HBCC UFO Research Note: The report, or experience which was related to me by a really nice fellow wishes to remain anonymous which is totally fine with me. Also I completely understand why he would like it to remain this way. But, this is an important case and the witness, or witnesses to this unusual event are looking for answers, as I am. These folks are requesting anyone's help, in other words people who may have been witness to some unusual events around the time of this experience. Anyone with information on sightings in the Thousand Oaks, California area in November 1975 would you please contact Brian Vike, Director of HBCC UFO Research with your information on what took place. I then can pass along just the detailed information to the people who were involved in the November 1975 incident. Thank you very much, Brian Vike. We lived in Thousand Oaks, California at the time, at 2130 Sapra (There are 2 Sapra's that were supposed to connect but never did. Our house was on the short one, connecting directly to Erbes Road). It was a new housing development when we moved in from Amarillo, TX in 1969 (My dad worked for Burroughs and was transferred from Texas to the Westlake Village branch). We were the last house on a dead end street at the end of town. The houses were on only the south side of the street, cut out of the hill, with a large horse field across the street. The house was perched quite high above Erbes Rd and we could see over the horse field and into the valley below. First Night: My cousin lived next door and he and I were playing guitar on my front driveway along with my brother and a couple of other friends around 7:00 or 8:00 pm (close guess). Suddenly a blue light (size of a basketball?) streaked (super fast- no sound) over the house from the south and hit the horse field. I say hit, but it seemed to dissolve on impact and sent blue, lightning like streamers shooting off across the ground in all 3 other directions, for hundreds of yards until they disappeared. Well, this was kind of strange to say the least, but we were kind of laughing about it as a couple of the people were facing away and saw nothing. We went back to playing guitar and 15 to 20 minutes later, this huge pine tree on the street down in the valley (Marview Drive - just looked it up on map quest) suddenly was fully engulfed in flames. We stood there for awhile ( I remember watching the fire truck come down Arboles and turn up Erbes down in the valley below). Eventually it was put out (the story was in the paper -News Chronicle- the next day). That night my brother, ex and I were up in my old room (My ex-wife and I were up in Alaska that year and had just gotten back) watching TV and we had the window on the east side of the room open. About 10:00 or so my brother told me to turn down the TV, he thought he heard something. We went over to the window and, after a couple of minutes, heard a far off 'scream' way back in the hills to the northeast. We looked at each other with a 'what was that' look and a couple of minutes later heard it again, only it sounded farther away. I think we heard it a couple of other times and than didn't hear it again. Nothing else happened that night. We all got home from work the next day, ate dinner, then my folks sat in the living room to watch TV and the 3 of us went upstairs to do the same. Around 7:00 my brother again said to turn down the TV (He always sat in a chair that we had next to that window) and immediately we heard the 'scream', only much closer. How do I describe 'the scream'? I can't. I've never heard anything like it, before or since. Part human, part animal? Pain? Fear? Certainly wasn't happy. I can kind of imitate it, but I can't describe it. Let me also take a break here and describe the terrain. The houses stepped up the street, each one higher than the other. They had a lot above ours, but it was too small to build on and they sold it to my dad and he put a pool on it. That lot was even with the window in my room so my window looked out on the pool. The hill behind both lots started very quickly up (steep) for about 30 feet to a small drainage ditch and then both were surrounded by a chicken wire fence we had put up to enclose both lots. Beyond that, thick, impenetrable sage brush. We owned that land but were never able to use it. You couldn't walk through it and the sage brush covered the entire hill south and east of the house. The fire department occasionally came and cleared a little back from the drainage ditch, but it always grew back quickly. The hill went straight up for hundreds of yards to the houses on the top of the hill, which you could neither see or hear. At this point we heard the scream coming from a point near a phone electric pole that was in the middle of the hill (50 yards away maybe). It screamed again and the 3 of us didn't need to hear it again to know it was time to get dad involved so we ran downstairs. A thought occurred to me - where are the dogs? I went left out to the garage and my brother and ex went right, into the living room. I opened the back garage door (somewhat hesitant I might add). Usually at this point, I'm bowled over by a lovable, but hyper, 120 pound male German Sheppard who's favorite thing is to bound inside or in the garage and destroy everything in his tails path. But no dogs and then a scream up the hill to the left and I closed the door and headed inside. My dad and brother were at the front door going out as I came in so I followed them outside. They went down the driveway while I went over to the gate on the west side of the house to see if I could find the dogs. I rattled the gate, and still no dogs but I heard the scream again, at the edge of our property, about near the drainage ditch. I went back to the front of the house and could see my brother and dad standing on the sidewalk in front of the 2nd lot, looking up at the hill. I saw my dad and brother flinch down and the scream was thunderous. By far, the loudest we had heard, and the house was blocking me. My dad and brother came running up the driveway, asking me if I'd seen the fireballs (which I hadn't). They said 2 blue fireballs came shooting over their heads and hit the hill and immediately the thing screamed it's shriek. This was the only time in my life I saw my dad scared. We all went inside and I tried to call my cousin next door, but nobody answered the phone. My Dad then decided to call the police and he reported something was up on our hill to the Thousand Oaks PD. At that point, the 3 of us went out the back door with a flashlight to look for the dogs. The thing had stopped screaming after the fireball incident to the best of my memory, but it wasn't screaming now. We found both dogs in the doghouse,shaking. We finally got them out and into the garage. Quick note about the dogs. Anything near the property, they went nuts on. Rabbits or birds? An hour bark-a-thon. They protected that yard relentlessly, but what ever was up there this night, they wanted no part of. My dad, brother and I went back out front and heard nothing. We stayed out there, one of us going inside every few minutes to check on things. An officer arrived about 8:30 and my dad somewhat told him what was going on (He was a Korean war vet so he wasn't going to the unexplained just yet). The officer stayed for a while, shined his spotlight on the hill and of course not a peep. I'd say he left after 20 minutes to 1/2 hour. We went back inside and talked about it for a while then we went upstairs. Now it got weird. We were upstairs for a while (an hour maybe less) when we thought we heard it again. We went to the window and it screamed again just as we got there, loud from behind the main house. I ran downstairs and yelled at my dad, I remember him sitting in his chair and Johnny Carson was doing his monologue so it was between 11:30 and 12:00. They were always in bed by 12:30 - 1:00 on work nights. We ran upstairs, met my ex and brother at the top of the stairs, and headed into my folks bathroom which had the best vantage point at the back hill with a south facing window. I got there first and listened for a few seconds when suddenly a large scream bellowed forth followed by a very loud electronic 'beep'. My dad was at my side and I said 'Listen, I heard a beep' and on queue, loud scream - beep. It had moved about 5 feet east at that point with no sound (remember the sagebrush) and then it did it a third time (scream - beep) and had moved a little further. My ex was screaming about somebody putting a needle in her belly button (The Betty/Barney Hill movie had aired about a month ago) so I stepped back to the door to comfort her, I saw this blinding white light that seemed to fill the house and then we are all standing in the hallway and going off in different directions to go to bed. My brother decided he wanted to sleep in the chair instead of alone and when we got into my bedroom I saw the clock said 4:30 exactly. I remember I could hear the screams now from there original point by the poles on the hill, but we all went to sleep. Everybody went to work the next morning, but I called in sick cause my ex didn't want to stay there alone. I went up the hill to the east of the property as far as I could get and there were 2 circular patterns in a clearing where there were weeds, about 8 feet in diameter. That was all I saw and that was the end of that. A woman who worked at my mothers work (an optometrist's office) told her that day she was driving up Erbes road about 7:30 that night when she saw 2 cars stopped on Erbes with people looking up at our hill, and she looked and saw a bright white light hovering over the hill east of our house, and then it just disappeared. Aftermath: We talked to my cousin next door and they heard nothing (I have no explanation because they should have, that thing was LOUD) and they said they were home and never heard the phone ring. The male German Sheppard went fast. He was 5 years old, and in the weeks following the incident, he lost control of his nervous system to the point he couldn't function and was put to sleep. The vet said he had no idea what was wrong with him. The female went blind (7 years old) over the next few months and she too was put to sleep. My dad seemed to age rapidly for the next year and 1/2 and died of a heart attack at a company picnic in August 1977. My daughter was born normally, but has had a few 'strange' incidents and I watched her lose her baby teeth then get in her adult teeth, only to lose them all at age 12 and get a third set of teeth, The dentist said it wasn't happening but we know it did. A few months after the encounter, I went and laid down after work and spiked a 106 temperature. I was sick for a year, was put in the hospital and tested for hepatitis and cancer but they had no idea what was wrong with me. The only thing they told me was my blood work showed some irregularity and I was told not to give blood. The lady that worked with my mom quit unexpectedly that day and I never had a chance to ask her about it as she committed suicide shortly there after. That's it. The scream and fireballs were strange, but the fact we all went to bed and didn't seem to care that our 10 minutes in the bathroom turned into 4 hours was maybe the strangest. I have no explanation for any of it. This was hard to write about. I had to stop once and thinking about it still causes Goosebumps. A couple of days after that my dad, brother and I were on our front yard talking about this encounter, when my dad told us the following story. He joined the Air Force in 1950 after 2 years at the University of Minnesota and spent some time in Korea as a jet mechanic and then came stateside and was stationed at Sioux City Iowa, were he was trained as a radar technician. One night in 1954 the whole base went on alert suddenly and he was told there was an unknown object coming from the north. They got a radar reading that it was at 50000-80000 feet and traveling in excess of 1,200 mph (I recall him saying 1,800 mph but my brother said 1200 so we'll go with that). It went off the screen to the south, and everybody in the room was told to forget it even happened. He never told us about that before, but my mom confirmed today that he told her about it the next day (he was on the overnight shift). Thank you to the person for relating this fascinating experience to me.
|
