THE NIGHTSTALKER OF EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE
From The Files Of The Late Bobbie Ann Slate, bigfoot investigator
(Edited) It was a routine night at the Edwards AFB (California) air security police desk until the frantic call came in from the patrol on duty at the restricted site known as Project Logic. The man’s voice was urgent and high pitched with fear. "send a patrol quick! There’s this huge form coming toward me. Hurry!" His voice trailed off and the sounds of gunshots could be heard through the receiver. Then there was nothing but an ominous silence. When the patrol arrived, the guard was found in a dazed, incoherent state after having fired the full magazine in his gun. The Office of Special Investigation (OSI) was called in. (According to one military source, the patrol vehicle was found overturned, the patrolman’s rifle snapped in two , and huge, 5 toed bare, human-like footprints crisscrossed the sight. The patrolman had not been injured, but was terrified.)
While no official report of this incident can be found in the archives of the base’s Historical Department, the rumor circulated throughout the Air Force police that the man at Project Logic was deeply affected by his encounter of that night. They said he was placed in a military hospital and eventually sent to an overseas base.
In the spring of 1974 Edwards AFB security policeman, Sgt. Michael House, was on night patrol on the outskirts of the powerful communications site known as MARS station, which maintains radio contact with other military installations around the globe. A nearby microwave tower, looming like a lonely sentinel in the darkness stood surrounded by a wooden fence posted with signs advising that explosive devices, electrically operated or magnetically charged, would detonate within a certain radius…Sergeant House was patrolling in the area of the abandoned sled track, once used for testing G forces when he saw ‘it."
"I’d gotten a new spotlight and was trying it out," the Sergeant said. "Heading back to the main vase, I noticed maybe 200-300 yards to my left, these large blue eyes. I do a lot of night hunting and it was strange - they were larger than anything I’d ever seen before. Their diameter had to be about four inches apart and seven feet off the ground. I stopped the truck and sat there watching them, It was too dark to see any body-shape to the thing, The blue glows proceeded toward my truck at the right angle for about 100 yards and then stopped."
The hair bristled on the back of the patrolman’s neck as the larger-than-human "eyes" began circling and again moving closer to his vehicle. A rank smell like something rotten permeated the air. The thing moved closer again, now coming within 50 yards of he truck, but still it’s shape cold not be discerned through the brush in the desert.
Just at that moment the truck radio advised Sergeant House that he should proceed directly back to the main base and he quickly left the area. He returned three hours later but there was no trace of the "blue eyes." Rain washed out the possibility of location any tracks the following day.
"The movement of the eyes was extremely fast," Sgt House recalled. "Another thing that bothered me was that they didn’t bob up and down. It was like two lights on a wire moving from one point to another. He was ribbed a good deal while making out this official report on the incident, which was to set the standard of non-reporting from other patrols that encountered strange things in subsequent months. The C O (Commanding Officer) wanted to believe this men were simply overly imaginative,. After all, the desert could produce some eerie effects at night and then too, reports of fantastic creatures in and around restricted areas didn’t look good in the official log.
"You’re only hearing the wind," he told the men staffing the MARS Station on the midnight shift who said they’d been hearing some unusual sounds as well as seeing he dark form of "something" walk past a building - a figure which would have had to be almost 8 ft tall to be seen through the high windows (something which stepped on and pulverized a glass soda-pop bottle in it’s path). In several instances, calls to the Air Police about creatures moving in the desert did turn out to be wild burros moving silently through the sage at night. The while their eyes are blue, there is almost no reflection due to limited pigmentation. If there were official investigations by the OSI, the men on patrol seldom heard the outcome unless there was some natural explanation. Thus they wondered about the rumor circulating that three men on duty at a complex near the bombing range had called in for help. As the story went, -when the patrol arrived, they found the security guards unconscious. The door leading into the building was ripped off it’s hinges and the sophisticated electronic equipment within had been demolished. Just a tale? It was told to an air policeman by a member of the patrol investigating that call for help.
The Rocket Propulsion Lab lies on the eastern edge of Edward’s AFB, and utilizes a vast area of the facility. It contains installations ranging from gigantic multimillion-pound-thrust rocket stands to smaller, highly specialized test equipment which can capture and instantaneously analyze the exhaust gas produced by a rocket engine. It is here that rockets and similar hardware are tested for the study of propulsion equipment under conditions of long term exposure to the environment. It is also here that weapon systems are developed and tested. Certain areas are off limits to civilians and signs warn to keep out of the potentially toxic areas.
Air Police Sergeant Barton had an open mind about "creatures." His relatives in Missouri had seen and shot at the mammoth Bigfoot-like monster known as "Momo" and though he trusted their accounts of the incident, he also realized the doubt and ridicule they were subjected to when the talked about it. As a result, no formal report was made to the Air Security Police concerning what happened in the winter of 1974 while Barton was on patrol in the vicinity of the Rocket Propulsion Laboratory and the strange blue lights he saw in the nearby mountains.
Assuming the lights to be from a car, Barton drove toward them in order to intercept any unauthorized trespassers. The lights vanished when he arrived at the site where he had last seen them, but now he found his vehicle mired in the soft desert sand. Walking approximately two miles back to base, the sergeant intercepted a patrol and they radioed for a tow truck. When the truck arrived and everyone returned to the Sergeant’s vehicle, they found 3-toed tracks measuring 14 inches long with what appeared to be a clawed digit at the heel. The wind was blowing soft sand and the footprints were filling in rapidly, making any precise identifications difficult. But whatever "it" was had completely circled the truck as if inspecting it and then walked off on two legs into the desert.
Three weeks later and also on patrol, Air Patrol Sergeant Jones was parked in the region of the rocket site. It was close to midnight. The moon was up when suddenly Jones noticed a shape moving across the skyline of a nearby hill. While he couldn’t estimate it’s height, the trunk area or girth was described as "immense." The Sergeant quickly grabbed his radio microphone and called HQ. "Tell the replacement to hurry up! I might need some help!" he urged.
As Jones looked back again to the hill, two large luminescent green-blue orbs, "like eyes" were moving towards him. "They didn’t really seem to me like they were bouncing the way a person would when walking," he said. "They kind of floated or were moving on an easy glide."
Car lights appeared down the road and the patrolman lost no time in getting out of his truck and walking to meet the vehicle. At that moment he was extremely grateful that the men had responded so quickly to his call for help, but that wasn’t actually so. The other vehicle had been ordered into the area in response to a report about strange lights being observed in the hills. Yet no unauthorized cars had been located and now the glowing eyes had disappeared. All that remained in the vicinity were unusual marks on the ground., The two rounded depressions measured six inches and two inches in diameter respectively. There were foot tracks as well. "They were all over the place" Jones said. "There were so many of them that I couldn’t follow any trail."
Barton, who had found tracks around his truck a few weeks earlier, said they were similar to what he had seen. The other man along on the patrol didn’t get out of the car. He said he didn’t want anything to do with it. Can anybody blame him?
Story written and compiled by the late Bobbie Ann Slate, expressly for and in conjunction with the Bigfoot Research of Peter Guttilla in 1974.
Reprint permission of edited document by Peter Guttilla, January, 1997 © SPECIAL EDITION BIGFOOT FILES
Author Peter Guttilla, 1994
Upland, California
