Classic Mysteries
The UFO Contact Story of Gary Wilcox
by: Brent Raynes
At about 10 a.m., on April 24, 1964, a 27-year-old farmer named Gary Wilcox was out in one of the fields of his 300-acre farm spreading manure at Newark Valley, New York, when he noticed something unusual over by the edge of the woods. Curious he drove his tractor over for a closer look. He initially suspected that it was perhaps a fuel tank or something from a plane. As he walked up to it he could tell it was slightly off the ground, but wasn’t sure how it was suspended there, whether on some sort of legs or whatever. He described it as oblong shaped, resembling an egg, and that it was approximately 20 feet long, 4 feet high, and 15 or 16 feet wide. He stated that he thumped it, even kicked it. He determined that it was definitely metallic, with an aluminum color. The surface was smooth, with no rivets or seams visible, and when he touched it he detected no vibration, there was no sound, nor was there any sensation of heat or anything else out of the ordinary. Then two men, both about 4 foot tall, came out from underneath it, and they had what resembled a metal tray about a foot square that was filled with alfalfa, roots, soil, leaves and brush. The men were dressed in some sort of white or metallic suits. No part of their body was showing.
Wilcox said that for the first few minutes he didn’t say much of anything. He was frightened, and he suspected that someone was playing a trick on him. When asked what the beings first said to him, Wilcox stated that one of the beings seemingly told him “Don’t be alarmed, we have spoken to people before.” In a prepared statement Wilcox recalled, “Their voices did not sound like a voice I could describe. I could understand what was said but cannot tell whether they were speaking English or not.” Then they proceeded to ask him about what he was doing, asking for him to explain about the tractor, manure spreader, and manure itself. He claimed that it turned out that they were very interested in organic substances as Mars (where they allegedly claimed to be from) was rocky and not fit for growing anything. Wilcox said he answered their questions for two hours. During that time he learned that they had been watching him for sometime.
Wilcox said he asked the beings if he could go with them. They turned down his request, stating that their atmosphere would be too thin. They added that they avoided congested areas on earth because of automobile fumes, as it seemingly interfered with the performance of their vehicles. They preferred operating in areas where the air was clean. Meanwhile, the strange men, who had approached within a few feet of Wilcox, seemed interested in farming practices, and when Wilcox mentioned how he used fertilizer, they wanted to know about it. He offered to get them a bag of fertilizer to take with them, but they did not want to wait around for him to do so. Soon the men got back into their craft which quietly rose into the air with a noise he described as comparable to a car motor idling. The UFO slowly glided off and then just disappeared from sight to the north, at an estimated distance of about 150 feet. Later that afternoon, Wilcox took a 75 pound bag of fertilizer and left it near a small tree near where the UFO had landed. When he checked the next morning he found the bag of fertilizer was gone. During their conversation, the little men allegedly told Wilcox astronauts John Glenn and Virgil Grissom and two Russian astronauts would die within a year, something to do apparently with exposure to the elements of space. Although Glenn is still alive and well, Grissom and two others died in the tragic Apollo capsule fire of January 27, 1967, and Russian astronaut Vladimir M. Komarov was killed when his capsule’s parachutes didn’t open upon re-entry on April 24, 1967, exactly three years after Wilcox was given the alien prediction.
The late Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz, a distinguished psychiatrist and paranormal researcher, gathered much background information on this case and followed up with an extensive interview of Wilcox at his home on October 18, 1968. Dr. Schwarz was extremely impressed with Wilcox’s obvious background and evidence of stability, integrity, honesty, and intelligence. A detailed chapter length review of his investigation of this case can be found in his two volume book, UFO Dynamics (Rainbow Books, 1983).
