The following is my encounter with a UFO.

     I was born and raised in a small town in Iowa. Being in a small town and all there usually is not much to do. So about three years ago my family and I went to this amusement park, Adventure Land, up north in Des Moines, IA. It was about a five hour drive so I slept most of the way. When we finally got there it was noon and I was hungry, so we got a bite to eat. After a long day of riding somethings, we got to the best ride in the park, I forget its name, it was the largest coaster there. It is old looking, and made of wood. As I stood in line, I gazzed up to watch the coaster car go near by. I noticed a faint object in the sky at a distance. At first I just thought it was a airplane but soon realised that it had no vapor trail and was hovering. It was silver, and pan like shaped. I'll never forget that day as long as I live. Now I shall share with you other sightings seen over the years.

  About 5:45 P.M. on April 24, 1964, Patrolman Lonnie Zamora, a five-year veteran of the Socorro, New Mexico, police department, was chasing a speeding black chevrolet north on U.S. 85 when he heard a roaring sound that changed from high frequency to low frequency and then stopped. He then saw a flame in the southwest sky and became concerned that a dynamite shack in that area belonging to the Socorro mayor might have exploded. Abandoning his chase, Zamora turned off the highway and drove over rough gravel road toward the flame, which he described as a blue and orange, pointing downward, and narrower at the top.

  After being slowed attempting to drive up a steep incline, Zamora reached the top and noticed a shiny object between 150 and 200 yards south of his position. He thought at first glace it was a car turned upside down. Then he saw it was an egg-shaped object that appeared to be made of aluminum or some shiny white metal. He saw two figures in white coveralls standing beside the object. They appeared normal in shape but diminutive, either "small adults or large kids." One of them turned to look at his patrol car and appeared startled, jumping slightly.

  Zamora lost sight of the pair and the craft as he maneuvered his car around some low hills toward the site. When he reached the object, it began ascending into the sky with a roar "not like a jet." He noticed a two-and-a-half-foot insignia on the side, which looked like a stick arrow pointing up over a horizontal straight line enclosed in a semicircle. Much later, UFO author Jacques Valle, who reportedly was portrayed as the French scientist Lacombe in Steven Spielberg's film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," would identify this insignia as the Arabic astrological sign for Venus.

  Fearful of the noise and the flames now issuing from the craft, Zamora sought protection behind his car but stumbled and lost his prescription glasses. The object, after rising straight up, moved off horizontally, "traveling very fast." Zamora said the craft left behind smoldering plants that were oddly cold to the touch.

-By Jim Marrs

April 17, 1897, dawned clear and cool in North Texas when out of the south came a large, silver, cigar-shaped object dropping lower and lower as it approached the small hamlet of Aurora, Texas, less than twenty miles northwest of Fort Worth. There it struck a windmill and exploded, scattering debris-and at least one body-in all directions.

Or did it? Despite straight-faced coverage in the local newspapers at the time, the Aurora crash continues to be a sourse of controversy. Here's what is known: In the spring of 1973, Bill Case, aviation writer for the now-defunct "Dallas Times Herald," wrote a series of articles about the Aurora crash after being told the story by Hayden Hewes of the International UFO Bureau. Case immediately looked up the April 19, 1897, article in his newspaper's microfilm library.

  The story stated:

  About six o'clock this morning the ealy risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearence of the airship which has been sailing throughout the country. It was traveling due north, and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles and hour and gradually settling toward earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Protor's windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over serveral acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden. The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one abroad, and while his remains are badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world.

  Mr. T.J. Weems, the U.S. Signal Service officer at this place and an authority on astronomy, gives it his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars. Papers found on his person-evidently the records of his travels-are written in some unknown hieroglyphics and cannot be deciphered. This ship was too badly wrecked to form any conclusion as to its construction or motive power. It was built of an unknown metal, resembling somewhat a mixture of aluminum and silver, and it must have weighed serveral tons. The town today is full of people who are viewing the wreckage and gathering specimens of strange metal from the debris. The pilot's funeral will take place at noon tomorrow.

-By Jim Marrs

  By late February 1942, just three short months after the Japanese bombimg of Pearl Harbor, tensions were high on the West Coast with just cause. America had been attacked without warning and there was a fear of imminent invasion. Air raid drills had been conducted regularly since the attack, and on February 23, a Japanese submarine had shelled the Bankline Oil Company refinery in Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara.

  At 2:25 A.M. on February 25, Los Angeles County residents were awakened by the wail of air raid sirens. Most believed it was simply another drill. They were blissfunnly unaware that one of America's most recent military secrets-radar-had picked up blips indicating a flight of approaching aircraft about 120 miles west of Los Angeleses shortly after 2:00 A.M. According to a report on the incident sent to President Franklin Roosevelt the next day, 1,420 rounds of antiaircraft ammunition were fired at the incoming craft, yet no planes were shot down and no bombs were dropped. There were no casualties among American military forces and no army or navy planes were involved.

  The firing, which went on for about an hour, caused considerable damage to serveral homes and public buildings. The city was littered with pieces of metal from exploded ordnance. At least six civilians died as the result of automobile accidents and heart attacks attributable to the gunfire. The all-clear signal did not come untill 7:21 A.M., and the traffic james lasted well into the morning rush hour.

  For all the commotion, there was no evidence that an enemy attack had taken place. Embarrassed military officials immediately began to downplay the incident. In Washington, Navy Secretary Frank Knox said "that as far as I know the whole raid was a false alarm  and could be attributed to jittery nerves." But his reassuring staement was not supported by West Coast witnesses.

  The told of fast-moving red or silver objects high in the sky accompanied by a large slower-paced-some said as slow as sixty miles per hour-object, which then hung motionless in midair for some time as antiaircraft shells burst all around it.

-By Jim Marrs