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Was it UFOs?
Mystery Haunts Eastern Plains
December 25, 2005
Cattle rancher Clyde Chess never learned who — or what —killed his
heifer 11 years ago, removing its lips, tongue, ears, heart and
reproductive organs with laserlike precision.
But he has a theory.
“I suspect, and I know it sounds far-fetched, it was government
testing,” said Chess, who has a ranch in Rush. “They’re the only ones
that have that kind of technology.”
This is eastern El Paso County, where stories of mysterious black
aircraft, unexplained lights in the sky and bizarre cattle
experimentation aren’t considered too farfetched. Many remember the
string of cattle mutilations that oc- curred in the 1970s and happen to
this day.
Of course, it’s been a long time since Colorado ranchers sat on their
porches at night with shotguns, scanning the sky, but there’s a new
mystery on the eastern plains, one involving the unexplained deaths of
six horses and a burro in Calhan.
The case has UFO investigators talking about aliens and mysterious black
helicopters. Several have launched their own investigations into the
deaths.
The truth, they say, is out there.
“Is this a mystery? It’s a huge mystery,” said Linda Moulton Howe of
Albuquerque, N.M., author of “An Alien Harvest,” a book about the cattle
mutilation phenomenon. “What it all means I don’t know. But do I think
humans did that? Absolutely not.”
The facts are sparse:
Oct. 11, six horses and a burro — all healthy — were found dead in a
field near Calhan.
The veterinarian who examined them, Dr. John Heikkila, ruled out a
winter storm, disease, toxic plants and lightning. Officials remain
puzzled by the quarter-inch puncture holes in the animals’ hides,
originally thought to be gunshot wounds, but no evidence of bullets was
found.
Toxicology tests for common poisons came up negative, and expensive
testing for “unusual possibilities” was not done, because of cost,
Heikkila wrote in his Nov. 20 autopsy report. He concluded that an
unusual toxin, delivered through a dart or pellet, caused the deaths.
The horses’ owner, Bonny Blasingame, also thinks they were poisoned. She
doesn’t know who would do it, but others have an idea.
“I’ve talked to several of my friends who think that it’s aliens,”
Blasingame said. She said she didn’t laugh.
Fears were heightened by the deaths of 16 more horses, found near Calhan
on Oct. 22, though investigators determined lightning caused the deaths.
Howe, who has written several books and produced television
documentaries on strange phenomena, wrote an extensive report on the
deaths on her Web site, www. earthfiles.com. She has seen similar
puncture holes in dead livestock elsewhere.
“Unusual animal deaths have long been associated with odd, silent black
helicopters that have dissolved into misty clouds and unidentified
lights and beams in the sky and pastures,” she wrote.
Leslie Varnicle, state director of the Mutual UFO Network, has also
looked into the deaths. She said a teenager spotted a strange aircraft
in the Calhan area Oct. 21. She thinks it’s no coincidence.
“You had the animal deaths and, in the same time and area, an
observation of this V-shaped craft,” Varnicle said. “In the back of my
mind, I think there is a connection.”
Eastern El Paso County is fertile ground for such theories.
In the 1970s and ’80s, the area was among many parts of the West to see
a string of cattle mutilations. Typically, soft tissue such as the lips,
rectum and sexual organs were removed, with little blood or signs of a
struggle evident.
There was an FBI investigation, and in 1979 a summit attended by
scientists, law enforcement officials from several states, UFO
investigators and a U.S. senator. The wave died out around the
mid-1980s. In New Mexico, National Guard helicopters patrolled pastures.
But mysterious livestock deaths never stopped here. According to the El
Paso County Sheriff’s Office, there have been 26 unusual or unexplained
livestock deaths since 1989. No arrests have been made.
The presence of two Air Force bases and NORAD only fuels the
speculation.
Said Varnicle, “We jokingly say, ‘Yeah, they moved Area 51 over to
Peterson’” Air Force Base.
Some cases have been truly bizarre. In January 1996, Trucktonarea
rancher James Richard White found one of his cows dead, with an entire
eye socket surgically removed.
According to a Sheriff’s Office report, White told a deputy he had seen
black helicopters in the area before, hovering a couple hundred feet
above the ground, not making a sound. And on the night his cow was
killed, his television flickered.
“I really couldn’t tell you exactly what it was. I know what I saw and
what I reported,” said White, who still owns a ranch.
In 1994, Simla rancher Ted Hasenbalg found one of his bulls mutilated,
the third to die strangely since the 1970s.
“I’ve got to think it’s UFOs. That’s the only thing logical,” Hasenbalg
said. “I think anything’s possible, because we don’t know if we’re the
only life in the universe.”
UFO investigators say the recent Calhan incident, although it differs
from classic mutilations in several ways, could be connected.
“You have a minimum of information here on these animals to connect them
to anything nonterrestrial, like we can with the cattle,” said Richard
Sigismund, a Boulder social scientist who spoke at the 1979 summit. “But
on the other hand, that same minimum of information prevents you from
connecting it to anything.”
Varnicle, of the Mutual UFO Network, said she continues to ask questions
about the deaths.
“I would love to catch someone doing it, whether it’s the military, E.T.
or Joe Joker,” she said.
Sheriff’s Office investigators have also heard plenty of theories, among
them top-secret military lasers and ice bullets. They believe the answer
is more mundane, probably some sort of toxin that didn’t show up in the
tests.
“We believe there’s a logical explanation. We just haven’t found it
yet,” sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Clif Northam said. The investigation
remains open.
Some ranchers have expressed concern about the killings, but Jim Brewer,
president of the El Paso County Farm Bureau, dismisses talk of UFOs and
secret experiments. He thinks the deaths were weather-related.
“It was a bad thing, but it wasn’t somebody out trying to kill
livestock,” Brewer said.
For Blasingame, the horses’ owner, the case is more than a story worthy
of “The X-Files.” She loved the horses that were killed.
One horse survived the incident, a 6-month-old filly named Santanna,
whose mother was among those killed. The horse remains skittish, jumping
at the slightest sound.
“I wish she could talk. I’d give anything if she could talk,” Blasingame
said. “She’d have a story to tell.”
CONTACT THE WRITER:
476-1605 or srappold@gazette.com
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