses about UFOs, describes Anderson as "a really significant, potentially the most important" witness to what both men believe was the aftermath of one of two space craft crashes in New Mexico in mid-summer 1947.

Friedman is co-authoring a book based upon several years of painstaking investigation into the haunting mystery. He was startled, upon meeting Anderson for the first time only a few months ago, to hear the Springfieldian echo details of the yet to be published research.

"There's no way he could know some of these things unless he had been there at the time," Friedman believes. Example: only days before first talking with Anderson, Friedman coaxed a heretofore reluctant New Mexico mortician into recounting a run-in he'd had in 1947 with an especially unpleasant red-headed captain who was heading up a team recovering bodies from a hush-hush aircraft crash. Anderson, too, spoke of a red-headed captain with a mean disposition. Friedman says the descriptions of the ornery officer provided by the two match precisely, although Anderson and the mortican never have met.

In sketches of the desert crash scene drawn by Anderson in Springfield following a hypnosis, a lonely windmill appears in the distance. When Friedman later arranged for Anderson to return to New Mexico to pinpoint the long-ago crash site, no such windmill could be see on the horizon-- until, almost by accident, the windmill wa spotted behind tress that had grown up during the 43 years since Anderson was last there. "I got shivers over that one," says John Carpenter, who has extensively debriefed Anderson over the past 4 months and went along on Anderson's return trip to New Mexico in October. Capenter holds degrees in psychology and psychiatric social work from DePauw and Washington universities and trained in clinical hypnosis at the Menninger Institute. He's in his 12th year of work at a psychiatric hospital facility in Springfield.

"When Gerald tells his story, it's not just a story -- it's his life he's telling you, intermixed with his feelings and his beliefs and all that is Gerald," Carpenter says. "When someone is spinning a hoax or tale, they only give you enought to raise your curiosity. Not Gerald. He gives you everything, in detail, much more than you ask him for. He'd be setting himself up to be found out if it wasn't true. He's so confident, he goes so much further than a hoaxer would ever dare."

Carpenter puts great stock in Anderson's recountings under hypnosis. "It's what he didn't say that was significant." Caprenter says, explaining that despite clever prodding, Anderson never committed a hoaxer's mistake of "recalling" something that shouldn't be a part of his own memory. "And when he's under hypnosis, all the bigger, adult words drop out when he describes events from his childhood," Carpenter found. "He relates what he was in child-like terms."

Carpenter also detected "genuine amazement" when Anderson heard what had been dredged from his subconscious memory under hypnosis. "The look on his face was priceless when he realized he'd produced details he'd forgotten on a conscious level so long ago."

Most subtle but perhaps most telling, in Carpenter's view, was Anderson's reaction to being accepted as a viable witness to an extraordinary encounter with a spacecraft and creatures from beyond Earth.

"He was so grateful at being taken seriously. You could see the relief and release after all those years, and the great hope that other people would take him seriously too, once and for all."

Ironically, Friedman points to Gallup Poll results indicating that 60 percent of Americans who have college degrees say they believe UFOs are real. With such a receptive constituency, why would government officials persist in what Friedman calls the "Cosmic Watergate" -- the coverup and denial of the New Mexico crashes? Perhaps, some speculate, because it would be too embarrassing now to admit that some supposedly made-in-USA technologies actually were plagiarized from confiscated spacecraft.

Friedman emphasizes that he's not as interested in uncovering past misdeeds as he is in encouraging future progress. "I believe we should have an 'Earthling" orientation rather than nationalistic orientation. The easiest way to demonstrate the wisdom of this is to prove that lifeforms from other planets are coming here. If we can do that, then everyone will be forced to look at our world differently, as a part of a galactic neighborhood."

Ozarkers wishing to learn more about UFO research may attend meetings of the local chapter of the national Mutual UFO Network. The next MUFON gather is scheduled for 7pm Tuesday, Jan 29, in the private meeting room at Mr. Gatti's Pizza, 1508 E. Battlefield Rd.

ALSO NOTE: the actual newspaper article shows a scene of the UFO crash drawn by Gerald Anderson and also a sketch of a creature he believes was a visitor from another galaxy.

To a 5-year-old kid from Indianapolis, the mountains and mesas and vast scrubland surrounding Albuquerque seemed an alien world.

"I was in awe" recalls Gerald Anderson of his arrival in New Mexico with his family in July 1947. "I was in the wild frontier. There were real, live Indians out there."

Then says Anderson, on his second day in the Southwest he bumped into real,live creatures from a truly alien world.

There were four -- two dead, on dying, one apparently uninjured. The creatures were about 4 feet tall, with heads disproportionately large for their bodies by human measure and almond-shaped, coal black eyes. They huddled in the shadow of 50-ft-diameter silver disk - a "flying saucer" that had crashed into a low hillside on the rim of what locals call the Plains of San Agustin.

Anderson, a former police chief at Rockaway Beach and Taney County deputy sheriff who now works as a security officer in Springfield, is adamant about events on the hot midsummer day so long ago.

"I saw them. I even touched one of the creatures. I put my hand on their ship. And I wasn't alone - my dad, my uncle, my brother and my cousin all saw the same things. And so did a lot of other people. But they aren't talking.

Anderson is talking, publicly, after 43 years of silence.

Among those listening most intently are some of the foremost researchers into unidentified flying object (UFO phenomena. These experts say Gerald Anderson appears to be an important link in a frustratingly fragmented chain of evidence concerning the most famous - or infamous - chapter in UFO annals: the so called "Roswell Incident."

No one denies that "something" happened in July 1947 in central New Mexico, cradle of U.S. nuclear and rocket technology. However, military authorities insist reports of strange craft in the sky and bizarre wreckage on the ground were traced at the time to an errant weather balloon and other manmade or natural circumstance.

Nonetheless, over the years, persistent whispered rumors grew into published articles and books, even movies, which fanned speculation that what actually occurred was a visit by creatures from another planet - an intergalactic expedition that turned to tragedy on the high desert and then into a massive coverup in the highest circles of the U.S. government.

Anderson says he was unaware of ongoing fascination and controversy over the strange episode from his childhood until one evening this past January when he was flipping through channels on his television set and stumbled across the popular program "Unsolved Mysteries."

"I wasn't looking for any unsolved mysteries - I have enough mysteries in my life that are unsolved, and I don't need any more," Anderson jokes. He is a burly, barrel-chested man standing 6-4 and carrying a muscular 250-plus pounds, with reddish hair and a rudy complexion creased from easy laughter.

"But, bingo! On comes this story, and everything was wrong," Anderson recalls of the TV show. On sudden impulse, he dialed an 800 phone number that flashed onto the screen. "I guess I figured that if people were still interested in this thing, they might as well get it straight" is the only explanation he can muster for speaking up after years of keeping mostly mum on the matter.

"These people don't know what they're talking about," Anderson told the operator on the other end of the long-distance line. "The shape of the craft is totally wrong. 'And how do you know that, sir?" she asked. ' I saw it, I was there,' I told her. "Whoa!" she said. "Thee are some people who will want to talk to you...'"

Anderson's phone soon was ringing with calls from UFO researchers around the country. One in particular, Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and popular lecturer who had advised the "Unsolved Mysteries" producers, was struck by correlations between Anderson's recollections and obscure details Friedman uncovered while sleighing for a book to be published next year.

End of part 1