The Cash-Landrum UFO: The True Picture

This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of UFO Today magazine, but unfortunately the format did not allow for all the pictures used as supporting evidence, or for the three versions of the Cash-Landrum UFO illustrated by Christian Lambright. Here for the first time is the article in full.

The Cash-Landrum Incident: Getting to the True Picture

by Curtis L. Collins

     I'd like to get to the bottom of the Cash-Landrum affair. The story there concerns Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and Vickie's grandson Colby. The three were coming back from a bingo game when they saw a glowing (object) spewing flames above them in the sky. They stop the car to watch this thing, and as it moved off, they reportedly saw about twenty-three helicopters escorting it out. After they got home there were all sorts of physiological effects: Their eyes swelled, their hair fell out, they developed blisters, they were nauseated and weak. The event completely altered their lives. 

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, OMNI Magazine, February 1985 

The December 29, 1980 encounter near Huffman, Texas is one of best known, thoroughly documented cases in UFO history. Much of the enduring appeal of this dramatic and intricate case is due to the investigation of it by highly credentialed aerospace professionals. The image formed during their early casework permanently shaped how the case is viewed and understood. We need to look back to opening the of the case to examine how that picture was developed. 

It was during Betty Cash’s second hospital stay for a mysterious illness in January 1981 that the story of the encounter began to emerge. Vickie Landrum had been making calls, desperately trying to get some help and answers. They wanted to know: what the object was, how it had injured them and who was responsible for it. When they saw the helicopters following the object, they become convinced that it was all some kind of military operation, and later reasoned that the U.S. government would have knowledge of it, and information that could help them. When Betty Cash was released from the hospital, she joined in Vickie’s efforts to reach someone who could help or provide answers. After some difficulty and delays, Betty contacted John F. Schuessler, and he began investigating the event as a UFO case.

John Schuessler worked for McDonnell Douglas at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. He had a private interest in unidentified flying objects and was a founding member of MUFON (the Mutual UFO Network), serving as its deputy director. In 1976 he founded Project VISIT (Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team), a Houston-based research group that chiefly consisted of aerospace engineers and other professionals who, in their spare time, applied technical expertise to the study of USVs, or Unidentified Space Vehicles.

Schuessler began by interviewing Betty Cash about the events, taking photographs of her injuries and examining her car. Vickie and Colby Landrum were interviewed one week later, followed by a trip with them the scene. By this time, Betty had moved to Alabama to be cared for by her mother and was unavailable to participate in further physical investigations. Schuessler shared his preliminary report in March 1981 with major UFO organizations, but the investigation continued.

MUFON's John Schuessler. Left, Vickie, Colby Landrum and Betty Cash pose by Schuessler's car.

Other members of Project VISIT participated in the search for additional witnesses and investigated the source of the helicopters. Schuessler also solicited Dr. Peter Rank, a radiologist associated with MUFON, to analyze the medical records to determine if radiation could have been involved in the encounter. The nature of the witnesses’ injuries became a controversial issue; they were cited as proof of the encounter, and yet the medical records documenting them were withheld. The unwillingness of the chief investigator to allow access to case materials has long been a topic of criticism from both UFO skeptics and proponents. 

Pre-hypnosis sketch based on witness testimony by Kathy Schuessler

Over the next several months the media attention continued to build and formed a strange relationship with the case. The media seemed to take the lead in the production of new information and developments. Pleas in the news coverage for any additional witnesses to come forward yielded a few results- respondents claimed seeing either a UFO or some helicopters. The involvement of the television program “That’s Incredible!” led to two new developments. The witnesses were examined by doctors at Houston’s Methodist Hospital, and Vickie Landrum was questioned under hypnosis by abduction researcher Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle. Neither produced any clear solutions. While there was little progress in the case there was much activity, and it continued to look promising. The witnesses were still looking for their answers and cooperated, enduring the publicity in the hopes that it would lead to getting help.

Vickie and Betty weren’t content to let others do all the work, and in late July 1981, it seemed their efforts were beginning to show results. Senator Lloyd Bentsen replied by letter to Betty, advising her to contact Bergstrom Air Force Base to file a report and claim for damages, stating that “...they will be most willing to assist you in any way possible.” Betty took a flight to Texas, and together with Vickie and Colby, made the long drive to Austin to visit the base. Their hopes and expectations were high, perhaps unrealistically so, due to the effusive tone of the letter. Base officials merely questioned them about the events, then explained that the Air Force no longer investigated UFO cases. The witnesses were told there was nothing the Air Force could do beyond providing them with damage claim forms. They were profoundly disappointed, and it proved to be just one event in a long series of false hopes.

Looking back, we can now see that by the fall of 1981 the VISIT investigation had peaked, but media interest in the case had not. Schuessler presented the case for the first time at the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) conference in September. In his lecture he summarized the case, describing the events to date, offering many new details, including a fresh physical description of the mysterious object. Schuessler stated it as a “...large glowing UFO... The unusual aspect of the thing was its diamond shape. Small blue lights ringed the center and the points of the diamond seemed to be cut off. The light from the object was intense and lit the whole area.” 

(Mimi Hynek, ed. The Spectrum of UFO Research. Chicago: J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, 1988.)

When the case was featured in the November 1981 MUFON UFO Journal, it was accompanied by an illustration by Kathy Schuessler. The picture showed a clearly defined, glowing diamond-shaped UFO with a ring of lights around its center. The Schuessler description and picture served as the UFO equivalent of a police sketch, or “wanted poster,” and effectively became the face of the case.

The post-hypnosis illustration by Kathy Schuessler with the ring of blue lights.

The Schuessler illustration appeared next in the presentation and booklet for the 1982 MUFON Symposium in July and again later for the cover of the September 1983 MUFON Journal. The “lighted diamond” concept was repeated throughout UFO literature, and other artists’ versions of the UFO with a ring of lights began appearing. John Schuessler later started using a second painting by his wife that featured a more oval version of the UFO. This painting was used by Schuessler in his many slideshows and lectures on the case, and later as the cover illustration of his book, The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident. When the prime time television program Unsolved Mysteries featured the case, it based its depiction of the UFO on Schuessler’s report, introducing it to millions of viewers. The image of the otherworldly diamond played a defining role in the case.

Another byproduct of the media coverage was the investigation Department of the Army's Inspector General as to whether U.S. Army helicopters were involved in the incident. In the spring of 1982 Lt. Col. George C. Sarran spent several months checking the possibilities, and also traveled to Texas. There, he met with Schuessler, examined the cold leads and interviewed the available witnesses. Sarran considered the witnesses credible, but found no evidence to suggest any Army involvement.

The damage claim forms obtained at Bergstrom Air Force base finally came into play in late 1982 when Peter Gersten, the flamboyant “UFO Lawyer,” filed them on behalf of the witnesses. When the claims were denied, they then attempted to file a civil suit against the United States government, a contentious process that went on for the next several years. This proved to be another false hope, as there was never enough evidence gathered to satisfy a court. The witnesses were deeply disappointed when in August 1986 the case was dismissed without ever going to trial. Media coverage of the case faded away.

While the lawsuit developments were making headlines, UFO investigator and artist Chris Lambright tried to reach the witnesses for testimony of another sort. Lambright sought to paint technically accurate illustrations of the most credible UFO encounters. His first painting was of the classic 1964 Socorro, New Mexico sighting by police officer Lonnie Zamora. There Lambright used measurements from the official reports with the direct cooperation, testimony and feedback from the eyewitness. He wanted to apply the same methods to depict the Cash-Landrum sighting. 

Christian Lambright's array of diamond UFO shapes.

After studying the case literature, Lambright’s first step was to draw a series of different diamond UFO shapes, which he sent to the primary case investigator, John Schuessler, asking him to indicate which was the closest match. Schuessler instead drew his own diamond shape and included a note about the midline ring labeling it as “small blue ports or lights.” With this drawing and the published descriptions as reference, Lambright sketched out a scene of the encounter, then sought out the eyewitnesses for further details.

On July 10, 1985, Chris Lambright and fellow researcher Tommy Blann paid a visit to Vickie Landrum at her home in Dayton, Texas for an interview, which they recorded for reference. Lambright opened the MUFON Journal to Schuessler’s article and asked, “Do you see this illustration? This was done by John’s wife and it looks like the whole thing is glowing and it’s got a series of lights or dots or holes or something around it.” 

“I didn’t see any dots…nothing.” Vickie shook her head and explained that Schuessler must have taken the blue lights from Colby’s “Lite-Brite” picture of the object.

The Hasbro toy Lite-Brite has a screen with a grid of holes lit by a tiny light bulb, allowing simple pictures to be formed using colored translucent pegs. Betty Cash later described how Colby was preoccupied with drawing the UFO for weeks after the event: “Vickie went and bought him that Lite-Brite, to try to help him… she could not afford the notebook paper that that child was going through.”

Lambright moved on to other details of the craft’s flight and physical characteristics. Vickie described how they originally saw just a light at a distance through the trees. When it came down to hover over the road, they saw flames spewing downward, apparently in some kind of mechanical distress. The object would rise above the trees on a jet of fire, and when the flames diminished, it would lower.

Lambright sought clarification, “When the thing went out (flames decreased), I think most people think the thing was still glowing like a light bulb.” 

“No, no, no! It was hanging there,” Vickie explained.

Shortly afterwards Lambright interviewed Betty Cash by phone. He asked Betty similar questions about the UFO and how it had been depicted.

“... they showed several small blue…it looked like portholes or lights around the middle of the object...but you don’t recall seeing anything like that on the object itself?” 

“No sir!” Betty had either not seen or noticed the illustration. “I can’t imagine what picture it was that John put in the blue lights.” She went on to explain that the early case drawing she had seen was an accurate depiction. 

Lambright asked, “In other words, it was a dark object with fire coming out of the bottom?” 

“Right,” Betty answered.

The witnesses were not technically sophisticated, and they had difficulty describing just what they’d seen during their terrifying ordeal. The fiery light coming from the bottom of the object was blinding, and the witnesses had some trouble expressing the difference between the light and the object producing it. Vickie said, “Colby swore it looked like a big diamond. I couldn’t tell for I was so scared about him... It lifted and I knew it was at least half a mile or more across the main part of the light. It was bigger than a water tower.” (Schuessler, John F. The Cash-Landrum UFO Incident. La Porte: Geo Graphics, 1998, pp.42-43.) It seems that the original investigators were confused by this and reported the UFO itself as gigantic and glowing.

How and why the “ring of blue lights” became accepted is a bit more puzzling. Vickie had explained that Schuessler photographed Colby’s Lite-Brite picture, and it seems he interpreted the colored pegs illustrating the UFO’s center as a ring of lights. There was yet another ingredient for the blue lights that Vickie didn’t seem to remember; something revealed when she had been put under hypnosis.

On July 11, 1981 Dr. R. Leo Sprinkle put Vickie Landrum under regressive hypnosis for the coverage by National Enquirer magazine (and again later for the ABC network television program That’s Incredible!). The purpose of the hypnosis was to attempt the recovery of additional details about the sighting. During the session, two new details were produced: the scent of lighter fluid and the first mention of blue lights. Vickie is reported to have said, “It had some blue on it... Looked like little lights.” (Schuessler, 1998, p.134)

John Schuessler accepted the hypnosis material as genuine evidence, incorporating it into the case as additional witness testimony. He interpreted the lighter fluid smell to be the odor of helicopter fuel and the blue lights as a ring around the fuselage of the UFO. The hypnosis story was combined with the Lite-Brite picture and the mistaken glow to form a composite image. A new picture of the UFO was born - not of what the witnesses saw or described, but of a colorful, gigantic gleaming Unidentified Space Vehicle similar to those in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

There were no public statements from the original witnesses of a glowing UFO with blue lights, either before or after the hypnosis. It is worth reviewing the earliest testimony to examine what they were able to describe.

Betty Cash, early February 1981: “We could not get up close enough to detect what the figure was. Or I couldn’t at least, the lights were too bright in my eyesight.” She later added, “...this bright object that made the sky just split up and it looked like the world was coming to an end. It was a very bright red... (Vickie) looked out the glass but she said the light was to bright for her to see very much of the figure...”, (Schuessler, 1998, pp. 39, 253).

Vickie Landrum : (Vickie told the reporter) Colby insisted that it was “diamond-shaped,” and that “The light from it was just like someone was up in your eye shining a flashlight at 'em. Maybe he could see better from in the car or something, but we couldn't tell no shape to it. The light from it was glowing, lighting up the whole road like it would set it on fire.”

Gordon, C. (1981, February 22). “Two women share terror of mysterious encounter,” The Courier, p.1A.)

In the original published reports there was no mention of any specific markings or lights on the UFO. There were, however, a few UFO reports in Texas and other areas both before and after the incident, some of which involved UFOs with lights. VISIT sought comparisons and connections between the Cash-Landrum sighting and some of the other incidents, most notably the separate sightings of Glenda and Jerry McDonald also of Dayton; Frank Chinn of Echols, KY. (Schuessler, 1998, pp. 74, 75, 314, and Brookesmith, Peter, ed. The Age of the UFO. Orbis Publishing, London, 1984, pp. 160-161.)

As they were asked to repeat the story for the public, media and investigators, Betty and Vickie gradually accepted Colby’s “diamond-shaped” description and began using it themselves in talking about what they had encountered.

Witness testimony summarized from the first VISIT report:

“Betty described the object as just an extremely bright light with no distinct shape, Vickie said it was oblong with a rounded top and a point on the bottom, while Colby said it was totally diamond-shaped." (Lorenzen, C. (September 1981) Burns Follow UFO Incident. The APRO Bulletin Vol. 29, No. 8, p. 2.) 

Vickie Landrum: “It was diamond-shaped and as tall as a water tower. It was a dull metallic color, and it just floated there.” (Horswell, C. (1981, September 25) State, private agencies probing claims of UFO encounter. The Houston Chronicle, p.1A.) 

Colby made many pictures of the UFO, and one he drew with Vickie from March 1981 was reproduced in Schuessler’s book (page 237). It shows a featureless diamond-shaped object spewing flames downward. Betty Cash also drew the UFO during the interview at Bergstrom Air Force Base. It also depicts a featureless diamond-shaped object spewing flames downward. Vickie signed the drawing, agreeing that it was accurate.

With the legal case lost, the story of the witnesses was absorbed into the body of UFO lore, becoming little more than a parable about the evils of a cover-up by the U.S. government. Along the way, a crucial question went unasked: How did something as basic as the description of the UFO get so distorted and then become recorded inaccurately in the case history?

As personal computers became more prevalent, the Computer UFO Network developed. Originally conceived as an online bulletin board; Chris Lambright joined them and led the implementation of the CUFON website. The site collected and archived important UFO material, including Cash-Landrum case documents. In 1994 Betty Cash provided them with a tape of the pivotal 1981 Bergstrom AFB interview, which documented lengthy testimony from the witnesses to U.S. military officers. CUFON published a transcription of the interview online, making it public for the first time. 

Also in 1994 Lambright briefly discussed his interviews with Vickie and Betty on a UFO Internet forum. He mentioned the discrepancy of the UFO picture and details as an indication that there might be other problems in the original investigation of the case. In 2003, Rebecca Keith shared Lambright’s message on the forum by UK researcher James Easton, where it could find a wider audience. Ten years later, I came across Lambright’s comments there, and tracked him down to get the details. We’ve continued to correspond on the case, and he recently told me:

“I never did finish the oil painting I originally showed to Vickie Landrum, though I think it's still in storage somewhere... more recently I tried my hand at a rendition using a 3D program...and you get a great idea of how light effects the entire scene. It's still a guess on how bright the flames really were, and how reddish they were, etc. What really becomes obvious is how dark a dark grey object would have been in the sky, and brings home what Vickie said that if it hadn't been for the flames they might not have seen it at all.”

Lambright completed two variations of the scene, showing different degrees of illumination from the flames. This is is a unique effort by Lambright, finally a realistic representation of the scene as described by the witnesses themselves.

Illustrations copyright Christian P. Lambright

Version 1: All illumination comes from the downward flames, shown here almost dormant.

Version 2: The flames become more powerful as the object rises.

Version 3: Another view, depicting the blinding light that lit up the whole woods.

With the documentation that the circulated UFO description was in error, doubts arise about how other data was gathered, evaluated and represented. There was no police or Air Force investigation at the beginning of this case, and the only the documentation was the elusive medical records of Betty Cash. About all we have to work with is the media coverage, and the parts of the VISIT investigation that John Schuessler chose to share. The Cash-Landrum case deserves a fresh look and should be reopened.

The passage of time closes some doors, but others may open. Betty Cash died in 1998, and Vickie in 2007, leaving only Colby Landrum remaining as a primary witness. The helicopter personnel who participated in the operation are nearing retirement age and could now discuss this case without the fear of risk to their military careers. Others who were involved may still be alive, and it is possible that once-secret government documents could now be available. The VISIT case file also needs to be opened for whatever cold leads it may provide. There is yet hope that the curtain of secrecy can be parted to provide what the witnesses have fought so hard to find - answers.

Update: The original VISIT report by John Schuessler has since become available, along with many other documents on the case. See: 

The Cash-Landrum UFO Case Document Collection

A special thanks to Christian P. Lambright whose input into was invaluable. Chris' interviews with the witnesses, artwork, investigation and insight provided the foundation for this article. Chris has a website http://www.xdeskpublishing.com/, where more information can be found on his book, X Descending.

The Cash-Landrum-McDonald UFO Incident of 1980

The Cash-Landrum case of December 29, 1980 is one of the best-known UFO stories, 

made famous in the media for the alleged radiation injuries to witnesses Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and her grandson Colby. Shortly after the story became public, another UFO witness from that night came forward, but his testimony has been largely ignored. Jerry McDonald of Dayton, Texas, witnessed a low-flying triangle-shaped object, but earlier the same evening and miles away. All these years later, Jerry feels his story has not been told, so he contacted BBL to share his experience and his thoughts on the UFO’s origin. 

Before hearing his modern perspective, let’s first examine how his story surfaced in 1981.

The Original Interview

John Schuessler, then the deputy director of the Mutual UFO Network, also ran a Houston-area group, Project VISIT (for Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team), which began investigating the Cash-Landrum case Feb. 21, 1981 after getting a call from Betty Cash, then by visiting the sighting location a week later with Vickie and Colby Landrum.

Other than getting the witnesses’ story, the VISIT investigation produced nothing, so they turned to the power of the media. John Schuessler’s memo of March 20, 1981 states:

“Metro News Service carried a plea for witnesses to come forth. Jerry heard the plea on KIKK radio.” That was Jerry McDonald, and on March 23, David Kissinger of VISIT went to Dayton to interview him.

Jerry was an oil field worker, 23 years old at the time, and lived in Dayton in a house trailer with his wife Glenda and their baby girl. It was early Monday night, and Jerry was outside repairing the water line when he heard a rumbling noise. He looked up, maybe expecting to see the Goodyear blimp, but instead saw a strange triangular object flying above the 40-foot tall trees nearby. Jerry described and sketched the object as triangular, flying point first, the opposite side with white and blue lights near the corners, and two flaring lights that looked like the flame of an acetylene torch near the middle. In the center of the triangle, it had a brilliant red light. Jerry watched it for two or three minutes, estimating its size as 40 feet wide, its altitude at 130 feet, and it’s speed as 3 miles per hour.    

Drawing by Kissinger based on McDonalds's report.

Two days later, Jerry came down with the flu. Glenda hadn’t gone outside to see it, but she got sick too, but not their daughter. Two weeks later, on Feb. 14, Jerry was hospitalized for an air pocket in his lung which was treated by medication. An interesting detail surfaced during the interview. Glenda McDonald had also seen a UFO - two of them, but much later on the night of Feb. 14, and hers were a bit smaller, kite-shaped with lights at each corner. Kissinger closed his report by suggesting that they advertise on radio and TV to find other witnesses, and to notify the authorities about the public health hazard from the UFO. 

The problems making Jerry McDonald’s UFO with the Cash-Landrum case are numerous. He wasn’t able to pinpoint the time of his sighting, initially saying between 8 and 9 p.m., then between 7 and 8 p.m. to VISIT investigators. The Cash-Landrum sighting time is estimated at shortly after 9 p.m., so if the earlier time is correct, that’s a long while for a UFO to be prowling the Texas skies between Dayton and New Caney. Jerry reported the noise of  the UFO as a rumble that got made him look up, whereas Vickie Landrum described her object producing a roar like a hurricane. The most notable feature to Jerry was the lights on the UFO, particularly the single bright red on at its center, but Betty and Vickie described the object they saw as blindingly brilliant with no discernible features. Another big difference was the shape. Jerry’s UFO was a triangular flat wing about 40 ft wide, the Cash-Landrum object said to be a huge diamond-shaped object, more like a football shooting flame from the bottom pointed end. It’s difficult to believe they were describing the same object, but they were both UFOs, and that’s close enough for flying saucer science. 

In an undated follow-up, VISIT attempted to reconcile the different characteristics in the three UFO sightings described by Vickie and Colby Landrum, Jerry, and in his wife’s Feb. sighting. The letter included several pictures, suggesting the Jerry’s triangular pyramid UFO had really been a diamond-shaped craft viewed from below. 

The descriptions of the various witnesses have been reviewed. One of the possible configurations that fits all descriptions is given below. Please provide discussion of why and why it does not fit the object you saw.

VISIT sketch: "possible configurations"

 In other words, the investigators were trying to shape the testimony to fit the hypothesis that the UFO from all three sightings were the same object. The documents related to the McDonald interview are collected in a pdf: Project VISIT file on Jerry McDonald

Jerry’s sighting, along with Glenda’s and any other allegedly related UFO reports, were not given individual case files by VISIT or MUFON, just included within the Cash-Landrum material. Comparing that to a police investigation, it’s like dropping every crime in a city into a single folder and hoping for one solution for everything. Glenda’s sighting was completely dropped, but Jerry’s sometimes appeared in UFO literature, but just in an attempt to corroborate the original Cash-Landrum case. That's caused the McDonald sighting to be ignored, and missed by researchers investigating "black triangle" UFOs.

The Original Media Coverage

The most accurate reporting of Jerry’s sighting was the earliest one published, in The Houston Chronicle, p.1A., Sept 25, 1981, “State, private agencies probing claims of UFO encounter” by Cindy Horswell.

Jerry McDonald, 24, an oilfield roughneck, also witnessed something strange that night from his home in Dayton. “I heard a sound like a rumble, and I thought it was the Goodyear  blimp,” he said. “It was kind of triangular or diamond-shaped and had two twin torches that were shooting brilliant blue flames out of the back.” He said it also had two bright lights on it and a red light in the center as it  passed about 150 feet above him.”

In The Unexplained: Mysteries of Mind, Space and Time,  vol 9, Issue 107, 1982,

Orbis Publishing Limited (UK), “Blind Terror in Texas,” John Schuessler edited Jerry’s quote to remove the “triangular” description:

Oilfield laborer Jerry McDonald was in his back garden in Dayton when he witnessed a huge UFO flying overhead. At first he thought it was the Goodyear airship, but he quickly realized it was some unidentified object. "It was kind of diamond-shaped and had two twin torches that were shooting brilliant blue flames out the back", he said. 

It took The X-Files in the 1990s to get the media interested in UFOs again. “UFO Sightings” by Marty Racine was the cover story for the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Magazine, Nov. 11, 1996. It featured coverage of the Cash-Landrum case, including an interview with Jerry McDonald about his sighting, and printed his sketch of the triangle-shaped UFO.  

Fort the entire excerpt covering the Cash-Landrum story, see:
Houston Chronicle’s Texas Magazine, Nov. 11, 1996

The same evening about 15 miles away in Dayton, Jerry McDonald, an oilfield roughneck, was fixing a water main outside his trailer when a huge black triangular craft sporting a brilliant red light and belching twin flames passed 130 feet overhead."It was there, buddy, it was there. Blew my mind, it was going so low and slow. This was no blimp. This was something out of this world. I saw something that scared the death out of me."

Later in the article, it presented Jerry’s thoughts on the origin of the object:

McDonald now thinks his UFO was a Stealth Bomber, which was developed in the late '70s. ‘I think (the military) just got caught with their pants down."

In John Schuessler’s 1998 book, The Cash-Landrum Incident, the appendix includes copies of Kissinger’s interviews of the McDonalds, and on page 78 he gives a summary of Jerry’s sighting, portraying it as a closer match the C-L UFO. 

Jerry McDonald was working in his yard between 7 and 9 p.m. when he saw an object as large as the Goodyear blimp overhead... It continued on over the vacant football field and out of sight to the west, in the direction of Huffman.

The Cash-Landrum case was examined in UFO Hunters “Alien Fallout” episode from Jan. 14, 2009. It featured a short interview with Jerry McDonald and showed him making a sketch of the object he'd seen, a clip just intended to show that someone else had seen a UFO.

Jerry McDonald Speaks Out

Those brief appearances are about the extent of the coverage of Jerry’s sighting in the media, but 

Dec. 8, 2016, BBL published the piece, “Cash-Landrum UFO Case Updates: Witness Reports,” which closed with a call for new witnesses to come forward. That evening I received an email:

My name is Jerry McDonald I am the silent witness that has was not named in the lawsuit... I believe I know what I saw that night now, and I need to tell somebody.

When I called Jerry, he said that he was the “silent witness” of the lawsuit, that he had been asked to be part of it but declined, otherwise it would have been known as the Cash-Landrum-McDonald case. He said at the time he was young and a bit scared - unwilling to miss work to testify - and afraid of reprisals by the government. Jerry said Dayton Dayton police detective Lamar Walker, whom he described as a good friend, was someone who the attorney had intended to call as a witness. He mentioned that Walker had seen the helicopters, but not the UFO, which was just the opposite of Jerry’s sighting. Jerry said the lawsuit was thrown out due to lack of evidence, which is accurate. 

In reviewing his sighting, McDonald described the location, saying that there's now a Walgreen’s where his trailer was located in 1980. When he was filmed for the UFO Hunters segment, they went to an adjacent property to represent the location. He pointed out that UFO literature is in error when they say he was out in his “garden.” Instead, he was outside at the time to repair a broken PVC water pipe to his trailer, and was covered in mud. McDonald described his UFO sighting, saying that the object was triangular, about 100 - 150 feet in the air and it sounded like a blimp and he imitated the sound that it made, a humming or rumbling noise. He mentioned how the Goodyear Blimp was frequently seen at Christmastime, and that they had Santa Claus’ sled and the reindeers displayed on the side (animated by its lights). His description of the experience was consistent with his original testimony, but I tried to get a sense of the kind of impression it made on him. When I asked him about its size, he said that it was not all that big, and that it was flying low and slow (so low, he said he could have shot it down.) 

Two of examples McDonald sent of UAVs resembling his UFO. 

The main reason McDonald wanted to reach me was to  express his present day thoughts on the origin of the UFO. He has come to believe that what he witnessed was an early flight test of an unmanned aerial vehicle being test flown in Texas. He told me he had found a picture online, a Lockheed Martin UAV on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, a triangular-shaped drone that resembled the object that he had seen in 1980.  “This is a prototype of unmanned drones that you will never find - the government has covered this paperwork up because of the lawsuit. These ladies are dead of their injuries and never got compensated for it, and I know exactly what I saw I know exactly what it looked like.” He is convinced the same object he saw was the Cash-Landrum UFO, and went on to say it was “jammed full of radar” and that's what had caused the “radiation burns”in the witnesses. 

The NBC show, That's Incredible!, filming in Dayton, Texas, July 1981.
In the left photo, Jerry McDonald, center, on the right, Colby Landrum at the camera.

In returning to some of the points he had made earlier in the conversation, I asked him about knowing the witnesses. He said that he and Colby Landrum still talk, and that he had seen him recently at funerals. Colby is mad and blames the Government, his phrase was, “mad they killed his grandmother.” He mentioned that when in 1981 when ABC's That's Incredible! came to Dayton film, he’d taken pictures of the crew with Colby. McDonald was also supposed to be interviewed for the show, but he got too nervous and his part was canceled. Jerry has tried to talk to Colby about his idea that the UFO was a drone prototype, but Colby is mad about the situation the entire experience, and that he wants no part of it. 

McDonald feels that he's not had the opportunity to be heard, even locally, that they “will not let the story get out." Jerry thought that UFO Hunters might have been taken off the air, because "they were getting too close." He mentioned that the show had taken core samples on Farm-to-Market Road, but wasn't sure what the results of the analysis revealed (nothing but repaving over the decades). Regarding secrecy in the Cash-Landrum case, he said that the helicopters had been out there, and that it had been covered it up in the middle of the night. 

Today and Beyond

We’ve had intermittent contact since, and Jerry recently sent me several articles and photos on UAVs that resemble the aircraft he saw that night. I asked Jerry about the color of the craft, but he was unsure of it, the lighted portions of it were most prominent in the night sky. The drawing from his initial interview lists the body as black, but can’t be sure.  Jerry thinks it could have been a joint program between that Lockheed Martin and NASA conducted from the Johnson Space Center. The published history of the development of UAV’s does not agree with Jerry’s prototype scenario, but it’s worth considering. What I feel is most import about Jerry’s story is his description of what he witnessed, a very unusual aircraft. He makes no fantastic claims about what he saw, but his testimony is just as important as that of any UFO witness. His description of the event remains unchanged, and when he sent me the copy of his 1996 triangle illustration, he said,  “This is my original drawing and I stand by it.”

Jerry remains convinced that the UFO was really a US military UAV prototype, and that by investigating it, the truth about the Cash-Landrum incident might be revealed. “My resolve is strong, now I have clarity and that’s what they were experimenting with that night and got caught with their pants down... I’m telling you brother they think these people are dead and gone and not coming back from the grave, but I’m still alive to tell about it. This was truly a government cover-up.”

Jessie Roestenburg’s 1954 UFO Encounter and Beyond

Jessie Roestenburg’s Oct. 21, 1954 encounter with a UFO might have been forgotten had it not been chronicled by Gavin Gibbons in his 1956 book, The Coming of the Space Ships. I provided the basis for almost all the subsequent accounts throughout ufology. Charles Bowen based his entry in the Flying Saucer Review Special: The Humanoids, 1966, on it, and the short version below is all that most people know of the story.

Bowen  compounded an error, calling the witness Jennie, instead of Jessie, and misspelled the location of Ranton. Gibbons had spelled the family name RoestenBERG, but it should have been BURG. Most UFO literature since has followed his version. Throughout, we’ve corrected quotes using “Roestenberg” to the proper Roestenburg.

It’s a famous sighting, one of the best-known early UK cases, but few know that her family experienced at least six UFO sightings, with Jessie being involved in all but one. Like her first, most of the additional sightings involved multiple witnesses. 

L, drawing of the Ranton humanoid type.

R, art by Mike Rogers based on the abduction story by Travis Walton.

The Original Incident: Eye Contact

In 1954 Jessie Roestenburg, her husband Tony and three young children lived in a cottage at Vicarage Farm, Ranton, Staffordshire, England. It was an old house three and a half miles from Stafford, and without the modern conveniences like electricity or indoor plumbing. It was almost like they were quietly living in the past, but that all changed on October 21, 1954.

Vicarage Farm

Mrs. Roestenburg was inside with her two-year-old daughter, Karin, and her two sons, eight-year-old Anthony and six-year-old Ronald were just home from school and playing in the garden.

The time was 4:45 p.m.

The Wolverhampton Express and Star Oct. 22, 1954: 

Midland Woman says flying saucer terrified herRanton, near Stafford, A woman today told the “Express and Star” that she and her two children had been terrified by a flying saucer, carrying “two long-haired human-like creatures in tight-fitting jerseys.”The machine landed in the garden, she stated.When she heard a noise like a crashing aircraft, yesterday, Mrs Jessie Roestenburg, of isolated Vicarage Farm, ran out into the garden. She found her two children lying prostrate and terrified. The next house to Vicarage Farm is about two miles away.Above the children was a huge, saucer-like object with a dome, the front part of which was transparent, stated Mrs. Roestenburg.Staring at the children from the machine were two “unsmiling, human-like creatures, with long faces and long hair.”

Mrs. Roestenburg told our reporter that she ran to the back of the house in fright. The object then  moved over the house, hovered for about 15 seconds, and then shot off at high speed.

From another section of the story, she’s quoted as saying the object was "about 15 to 20 feet in diameter.”

Captions from the Wolverhampton Express and Star:

This is a sketch, made today by Mrs. Roestenburg, of the object that she states she saw in her garden, It appeared to be of “a dull silver metal,” and the outer rim seemed to be revolving.

Mrs. Roestenburg, with her two sons keeping close beside her, points to the place where, she says, she saw the flying saucer hovering above her home.

UK flying saucer researcher Gavin Gibbons wrote a report for Flying Saucer News, Winter 1954/55, "Full Report on the Ranton Affair," which included the above illustration.

The Coming of the Space Ships

Gavin Gibbons’ 1956 book, The Coming of the Space Ships, covers the flap of UFO sightings that began in June of 1954 in the Stafford area, and devotes two chapters to the story of the Roestenburgs, which he regarded as the “the most informative and, in some ways, astounding of all the sightings...” Although Gibbons provides the best documentation on the story, he was a linguist and scholar, not a journalist, and with his own UFO experience approached things as one of the awakened. As his title suggest, Gibbons regarded flying saucers as extraterrestrial space ships, and was persuaded by the reports from the Contactees. Wishing to retire the phrase “Flying Saucer,” Gibbons preferred the Atlantean/Sanskrit term “vimanas” (chariots of the sky) for disc-shaped scout craft. He invented other UFO terms to match, such as vunu for cigar-shaped spaceships.

Based on his interviews with the family, Gibbons gave a more detailed account of the Roestenburg story and what was seen:

...they looked very like Earthly men, with white skins and long hair down to their shoulders. Their foreheads seemed immensely high, with the features almost entirely in the bottom half of their faces. Their heads were enclosed in what appeared to be some sort of transparent helmet and they were dressed in clothes of turquoise blue that resembled ski suits that Mrs. Roestenburg had seen.

The saucer’s exit:

It was hovering over the house! Very low and completely silent, a queer round thing was standing in the air immediately over the little cottage... Their heads were in a whirl... As Jessie Roestenburg watched, appalled, the vimana began to move, flashing a purply blue light from the front of it as it did so. At an angle of 45° it started to ascend, making no sound as it moved, but continuing the flashing the whole time. With a gasp of relief Jessie ran into the house, intent on finding pencil and paper to sketch what she and the children had seen. As she looked for the stub of a pencil, the boys called out again from the garden. With fear returning once more to her heart she ran outside to see the Saucer coming back again, this time from north to south. It circled the house in an anti-clockwise direction one and a half times and then streaked skywards. It had gone at last.

The section of Gibbons book describing the sighting was excerpted as an article in Model Aircraft magazine, March 1957, “Space Ships ‘a Coming.” It’s archived, found on page 39 of the PDF, at

https://rcbookcase.com/data/media/12/03Model_Aircraft_March_1957.pdf

However, like most accounts, it only covers Oct. 21, not the subsequent events or the other UFO encounters of the Roestenburg family.

The Rest of the Story

Gavin Gibbons was not a detached journalist or scientific observer - he became part of the story. Gibbons spoke Mr. Roestenburg’s native language, Dutch, and it drew them closer, and he became friends with the Roestenburgs, making frequent visits to their home, educating and advising them on the topic of UFOs. In the narrative, he introduces Mr. Roestenburg first and regards it as Tony’s story, not Jessie’s. 

2nd Sighting: Tony’s Cigar

The second sighting was around 2:30 on the next Sunday, Oct. 24, 1954. The Roestenburg’s had a friend visiting, man whose name was not given. According to Gibbons, Tony thought there was a slight possibility that the saucer had dropped something on their roof. “He had a queer hunch, too, that it was his turn to see something.” From an upstairs he made his way to the roof, but found nothing, but remained to scan the skies.

“Suddenly he caught his breath and stared hard at the sky towards the south-west. His premonition was right after all. There, flying slowly along in a great semi-circle, was an enormous, cylindrical, sausage-shaped object.”

Tony called for Jessie and she and their guest  ran out to see “the huge machine looming in the sky, not more than a mile away, and watched with him as it carried on its curved course, eventually disappearing into a bank of cloud to the north.”

Mr. Roestenburg came down and asked Jessie if it was what she’d seen, but she said, no, that this was colossal, the saucer-shaped machine she’s seen was much smaller. the three discussed the sighting, but at first the friend said that he had thought that he had seen dark patches where wings might have been, but after careful thought he withdrew this idea.  Gibbon reports that Tony “became intensely interested in the subject of U.F.O.’s and kept a careful watch from then on, scanning the sky at every possible moment he could spare and hoping with all his heart to see another visitant.”

Gibbons was of the opinion that Jessie had seen a disc-shaped scout ship and aliens just as George Adamski had described, while Tony had seen the massive cigar-shaped mother ship.

3rd Sighting: Tony’s Fireball

Another hunch.  On or about December 15, 1954, Tony’s skywatching paid off. He saw a ball of fire slowly, silently moving at an angle of about 45° above the horizon. It was about two or three inches across when measured at his arm’s length, but when he went around to the other side of the house to follow its path, “It was now about eighteen inches at arm’s length!” It seemed to be moving lower and slower until it was almost stationary. As he watched, he heard the sound of an airplane coming from the east, and as the plane got closer,” the fireball suddenly moved, shooting northward at incredible speed and disappearing from sight within a few seconds... He had seen another Flying Saucer!”

The Family’s Transformation

The aftermath of the sightings on the family is discussed in chapter 8, Gibbons’ book. Jessie told him that afterward, her daughter Karin seemed to cry constantly and the two boys had become unruly and disrespectful. “I can see a tremendous change in them. Whether it’s a reaction after their fright or what, I don’t know, but they are much naughtier now than they ever were before it happened.”

Jessie herself was stressed, and had a blotchy rash on her skin, “It’s on my face and arms and I don’t know what it is.”

Her condition had developed sometime after the sighting, and Gibbons asked if she knew the cause.

“Just nerves. The same as my edginess and bad temper.”

Gibbons noted, “nervous strain will do peculiar things to the human body. I hoped that these bad after-effects would soon wear off, for, as I explained to Mrs. Roestenburg, I was sure that the men in the saucer had no intention of frightening her and the children.”

Jessie made no mention of having any other symptoms or of receiving any medical treatment.

When Gibbons visited the Roestenburgs in their new home southern edge of Stafford in March and May of 1955, he found them all changed for the better. He asked Mr. Roestenburg what had made the difference, and Tony almost sounded like they were fleeing a haunted house.

“That old cottage,” he answered without hesitation. “Ever since that U.F.O. hovered over it, something snapped there and almost made us snap, too... The move has made a different family of us and that’s a fact!”

Asked if he’d seen any more UFOs, Tony replied, “Not since that last one, but I’m still looking.”

Gibbons could see no motive for a hoax, and he was convinced of their sincerity.“I have gained some new friends. I often visit them in their new home and we talk over the happenings of the day when the Saucer came. The children, and it is best so, have forgotten the incident, but for Jessie and Tony Roestenburg... it is a good memory. Now that the fear has gone and they are....almost beginning to wish that the vimana would pay them a second visit. Almost, I think they said, almost....”

Caption from Gibbons' book:
Mr. and Mrs. Roestenburg and their children,
May 21, 1955, seven months after they had seen the vimana.

1956 - 1957: More Flying Saucers 

Gavin Gibbons briefly returned to the Roestenburg case in his follow-up book, They Rode in Space Ships (1957), but continues the story, describing the lesser-known aftermath and further sightings by the family.

“Tony Roestenburg could hardly be said to court notoriety - he got more and more weary of references to his experiences... He certainly did not seek money-he and his family have gained nothing from an experience now largely forgotten by the children.” 

After summarizing both the original sighting, Tony’s rooftop sighting of the cigar-shaped UFO, Gibbons states, “He was to see another Space Ship later on, probably a vimana, but this has no direct bearing on the argument.” An asterisk leads to a footnote about three further sightings by the Roestenburgs, even after they moved from Ranton to Stafford. In the first one, the Roestenburg’s daughter instead of the boys, takes on the role of sounding the summoning cry:

“Sightings in the Stafford area are still taking place. On 5 December, 1956. Mrs. Roestenburg was called into the garden of their Stafford home by Karin. A bright orange disc, probably a vimana or scout ship was overhead! Seen by neighbours, it disappeared in the direction of Seighford. On to January, 1957, an orange glowing cigar-shaped vunu was seen by many people flying northwards over Stafford towards Stoke-on-Trent. Witnesses included Tony, Jessie, and Karin Roestenburg and Mrs. Daniels, wife of Wilfrid Daniels, the Stafford U.F.O. expert. On 13 May, 1957, a silvery vunu was seen over the west of Stafford by Mrs. Roestenburg, a near neighbour, Mrs. Violet Wilding, and several other witnesses in the area.” 

See appendix, the chronology: Roestenburg Family Sightings

Spiritualism, Psychic Powers and ESP

Gibbon’s second UFO book contrasts the Roestenburgs with someone he did not find credible, George King of the channeler of the cosmic being Aetherius. Gibbons disapproved of mixing spiritualism with UFOs, saying, “But the greatest danger is that spiritualism so easily leads to involuntary fraud or to misrepresentation by people who are themselves quite honest. Although a lot of people, including several well-known public figures, believe in spiritualism, there are many others who turn from it in disgust. As many of these latter believe in Flying Saucers, George King is doing a disservice to the Space Ship movement by associating spiritualism with Flying Saucers.”

Gibbons makes no mention of Mrs. Roestenburg’s psychic powers and experiences in his books. There’s just the tingling in her nose prior to the first sighting, and her husband’s hunch or premonition prior to the second one. Reading between the lines, there’s some suggestion the  Roestenburg’s felt there was something almost haunted at Vicarage Farm, and they were happy to be away from it.

                                                    

Wilfrid Daniels 

At the same time Gibbons was working the case, so was another. Wilfrid Daniels was a UFO researcher living in Stafford. He reported on the local sightings and interviewed Mrs. Roestenburg and was the first to disclose her psychic or ESP claims in Flying Saucer Review Vol. 1, No. 3, July-Aug. 1955 (page 16), “Flying Saucers and the Psychic” by Wilfred Daniels. Here’s a summary of it by UFO historian Loren Gross from The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs: A History 1954 October (1991):

According to UFO researcher Wilfred Daniels, Mrs. Roestenburg had for years felt she was a “psychic,” and that for a number of hours prior to the “space ship appearance,” she had a “queer feeling” something was about to happen, at least that was her peculiar claim. Years before during a seance a medium directed a comment to Mrs. Roestenburg, pronouncing her a psychic of considerable ability, a compliment she never forgot. While denying she was a full-blown spiritualist, Mrs. Roestenburg said she did experience on one occasion a “spirit manifestation of the spectral sort.” Her aunt, she admitted, was a practising “psychic healer.” In Gibbon's mind, and to any UFO buff worth his salt, the possible flaw in the “strange affair at Ranton” was that it had a George Adamski smell, the American who at that time was the darling of England's occult society. 

Gross took Mrs. Roestenburg's claims of having psychic powers and supernatural before her sighting as a negative, but in the FSR article he quoted, Wilfrid Daniels thought it might be just the opposite. He speculated that these were exactly the kind of earthlings the spacemen wanted to visit:

But could it not be that just because of their peculiar powers of mental perception, spiritualists, and those with “psychic” sensibilities, maybe the very people better equipped than anybody else to be sought out, or inspected at close quarters, but alien visitors in flying saucers?

Gibbons worked closely with Daniels on the Stafford sightings and must have known about Mrs. Roestenburg's psychic stories. Due to his distaste of missing spiritualism with saucers, it appears he chose to censor it from his account of the Roestenburg case.

Jessie’s story became part of UFO literature, especially in the volumes devoted to Contactees and close encounters. Jessie had made contact with aliens - only eye contact, but still historic. However, for many years, her tale just circulated by repeated versions of Bowen’s 1966 short summary of the encounter.

The 1970s UFO Revival

The public’s interest in UFOs after the Pascagoula Abduction story caused a revival of media coverage, and that included reviewing old cases. 

The comic book, UFO Flying Saucers No. 7, August 1975 published by Gold Key (Western Publishing Company, Inc.) featured a brief adaptation of the first Jessie Roestenburg sighting,  “The Unsmiling Men,” a four page story illustrated by John Celardo.  It’s chief departure from the original account is in the depiction of the saucer occupants, drawn here as weird aliens, not the beautiful angelic astronauts Jessie described. One interesting thing the story does well is to demonstrate is the peculiar angle the saucer would have to tip forward in order for the occupants and witnesses to be able to see each other.

TV Coverage

In 1976, Hugh Burnett was preparing a UFO documentary for the BBC, and he approached Charles Bowen and Gordon Creighton of Flying Saucer Review. They gave him the contact information for Jessie Roestenburg. The documentary was titled Out of this World, and it was first broadcast May 10, 1977 on BBC 1. It’s largely responsible for reviving interest in the case, and today, most people are probably familiar with Jessie Roestenburg’s story via the YouTube clip of her from the program. It’s often shared with comments noting how genuine, sincere and credible she appears. 

She describes the saucer as looking like a Mexican hat, and says occupants, says were beautiful people with long golden hair, wearing  coverings over their heads like a “transparent fishbowl.”

“They just looked, and I was absolutely paralytic with fear. I couldn’t move, although my mind was taking over. And they seemed so sympathetic that I was mesmerized, seemed to be - oh, ages, but it could have only been seconds. After checking on her boys, “I looked up and it was gone.” 

Asked about the size of the object, she says it was “massive,” that it was larger than the roof of the house. She said they saw the object again in the distance, that it circled them three times then it shot off.

A spaceman in a fishbowl helmet, as seen in The Man from Planet X, 1951

More fishbowls from The Net, 1953

Mrs. Roestenburg appeared in another UFO program a few years later, and told her story again on the episode, “U.F.O.s” of Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, which was broadcast Nov. 4, 1980. It’s interesting to contrast it with her previous clip from the 1977, Out of this World. Her description of the events are very similar,  sometimes word for word. In both she's quite animated, but here she’s far less emotional, and perhaps convincing. 

She describes discovering the flying saucer:

“To my amazement there, suspended on the top of the roof of this old farm, was this object that I can only describe as a huge Mexican hat. It was that shape, without the bobbles. It must have been fifteen to twenty yards from where I stood. It covered the roof, so in circumference it must have been about sixty feet, it was enormous.  The people in the space-craft were just looking out, I could see them from the waist to the top of their heads. They were very beautiful people. They had long golden hair... (but no mention of the fishbowl helmets). and they just looked at us. Their eyes - the expression in their eyes - were full of compassion.”“And then all of a sudden, I felt the tension leaving me and I felt movement, and I turned around to touch my children and when I looked again it was gone.” Moments later, her younger son pointed it out then, “it circled round the farm three times, then it just shot straight up and away.”

“U.F.O.s” episode of Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World  (link)

How Big was the UFO?  

The account from the two shows differ from the original version documented by Gavin Gibbons on several details, and none of the other subsequent events or sightings were discussed. The part about Jessie seeing the saucer ascend, then running inside to look for a pencil was dropped, and instead she remains outside for the entire sighting. Also, when seen again, the saucer makes not 1 /1/2 circles, but 3 around the farm on its exit, but perhaps that’s an unimportant difference.

The biggest difference seems to be the size of the UFO. The figure Jessie gave for the saucer’s size in the first account was, "about 15 to 20 feet in diameter,” which matches the drawing she made for the newspaper. In her sketch, it depicts the saucer as room-sized, not house-sized. In the Jul-Aug 1955 FSR, investigator Wilfrid Daniels gave the size as “a 25-ft. saucer.” In her later television interviews the spaceship was described to be enormous,  large enough to cover the entire roof of the cottage. 

Thirty Years Later, New Details Emerge

Excepts from Jenny Randles’ Abduction (aka Alien Abductions), 1988, pages 68-70, Chapter 5, “Alien Abductions - The British Catalogue,” Type II: Contact Cases 

21 October 1954 - Ranton, Staffordshire This case is legendary in UFO circles, having featured in several books during the 1950s, but no one seemed to have looked at it recently, so on 6 August 1987 I interviewed the chief witness, Mrs Jessie Roestenburg. She was in her late twenties in 1954 and had two children, Anthony (aged eight) and Ronald (six). They do remember the events, but only vaguely. Jessie had felt 'tingles' all day, prior to 4:45 p.m., when the incident occurred. (Recap of sighting.)“It felt like hours passed, but it must have been seconds. Time was suspended. I was also paralysed. It was like I was in a vice. But my mind was working overtime.” 

“...nothing Jessie said indicated to me that she was familiar with UFO cases...”Since then she has often thought about it: 'This was something absolutely marvellous. The saddest part to me is that I have never been able to fully understand the greatness of this thing.'However, she says that she has since had a 'great, almost extreme, development of ESP. I know things about people. I understand situations. All this probably sounds crazy, but it is true.' Some of the things that have happened include seeing the aliens again in her house '. . . out of the corner of my eye .... But I think it could be a "thought thing". It could be my imagination'. 

These contacts have implanted feelings into her mind about the aliens: 'I think they'll be here when I need them .... They are surveying us. They're afraid that we might panic. But some of them are living amongst us.’

Jessie Roestenburg impressed me because she had not become a 'UFO nut' and had seemingly read no books on the subject since 1954. She had seen the Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind but in typical fashion said about it, ‘I remember thinking whoever did this film has a good understanding of the subject. But when those little funny aliens came on I almost stood up and shouted, "They're not like that!" I don't believe in little green men. Not after what I've seen."  

Excerpts from the interview were carried in an article in The Star, Feb. 29, 1988,

‘Jessie Spots an Alien Crew”

1998

Timothy Good’s  Alien Base, 1998, contains an interview with Jessie Roestenburg that offers details I’d not found documented elsewhere, health problems following her first sighting.

Jessie‘s health began to deteriorate. ‘I went to see my doctor, who had read about what happened,’ she said, ‘but he thought I was round the twist. I insisted on seeing a psychiatrist and he said: “There’s nothing wrong with your mind but you do you need to go to hospital.” He took me himself and they did a blood count. [It] was so low they couldn’t understand how I was still alive. They said they wouldn’t be surprised if I was suffering from radiation sickness. For a while, I was in a terrified mess but gradually got better.

Good quotes Jessie from the news story by reporter Neil Thomas in the Staffordshire Newsletter, August 30, 1996, which gives her name as “Jessica Roestenburg.” She said, “To this day I don’t know what they were, I don’t believe they wanted to do us any harm. They are far more intelligent than we are.”

2011 (probably from 2006)

Sadly, Jessie Roestenburg passed away on May 12, 2017. Luckily John Hanson was able to interview her a few times in her later years for Haunted Skies.

From John Hanson 2006, Haunted Skies-Vol. 1. Photo by David Sankey

Excerpts from the Haunted Skies blog by John Hanson and Dawn Holloway

“Special Blog to celebrate Volume 3”

http://hauntedskies.blogspot.com/2011/09/special-blog-to-celebrate-volume-3.html

Jessie’s religious disclosure

“I seemed to be in some way drawn, or compelled, to the top of the garden - almost as if I was being manipulated by an outside influence, of which I had no control. I glanced around and saw the amazing sight of this flying saucer shaped object hovering 40-50 feet above the roof of the house. Inside the ‘saucer’ I could clearly see what looked like two humans, wearing long golden hair down to their shoulders. I felt a mixture of emotions - amazement and fear run through my body, followed by the thought, ‘God will wipe away all tears’. Immediately, all the tension left me, (something I have never disclosed to anyone before because of its religious significance). I turned to my sons and asked them if they had seen the ‘flying saucer’. They replied, ‘yes’.”

Expanded Account of the Medical Treatment 

After the sighting, she felt revitalized, for a short time, until discovering a strange rash covering her face and front part of the body, accompanied by a considerable loss of weight over a relatively short period, which gave rise for concern. Jessie sought the advice of her Doctor, who was well aware of the UFO incident and intimated there was something wrong with her mental health.Offended by this suggestion, Jessie contacted a Psychiatrist - Dr. Wilson, who confirmed, after a medical examination, there was nothing wrong with her mental state of health. “He asked me if I had been given a chest x-ray and blood tests. When I told him this had not been done, he personally escorted me to hospital, where a chest X-ray was taken but found to be clear. Unfortunately, blood tests showed the blood count was very low. The haematologist said to me, ‘If it didn’t sound so ludicrous, l would say you have been exposed to a massive dose of radiation’. I was given injections of iron, twice a week, which caused all sorts of problems before the correct dosage was established.”

A short clip of Jessie Roestenberg when aged 90; recorded in 2015 by John Hanson and Dawn Holloway of Haunted Skies.

Although the Roestenburg children were involved in several of the UFO sightings, they were treated as bystanders in the news coverage and UFO literature. Gavin Gibbons played with the children in his visits with the family and talked to them about the events. At the time, Karin was two and inside, but Anthony Jr. , eight, and Ronald, six, were outside and as close to the spacemen in the UFO as Jessie. A year or so later, somewhat incredibly,Gibbons noted it was “an experience now largely forgotten by the children.” If they’ve commented on the family’s UFO sightings as adults, I’ve been unable to locate a credible source. Beyond Gibbons book, there seems to be nothing recording Tony Roestenburg’s sightings. Only Jessie’s story really lives to carry on.

. . .

For readers who'd like more information on the Roestenburg story, check out the sources below and the BBL page of additional material, including:

• Epilogue: The Forgotten Witness 
• Appendix: Roestenburg  Family Sightings 
• Bad UFOlogy: Jennie and Apocrypha

Jessie Roestenburg’s 1954 UFO Encounter and Beyond: The Extras

Online Sources and Links to Further Information

They Rode in Space Ships by Gavin Gibbons, 1957 (Online at Daniel Fry.com)

The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse: UFOs: A History 1954 October by Loren Gross

“The Roestenburg case” (pages 75 - 76)

There was an excellent discussion of the case by Kandinsky from Dec. 2011, on the site Above Top Secret (ATS) that provides a good background on the Roestenburg events. 

“BBC Out Of This World Program (1977) Re: Staffordshire 1954 Sighting”

Flying Saucer Review  Vol. 1, No. 3, July-Aug. 1955 (page 16)

“Flying Saucers and the Psychic” by Wilfred Daniels

Flying Saucer Review  Vol. 3, No. 1, Jan.-Feb. 1957 (page 9)

“Flying Cigar at Stafford”

Flying Saucer Review, Sept./Oct. 1957. Vol. 3, No. 5.

“World Round Up,” Europe, Great Britain. (pages 5 & 6). "Stafford in the news again"

Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 38, No. 1, 1993 carried an article recounting the case, “The Roestenburg Story (1954)” by Gordon Creighton. (pages 6 -9)

Out Of This World - UFO Interview - My Body Language Analysis. Staffordshire 1954 CJB

Craig James Baxter, the author of Unmasked: A Revealing Look At The Fascinating World Of Body Language made a video examining the clip of Mrs. Roestenburg from Out of this World.

His analysis is interesting, and he seems to believe she was sincere. However, his conclusion that there’s a tear shed at the close of the video seems to be in error. Compare the scene with a clip from the original program. No tear is evident. (https://youtu.be/58R7JAQm_yQ?t=37s)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keurBtEy81E

UK newspaper story from 1954 - fragment the Wolverhampton Express and Star Oct. 22, 1954

Stafford and Mid-Staffs Newsletter, 5/2/5?, “Staffordian’s Opinon on Flying Saucers,” a profile on Wilfrid Daniels, who discusses investigating the Roestenburg sighting.