Jerry, scheduled to enter college in the fall, had taken turns with the driving chores. Finally after being on the road for more than 18 continuous hours, the family pulled their new Chevrolet pickup, behind which they towed a house trailer, onto a service station lot to refurbish themselves.
As they proceeded to stretch their limbs and catch a breath of fresh desert air, their eyes were attracted to a peculiar-looking object moving about overhead. Later, Jerry was to give me the following description of what the family had witnessed. "The object - a definite aircraft of a completely unknown type - was shaped similar to a child's top - round at the top and pointed at the bottom. It was encircled by a ring of brightly colored lights, and from out of the lower portion of the 'ship' came a beacon similar to a searchlight. This light beam passed over the area as if in search of something. We became quite shaken, moments later, when it shone directly on our trailer."
Jerry states that the object appeared to be about the size of an automobile. "Before disappearing from our view, the UFO hovered only a few feet above the top of our truck and then quite noislessly zoomed off into the distance, and went out of sight." None of those present found it easy to believe what they had seen.
The next day the James' camped off the main highway, miles from where their observation of the previous evening had taken place. "We thought we were once again going crazy when we saw a silver-looking vessel floating in from over a nearby mountain peak." This time Jerry revealed, "the UFO got so close - within 75 feet - that we could even see rivets visible in the metallic gray structure. At one point, as the orb made a direct pass at us, my mom fainted dead away. We had to use smelling salts to revive her."
Entering the back of the trailer they immediately noticed that something truly strange - well beyond their mysterious traveling companion - had come about. "Everything inside the trailer compartment was in perfect order, although when we left it the bunks had been unmade and the sink area strewn with silverware and unwashed dishes and utensils. Our beds had been put together and everything was as neat as it could be - though not as my Mom would have done it." It was then, looking around them, that Jerry noticed the most unusual feature. "On the kitchen cabinet we found a small dish with a sprouting carrot which had been placed there sometime during the last 24 hours. But something drastic and truly puzzling had happened to it, for the carrot did not resemble a carrot any longer. It had spread out, as if having grown for weeks in a tempered, professional hot house. Roots were everywhere, running outside the dish and reaching almost to the floor."
Examining the vegetable closer, Jerry and his parents and sister noticed a slimy green-colored substance on the cabinet and dish. "It was a vile smelling substance," Jerry observed, "and other than that I can't tell you much about it. One thing strange through. When I touched it with a pencil it 'ate up' the wood and lead in a matter of seconds."
Soon after this Jerry telephoned the police, who they hoped would investigate the series of phenomena. En route, their truck began to accelerate against the will of its driver. "Only a fractional depressing of the accelerator was enough to send the vehicle - truck and trailer - speeding along at 40 miles per hour."
But this was not all, as Jerry later confirmed. Upon arriving at the nearest gas station, the attendant proceeded to remove the gas cap. As he did out rushed an odorous and gaseous material, causing a hissing noise and bringing with it a strong smell like that of sulphur dioxide, or rotten eggs.
Even later, they discovered that the part of the truck seat where the driver sat had rotted out and the ignition key itself now glowed in the dark and had gotten soft and rubbery.
While law enforcement officials whom they contacted refused to believe that the James family had actually encountered a strange visitor from the depths of the universe, their insurance company was remarkably less skeptical. "They bought us a brand new truck to replace the one that had been wrecked so bad," Jerry reported. "They informed us that they had never seen anything quite like it before. What happened really had them stumped - almost as much as it had us frightened."
Jerry remarked in a later communication that he was well aware that a good portion of what transpired could have been caused by a harmful dose of radioactivity. Yet, he also added that no one in his famliy showed the slightest symptoms of radiation poisoning. "None of us became ill afterwards. Even if the amount of radioactivity had been negligible, we should have become sick. In addition, it seems very probable that if the UFOs which passed directly overhead had carried with them some sort of contamination - enough to make the carrot root grow so widely, or the ignition key to glow and turn soft - surely it would have made us ill enough to need medical treatment. Probably we would have been quarantined in a hospital for observation. Thus I have my doubts that radioactivity was what caused these peculiar things to happen."
But if radiation wasn't the cause of this family's problems, what was? It seems more than coincidental that two UFOs were seen while all this was taking place. A careful examination of other close sightings reveals numerous instances of similar rapid "growth pattern."
Copyright Tim Beckley, 1992, extracted from Strange Encounters booklet.
