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    An alternative way to explore and explain the mysteries of our world. "Published since 1985, online since 2001."

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Alternate Perceptions Magazine, October 2022


1974 - TERROR ON A NEVADA DESERT ROAD

by: Rick Hilberg






1974 was another one of those very active years for UFO encounters of all kinds coming on the heels of the huge sighting wave of 1973, what I like to refer to as "the last great flap." While there have indeed been years since then that had their fair share of reports, somehow the number and intensity of subsequent years has not quite matched those that historians have noted in the past going all the way back to the beginnings of modern-day reports in 1947. One researcher in the 1990s even suggested that somehow the UFOs seemed to have gone away, although there indeed have been years that saw many good, solid UFO cases as in times past.

Anyway, the following account concerns an incident that happened to a pair of brothers on February 14th of that year. One of the brothers, Robert Klinn sent the following to a Southern California newspaper about their decidedly frightening encounter on a trip from Idaho back to California. It's one of the best accounts that I have ever come across in my years as a UFO historian and writer.

"We left Buhl, Idaho with a load of furniture in a 12-foot U-Haul truck. Later, on the desert outside of McGill, Nevada we were driving when my brother gestured and told me to look. I looked out of the left side of the truck and observed a round, orange object that appeared to be 10 feet off the desert floor. I couldn't tell how big it was or how far away it was.

"I then looked out the right side of the cab and saw three more smaller objects that were higher up and blue. One of them was flickering off and on; the other remained constant. "My brother said the orange object had been on the right side of the truck and had passed us and crossed over the road in front of us and had come to the left side of the cab. "We were moving at about 55 miles-per-hour, and at that moment it felt like we had been hit by a blast of wind or force field. The lights on the truck flickered on and off and the engine started to miss.

"Then he lost control of the truck and couldn't steer it. I told him to stop, and then before we could stop, the transmission selector jumped out of 'drive' into 'neutral', and we coasted to a stop in the middle of the road. Up to that point I wasn't very scared yet.

"As we sat there in the road with the motor running, we observed a huge silver metal ball with a dome on top and sharp wings, standing still over a hill to the left. It was pulsating.

"We then were scared half to death as we observed a huge light on the road in front of us that had a red light on the top of it. We thought it was moving towards us. It appeared to be maybe a mile ahead of us. I got out of the truck and shined my flashlight on it, but nothing happened. I then looked under the truck to discover the drive shaft turning. "Fearing for my life, I got back into the truck, and we both kept watching the light move closer. We felt that we were in a vacuum of some kind and isolated from the rest of the world. This experience lasted about 20 minutes. Then it seemed to disappear and it was over.

"Just then a car or whatever it was zoomed past us so fast we couldn't tell what it was. It was all over. I got out and put reflectors on the road to avoid an accident and tried to flag down a car. We finally stopped someone, and they took us into McGill, which is 10 miles north of Ely.

"We got another U-Haul truck and the station owner drove us back to where we had stopped. We didn't say anything to him, for we thought he might have laughed. After we unloaded the truck, he had it off the highway, as the back wheels would not move."

Several days later, Robert told the newspaper that when the truck had been hit by the blast of air, he felt that the truck was lifted off the ground. "It was floating slightly off the highway in the air," he said. "None of the wheels were touching the highway." When the transmission selector skipped into "neutral", the truck swayed in the air, he said, and the vehicle came smoothly to a stop without skidding.

Lewis Sandberg, owner of the Walker-Texico Service, outlet for U-Haul in Ely, informed the paper that the entire rear end of the witnesses' U-Haul truck had to be replaced - the tires, the rear axle, the outside housing, as well as the gears, "which were all messed up."
"The rear end was beyond repair," Sandberg said. "The back axle was twisted right off."
Sandberg said that after the brothers continued on their journey with the replacement truck, Sandberg and a helper took a tow truck to the disabled vehicle.
"When our tow truck lifted up the back of the truck," Sandberg stated," the wheels just fell right off! Those men stopped the truck just in time."


Friday, March 29, 2024