1951: Salzburg, Austria Encounter

THINK ABOUTIT ALIEN ENCOUNTER REPORT

Date: 15th to the 16th of May 1951

Sighting Time: 11:20 p.m.

Day/Night: Night

Location: Salzburg, Austria

Urban or Rural: Urban

Entity Type: Humanoid

Entity Description: about 5 feet tall, wearing a transparent near-spherical helmet, a two-piece suit with tight-fitting legs that and merged into its toes. The body appeared to be rigid and cylindrical, with a torso round like a tin-can. It had no neck, proportionate legs, short arms ending in long and graceful four-fingered or three fingered hands. Its cranium was also slightly cylindrical, high, bald, with a white skull extending up and back from a wide, heart-shaped face. His eyes were large and compound like an insect’s eyes. It had only holes for ears, two holes for a nose, and its mouth was a very small horizontal slit. The entity never spoke and never communicated anything.

Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter III) Close observation with animate beings associated with the object.

Duration:

No. of Object(s): 1

Height & Speed:

Size of Object(s): 150 feet 

Distance to Object(s):

Shape of Object(s): disc

Color of Object(s):

Number of Witnesses: 1

Source: Charles Bowen, “Fantasy or Truth? A New Look at an Old Contact Claim”, FSR 13:4, July-August 1967 [sic, 1957], pp. 11-14.

Summary/Description: According to a journalist’s newspaper article in the Prince George Citizen, British Columbia, Canada, for December 11, 1957, a soldier with the US Army occupation force who has always maintained his anonymity told him the experience he had 6 years earlier near Salzburg, in Austria, at 11:20 p.m. in the night from the 15th to the 16th of May 1951.

As he was on his way home, an entity moved into view from behind some bushes and pointed a long thin pencil-like device at him, and he was paralyzed. He described the entity as about 5 feet tall, wearing a transparent near-spherical helmet, a two-piece suit with tight-fitting legs that and merged into its toes. The body appeared to be rigid and cylindrical, with a torso round like a tin-can. It had no neck, proportionate legs, short arms ending in long and graceful four-fingered or three fingered hands.

Its cranium was also slightly cylindrical, high, bald, with a white skull extending up and back from a wide, heart-shaped face. His eyes were large and compound like an insect’s eyes. It had only holes for ears, two holes for a nose, and its mouth was a very small horizontal slit. The entity never spoke and never communicated anything. The entity strapped a black and square device to the soldier’s chest. This made the soldier virtually weightless, and he was pulled towards a 150 feet disc-shaped apparatus posed in a nearby field. He and the entity floated up to the top of the disc, where a hatch opened, and they entered a transparent room.

Inside, the soldier watched the Earth “fall away” through the flying saucer’s transparent walls. The soldier told that he and the entity flipped over as they reached the “zone of gravitational neutrality between the Earth and the Moon.” They continued past the Moon and on to Mars, where they quickly arrived and landed on a raised platform. The entity left the craft, and the soldier said he saw fields of big red flowers, canals with bridges across them, and other saucers with human captives leaving two in them. The entity then came back and the saucer took off. They passed a Martian satellite that “that looked like a tin ball,” and 10 minutes later they were nearing Earth.

Once returned on ground, again, the square black device was strapped to the soldier’s chest, and he was floated to the ground. The entity pointed a pencil in the direction of the soldier’s head, then a dog barked, which seemed to frighten the entity. No loss of memory followed for the man. The whole episode had taken about an hour. The journalist who wrote the article said he tried on several occasions to trick the soldier into contradicting himself, he did not, and thus he expressed that he was greatly impressed by his apparent truthfulness. 

FULL REPORT

The witness was working for the United States Occupation Army in Austria at the time. On this date he was driving for QM Colonel Cousin. He commanded him to drive Mr. Haste to Linz from Salzburg. Mr. Haste was teaching evening classes to United States soldiers in Linz. His job was to drive him from Salzburg to Linz three times a week.This particular day he came back as usual from Linz at about 2300 and arrived at the motor pool five miles north of Salzburg. He started for home, leaving the car at the motor pool. He took a short cut, and on the left side was brush. It was dark, with no moon. Suddenly someone came out of the brush and came close to him. He could only see the outline in the dark, but he seemed to have a helmet on. He was about his height, maybe a little shorter. He had something in his hand and he pointed it at him. I thought it was his finger, but it made a “click”.

After the click he waved his hand quickly and the witness went to put his arm up in front of his face but he was paralyzed. He felt like falling down, but he didn’t. The stranger placed a black square plate on the witness chest and strapped it around his back. He could hear a dog barking in the distance, but he couldn’t hear him walking. He must have walked very easily. He could see his outline as he walked around him.After he strapped the plate on him he walked in front of him, and pointed the thing in his hand at the plate on his chest rather than at his head like before. He walked away and pulled the witness after him. He couldn’t move or walk, but he just pulled him along after him. He wasn’t actually in the air, but his full weight wasn’t on the ground. It seemed as if he was light. Behind the brush was a small field. In the field hidden from the road, was a round object about 150ft in diameter. It was dark, and he couldn’t tell what it was. His first thought was that a spy had captured him for some reason.

The ‘thing’ that led him sort of roe from the ground and took him after him to the top of the object. He did something, either stepped on something or pushed some button, and a door opened and he pulled him after him down into the dark. He was plenty scared and he wondered what would happen next. He got down into the dark and he could finally feel a floor under his feet. He knew that where he was either glass or plastic, because the stars could be seen shining up above. Then he saw the outline of what looked like a door, and he pulled him through into what he later found was a room of glass or plastic.The stranger kept his finger or what the witness thought was his finger but later saw was some form of pencil shaped object, pointed at the witness all the time, then when he was in the room, he took it off him and he sank down on the floor. He went out and the witness could see his outline. There was a sort of shaking sensation, and he knew the door to the room had shut. The next sensation he had was a sensation of rising up into the air. He had never flown in his life.

In a few minutes he could see the left half of the moon shining. He was scared, but he figured he was dreaming. Then he started to feel his hands and feet again. He sat up, and then he got up on to his feet. By this time they were in the sunlight. He looked across the ship and he could see the ‘person’ that had brought him there. He looked like a person, like we are. A little bit shorter than the witness. To the witness at the time he looked like a “devil”. He had no hair at all. He could see through the sort of glass helmet. His head was sort of cylinder form. A very high forehead, with big eyes. You could see lots of little eyes in the two big eyes. It seemed to the witness that it looked like the eyes of a fly. No nose at all, just two holes. He had a very small slit for a mouth. It looked like he had skin, it was sort of white. There were two holes for the ears. His skull was very large. The torso was round like a tin can. The legs were of proportionate length. His arms were a little bit shorter than our arms. His hands seemed to be three long fingers.

He couldn’t see the neck, but he was wearing material that was like silver but wasn’t shiny. This covered all of him except the head part which had on the helmet. He didn’t look at the witness at all.The main part of the ship that he could see from the room he was in appeared to be round and the walls were like glass, but you couldn’t see through them. The floor was made of glass or plastic. In the middle of the floor, under the glass, was a black plate, something like he had strapped to his chest. From the corners of the plate, which looked to be about ten feet square, black beams ran to the walls of the ship. He could see under the black plate and there seemed to be a duplicate room on the other side of the ship. He could see the same kind of levers on the wall as the ‘thing’ was standing beside him. As soon as he came out in the sun, he could feel burning heat, but he stranger pulled a lever and a covering like blue water came over the roof. Then the sun was normal, but he could still see through it. His first thought was that he was dreaming, and then his second thought was that he was dead and that his soul was rising up.The ship was not rotating or going sideways, but kind of gliding straight up. He could see the Sun like a ball of fire, and the Moon was like a silver ball, but the rest was darkness. Suddenly he looked up, the Moon was right above him and it seemed to come down at them.

Suddenly they were both standing on what had been the roof. They seemed to be about a quarter of a mile above the Moon. He could see clearly the craters on the surface of the Moon. There were lots of them. The ground seemed to be a grayish color and he could see rocks and hills. They were in the sunny part of the Moon. The ship glided to the right and into the darkness. Then the driver stopped the ship, he could feel it sort of waiting. It was dark all around outside, but the sun seemed to shin into the ship. He saw the creature take on of the pencil things that he had pointed at him and he pointed it downwards. He thought at that time that he must be from the Moon and that he was signaling someone down below. There was no noise from the ship or from the signal. After about five minutes they started to move again to the right. His first thought was that he was going back to Earth. But he could see the outline of America and Asia, and he could see clouds. The Earth and the Moon were going away from him very fast. Then he began to think that this was from another planet.Suddenly another planet seemed to loom up in front of them, and he thought they were going to crash into it.

He was sure of this but the driver suddenly stopped it again, but there was no jerk. He realized then they were still quite a way from the planet, and then they started to glide sideways down, towards the ground. He looked out over the land and it looked like “paradise”. As they went down he looked over the land and on one side there red fields. On the other side there was what looked like gray green fields. Some places in the fields were what looked like big chimneys rising from the ground. It was bright daylight and the sun was shining with no clouds in the sky. They were approaching the red fields and he could see rivers with blue water in them. The rivers ran straight and at intervals there were bridges built across them and he could see roads. The bridges were just like our bridges. From high up he could see no sign of life. Then they glided to a field that was filled with the saucers like he was in.

There appeared to be hundreds of them. They were of different colors, gray, gold, and silver. But there were no black or red ones. The driver stopped the ship about a quarter of a mile above them by just pulling a lever. Then they went straight down until they were about 20 or 30 feet from the ground, and he parked the ship on a high platform. As they went down he could see the same kind of people were in them like his driver. When they got to the platform the driver pulled a lever and the glass slid back and he went outside. He put the pencil-like thing to his chest and slowly dropped to the ground like a falling leaf. He then started to walk very fast along to the third or fourth saucer. He pointed the pencil at his chest again and sort of jumped up inside the ship. He was inside that ship for about 10 minutes.

The witness could see that the creature in the other ship was smaller than the driver of the ship he was on.While he was inside the ship he looked around at the other saucers and he could see the same type of people. Suddenly quite a way away he saw two ships that had people from Earth on them. One ship was sort of dirty looking and there was one man, one woman, and two kids in it. In another saucer nearby that was kind of golden he saw one man and one woman. He was going to wave at them but he felt scared. He was waiting for them to wave but they didn’t wave. After he saw them he thought that he would have to stay there with them now. Way off in the distance by the river he could see things moving. They were dark, but he couldn’t tell what they were. Down on the ground he could see large red flowers growing. They looked something like our sunflowers. There were some green patches between them, but there were flowers as far as the eye could see. The earth could be seen in patches too and it was just the same as our Earth. He started thinking that he must be on Mars. Then the driver of the ship came back from the other ship. He got back inside and closed the door again.

Then they took off the same way they had come. They went into the darkness and then he could see a moon that looked like a tin ball. They came quite close to it, and he could see it was smooth and silvery, without any signs of craters on it.He didn’t know where they were going then; he thought they were going farther yet. After about ten minutes, he could see what looked like half our Moon and he realized they were approaching the sunny side of Earth. He was very glad that it was the Earth. But they came at it with such terrible speed that he thought for sure they would crash. The driver stopped the ship again when it seemed to hit the atmosphere, and he glided down towards Earth. He seemed to know the driver was going to take him back to where he found him, but he had the impression that he was going to ill him because he would want to keep it secret. They came into the darkness and then went down to the ground and he knew they were back at the same place he was picked up. The witness was really afraid the alien would kill him. The alien opened the door and took the small pencil thing and pulled the witness out the door the same way he pulled him in. He guided the witness back to the road. At that time he could walk, but he was very light and the alien was just pulling him. The alien took the pencil from the witness chest and pointed it at his head. At that moment a dog started to bark at them from about a quarter of a mile up the road and it seemed to have startled the alien, because the pencil-like thing clicked and nothing happened to the witness. He knew from the first experience he should be paralyzed, so he just pretended to be so that that the alien wouldn’t know. He took the plate off the witness chest and went back to the ship. The witness remained still until he saw the outline of the saucer going off into the distance. Then he ran home.