Coast to Coast AM - Dec 26 2011 - ET Encounter

Host: George Knapp
Guests: Noe Torres, Ruben Uriarte, David Hatcher Childress

Hour 1 - Researcher and author David Hatcher Childress talked about the possibility that the Grand Canyon might have been visited by ancient Egyptians.

A Phoenix Gazette story of April 1909 reported that the Smithsonian was doing excavations of unusual caverns at the Grand Canyon, where a prospector said he'd found a mine opening that contained Egyptian artifacts, as well as hieroglyphics. A recent article from the Arizona Republic reported that figurines recovered from a limestone cavern in the Canyon had been carbon dated to 2145 BC.

Hours 2, 3 & 4 - Ufologists Ruben Uriarte and Noe Torres discussed one of the world's most intriguing and least known UFO cases.

The incident took place in 1964, when eyewitness Donald Shrum had a terrifying 12-hour encounter in the Tahoe National Forest with menacing robot-like and humanoid invaders. He'd been hunting with two companions when they saw an enormous cigar-shaped UFO-- around the size of a 14-story building. According to Shrum, from out of the larger craft, a smaller scout ship was expelled, which landed nearby. He was then discovered by two small humanoid beings that looked like they were wearing "welding goggles," Uriarte recounted.

As the beings came toward him, Shrum climbed up a tree to escape them. Then, he noticed a more robot-like creature with fiery orange eyes that came toward him and emitted a vapor that would temporarily knock him out. Carrying a bow and arrow, he tried shooting at the robot. He also observed that audio signals from the ship seemed to influence the behavior of the beings. Eventually, a second robot appeared and they increased the volume of the asphyxiating vapor, and Shrum said he was knocked unconscious until the morning. When he woke up, the beings were gone, and Shrum later sought medical attention to see if he might have been exposed to dangerous levels of radiation.

A second witness, Shrum's hunting companion Vincent Alvarez, gave a written affidavit as to seeing a bright craft. Shrum was initially hesitant to go public with his story because he thought it might jeopardize his career as a missile defense contractor, Torres noted. At the time, Shrum did speak with the Air Force about what he saw but they tried to downplay the incident and suggest that he was the victim of a hoax or prank. Torres and Uriarte believe the case is comparable in significance to the Betty & Barney Hill abduction, and also draws parallels to the Travis Walton, and Pascagoula UFO abductions. For more, see the illustrations below.