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Encounters of the Unknown—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, July 2018


Did two women give an Alien a ride?

by: Brent Raynes




It was October 18, 1974. Edmoana Toews, an ordained minister of the Coptic Christian Fellowship was making the long trip back home to Alaska after attending a convention of the Coptic Christian Fellowship in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her friend Nuria Hanson. In their 1972 Datsun station wagon, the two women had reached the summit of British Columbia's Steamboat Mountain (elevation 3,500 feet) and were headed back down the other side, tired and worn out, having driven through heavy fog, looking for a lodge to turn in for the rest of the night. It was then that they spotted a light. Toews thought it was a beaon for planes, but Hansen disagreed. Why was it on the side of the mountain instead of being at the top? Then another light was seen. It was in the sky, and so Toews slowed to a stop. Both agreed the airborne light must be a plane – that is until it next moved toward them and then hovered, becoming about three times bigger than a full moon looks. So at that point they decided it must be a helicopter. But then it blinked out, leaving some sort of dark body in the sky where the light had been. Then it lit back up, gradually getting brighter and brighter until it became a brilliant white light. Then it shot up into the night sky becoming a mere pin-point of light, which they then lost among the stars.

The women next turned their attention back to the light on the mountain side. Seeing it more clearly they could see it was shaped like a derby hat with luminous portholes around it near the “brim,” with a domed top. “Wow! That's got to be a flying saucer, Nuria!” Toews exclaimed – Toews formerly an admitted skeptic of such things.

They next pulled into a driveway a short distance down the road. It was about 9:50 p.m. when they pulled into this driveway. There was no building visible, though they assumed that at some point in the past there probably had been. They watched the sky for about 45 minutes from this vantage point. During that time, the light in the sky returned, hovering over the derby hat looking craft on the ground, at which time that craft's light changed from yellow to bright orange, and then rose up off the ground and relocated to another spot on the ground an estimated 100 to 150 feet distance. As the craft landed the orange glow turned into a kind of darker burnt orange. On three occasions the airborne light again took its place in the sky to become a “star.” Whenever it did that, the craft on the ground would become bright yellow again, emitting orange flashes when the other UFO would return to hover over it.

At 10:35 p.m., the ladies continued on to Summit Lake, some 25-30 more miles, hoping to find a lodge and get some sleep. Toews found herself fighting to maintain control of the car as she navigated up and down steep hills and around sharp curves. She suggested to her passenger that they should pray some and sing. Then as they did, and they became relaxed, Toews noticed something very strange: the car was driving itself! This is when the “high strangeness,” as we in ufology call such things, really began kicking in.

“I tried to turn for a curve that I mistakenly thought was there but the car went straight ahead,” Toews recalled. “I took both hands off the wheel but only about an inch so that Nuria wouldn't notice. The car steered itself around succeeding curves without any help from me! I also found I could not increase or decrease the car's speed on level ground. No matter how hard I stepped on the accelerator, we maintained a steady pace of 25 miles an hour.”

Then Toews took her foot off the accelerator completely, their speed remaining the same. Nuria Hanson, at this point, was taking notice of what was going on. She suggested Toews try placing her hands on her lap.

“I did,” Toews explained. “The speed stayed the same and the car continued to negotiate curves without difficulty. It didn't even seem strange to us. A kind of pleasant, peaceful calm had settled in our minds.”

Then the women noticed that their car was casting a shadow, as well as something else as there was another shadow ahead of the car. Rolling their windows down they stuck their heads out and looked up. “There about 20 to 30 feet above us was the prettiest, fluffiest white cloud we had ever seen,” Toews stated. “Light was emanating from it but the source must have been above it, for it was the cloud itself that cast the other shadow. We talked about this for awhile and decided the UFOs we had seen must be guiding us, protecting us and driving the car. It all seemed a nice and pleasant thing; how very kind of them, we thought.”

The Summit Lake lodge turned out to be closed so they went on another 70 miles to Muncho Lake. Meanwhile, their car continued to drive itself, and ever since they had left Steamboat Mountain the gas gauge needle hadn't moved.

Upon arrival they found Muncho Lake closed as well. They got out to stretch their legs and as they were climbing back into the vehicle, a dark haired young man with a beard approached them, asking if he could get a lift. Toews pointed out they had no room, that the back portion of the car was loaded with luggage and they only had the two bucket seats in the front which they were occupying. Toews then explained that only if Hanson could sit in his lap or vice versa would it work. He explained that wouldn't be a problem, that he just needed a ride to the next lodge (where he said he worked), about 80 miles further up the road.

And so the tall young stranger sat hunched over in Hanson's lap. Toews had control of the car again, so was concentrating on her driving, even though something was nagging at her. The man reminded her of someone, but she couldn't think who it was. Later, Hanson too would confess the same. Neither had questioned at the time where this man had come from, wearing only a shirt and slacks and ordinary oxford-style shoes outside where it was only a few degrees above zero and the ground was covered in snow.

As they drove on, the stranger leaned forward and gazed into Toews' eyes saying, “My name is Gordon.” Then after about 5 miles, Hanson asked Gordon why she didn't feel him. He asked her what she meant and she explained that he had been sitting in her lap for awhile and it was like he didn't weigh anything at all. He dismissed her question saying that he simply didn't weigh much.

Toews reached in the back and placed a pillow on the console between them and insisted the man sit on it. He did, but then later Toews made a shocking discovery. The man was hovering several inches over the pillow! She had even placed a hand underneath him! “I was terror-struck,” she recalled. “I desperately wanted to shout, scream, yell for help. I gasped for breath and nearly strangled in my fear. But before I could utter a sound, Gordon suddenly leaned forward, peered into my eyes, and said slowly, intently, distinctly, 'Really, I'm perfectly all right. Please don't worry about me anymore.”

With that Toews calmed down. The matter went out of her mind. “I didn't remember it until many hours later,” she stated.

They next arrived at the Fireside Inn around 4 a.m., October 19th. They had promised “Gordon” that they would stay the rest of the night there. He had told them that the road ahead was too dangerous for them to drive on. As they were getting out of their car their mysterious male passenger just vanished. “Nuria and I turned back to get out purses, lock up the car and thank Gordon for his help,” Toews said. “He wasn't there! I couldn't have glanced toward the lodge for more than a few seconds. Nuria said he was standing behind me one second and was gone the next.” They looked around for some sign of him and could find nothing. There wasn't even any tracks to be found in the fresh fallen snow that was on the ground.

After a few hours of sleep the women hit the road again. The road was still icy, but there was almost no fog. They went 150 miles to a lodge at Watson Lake. They got a room, but hadn't been in bed long when it hit them. It was almost as though a “hypnotic spell,” as Toews put it, had worn off. Suddenly they were unable to go to sleep. For several hours they sat up discussing all of the very odd things that had happened to them and wondered how they had been so accepting of it all. Why, after seeing the strange lights, did the car not use any gas for the next 200 or so miles? Who was this “Gordon”? Where did he come from and where did he go? Why was he dressed the way he was for such cold weather? How could he have been weightless? How did the car drive itself?

“Then it hit me,” Toews declared. “Now I remembered of whom he reminded me: my husband Jim! Nuria agreed. 'Gordon' had Jim's hair color, eyes, build, beard, mannerisms. And was it only coincidence that he said his name was 'Gordon' – Jim's middle name?”

Author's Note: This story was a two part article by Edmoana Toews as told to Joseph J. Brewer, in FATE magazine, issues June and July 1977.


Friday, March 29, 2024