Classic Mysteries—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, November 2023
Close Encounters with UFOs, Light Beams striking witnesses, and Poltergeists.
by: Brent Raynes
Copy of drawing by young Foxboro, Massachusetts witness. Featured in New England UFO Newsletter, January 1981.
Link: https://archive.org/details/New_England_UFO_Newsletter_No_21_1981_01/mode/2up
Additional Link: https://archive.org/details/New_England_UFO_Newsletter_No_22_1981_04
Some years ago, I met with and corresponded extensively with Joe Nyman, a crackerjack investigator/researcher in Massachusetts who was busily investigating UFO close encounters and contact cases, working and interacting with folks with similar interests in the UFO field like Ray Fowler, Budd Hopkins, and many others. He did a presentation at the 1992 Abduction Study Conference at M.I.T. (which that event is well covered in C.D.B. Bryan's book Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind, 1995) One extraordinary case Joe shared with me was that of a young boy who back on Thursday, December 4, 1980, in Foxboro, Massachusetts, on a clear very cold evening around 6:35 p.m., had a UFO close encounter. The object hovered over him, at very close range, and he claimed that it was "bigger than a house." It was producing a high-pitched humming sound. Joe and a fellow investigator named Ed Fogg were on the scene just two and a half hours after the alleged encounter, which is a rare opportunity for investigators to arrive on the scene in such a timely fashion. Shortly after this, Joe wrote me: "It involves a 13-year-old boy and an encounter that took no more than ten minutes of time, as we know it. He reported being paralyzed by a beam of light, hearing voices in his head, and we discovered a strange redness on his chest during the interview. After we left, he went to sleep and about half an hour later began talking in his sleep as if reliving the experience. In the 'dream' he was told that the occupants of the UFO could 'mold' time so that he need not worry about his boy scout meeting. (He was scheduled to be picked up ten minutes after the encounter began and made it in time)." He claimed that the beam of light struck him in the chest, at which point he was briefly paralyzed and unable to move, until the light beam eventually diminished and went out.
"Remember the case of 'Jimmy Hoffa' on the UFO?" Joe wrote. (1) "Would you believe Amelia Earhart on this one? That's who he was 'talking to' in his dream. He didn't remember anything about the dream in the morning but his parents recorded it for the case record."
In March 1981, Joe further revealed: "The current status of the Foxboro case is 'back burner.' We tried very hard to get a second hypnosis session in for nearly two months. Then when all illnesses and personal conflicts had been resolved, the boy's natural father took him out of school one day and is suing the natural mother and stepfather for custody. ...The other shoe in this case dropped on February 12, when the mother admitted that she had been keeping something from us, namely, that ever since January the family had been plagued by poltergeist phenomena. They were not malicious phenomena but benign things like keys and cigarette lighters disappearing, strange footsteps, drops of water falling out of the air, and the dog refusing to go into certain rooms at certain times. All the phenomena seem to center around the boy. ...As of the current emotional turmoil involved in the custody battle the phenomena are continuing and gaining in intensity, scaring the boy. At his grandmother's house where he is now staying, glasses have tipped over on the table, the TV has changed channels when the tuner knob has rotated, even though no one was touching the knob, and articles of the boy's clothing seem to be flying away from him when he is dressing. Also, doors are slamming with such force that the boy fears he himself will be injured. Apparently, the boy doesn't completely share everyone else's conviction that he himself is the agent of these forces."
National Enquirer article on another young person struck by a UFO beam of light with a reddish mark on his chest.
Next, I forwarded a clipping to Joe of an article that appeared in the National Enquirer dated September 18, 1979, that described a case from out near Tyler, Texas, wherein a young male college student also was hit by a UFO beam on January 24, 1979, on the chest (had a red diamond shaped 5 1/2 inch wide reddish burn). He had reportedly dreamed three nights in a row that he was going to encounter a UFO. The Enquirer article read how the witness "had the same frightening dream of a UFO encounter for three nights before the abduction. He kept seeing lighted objects come close to him - and on the night of Jan. 24, 1979, that dream turned into a chilling reality."
"Could the time-control facet of these experiences be a key?" Joe would openly wonder. Due to the similarities between the two apparent chest-burn cases, Ray Fowler phoned Dr. Richard Niemtzow, a physician, who along with John Schuessler, a former aerospace engineer, both formerly employed by NASA, together wrote a report for the September 1979 MUFON UFO Journal on this case. (2) "After their phone conversation I was sent back to the boy's house to look at his feet for puncture or abrasion traces," Joe informed me. "But there were none. It seems that these marks were a feature of the Texas case that was kept generally quiet. If I had discovered these marks on the boy's feet, Dr. Niemtzow was ready to fly up to examine him further. ...Dr. Niemtzow also sent up a color slide of the photo that was in the Enquirer. In it you can see that the mark in the Texas case is qualitatively different from that in the Foxboro case. The Texas mark is sharply outlined and brownish, almost as if it had been the result of a chemical such as mercurochrome."
The young man in Texas [the authors simply called him "Scott," to protect his identity] claimed he was driving home at 10:15 p.m. when he pulled over to relieve himself about 4 miles from Lindale. He got out, leaving the car motor running, at which point his attention was drawn to a bright green and yellow flash of light in the sky, accompanied by sparks. "This light hit him," the MUFON authors wrote. "A wind whirled around the car and his hair stood on end as if affected by static electricity. Then he saw two ships with a moving violet-red light between them."
"Later he found himself sitting in front of the car. The lights were on, but the car was not running. He was scared, shaky, cold, and his stomach was in knots. He had a loss of memory and the next day the clock in the car was found to be 5 1/2 hours off. Scott heard a loud ring and the car turned on." He returned home at 5:30 a.m. His friend Ron Patrick was waiting for him, claiming that he had been hunting for him and that on that very same night he and his mother had seen a UFO from his parents' home in Tyler. Ron, it turned out, was no stranger to UFO phenomena. Back in May 1977 he claimed he encountered two strange black figures with no hands or feet, no facial features, who were taller than him and appeared not to be touching the ground. They growled loudly too. Then the next day he and a girlfriend witnessed a round metallic craft with blue lights that noiselessly descended into a nearby lake. Additionally, Ron claimed that back on January 17, 1979, while living with his grandmother in Quitman, north of Tyler, he awakened at 4:15 a.m. to observe a "beautiful" beam of white light with a blue tint and sparkles, coming through a window, and how when he repeatedly touched the light it would "go through" his hand and arm. "It didn't hurt, but then I felt it was like static electricity," he told the investigators. At the time he was dressed only in shorts, but the next thing he knew he was sitting in a chair, fully dressed, and it was 7:00 a.m.
Ron's experiences seemed somehow connected with Scott's. He even claimed that around 12:30 p.m., on January 28, 1979, while driving his truck on Highway 69 near Tyler that he saw metallic colored UFOs similar to what Scott had claimed seeing on the 24th, just four days earlier. He even claimed that during this sighting a robot sounding voice, speaking in English, informed him that they meant no harm, were here to help, and that they would return. The MUFON Journal article added: "After the event Ron felt as if he could understand many new concepts. He admitted to being a 'slow' student prior to the event. Now he plans to start college on a part-time basis in the fall of 1979. ...the diamond-shaped discoloration on the chest of Scott has persisted for weeks. Initially it did peel in large heavy slabs but did not fade away."
Quite recently I was chatting on skype with seasoned investigative journalist Peter Jordan and he brought me up to speed on how significant a figure in the UFO field that Niemtzow was, working closely with John Schuessler, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Jacques Vallee, and other high-profile people in the UFO field. I found a site online about him and what an extensive and professional profile he had and how he was someone who really took a deeply serious interest in these close encounter cases. (3)
I’ve tried reaching out to Dr. Niemtzow and Joe Nyman for further comments on these cases, but have received no further responses at this time.
References:
1. Link: http://www.ufoevidence.org/cases/case657.htm
2. Link about the Texas case: https://dailydialectics.com/space/MUFON/MUFON%20UFO%20Journal%20-%201979%209.%20September.pdf
3. Link about Dr. Richard C. Liemtzow: https://ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-work-of-richard-charles-niemtzow.html
