Day 6 - Kingman Arizona

Click here for the photo album covering this day's events.

Day 6 started with breakfast and a small drive to another part of the Canyon where we hiked a bit and took some more scenic pictures. There were several vendor tables setup along the pathway with people selling American Indian wares and such, and I recognized my Sedona hat at one of the booths. I stopped to talk to the American Indian merchant to asked me about my hat, where I'd gotten it and how much I paid for it. It turns out the booth in Sedona was part of his franchise and I got the feeling he was quizzing me to make sure the other vendor wasn't over, or under, charging people. I've studied the plight of the American Indian in several college classes and have a soft spot in my heart for the people and culture, so I paused to talk to him a bit, learning that he was a "local" and this was his primary business.....selling to tourists. I thanked him for his time and moved on.

Once back on the road "for real" we were headed to Kingman, AZ. Here we were supposed to listen to watch a video of the famous Phoenix Lights incident of 1997, however Tony stated that  since we'd gotten the smaller van with no DVD player that plan got nixed. Instead he played audio of some 1960s and 1970s paranormal radio shows, similar to Coast to Coast or The Paracast in which UFO cases are deeply discussed and debated. Tony peppered in some New-Age-y music to set the mood. I have to admit that it made this part of the trip enjoyable and relaxing.

When we got to Kingman we ate lunch at a nice restaurant then met up with a guy named Harry Drew and his companion, Dr. Joan Hangarter, both of whom were immediately warm and personable to the whole tour group. I'd not heard too much about the Kingman crash but had looked it up on Google before our trip, so this was going to be interesting to me. We loaded up in the van, Harry and Dr. Joan in their 4X4 Jeep, and headed into downtown Kingman where Harry showed us the historic sheriff's office and jail.

As the story went in the 1940's there was a military radar array stationed in Kingman and used for Army-Airforce flights and such. After the end of WWII and into the late 1940's to 1950's, the military (Airforce, I think) decided to ramp up the radar signal, boosting it by several hundred-fold to use it as an early warning system against Russian missile attacks that may be flying over the U.S. west coast. So why is this important to UFO's? According to Harry since Kingman was established it had been a hotspot for flying saucers, a proverbial fly-over and flight path for UFO's. The stories told of innumerable UFO sightings in the desert around Kingman throughout history, but suddenly in the early 1950's there was a UFO crash on the outskirts of the city. Then, about a year later there was another one, and another. Four, total, I believe, from 1951 through 1953. Flying saucers were dropping out of the sky during this time frame, and Harry said it became common place for the local emergency services to retrieve the occupants, (dead or alive,) gather up the debris of the crashed craft, and transfer it all to the government officials who would show up a day or two later. The belief of many supporters of the Kingman UFO crash series is that when the government beefed up the signal of the radar array, the array may have started wreaking havoc with the UFO navigation systems, causing the pilots to lose control of their craft and crash within the desert around Kingman. Harry hinted at this belief while we were there, but his website indicates the radar array was removed in 1945 after the war, in fact, perhaps nullifying this suspicion and rumors. I find it a bit difficult to believe myself since the idea of human radar transmissions would be powerful enough to bring down a presumably extraterrestrial craft designed for flight in outer space.

Harry Drew giving his presentation to Team UFO on the left. From front to back; Linda, Glen, Ellen, Terry (asleep, I think. No offense Harry, he tended to do that), and Bonnie. (Courtesy of Top Secret Tours)

The first crash report involved the local authorities taking the inhabitants of the UFO into custody. The report states that these beings looked very human like in appearance, with pronounced almond-shaped eyes being the biggest hint that they were "not human." Here's where the jail cell comes in. The local sheriff stowed the crash survivors in the cell but they ended up disappearing a few hours later, seemingly having been released, escaped, or otherwise shifted through the cell door. They then walked down the hall of the courthouse and past a few people who appeared to have some fuzzy memories of the whole incident.

The accounts of the other crashes were also pretty fascinating, including one that started a fire up on a small mountain ridge within sight of the city. Some local campers were blamed, originally, but when the site was visited a craft was discovered. Harry related all these accounts to us before we loaded back up in the vehicles and followed him out into the desert. Here would have been the one and only reason I can think of why it was a good thing we had the van and not a tour bus. The roads we took into the desert were rough, even for the van, so I doubt a bus would have been able to handle it. We traveled for about an hour or so on bumpy roads and finally came to a U-shaped area in the desert where, Harry claims, one of the UFO's bounced off a hill and crashed into the desert floor. (He had found at least one more suspected crash site but this one was the easiest to get to.) As we walked into the U-shaped area Harry pointed out the good-sized hill to our right that created the end of the U. As Harry described, he believed this hill is where the UFO initially impacted, bouncing off the top and kicking up a small ridge of harder stone before falling into the U and sinking itself into the floor of the desert at an angle.

Harry and Team UFO at the crash site.
Your's truly to the left. (Courtesy of TST)

I stopped and took a look at that hill and the ridge of harder rock Harry claimed was a result of the UFO impact from 1953. I could get up there, I was sure of it. I'm in pretty good shape for my age, 41, and had actually been training for this trip (long story but I believe being in good physical shape leads to a better experience on vacations and such, ... much less life in general.) I was dressed to hike and climb, looking like Indiana Jones with my fedora hat and cargo shorts. Yeah ... I could make that, even without a whip. I asked Harry if we could get up there to take a look and he got pretty apprehensive, saying it was quite dangerous of a trek, with loose sand and rocks much less the possibility of a rattle snake or two. Neither of these things phased me but we moved on, deeper into the U. I kept an eye on the ridge that led to the hill and noticed it was considerably lower in elevation than the hill itself, with a much smaller incline up the hill than trekking up from the desert floor. Again I stopped and pointed this out, asking Harry if we could get up the hill by first climbing the lower ridge, then following the top of the ridge (a safer route) up to the top of the hill. Everybody stopped and Harry looked up there as if he'd never considered this route in the past. "Um.....I still wouldn't recommend it," he said, again mentioning rattlers (with it being spring, I guess, the rattlers were out in force due to it being breeding season.) I was standing there, pondering the climb with my hands on my hips, looking at the ridge, then at Tony. After a good few minutes of pondering, Dr. Joan said with a little smile, "I can tell you really want to get up there." Well, yeah. It wouldn't take a psychic to see that, but the bottom line was this was Tony's tour. He was the guide. He was responsible for the safety of all the tour members, and this was his call. He seemed to be avoiding my looks so I got the feeling he really didn't want me going against Harry's wishes and trekking up there. That's why I balked and didn't make the climb but I tell you this, NOT doing that climb was my single-biggest regret of the tour!  (I pissed-and-moaned about this missed opportunity for the rest of the tour, much to the annoyance of the other tour members but hey, if I was going to be miserable about it so were they, LOL!!)

On we moved, trailing into the heart of the large U-shaped formation to the point where Harry showed us the suspected impact site. For the second time on the tour (the first being in Socorro), I was pretty pumped. I mean whether or not a UFO crashed here this was pretty exciting to me. Harry told us of taking soil samples from here and that, indeed, the Earth on top of the small ridge was up-turned and "reversed" meaning that it was older than the Earth beneath it. The small ridge, which appeared like the imprint of a large saucer that had dug itself into the Earth, ran for several feet in an arch. Dr. Joan took several pictures while we walked around, and commented that sometimes you can find bits of metal or other suspected debris within the area. I doubted that claim, myself, since the government had supposedly swept the area thoroughly. I couldn't see them leaving pieces of alien-ore laying about for anybody to collect, but as I write this I wonder if Harry had ever gone out there with a metal detector. Too late to ask now. I noticed several good-sized rocks of quartz and lava rock, asking Harry about near-by volcanic activity which he did confirm. I picked up a few stones of each for my kids, including a bit of quartz that would have cost me about $15 in Sedona a few days ago. Here it was for free on the desert floor, and from an honest-to-god, maybe, perhaps, crash site of a UFO.

(Left-to-right) Harry, Glen, myself, Van, and Bonnie (courtesy of TST)

As we walked back to the vehicles Harry and I talked a bit more, discussing the findings he had discovered in his research. Harry was writing a book and/or making a DVD documentary about the Kingman crashes and had done a LOT of leg work on the subject. Whether or not anything really happened at Kingman, Harry was presenting a good case 'for' the event(s) but like most UFO researchers he tended to angle his research towards a pre-existing conclusion. To me, in the back of my mind, I thought Harry was trying to break a new Roswell case open, but by saying there were multiple crashes over a three year period he was ramping up the stakes against Roswell. Oh well. I found Harry to be likable, if a UFO believer, and I suppose everybody has a right to present a case to make a buck in a capitalist economy. Kingman was Harry's case. We drove away from the crash site into the deeper desert and came across a small convenience store, stopping here for a potty break. The store was awesome; a hole-in-the-wall shop smack in the middle of the desert, airconditioned, ran by a Vietnam vet. It as well-tended and quite busy while we where there, with the single bathroom the most popular feature of the store. I took a few minutes of the stop to ask Dr. Joan what she had her doctorate in, having thought I heard the word "anthropology" during her introduction. Instead she mentioned being a rikki massage therapist and a psychic intuitive.
Oh.
Well she still made a good companion for Harry. They played off of one another quite well.
(**Correction** Dr. Joan contacted me and advised that she has also been a practicing and successful Doctor of Chiropractic  for over 30 years... a fact I'd missed in my prior description - 12/07/2012)

We drove back to Kingman where we had dinner at the coolest restaurant of the tour. It was a combination biker/cowboy bar with a massive Harley Davidson cycle displayed inside the front door. The cycle was a prize in a drawing the restaurant was having. I cut lose bit, ordering a steak and a beer, sitting across from Harry and Dr. Joan to continue asking questions. The line of questioning by the tour group was a bit frustrating as Harry has extreme hearing loss. Even I, sitting directly across from him, had to shout my questions several times. I found it odd that while talking in the desert he could hear me seemingly just fine, but now was having troubles hearing someone inches away. Later I would reason that it was because in the desert it was still and quiet except for a light wind, but in the restaurant there was a constant drone of music and crowd noise. We talked more about the Kingman case, ate a great meal, shared a few drinks, and watched as Dr. Joan worked with Bonnie and Katie in practicing dosing without rods and discussing other metaphysical practices. I'm not a big believer in the metaphysical, psychics and all that, so I avoided that discussion since I didn't want to poo-poo on the believers. It wasn't my place to do so, and everybody was having a good time anyway.

Saying our goodbyes to Harry and Dr. Joan we headed back to the hotel to crash. Tomorrow was Vegas, baby!

Click here for the photo album......in case you didn't click it at the top of the post.