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- UPDATE
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- I was disturbed by the Utah's Time/Space warp Gadianton
Canyon Encounter because there are some geographical discrepancies. If
you find the details trivial, please forgive me, but for as reputable show
and website The Sightings.com is, the millions or readers deserve to read
correct details.
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- Here it is:
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- The city of Modena is in Southwest Utah, not Southeast
Utah and the Nevada-Utah state line is west of Modena. Cedar city is perhaps
46 miles from Modena but it is South-east and not North-east on Highway
56. There is a paved road that goes North-east through Escalante Desert
but no one, in their right mind would take this road as a short cut to
Cedar city, especially College students with some intelligences, because
the North-east road will make their trip to the dorm at least three times
longer, going through Beaver, Utah, unless of course there was some road
that "materialized" at this particular time, for the girls to
take the trip into the Time Warp Continuum.
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- I realize that people could be ignorant about geography,
but I believe that for the sake of the honest journalism the author should
have checked his map... unless he was reporting something from a mirror
- Universe.
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- The article, being sent to you by UFO Roundup, did
not pose a reason for you to doubt about its truthfulness, but still, your
millions of readers deserve to have the facts strait.
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- Perhaps Gadianton Canyon exist, with all its hauntings
and unexplained circumstances, and perhaps my remarks are trivial, but
unless the facts are correct, how can we take the article- as a real life
"unexplained" story or Science fiction?
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- I have sent an e-mail to UFO Roundup already, and I would
appreciate if my name and e-mail address is not mentioned if a correction
is due.
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- Regards
R.Yarbrough
Arizona
- -----
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- One of the strangest Highway Space Warp (HSW) cases took
place in southeastern Utah near the railroad crossing of Modena, on the
edge of the Escalante Desert.
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- There's a slickrock canyon just north of Modena that
bears the name of Gadianton. It's a name that brings a shudder to God-fearing
Latter-Day Saints.
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- "Among the freighters who hauled supplies to Pioche
(Nevada) in the seventies (1870s--J.T.) there grew up a legend that a rocky
gorge near the Nevada Line was haunted by the Gadianton robbers, a terroristic
brotherhood which the Book of Mormon explains as having sprung up among
the Nephites and Lamanites in the century before Christ."
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- The Gadiantons were a mysterious sect of assassins quite
similar to the Bruder Schweigen of Germany or the Crna Ruka of Yugoslavia.
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- "Wide-eyed freighters told tales of rocks closing
the way, and of the canyon folding up to entrap them."
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- Eventually the old Gadianton tales were forgotten in
Utah's Iron County. Until May of 1972, when four coeds from Southern Utah
University (SUU) were driving back to their dorm in Cedar City after spending
Saturday at a local rodeo in Pioche. (All names have been changed to protect
the witnesses' confidentiality--J.T.)
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- Janna North had the wheel of her father's 1971 Chevrolet
Nova, and Carol Abbott was in the passenger seat. Sitting in the back seat
were Lisa Rochefort and Bethany Gordon. It was after 10 p.m. when the girls
crossed the Utah-Nevada state line nine miles (14 kilometers) east of Modena.
And they were anxious to get back to the campus before their housemother,
Mrs. Mortensen, locked the dorm doors.
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- That stretch of Utah Highway 56 is pretty desolate, all
sand and sagebrush and ocotillo and Spanish bayonet, with the red sandstone
bluffs on the northern horizon. So the girls were pretty happy when they
finally spotted the Union Pacific railroad crossing at Modena. But just
past the rails, Janna noticed something strange. Two sets of blacktop highway
headed off into the desert--one veered sharply to the southeast, the other
shooting northeast toward the canyon country further north.
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- "Which one do we take?" asked Carol.
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- "Left," Janna said. She knew that Cedar City
was 46 miles (73 kilometers) to the northeast, and she guessed that the
canyon road would bring them home much sooner.
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- Five minutes later, the Chevy entered the red-rock canyon.
Janna, who had been chatting with her friends, suddenly noticed that the
car's headlights were shining more brightly on the pavement. Looking closer,
she let out a gasp. The white centerline was gone. Instead of black asphalt,
they were driving on white cement..
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- "Janna, up ahead!" Carol exclaimed.
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- Janna gasped. The highway ended abruptly at a rocky cliff
face. Janna stepped down hard on the brake pedal. Fishtailing slightly,
the Chevy screeched to a stop in front of the cliff.
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- "Oh, great! A dead end!" Putting the gear into
reverse, Janna swung the car's nose around. "You'd think they'd put
up a few warning signs."
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- "Now we've got to go all the way back to Modena,"
Bethany complained.
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- "We're never going to make curfew," Lisa said.
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- "We'll make good time once we're back on the state
highway," Janna assured them.
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- Tense minutes passed. Janna began to feel uneasy. They
were still rolling along, hemmed in by red canyon walls. But they should
have been back out in the open desert by this time.
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- The canyon gradually gave way to open country. The girls
gasped. Instead of moonlit desert, they saw grain fields on the right and
a large like, with stands of ponderosa pine, on the left.
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- Carol looked around in awe. "This sure ain't Modena!"
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- "We must've gotten turned around back there,"
Janna said, her gaze darting back and forth. "Where the hell are we?"
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- Up ahead Janna spied a roadhouse (tavern--J.T.) and an
adjacent parking lot. It seemed to have a neon sign, but she couldn't red
it. What should have been letters were brightly-lit squiggles and curlycues.
Some men came out of the building.
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- "There are some guys," Carol said.
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- Bethany let out a giggle. "Are they cute?"
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- "Let's find out." Lisa began rolling down the
rear passenger window.
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- "Lisa! We don't have time for this," Janna
said.
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- "Relax!" Hastily she touched up her lipstick.
"I'm only going to ask them how to get back to the highway."
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- As Janna slowed down, she noticed a good deal of consternation
among the men. As if they'd been startled by some unknown animal. Sticking
her head out the window, Lisa said, "Hi! We're--" And she let
out a terrified scream.
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- "Lisa! What--!?" Janna turned in her seat.
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- "Get out of here!" the girl screamed, frantically
rolling up the window. "Punch it, Jana!"
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- Bethany shrieked, "Step on it!"
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- Tires sitting sand, the Chevy zoomed away from the building.
Janna stepped down hard on the gas pedal. The lake flew by on her left.
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- "Oh, my God! They're coming after us!" Bethany
shouted. "Janna, faster!"
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- Janna glanced in her rear-view mirror, and what she saw
turned her blood to ice. They were being chased, but not by any vehicle
that had ever been built in Detroit.
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- Four queer-looking automobiles followed in their wake.
Egg-shaped vehicles mounted on tricycle wheels. That is, with two large
wheels in the front and a smaller wheel in the rear. A single bright white
headlight shone from the front of each pursuing "car." They made
a strange whirring or buzzing sound as they rolled along.
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- "Janna, go faster! They're gaining on us!"
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- Ahead the road led back into a red-rock canyon. Janna's
Checy plunged into it at 80 miles per hour. The road was so narrow, it
seemed to hem them in. The Chevy's tires kicked up a billowing cloud of
dust. They could no longer see their pursuers.
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- Minutes later, they roared out of the canyon, back into
the familiar desert. All at once, the road vanished. The headlights showed
nothing but sagebrush and ocotillo. The Chevy bucked and jostled like a
wild bronc. Janna hit the brakes. Too late! The car sideskidded down an
arroyo and came to rest at the bottom.
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- Shaking uncontrollably, the girls emerged from the car.
Miraculously they were unhurt. The Chevy took the worst of it, with three
flat tires, numerous dings in the front bumper and a missing hubcap. Jenna
took one look and clapped both hands to her forehead. "Oh, no-no-no!
My dad's going to kill me!"
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- Lisa, however, was near-hysterical. She sat on the ground,
hugging the knees of her bell- bottom blue jeans, weeping and moaning,
She kept mumbling, "They-they weren't human..."
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- The girls stayed with the car until sunrise. Then they
walked a couple of miles due south. Boy, were they glad when they found
the familiar blacktop of Highway 56. An hour later, they flagged down a
cruiser of the Utah Highway Patrol and told their story.
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- Trooper Vic Lundquist, who investigated the case, noted
several circumstances that were never adequately explained.
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- (1) There were no tire tracks showing where the Chevy
had left Highway 56 in Modena.
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- (2) Tire tracks from the wrecked Chevy extended only
200 yards back into the desert and ended abruptly.
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- (3) No one could explain how the Chevy had gotten nearly
two miles north of Highway 56 without leaving any physical trace of its
passage through the rough desert terrain.
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- (4) Although volunteers searched diligently, no trace
of the Chevy's right front hubcap was ever found.
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- If Utah's Gadianton Canyon is, as some people claim,
a gateway to another dimension, then perhaps Janna's missing hubcap is
a prime exhibit--an "alien artifact"--on display in a museum
on that parallel Earth. (See the book Utah: A Guide to the State by Hastings
House Publishers, New York, N.Y., 1945, page 298.)
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