Val Johnson 1979: Prelude to Cash-Landrum?

Val Johnson in a reenactment for That's Incredible!

The Cash-Landrum story is a perplexing case, and a lot of attention is given to Betty Cash's skin problems, which have been mythologized as radiation burns from the UFO. As dramatic as it is, it’s by no means the first instance of UFO “sunburn.” Claims of burns from UFO encounters go way back; some notable early examples are the Sonny Desvergers “Scoutmaster”story, Palm Beach, Florida, 1952, Levelland, Texas, 1957, Loch Raven Dam, Maryland, 1958, and Stefan Michalak, Falcon Lake, 1967. 

It didn’t end there, and reports and rumors of UFO burns became a staple in UFO literature. In 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind introduced the concept to millions, and was highlighted in the scene where Roy Neary shows his wife his burns from a UFO, and insists that it is not a "moonburn."

Val Johnson

There were other cases shortly before the Cash-Landrum event with UFO burns, some that received nationwide news coverage. The Jerry McAlister UFO sighting on September 11, 1980 has previously been posted here.  His case featured a huge, brilliant UFO that allegedly left the witnesses suffering eye damage and radiation burns.

Before that, a much more famous case featured some details that would be found again in the Cash-Landrum case. On Aug. 27, 1979, Deputy Sheriff Val Johnson was driving  along a lonely road at night, when he saw a blindingly brilliant UFO above the road ahead. Unlike the C-L case, he didn’t stop, and his vehicle collided with the UFO. The car was damaged, and he suffered injuries including “welder’s burns” to his eyes. When help arrived, Johnson was taken to the hospital for an examination and to treat his injuries.  Unlike the C-L case, there was extensive visible damage to his car, and it was preserved as evidence and carefully examined.

That’s Incredible!

There’s another possible connection to the Cash-Landrum case. The popular television show, “That’s Incredible!” debuted in March of 1980 and ran until 1984. It often featured UFO cases, and in its first season they aired a segment on the Val Johnson story. It featured a reenactment of the event, and an appearance by investigator Alan Hendry of the Center for UFO Studies. Johnson was presented as a credible witness, and it showed that his doctor, employer and family stood behind him. 

What was strange, though, was that at the end of the segment, host John Davidson asked Johnson a question out of left field.

“Was it a religious experience for you? 

Many times these events are a religious experience.”

A strange and seemingly scripted question, perhaps to allow Johnson the opportunity to unburden on the topic. The effect was to suggest that UFO sighings are expected to have a religious element.

Vickie Landrum in particular put emphasis on how she initially took the UFO to be the Second Coming. She said, "The Bible says the sky will split and in a rain of fire, Jesus will come." Could the Cash-Landrum witnesses have been influenced by this program, perhaps in how they reported their story? In 1981, they appeared on “That’s Incredible!” themselves.

The rare segment with Val Johnson on “That’s Incredible!” recently surfaced on YouTube. It’s certainly interesting in and of itself, for the insight into his case it provides, and as a bit of UFO history.

For the full story of the Val Johnson case, see this article by Chris Rutkowski:
 The Val Johnson CE2 case of 1979 

Cash-Landrum キャッシュ・ランドラム Japanese UFO Documentary

The search for original documents on the Cash-Landrum case continues, and that extends to early media coverage of the events. The story received international attention and was covered at least twice by Japanese Television.

Below is a segment posted on YouTube on the case from a Japanese television show featuring witnesses Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and investigator John Schuessler. It’s particularly notable for Betty and Vickie participating in a reenactment of the UFO encounter instead of the being portrayed by actors. Colby did not participate and is shown only in a school photograph.

I’ve been unable to locate details on this program, but reportedly, there was a documentary featuring the case filmed in May of 1989, and aired in August in Japan.

"890518 - People from Nippon Television Network of Japan complete Cash Landrum film, interview John Lear... in Houston, Texas.

890923 - Cash-Landrum documentary shown in Japan."

Nippon Television producer Jun'ichi Yaoi was very active in the 80s and 90s and filmed many UFO documentaries shown on NTV, and it is very likely this would have been one of his projects. However, it’s also possible this was an unknown US program dubbed for use in a Japanese broadcast.  I don’t think this clip is from this 1989 show, though. After comparing it against Betty's appearance in the 1988 show below, I feel strongly it must be from something earlier, maybe 1983. While the show mentions Area 51, which surfaced late 80s, but that could be material edited in years later.

Betty Cash from the Japanese clip, and at right from 1988 in UFO Cover-Up Live

Unfortunately, a translation of the program is not available, since the real value in programs like this comes from the opportunity to hear directly from the witnesses themselves. So often direct testimony is not available and we only hear the UFO cases summarized and reinterpreted by others. 

UFO科学大学院の公開講座(F)をUFO科学大学院(USS)から紹介します

If anyone has information on this program or other non-USA shows featuring the Cash-Landrum case, please share the details by contacting Blue Blurry Lines.

The Roswell Slides Return: a Book and a Conference

Jaime Maussan was an honored guest at the annual MUFON Symposium. There was considerable controversy about his inclusion, and in June he was invited on their KGRA program with Erica Lukes to deflect some of the criticism and to defend BeWitness and the Roswell Slides.

MUFON Executive director,  Jan Harzan on how and why Maussan was welcome:

Another long time UFO Speaker and Journalist is Jaime Maussan fresh from the “Roswell Slide” controversy. Several people have asked me why he is speaking at the MUFON Symposium and my answer is pretty simple. I invited him at the beginning of 2015, well before the slide discussion, and my reason for doing so is because he has some of the best UFO video footage I have ever seen. Being involved in UFOs over the past 40 years, and owning his own television station and TV show in Mexico, Jaime has tens of thousands of people from all over the world sending him their UFO videos. He has narrowed these down to the 100 best videos you will ever see in this field.  I have had the good fortune to see his presentation twice in the past year, and I can tell you it is quite impressive. So much so that I am looking forward to seeing it a third time! I might also add that right after Jaime speaks on Sunday... we hold a Panel on “Making Ufology Respectable” with the idea being that if there was ever an event or breakthrough in Ufology how would or should we as Ufologists go about announcing it to the world. He proposed using the “Roswell Slide” experience as an example to learn from. 

Harzan and Maussan at the 2015 MUFON Symposium

Leading up to the Symposium, Maussan had been silent for months on the Slides, but during his presentation of UFO video clips a segment was devoted to the Roswell Slides. He claims that the body in the Slides is not the body pictured and described in the National Park Service documents, or the placard identifying it. Here's video of the presentation:

The Roswell Slides portion begins at 47:59

Making Ufology Respectable

Afterwards, there was the panel, “Making Ufology Respectable." From the advertisement:

With Stanton Friedman, Robert Wood, Jaime Maussan, Marc d'Antonio, and Cheryl Jones. This panel asks the question what IF the UFO community were presented with the smoking gun evidence that would end the debate on UFOs permanently. How should we go about substantiating that evidence and presenting it to the scientific community and general public in a credible way that ends the debate on UFOs permanently? Is this even possible? Would anyone listen? The "Roswell Slide" announcement will be used as one example and lessons learned discussed about what went right and what went wrong, and how can we do even better next time.

“Making Ufology Respectable"

Lee Spiegel joined the panel, and provided the only criticism of the Slides fiasco. He said that he avoided the story, and that if you are trying to present a smoking gun, don't hype it before you have finished your investigation. MC John Greenewald seemed to give him a pass, saying that Maussan had brought a lot of attention to ufology, and that he shouldn't be blamed for trying.

Most of the other discussion was hypothetical, panelists saying what kind of evidence they would try to present as proof or how they'd do it. Maussan asserted that he had done tried to do everything right, but it was rejected by critics and disbelieved since it happened in Mexico instead of the USA. He said the case is not closed and that experts in Mexico are still studying the evidence. Maussan left he panel early, and no solid conclusion was reached on how to make Ufology respectable.

Maussan heavily advertises his participation in the MUFON Symposium, using it to enhance his status. He offers a replay of it to his paid subscribers at Tercer Milenio. 

It's not over yet

Maussan Productions has a new book out, available through iTunes for $19.99.
It's listed as BeWitness, detrás del caso Roswell by Tomas J. Carey, Donald R. Schmitt & Jaime Maussan. The ad and excerpt don't mention the Slides, it just alludes to "new evidence." At present, the book is only available in Spanish.

There's also a show...

Maussan had promised a scientific examination of the evidence, but that was postponed from June due to the release of the National Park Service documents conclusively identifying the body. Now, he's announced this for Oct. 26 at 12 PM, "ANALISIS DE UN CUERPO NO HUMANO":

Dr. Miguel Angel and Maussan

There's a video on YouTube...

beWITNESS, El Análisis y Debate / 

BeWITNESS the Analysis and debate

(Since removed)

It's part of a series of videos at Tercer Milenio: 
Se Pospone el Debate beWITNESS, Recompensa beWITNESS, Dos posibles Seres No Humanos, Comparación Forense del Cuerpo de beWITNESS and Comparación del Ser de beWITNESS.

The presentation is listed as an analysis and debate, but only Dr. Miguel Angel and his INACIFO associates are mentioned. The participation of the Tom Carey, Don Schmitt, Adam Dew and other financial partners is unknown. This event is free to attend, although there is no mention of the free streaming of this event as previously advertised.

There's been no mention of the event outside of Tercer Milenio, nothing on their Twitter or Facebook accounts or the personal ones for Jaime Maussan. It's almost as if they are avoiding international exposure for this. To the jaded eye, it would appear that Maussan is staging this event in an attempt to salvage a wedge of doubt that the Slides show an unusual body.

Maussan has been through this kind of thing before. He has a long history of holding on to and promoting discredited UFO and alien stories.

The Metepec Creature: author confess hoax

The BeWitness fiasco stink seems to have landed on Carey and Schmitt. For Maussan, business goes on as usual.

Questions on the Cash-Landrum UFO Investigation

I recently was invited to appear on an episode of the Paracast, “a special shop talk/listener roundtable episode...” Somehow, much of the discussion centered on the cover-up of alien bases on the dark side of the Moon, so I didn’t have much to add to the conversation. However, there were some listener’s questions that were very good, but there wasn’t time to present them all. A few very good ones came from “cosmonaut,” who'd asked about the Cash Landrum UFO case.

If it was a human military experiment why test the craft in a public area? How do you explain that?

Airport Ramada Inn, Indianapolis, Indiana

http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/RamadaInn_A-7D_1987.htm

The idea that a secret or experimental craft would be tested over a populated area seems incredible, as in the ridiculously implausible sense of the word. The article “Cracks in the Black Dike” by Jim Cunningham is an excellent examination of the attempt and failure to maintain secrecy about the F-117A stealth plane. In it, he mentions two crashes from the program that were near populated areas, the July 1986 crash of a training flight near Bakersfield, California, and also an A-7D Corsair (a daytime stand-in for used to keep F-117A pilots sharp) crashed into a hotel in Indianapolis, Indiana, killing 10 people.

Also, there have been a number of accidents in populated areas involving classified transportation of nuclear materials or weapons, as you'll see in this article on U.S. Nuclear Accidents. There must be many more projects that we’ll never know about, and it’s only because these incidents were disastrous and unsuccessful that become public knowledge. These examples can’t prove anything about the UFO in the Cash-Landrum story, but they show that the potentially dangerous military operations have often been conducted close to populated areas.

One further comment on the UFO as a secret military project. I think it is unlikely. These projects are built to solve a particular problem or serve a pressing need. US spy planes are a perfect example of that, and provide a good case to study in the developmental process. What we usually see is a five to ten year developmental period involving dozens or hundreds of people. Typically, secrecy of the project or its concept is not tightly maintained, about all that can be concealed is its purpose or function and some of the technical and operational details.  For example, the CIA’s U-2 spy plane was claimed to be a NASA project collecting weather data at high altitude. 

NASA's experimental weather plane, so the cover story said.

Eventually, most of these secret programs are eventually exposed during their operation and eventually publicly disclosed. But, if the Cash-Landrum UFO was a secret military project, it may have been scrapped and literally buried. That's just the fate of some other experimental aircraft, see Top Secret Tombs: The Classified Stealth Aircraft Burial Grounds of Area 51

What attempts have been made to get FOIA documents and the results?

The best Freedom of Information Act results on the case resulted from an inquiry from Fred Whiting of FUFOR (Fund for UFO Research) into the DAIG investigation, U.S. Army Inspector General's Office, Washington, D.C., which resulted in the release of the report by Lt. Col. George C. Sarran

https://app.box.com/s/w8uvmyulh1s4lbent7oh

Another FOIA request produced some interesting trivia, an attempt to learn more about the C-L case via a remote viewing session. I’d say they failed, but if you are interested, see:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1074447/pg2#pid19545571

As far as I know, these are the only materials produced and have been released to multiple individuals over the years. so far, I’ve only attempted two FOIA requests, one directed at getting the records from Bergstrom AFB, and another directed at the DAIG. both were unsuccessful.

There must be other material, but locating it and getting it released may be difficult. There should be documents from the Air Force from Captain Virginia (Ginny) Lampley’s brief investigation, from the defense prepared by Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Conforti in the legal case, and from the various branches of the military and NASA when they prepared statements indicating that they neither owned or operated any device resembling the UFO. In addition to that, there may be court documents from the Southern District Federal Court in Houston. Probably no smoking guns in there, but material I’d like to obtain and have persevered for the study of the case. These are the known knowns and known unknowns, but there may be unknown unknowns as well.

Can you elaborate on the idea that the UFO was launched from an aircraft carrier? What is the source and evidence for that?

USS New Orleans

The aircraft carrier theory was proposed by John Schuessler, but as a source for the helicopters, not the UFO. He suggested it could have been the USS New Orleans.

Tim Printy looked into these claims, and found it unlikely, with the New Orleans in particular being ruled out. 

“There is no evidence a carrier was out on operations over the holiday period. Like the rest of the military, unless they are deployed, most ships are in a stand down period over the holidays. Sailors spend a lot of time away from home (I have personal experience with this) and to deploy at this time of the year would have caused quite an uproar with the families. I think Schuessler had proposed the theory that the USS New Orleans was in the area. I recall looking into this and the New Orleans was on the west coast getting ready for an overhaul. It also had completed a westpac/operations in the Indian Ocean in November 1980. It seems highly unlikely that they would leave their home port in California shortly after returning from a long cruise overseas (this act would alone would cause a riot among the navy wives) to go to the east coast, conduct this secret exercise, and then return to the west coast in time to go to Puget Sound.” http://badufos.blogspot.com/2013/11/between-beer-joint-and-some-kind-of.html

Additionally, such a carrier would provide only about half the number of helicopters described in the case, and we’d still have to find a source for the others. Schuessler has done just the type of thing that skeptics get hammered for, manufacturing a real-world solution that fits the story, but for which there is no evidence.

What is your plan to further investigate this spectacular case?

Three key areas:

1) Seek out unreleased civilian documents on the case. There seem to be some in the files of both MUFON and FUFOR. The key item here is the original report made by Project VISIT led by John F. Schuessler. Copies of this report were circulated to the prominent UFO organizations at the time, but for whatever reason are not available.

2) Launch targeted FOIA requests for the material described above.

3) There are surviving participants in the case, reporters, investigators, medical and perhaps military personnel. Some of these have not spoken publicly in the case since after the story initially broke. I’ve located some of these individuals and would like to travel to Texas to personally interview them.

There are some other items, probably held by the family of the witnesses. For example, Betty Cash had a big file of clippings correspondence and documents, and Vickie Landrum maintained a log of her and Colby’s health and experience after the event. These personal records are a sensitive issue, so that will depend on the cooperation of the families.

Cosmonaut, thank you for asking some very good questions about the case. The C-L story is fascinating and holds a unique place in UFO history. The response and interaction by the US government alone sets it apart from other cases and makes it worthy of study. While the case has become a legend,  underneath the layers of myth, there seems to some genuine event at the core. I also hope that by continuing to discuss the case that perhaps someone with information about it will be prompted to come forward to share it.

The Cash-Landrum UFO Mystery on the Air

In the last few weeks, I was invited to talk on two different programs about the Cash-Landrum case.

Micah Hanks' The Gralien Report Podcast:

TGR 07.13.15. The Cash Landrum Incident: New Details? 

Within days of the Rendlesham incident, halfway across the world a similar UFO observation would occur near Dayton, Texas, which forever changed the lives of two women, Betty Cash and Vicky Landrum, along with Vicky’s grandson Colby. The story, known today as the Cash Landrum incident, is well remembered in UFO literature, but is there reason to question certain aspects of the long maintained story, and can any new information be determined by a careful examination of early witness descriptions? Finally, we look at theories about the case espoused by members of the skeptical community, and ask whether aspects of these investigations haven’t offered equal amounts of conjecture, comparable to that of UFO advocates, albeit from an ‘opposing’ viewpoint.

http://www.gralienreport.com/podcasts/tgr-07-13-15-the-cash-landrum-incident-new-details/

and more recently...

Alejandro Rojas on Open Minds UFO Radio:

Curt Collins – Amazing Texas UFO Encounter – July 20, 2015

Curt Collins is a UFO researcher and founder of the website BlueBlurryLines.com where he posts his work. Among other cases, Curt has taken a particular interest in the Cash-Landrum Texas UFO Encounter. The Cash-Landrum incident took place in 1980. Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and Vickie’s seven-year-old grandson, Colby Landrum, claimed to have encountered a UFO on the road near Dayton, Texas. It made the vehicle very hot and the group apparently suffered from physical effects due to the encounter.

In this interview we talk to Curt about how he got involved with UFO research, his findings regarding the Cash-Landrum incident, his work with the Roswell Slides Research Group, and much more.

http://www.openminds.tv/curt-collins-amazing-texas-ufo-encounter-july-20-2015/34403

Both Micah and Alejandro did a great job asking questions about the  Cash-Landrum case, and I was able to focus on some different aspects of the story for each show. As usual, I left lots of things out, and mangled a few details, but I enjoyed talking about the case and appreciate the opportunity to get the word out about it. If you've got any questions about things described on the programs, or just want to discuss the case, please post a comment.

Also, if you are visiting this page for the first time, welcome aboard, and please check out the case files on the Cash-Landrum case found at  Resources: Articles and Documents.