Tag: High strangeness

Weird day in Wyoming still haunts me 50 years on

L.T. Hanlon1 Comment
In the 1970s, two young men stand near a Ford truck with Boar's Tusk rock formation behind them.

I grew up in Colorado and spent many years working at newspapers in Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming. I love the West and hope to retire there someday. The West is in my heart.

When most folks think of the West, they envision a land in which the echoes of homesteaders, cowboys, Indians, and Manifest Destiny still echo. But there’s another side to the West whose echoes you only hear late at night; you’d best listen to these tales with the lights on. Such weird West stories range from legends of cryptids like the thunderbird to accounts of strange doorways into parallel universes.

Tall tales collect a patina of reality out West because so many still lie at the edge of living memory and are told and retold by those who insist they witnessed the events. Besides, as a newspaper editor in John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” famously observes, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

A recent series of books by David Paulides of the CanAm Missing Project explores the disturbing possibility that for more than a century, people have disappeared under unusual circumstances in wilderness areas. In his books, Paulides also claims that this phenomenon isn’t restricted to the United States and that clusters of similar disappearances exist worldwide.

I’ve been following his research since discovering Paulides’ books several years ago. I just purchased his latest volume, “Missing 411: The Devil’s in the Detail,” the list of oddities in the Great Outdoors continues as regularly as Old Faithful eruptions.

I’m fascinated by Paulides’ research because almost 50 years ago, I experienced something similar that I still can’t fully explain — and even writing about it now makes me uncomfortable.

Alone in the middle of nowhere

When I worked for the Daily Rocket-Miner in Rock Springs, Wyoming, as a reporter and photographer, I discovered an old 4×5 Crown Graphic camera in a darkroom closet. Our publisher told me I could shoot some test images with it, so I talked a friend of mine into driving me out to Boar’s Tusk. I needed a cover photo for the Progress Edition, and this stark rock formation out in the Red Desert would be good.

My friend Dennis (not his real name) had just bought a Ford Bronco and agreed to drive me out to Boar’s Tusk one Saturday. We’d made it nearly there when clouds began to move in. A thunderstorm was imminent, so I decided to slap on a red filter and grab a few shots of Boar’s Tusk framed by dramatic clouds before the sky opened.

Dennis pulled off the gravel county road, and I set up my tripod, mounted the vintage press camera, and pointed it at the distant remnant of an ancient volcano. I took light meter readings and was about to slide in the film when Dennis approached me, leaned close, and whispered: “Something’s wrong here. We need to get out of here NOW.”

He told me to loudly ask him to return to the truck and get some more film — and that when he’d reached the vehicle, I should quickly fold up the tripod with the camera still attached, carry it to the back of the truck, throw it in, and climb into the passenger side.

That’s what I did. A second after I got in the Bronco, Dennis fired it up and sped out as fast as he could. He didn’t slow down until we were back on pavement at least five to 10 miles away.

I was maybe 22 at the time, and Dennis was in his mid-30s. He was an experienced hunter and outdoorsman who didn’t drink to excess or do drugs.

People were hiding — and watching us

Once he’d calmed down, Dennis told me that a couple of minutes after we got out of the truck, he noticed a disturbing lack of insect sounds — and that in late summer, the place should have been screaming with noise.

What he said next still gives me goosebumps. Dennis said he saw at least two human eyes staring at us.

I told him that was crazy. There was no place for people to hide, and the sparse scrub and sage were maybe three feet tall at most.

That’s when Dennis said the people had been lying on the ground and holding what he took to be rifles.

Dennis drove back to Rock Springs and kept checking the rearview. My friend didn’t want to return to his place, so he spent the rest of Saturday at my apartment. Neither of us could sleep, and although we hadn’t seen anybody following us, at one point, we became convinced “people” were combing Rock Springs looking for us.

Neither of us could get to sleep.

Would authorities think we’re crazy?

By noon Sunday, we still hadn’t calmed down much and thought about calling the police and sheriff’s office. Then, suddenly, we both felt a strange sense of calm and realized that nobody had followed us. We began to consider the possibility that nobody had been out there in the desert watching us at all.

Both of us were starving, and it occurred to me that we hadn’t eaten or slept in more than 24 hours. So we walked over to the Taco John’s just up the street from my tiny apartment. I specifically remember ordering a taco salad, a taco burger, and a large cola.

Neither of us told friends or family about the incident until years later. I’ve since lost touch with Dennis.

As the decades passed, I decided that Dennis and I must have somehow locked our thought processes into some mutual feedback loop that amplified our paranoia into a brief, self-limiting, synchronized psychosis.

Several weeks previously, we had rambling, late-night discussions about the cattle mutilation cases unnerving ranchers across the Rocky Mountain West. I had also recently become obsessed with UFOs reported near Pinedale, Wyoming, and had interviewed the University of Wyoming’s Dr. Leo Sprinkle about his ufology research, which included investigating reports of alien abductions years before the subject saturated the public mind.

In short, we had been constantly talking about weird stuff for a long time. Perhaps a strange spark on a Saturday in the wilderness ignited a brief mental brushfire in both of our minds.

Another possibility is that somebody drugged us, but we hadn’t stopped to eat or drink on our way out to Boar’s Tusk, and we’d only consumed soft drinks from sealed cans stored in a small cooler.

I’ve decided I’ll never determine what happened.

But I’ll tell you this: I’ve never returned to Boar’s Tusk.

I did not need to watch this video at 2 a.m.

L.T. Hanlon2 Comments

I’ve been to many places, seen many things, and heard a truckload of stories.

By day, I worked at newspapers. By night, I’d lean into conspiracies. It’s not every journalist who’s got a side passion for Fortean phenomena. I’m not saying I believe in all that jazz, but something about UFOs, cryptids, and high strangeness catches me and hooks me in. It’s like a lousy earworm of a song you can’t shake.

Legends? They’ve got a life of their own. Ever heard of the telephone game? Start a rumor on one end of the bar, and by the time it reaches the jukebox, it’s turned into some wild tale. These urban myths — they spread, mutate, and grow legs. Sometimes wings.

Speaking of wings, let’s talk Mothman. A creature seen in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. But it’s not the red-eyed beast that gets me. It’s his alleged buddy, Indrid Cold. Some folks call him the Grinning Man.

The story goes: a chap named Woodrow Derenberger was driving home one night in 1966 when he got flagged down by a vehicle that screamed, “Not from this galaxy.”

Out pops a man with a metal grin dressed to the nines. This smiling suit introduces himself as Indrid Cold. Over time, Woody and Indrid chat telepathically, with Mr. Cold spewing tales of interstellar travels. Bizarre, right?

Then Indrid Cold became intertwined with the Mothman sightings. Some say he’s an alien, others believe he’s a government agent covering up the Mothman hullabaloo, and others still reckon he’s a fragment of overactive imaginations.

Whatever the truth, stories like his keep the legend alive, burning like a neon sign outside a dive bar.

I’ve driven endless late nights under countless starry skies, sometimes thinking about those twinkling dots. Could there be life out there? Probably. But I’m not holding my breath for a close encounter.

I’m as skeptical as they come. But when the clock hits 3 a.m., and I hear a strange noise outside my window, I get a tad jumpy.

UFOs and cryptids might be campfire tales, but they sure as hell make the night a little more interesting.

Terror in the Yukon: Close encounters of the gas kind

L.T. Hanlon2 Comments
Midjoiurney image shows four shadowy figures blocking a gravel road in the middle of nowhere as an orange light flickers on the horizon.
A sight similar to this caused my junior-high self to nearly have a nervous breakdown. (Synthograph by Midjourney)

It’s late summer 1968, and I’m about to enter ninth grade. Then my dad quits — or is fired from — his job at the National Bank of Alaska in Anchorage, piles our family into our VW Campmobile, and we leave town.

Mom tells me we’re moving to Seattle, but after a half-day of driving, it’s clear that’s not our route. My parents reveal we’re heading northeast over 300 miles to link up with the Alaska Highway at Delta Junction and then drive almost 3,000 miles down to Denver, Colorado.

This is the second time in two years we’ll be traveling the highway — but in the opposite direction.

We drove up in 1966 from the Bay Area after Dad quit — or was fired from — his job with Wells Fargo in San Francisco.

Today, the Alaska Highway is paved, but in the late 1960s, 75 percent remains unpaved and winds through some of North America’s most desolate inhabited stretches. You can drive for miles even during the day and not meet another vehicle.

Services are so scarce that travelers carry “The Milepost,” a guidebook listing gas stations, grocery stores, campgrounds, motels, radio stations, RCMP outposts, and hospitals designated by their mile marker along the highway. Failure to mind your “Milepost” can leave you stranded or dead.

Around midnight, we’re in the Yukon Territory and heading south. On the horizon, I spot a yellowish-orange glow. As we get nearer, the light brightens and flickers; the source seems beyond a small hill.

I tell Dad to stop and turn around, that this doesn’t seem right. Someone is going to “get us.” Years later, Mom will recollect that I nearly had a complete breakdown — screaming, throwing things around, banging my head on the floor.

Dad slows the Campmobile to a crawl, and as we reach the top of the hill, we see…

An oil drilling rig venting and burning off natural gas. Today, nobody wastes petroleum that way, but back then, it just hinders tapping a petroleum field.

The oilfield workers smile and wave us on.

I don’t consider the incident anything other than a funny story — until maybe 10 years ago. I’m reviewing the events in my mind, and that’s when I suddenly remember something else that happened after we found the oil rig.

A few hours later, we stop in a small town with one of those old downtown hotels. It’s not a motel but an actual hotel with a lobby. It’s maybe 2 a.m. now. Mom and Dad usher me out of the Campmobile and into the lobby. At first, I’m excited — I wouldn’t say I like camping and am looking forward to sleeping in a real room for a change.

But we don’t check in. There aren’t any people coming in or out of the hotel that I can recall, and I never see a desk clerk. All I remember is hearing an old clock ticking somewhere and watching Mom sit on a battered leather couch. I’m in a big chair next to her — and my father stands at the hotel lobby window, staring out into the street.

Dawn comes early this far north in summer, and we leave. None of us mentions either incident to relatives when we arrive in Denver.

The oil rig story passes into family lore as an amusing example of why I never should have been allowed to read “The Interrupted Journey,” one of the first widely publicized alien-abduction stories. Betty and Barney Hill described a similar encounter. So did architect David Vincent, for that matter.

And nobody but me remembers the hotel — and it doesn’t bubble to the surface until 20 years later.

When I tell this story, I think it’s funny, and the people I’m telling it to do, too.

But I get a different response when I tell the story to Wally Reichert, a freelance photographer with whom I discuss high strangeness.

Wally suggests that the oil rig incident is merely a false-memory implant and that something else happened that night.

At one point, I considered being hypnotized to recover these alleged abduction memories. Still, I decided against the idea since my mind is so polluted by ufology and pop culture I doubt the truth could be sifted out.

But I still get the shivers over UFO stories.