UFO Sets Boy's Hair On Fire.

Lots of close range reports of human related physical effects from unidentified flying objects over the years and John Schuessler lists some truly interesting ones in his catalogue below:


A CATALOG OF UFO-RELATED HUMAN PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS


One of the entries which occurred during the 1964 wave is a pretty freaky one in which a UFO set a boy's hair on fire in broad daylight - the object was also witnessed by his grandmother and caused quite a media stir at the time.

1964/06/02 NEW MEXICO, HOBBS
1600 Source: FATE, Oct. 1968
National Enquirer, Oct. 28, 1970

Charles Davis was burned by a blackish ball of fire from a strange object overhead. His hair was singed, and a sooty deposit was left embedded in the skin of his face and on his ears, neck, and shirt. His face became so swollen that his nose wasn’t discernable. He had no pain but was afraid he was going to die. The event was witnessed by his grandmother, Mrs. Frank Smith.

EFFECTS:

Burned hair
Swollen skin
Ears that looked like raw meat
Sooty deposits
No pain

Years later whilst going through the archives of atmospherical physicist Dr James E Mcdonald (link) researcher David Marler came across some pretty remarkable audio recordings from the folks involved and actually tracked the witness down - in the vid below is testimony from the mother, grandmother and a recent video interview with the main witness (56 years later).

● As well as media attention, also discussed is the subsequent police investigation and FBI involvement (samples taken were never heard of again).

Guest David Marler with a premier discussion of his most recent research of a UFO Burn Victim Case - New Mexico 1964. There are early audio excerpts of an original witness and a bonus clip at the end of the show of an on camera interview with victim, Charles Davis after he has tracked down 56 years after the incident.

For folks interested David Marler has also conducted some great research into Farmington and FBTs and his website can be found here.

a reply to: karl 12

Great thread premise and thanks for posting, karl. I look forward to reading up on that and watching the vid. I think there's a lot to take away from studying past cases and common patterns such as certain effects on witnesses.

My bet would be that those UFO cases that repored heavy heat emitions and sunburns were witnessing military tests of nuclear propulsion. I would guess that these tests ended because nuclear propulsion was too hazardous to both the pilots and the surroundings and they rather closed these programs quietly because of the same reason.

a reply to: karl 12

That is a pretty serious incident, at first it sound's humorous until you read the detail's.

Remind's me a little bit of this incident from Brazil but less serious as the child survived and I hope recovered but I do wonder if he had any long term problem's as a result of this run in with an unidentifed object.
www.ufoinfo.com...

I do agree with several of the other's that this could be an object with a more down to earth origin, possibly a military test vehicle but if so what was it doing there and not on a test range?.

Also it is worth noting the high quantity of ancient reports' of mortal's being struck by the God's, of angel's and being's from the heaven's unleashing wrath upon people etc many of which may simply have been the ancient people's interpretation of aggressive UFO interactions that harmed people and so maybe it is not us after all but it is worth thinking about.

Wow that is interesting... Great Balls of Fire!!!

maybe space debri.... in the 60's they where sending lots of junk up there.

a reply to: eitea


That is not a very plausible explanation for why UFO cases involving burns such as this one are so rare. Nuclear radiation would not ignite human hair and leave a deposit of soot in the skin of a boy's face. The black UFO was hovering ONE FOOT ABOVE his head, according to his grandmother, and his head and shoulders were enveloped in fire, which does not accompany nuclear radiation. I doubt a secret, nuclear-powered, military vehicle would have got that close! Besides, the object was 2-3 ft wide and 5-6 ft tall, so it was too small to be occupied by humans.

Before betting on a hypothesis, perhaps you should take heed of the facts so that they are at least consistent with the speculation. Otherwise, you will lose a lot of money.....

originally posted by: CraftyArrow
Wow that is interesting... Great Balls of Fire!!!

maybe space debri.... in the 60's they where sending lots of junk up there.

No. Space junk crashes into the ground at thousands of miles per hour. It does not hover a feet above someone's head before emitting flames, as his grandmother reported seeing when it happened!

For goodness sake, listen to the FACTS of the case before speculating.

Sounds like some adolescent aliens were playing a practical joke on the guy.

a reply to: micpsi

Your wrong.... not all space junk crashes into the ground at thousands of miles per hour.... yes it can hover if it breaks apart, depending on the material.

a reply to: micpsi

Good point's BUT remember a nuclear powered aerial vehicle would likely use a nuclear heated plasma to propell itself, that is unless it was like the old Orion rocket idea which was going to be launched using actualy nuclear explosions as a source of thrust.

So I would not rule it out just yet, why the black sut, it could have been the boy's own outer skin charred by the intense heat while just perhaps this charred layer then along with an underlying layer of moisture insulated and protected his skin.

Radiation would be left behind if this was the source however so your point is definitely a good one, that is why I wondered if the boy had any long term health problem's related to possible radiation exposure.

But you know there are at least a few accounts' out there of radiation being related to UFO's and many, many cases of sites were UFO landing's have been reported that have shown a residual higher than normal - sometimes several time's higher - radiation in the location's of these claimed landing sites - and also apparently in some crop circles as well though I mostly hold that those are down to a bunch of ale drinking english pub regulars that started a copycat craze around the world (but could the UFO's have then thought it was an attempt to communicate with them and reciprocated?).

I reference you toward the famous Cash-Landrum incident (which of course could also have been a US test project but why then approach and irradiate a civilian car?.


Now surely you are familiar with this.

This requires a powerful ground based laser to fly BUT what if a power source or NUCLEAR generator could be produces small enough and the laser source was efficient enough to make it a viable in craft power source, since the laser heat's the air up inside the mirrored ring so much that it explodes out this in theory if it was hovering close to the ground would produce a lot of heat that could set a boy's hair on fire, the concussive force of the blast waves may even concuss the child and leave him with a swollen head and face?.

While the downthrust would not be radioactive of course in this case the power source if Nuclear would make it a nuclear powered flying machine.

Now imagine using that for a star wars type speeder replacing jet engines', fan's and even the skirt of a hovercraft and making a viable ground effect - and perhape genuinely aerial - flying vehicle, all you would need is a sufficiantly efficient and reliable extreme high intenstic laser source, a light weight power source and a sufficial thrust to weight ratio to make it viable.

Just because we have not cracked it (in the civilian sector) does not mean someone, somewhere has not.

You kind of have to wonder why it would be expelling so much heat, and how it was generated without radiation. Excess Zero Point Energy? Still, that would sort of imply there was a massive EM field disruption, which isn't mentioned. It's also hard to figure out how the kid really didn't feel any pain after having his head roasted.

These UFO things are wacky. It's hard to imagine a science built up step by step like ours, but starting from a different ground floor and ending in a different building altogether. No "atoms," but a completely different way of looking at chemistry and physics as a way to define physical reality.

a reply to: eitea

I've always thought that too. Especially with the Cash/Lundrum case - they thought it enough to take the US government to court over it, after all!

originally posted by: LABTECH767
Radiation would be left behind if this was the source however so your point is definitely a good one, that is why I wondered if the boy had any long term health problem's related to possible radiation exposure.

Both Martin Willis and David Marler agreed there were some very strange aspects to this case, like for example, if Charles was burned so badly, why was there no scarring?

So it seems logical to not jump to the conclusion that all the burning was necessarily caused by fire, which tends to form scars. Maybe some other kinds of burns don't cause scarring, perhaps some types of radiation burns or chemical burns.

One frustrating aspect of the case is that neither witness is able to describe the object very well, and you can tell when McDonald phones years later that he is very frustrated in his phone call because Charles, by then about 11-12 years old, can't give a coherent description, and it sounds like he's repeating a lot of what his grandmother told him she saw and her description didn't seem very coherent either. McDonald says after several attempts to get a description that he still doesn't understand, which makes sense because the description was so muddled. I don't blame the 8 year old boy for that, maybe it all happened so fast he didn't get a good look and he was in shock afterward, but his grandmother's description was also very muddled.

Then one of the newspaper articles referred to a "blob" attack, which I can understand if the descriptions the newspapermen got were as muddled.

So Charles tried to not think about it for years, but if he did, he wondered if it was some kind of errant test device from White Sands test range or another base. If it really shot fire out the bottom, the propulsion sounds rather primitive.

Where it got interesting was the talk about the FBI collecting Charles' shirt and skin scrapings for testing.
David Marler filed a FOIA request for the test results, which was denied because he was a 3rd party, so he had Charles submit the same request.
Charles got a reply saying they needed more information to process the request, but Charles isn't sure if he wants to bother with going through the hassle of providing more information for the FOIA, he has a business to run.

So if there's any hope of shedding any more light on this, it probably hinges on whether Charles pursues the FOIA request or not.
Then as David Marler says, it all depends on whether or not the FBI lab testing found anything anomalous. If they didn't, it's a dead end and we'll probably never understand what it was/what happened. But if the FBI did find something anomalous, like maybe traces of radiation, or chemical residue of the kind used for rocket propulsion, that might give us some clues. I think some rocket propellants are hazardous, though I'm not sure if they can cause chemical skin burns or not. Even if they did find something anomalous, if it involved something classified, the information could be denied or else heavily redacted.

Good work by David Marler to get the interview even if it raised more questions than it answered, but I guess that's what makes a good mystery.

What did you folks think of David Marler's statement at 10:30 that "My attitude is, every UFO video is a hoax until proven otherwise"? I wouldn't go quite that far, but I do notice many UFO videos are missing some critical details like date, time location, direction, etc, and if they are missing all that they almost aren't even worth investigating. At least if you have all that, you might use that to spot if any other witnesses in the area might have seen or recorded the same thing. But Marler finds these old cases a lot more interesting and unlike the suspect nature of many recent videos, he doesn't have any doubts about some of these old cases being hoaxes.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

Well this was a boy remember, I severely scalded my arm when I was a boy and all the outer layers of the epidermis came right off like sleeve, I had slipped while carrying an open kettle of boiling water and fallen so that my arm went into the kettle almost to the elbow, it healed and I have no scar from that accident (Though scalded and the skin peeling my hand was actually less affected than my lower arm and wrist due to the naturally thicker skin we have in that area of our body's though the back of my hand like my arm was very raw for a long time afterwards, adult scars are far more obvious than childhood one's for this reason the body is still growing and producing new cell's at a far higher rate than when we age.

So I would be a little more cautious about explaining it away through a lack of scars especially given the child's age and also since we don't know exactly how bad the burn's really were.

That said you make very excellent point's.

You know though the swelling could be the result of a chemical interaction or an immune response.

So your point carries very well indeed and makes me ponder the case a bit more.

I'm just speculating...that the 1964 burn victim (Charles Davis), might have possibly been hit by a magnetically contained, aneutronic fusion plasma weapon of some sort.

But in his backyard???

originally posted by: jeep3r
a reply to: karl 12

Great thread premise and thanks for posting, karl. I look forward to reading up on that and watching the vid. I think there's a lot to take away from studying past cases and common patterns such as certain effects on witnesses.

Thanks mate and certainly a very interesting interview describing some very serious injuries and a very bizarre 'hissing' object - Alfred over at RealTVUFOs has done some great digging through the news archives on this one.

Front Page - Full Article

Continued

Text:

Mrs. Smith, the only adult witness, said the UFO looked like a long burner. ‘I would say it was about four feet tall, at was ablaze at the end of it. Then there was more of a smoke — real dark carbon-like smoke — that looked like it was coming out of oblong holes. I don’t know what it was.’

Full Printed Article

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: karl 12

That is a pretty serious incident, at first it sound's humorous until you read the detail's.

I agree mate and considering that after the incident his nose was not visible, his hair was burnt off and his ears were turned inside out resembling 'ground beef' no wonder his mother described him as looking like a 'monster' and refused to give him a mirror.

Also found it interesting that he suffered temporary blindness (as other UFO witnesses do) and, although the grandmother stated the flames covered the child's entire body, he was only affected from the neck up.

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: karl 12

Remind's me a little bit of this incident from Brazil but less serious as the child survived and I hope recovered but I do wonder if he had any long term problem's as a result of this run in with an unidentifed object.
www.ufoinfo.com...[/

Thanks for posting that - as Marler also states in the interview there were other reports from Georgia in a six to eight week period after this incident of 'a flying top shaped object belching fire'.

Here's one from 2 weeks later which flew over a guy's car 3 times and burnt him on the arm (also reports of hissing).

June 29, 1964; Lavonia, Georgia

Late evening. Businessman Beauford E. Parham was driving home when he spotted a very bright light in the sky coming directly toward his car. The next instant it was directly in front of his headlights - a top-shaped object, spinning and emitting a hissing sound "like a million snakes." It was amber colored, about 6 feet tall and 8 feet wide, with a mast-like protrusion on top and small portholes around the bottom through which "flames" were visible. The UFO disappeared, then quickly reappeared and stayed directly in front of the car, just in front of the lights (estimated 5 feet), for at least a mile while the car was traveling 65 m.p.h. The top of the UFO was tilted toward Parham, who said he followed it in a "near trance-like state." Next the UFO went up over the car leaving a strong odor like embalming fluid and a gaseous vapor. Then the UFO appeared for the third time, again heading directly toward the car; the motor began to miss and Parham stopped. The UFO spun "like crazy" and then took off, disappearing in a "split second." Parham began to feel a burning sensation on his arms, so he drove to an air base and reported the incident to FAA officials. They reportedly detected some radioactivity on the car (no formal report made). Parham's arms continued to burn even after he washed them. An oily substance on the car persisted after many washings, the car hood was warped with bubbled up paint, and the radiator and hoses deteriorated after the incident. (Trace case [cat 5] E-M [3] Radiation [10].

link

originally posted by: karl 12

originally posted by: LABTECH767
a reply to: karl 12

That is a pretty serious incident, at first it sound's humorous until you read the detail's.

I agree mate and considering that after the incident his nose was not visible, his hair was burnt off and his ears were turned inside out resembling 'ground beef' no wonder his mother described him as looking like a 'monster' and refused to give him a mirror.

I've been hanging around the Corona threads for a bit... but it was rather soul-destroying and depressing, so time for something more peaceful...

Or NOT so peaceful! This case is pretty startling, isn't it?

The Cash-Landrum case is not as isolated an incident as some people think, then, in terms of injuries suffered from a UFO (or black project).

originally posted by: ConfusedBrit
The Cash-Landrum case is not as isolated an incident as some people think, then, in terms of injuries suffered from a UFO (or black project).

I'm not aware of any injuries in the Cash-Landrum case. I'm aware of claims of injuries, but not actual injuries resulting from exposure to a UFO.

So to me this case is nothing like the Cash Landrum case, because it seems the 8 year old by was actually injured by the UFO, something I can't say about anybody involved with Cash-Landrum, there are too many red flags with that case.

originally posted by: karl 12

Thanks mate and certainly a very interesting interview describing some very serious injuries and a very bizarre 'hissing' object - Alfred over at RealTVUFOs has done some great digging through the news archives on this one.

I finally watched the vid, it's really a strange case. So what do we have?

- two witnesses saw the object
- others were at the scene shortly afterwards
- documentation of his stay in the hospital
- FBI got involved to analyse effects
- FOIA requests were filed
- audio of interviews by James McDonald
- video with main witness by David Marler

There are many cases out there that offer a lot less in terms of documentation. I think David Marler's efforts to capture the witness testimony on video are to be commended. As are those of James McDonald to investigate the case more in detail in the first place.

Hopefully, the second FOIA request submitted by Charles Keith Davis will yield some results. It seems strange enough that the FBI would be interested in analyzing his clothes and tissue samples.

By the way, I have a new thread in the works and hope it'll be ready-to-post in this forum later this week.