THE MOST BIZARRE UFO ENCOUNTER

By Jerome Clark
(Annotated)

Pelham, Georgia
August 6.1977

The alleged witness is one Tom Dawson, a 63-year-old retired automobile dealer who lives in a trailer park outside that southwestern Georgia town, population 4,500. Even he admits that he doesn't expect anyone to believe his story, he says he wouldn't believe it either if it hadn't happened to him. That's a remark all too many UFO witnesses have made.

But Dawson says, "I don't care what they say. This is the honest truth. I'm not crazy, I wasn't drinking, and I've never had a mental condition. This is the very first time I have ever experienced anything like this."

That morning Dawson went for a stroll with his two dogs. He stopped over at a neighbor's house and played for a time with Jimmy and Linda Kolbie's baby, then set off for a fish pond located behind some pine trees. To get there, he had to cross over a pasture where about 40 cows quietly grazed.

He had just stepped inside the gate when a strange circular object suddenly flashed out of the sky and came down in front of him, hovering two feet off the ground. Dawson found himself paralyzed, unable to move a muscle, and noticed that his dogs and the cattle were similarly "frozen."

As soon as the UFO stopped, a hatch opened and five humanoid beings, three men and two women, stepped out. Their skin was pale white, their noses sharp and turned up, their ears pointed. They had no necks. Two, a male and a female were completely nude. There was no hair on any of their bodies.

The first to emerge from the UFO, whom Dawson took to be the leader stepped gingerly to the ground and then motioned for the others to follow. Two men came out and stood at the entrance to the ship, acting apparently as guards. The others then walked out and cautiously approached Dawson.

Their clothing was "beautiful" and the men and women dressed alike (except presumably, for the two in the buff). They wore shoes made of a silky substance and the toes were pointed upwards.

Dawson was given what he took to be a medical examination in the pasture. The beings placed a "skullcap" over his head; the "cap" had several cords attached to a ring-like device, on which there was a set of dials. The ufonauts lifted Dawson's shirt and removed his trousers.

So far this story is more or less typical of a certain kind of close encounter. However...

At this point Dawson heard a voice screaming from inside the UFO. It was a human voice. It said -- and I caution you to hold on to your hat -- "I am Jimmy Hoffa! I am Jimmy Hoffa! I am Jimmy Hoffa! I am..." The cry was suddenly stifled as if someone had put his hand over the speaker's mouth.

The examination finished, the ufonauts moved about 10 feet away and huddled for a conference speaking in high, shrill voices. Dawson thought he heard one of them say the word "Jupiter." He noticed two of the males eyeing him and suspected they were talking about taking him with them.

Apparently, they decided against it. Instead, they trooped back into the UFO, closed the hatch behind them, and ascended to about 75 feet in the air. Then, in a flash, the object vanished.

When that happened, Dawson was free to move again. So were the animals. Pulling up his pants, he ran as quickly as his legs could carry him to the Kolbie residence, where Linda Kolbie was working in the lawn.

"He was in bad shape," the woman told a reporter for the Pelham Journal. "I saw him coming. He was running at top speed and waving his arms, trying to get his breath."

He couldn't even speak. Mrs. Kolbie had him sit down and wipe his face with a wet rag. He was, she said, "wild eyed" and extremely frightened. She asked him if he'd seen a big snake. He shook his head and managed to get out the word "spaceship."

Mrs. Kolbie rushed him to the hospital, where a doctor treated him for hysteria. Attendants checked to see if he was on drugs, medication, or alcohol, but he wasn't. However, they could see that something had really shaken him up. Later when a reporter interviewed him, he still had not completely recovered. He continued to insist. "I know what happened and there is no doubt in my mind that it happened just as I told you."

The Kolbies said they knew Dawson quite well and described him as "hard working, nice, and a gentle man who adores his daughter." He is not an alcoholic, a storyteller, or an individual with a particularly vivid imagination.

Without committing myself to either belief or disbelief in Dawson's claim. I'd like to note some interesting details which we have met in earlier close encounter reports.

For one thing, the reported paralysis which affected both human and animal bystanders is hardly unprecedented; it figures, for example, in the famous Delphos, Kansas landing. Nude ufonauts have appeared in at least two very obscure cases, namely the Springfield, Missouri contact of April 16, 1897, and the even less well known Centralia, Washington encounter of March 28, 1950, which Kenneth Arnold investigated but, except for a very brief item in the local paper a few days later, has never been published.
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If anyone knows about the case referred to above that Kenneth Arnold investigated please send it in and we will publish it. I have never heard about it before!