My Dad Was A Famous Alien Abductee. I Thought He Was A Joke — Now I’m Not So Sure.
“I was not at his side while he lay on his deathbed, by choice. I chose not to hear his last words, and that’s hard for me to accept.”
By David Riedel – 26/02/2024 05:08 pm GMT
There’s one video available on the internet concerning my father, Patrick McGuire. It’s strange. Uploaded to YouTube 15 years ago — though clearly recorded much earlier — the video frames another TV screen. There is constant static, and the image is fractured as if the broadcast comes from far away. My father is discussing cattle mutilations under hypnosis.
“We come up on a cow that was dead. They cut the nose off, tongues out and the sex organs were gone,” he recounts as though he is sleepwalking through a nightmare. He goes on to describe in great detail a “spaceship” that landed on his ranch and took members of his herd ― their distant, terrified animal cries filling those dark prairie nights.
One comment below the video reads, “Having lived and worked with cow-men, can you imagine this guy going to town after this got out publicly. I mean they are a finicky bunch to say the least.”
I don’t have to imagine. I grew up with him walking through our small Western town, his life by then fractured like that broadcast. He was completely destitute, picking through my classmates’ garbage, and when a classmate came to school the next day and told me what they saw, their grin, and subsequent laughter, left little to the imagination. However, I then joined in with their laughter. That commenter was right: We are a finicky bunch, to say the least.
On May 14, 2009, my father passed away in a Colorado hospital due to cancer. He was 67. I did not speak to him before he died. His last years were spent in homelessness, though he hadn’t always lived that way. His last words, so I heard, were about grand conspiracies and sinister deep states, though he hadn’t always spoken about such topics. My father’s legacy in our small Wyoming town ― and inside our family ― is stained with his tales of alien abduction, interstellar prophecy and the insistence he was chosen, though he had not always been chosen. There was a time before my birth when he was obsessed with the lore of his rural community, the spiralling complexities of high school dances and the schemes of enlarging his Roman Catholic family. He was normal, caring and complete. That was before the stars came knocking.
When I first saw the bold headline “Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin,” published June 5, 2023, in The Debrief, I initially didn’t think about whether the headline was true. I didn’t contemplate what the recovered crafts might look like or that “non-human” was just another euphemism for the same thing we have been talking about since 1947 ― I thought about my father.
I can see him now as though he were alive today, black cowboy hat tilted, face tanned and cracked from the high plains sun, saying, “Who’s laughing now?” I’m not laughing anymore, but not because I know what that headline is saying is absolutely true and proof lies just around the corner; I’m not laughing because I should never have laughed in the first place.
In 2017, The New York Times broke news about a previously unknown Pentagon department: the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This department was involved in investigating what were formerly called UFOs, now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). More shifting euphemisms and acronyms for us to track. Since then, the news surrounding these phenomena has steadily grown. There was a congressional hearing in 2022, the creation of a governmental department called the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) and a NASA hearing devoted to encountered ― or not encountered ― UAPs. And now a new whistleblower, former intelligence official and AATIP task force member David Grusch, claims a government cover-up. “These [programs] are retrieving non-human origin technical vehicles, call it spacecraft if you will, non-human exotic origin vehicles that have either landed or crashed,” he stated to NewsNation recently. What once seemed to be the premise for the next ”X-Files” reboot has become front page news, gaining mainstream consideration by the serious, the rational, the institutional and the scientific.
It’s strange to be here in this cultural moment. I think many people feel that to some degree. Whether this is all true or not, it is unmooring to read that U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) is demanding disclosure on a subject that, only a decade ago, would have been political suicide to even mention. To read former Pentagon official Lue Elizondo state, “My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone” is surreal, and stranger still is reading about governmental UFO agencies and “Black Money” in The New York Times.
D.W. Pasulka, author of the 2019 book ”American Cosmic,” an exploration of our cultural interaction with the UFO phenomena, recently referred to this specific whistleblower event and to the preceding media coverage as a “paradigm shift,” a fundamental change in the way we conceptualise an issue. “That is,” she explained, “there is huge pressure from [the] fringe, then marginal sources that finally initiate a shift in consensus.” And there is an unexpected change in our current moment from the one that preceded it, though now it feels to me — perhaps, given my family history, more than most — like there has also been an unexpected change in the past.
The stigma against people who believe in UFOs may go back to the very birth of the topic itself, when the first reports of UFOs described by Kenneth Arnold went from “saucer,” “disk” and “pie pan” to sensational terms like “flying saucers” in the press, for which Arnold later stated, “I have, of course, suffered some embarrassment here and there by misquotes and misinformation.” From there, this subject expanded to include tropes like anal probes, stock characters in films living their lonely, manic lives in houses criss-crossed with spiderwebs of yarn.
Abductees have been satirised on “Saturday Night Live” and in popular beer commercials. Even famed Harvard psychologist Richard J. McNally stated in his past clinical research into the abduction phenomenon that “it occasionally took [a researcher] several tries to record these [abduction] narratives properly. He would sometimes burst out laughing while trying to record these stories with the necessary solemnity.” Insincerity and mockery has shrouded the subject so thoroughly that NASA recently shared at a hearing that “the stigma associated with reporting UFO sightings — as well as the harassment of people who work to investigate them — may be hindering efforts to determine their origins.”
I know that stigma well ― having experienced it from both sides. My father was born and raised in Wyoming and was a rancher like his father and his grandfather. He nestled into a Western community that branded their cattle and youth alike with abstract symbols, that found definition in the regularity of rain and saw acreage as an inappropriate subject to discuss openly. “Asking about the size of a man’s spread is like asking to look at his chequebook,” he said to me once, laughing. And one local recently told me, “He could break a horse like nobody’s business. He was real sharp like that. Shame what happened to him.”
My father saw UFOs. Not one, once, like a dinner guest might claim after a few glasses of wine, but many times. Numerous UFOs all at once, up close, lingering in the western Wyoming sky like a nightmare that refused to dissipate come sunrise. In 1981, on NBC’s prime-time TV show “That’s Incredible,” my father’s story gained national attention as he related, under hypnosis, the specifics of his abduction claims and the demands aliens had made upon his life.
On the March 5, 1980, airing of ABC’s ”Eyewitness News,” he reported that UFOs had landed on his ranch “somewhere around 25, 30 times,” and witnesses present were quoted as saying they saw “two or three of them land at separate times… [and] we stayed and watched the sun come up and we saw two of them, in daylight, hovering in two separate places.” A headline in the March 24, 1981, National Enquirer reads, “Farmer: Aliens Use My Ranch as Their Landing Place,” and it reports that “Local newspaper and television reporters have also seen strange lights darting over the McGuire ranch.”
There appeared to be no shortage of witnesses to what was happening on his land. “While we cannot be certain of what we saw,” Casper Star Tribune investigative reporter Greg Bean wrote on June 29, 1980, “none of us left the McGuire farm with as much skepticism as we arrived with. Perhaps we can return.”
My father’s claims continued. Under hypnosis with famous UFO psychologist R. Leo Sprinkle, he recounted abductions by “Star People,” who demanded his actions in conjunction with their plan for humanity. These Star People told him of a coming climate apocalypse. Following this hypnosis, in a mere handful of years, he was completely destitute without home or family, and he claimed that governmental forces were keeping him that way because of what he saw and said. This story is a regular in the UFO community. In fact, the story of Grusch, the whistleblower, is no surprise to the community, the folks who did believe and respect my father. Covert conspiracies, recovered craft, Nazi research and “non-human origins” ― almost everything the whistleblower related, my father related to me in similar fashion at some point in my life.
From the earliest points in my childhood, I was told that UFOs were nothing to make light of. At every turn, every nightfall, through any locked door — the Star People could take anyone, even me.
My father’s description of the Star People, and my subsequent nightmares, matched what our culture has come to expect: 5-foot hairless beings with eyes like colourless pools hovering by my bedside. Soon classmates and teachers alike were smirking at my fears, and then, like any sociological contagion, I began to smirk, too. Then TV took over for my teachers, and “South Park, “Coneheads” and “Mars Attacks” taught me that this was, indeed, a laughing matter.
My brothers and I laughed when our father talked about the implants and their accompanying pain. We laughed when he claimed he could barely walk after what the Star People did to him. We laughed when he said that he was suing the government for the land they took from him, for destroying his life, for destroying our lives. We laughed. The world laughed.
If you were not one to laugh about UFOs, then you didn’t say anything at all, and if you did, you hesitantly considered the person you were talking to first, making sure they would not laugh at you, too, before you said anything at all. For many, it was a precarious high-wire if one was to discuss the trauma of the phenomenon or its reality.
When we weren’t getting our meals in school, my father often took us to the local soup kitchen in a basement bunker in the town Episcopal cathedral. I remember best the dampness of the walls and the claustrophobia of dining elbow-to-elbow with the other folks weathering the financial storms outside. Breaking expired bread to share over lentil soup, we were often the only children in attendance. For most of the diners, this was the last place to go. The person across from me would make small talk between spoonfuls, but nothing of the weather or local gossip. In the soup kitchen, the talk was of remote viewing, reverse-engineering and tapping into the collective unconscious for cosmic spiritual growth. I would nod with feigned excitement and encourage them to continue, go deeper. “What about the face of Mars?” I would ask with a smile. My brothers and I often failed to contain our laughter.
As the world contemplates Grusch’s claims, I’m the one who feels ashamed. These potential findings mean only one thing to me: An accounting must be made. How should we address our past mockery and ridicule if it turns out that, hidden in a desert base somewhere, there are indeed crafts, cadavers and photographs of strange visitors?
Regardless of the origins of the metallic orbs, Tic Tac crafts and flying saucers — and independent of the validity of Grusch’s claims — we should feel impelled to investigate and rescue a community living with the trauma of the unknown and indescribable. A community we greeted with sneers and derision for so long, a community we pushed to the outskirts of our cultural limits to be safely ignored. If it is all true ― or it is all lies and sickness ― we should approach both valuations with care and consideration, even skepticism, but not with the intense ridicule so many of us have given them for so long.
I cannot say for certain that a shift in the wider cultural acceptance of UFOs is already occurring in our institutions, as some have begun to state, but I can report what has occurred in my own consciousness. Since the ’50s, intrepid investigators have spent their whole lives and careers dedicated to the phenomenon of UFOs and abductions, and here we are, possibly closer to the truth than ever. And yet I somehow feel no closer to understanding my father. I was not at his side while he lay on his deathbed, by choice ― a choice I seemingly made as a child and never reassessed. I chose not to hear his last words, and that’s hard for me to accept.
“Although delusions are commonly encountered in schizophrenia and affective disorder, it turns out that anyone can have them,” Mahzarin Banaji and John Kihlstrom stated in their 1996 research titled, “The Ordinary Nature of Alien Abduction Memories.” “They are natural byproducts of our attempts to explain the unusual things that can happen to us.” As has been the tradition with this topic, I have little certainty about what happened to my father; I can only say that something unusual happened to him, then he spent the rest of his life trying to make sense of it. And now I will spend the rest of my life trying to make sense of him.
David Riedel, born and educated in Bosler, Wyoming, is a University of Wyoming graduate student whose writing often examines the realities of addiction and mental illness inside this strange, frightening world we all inhabit. In 2021, he won the Torry Award for his novella submission “Terrestrial Issues,” and his short stories “The Space Beneath” and “The Body” have been published in the Worm Moon Archive literary magazine.
Alien Abductions Of 2 Wyoming Men In The 1970s Remain Unexplainable
Recent whistleblower accusations of a U.S. government cover-up regarding UFOs casts new light on old claims, including a pair of Wyoming encounters in the 1970s that made national headlines.
September 30, 202314 min read
If aliens from other worlds exist, what is their fascination with our cattle?
Extraterrestrial visits to the remotest of American soil like far-flung ranches and secluded forests makes sense if, say, Martians are not yet ready to land in Times Square, whip out their ray guns and order everyone into their spaceships.
But judging from scores of UFO sightings, close encounters and reports of alien abductions over the decades, Earth visitation by space beings appears relatively benign and, at face value, seems to involve an inordinate preoccupation with bovine defilement.
Roswell, Area 51, Wyoming — all places where virtually no one lives. Therefore, all places intelligent beings from outer space choose to land their unidentified flying objects and snoop around. After travelling presumably jillions of light years cooped up in a souped-up saucer, the last thing aliens want to do is have to make a lot of chitchat with locals about the weather.
These remote locations also allow space creatures to get down to their main order of business on Earth — harvesting cow parts and probing unsuspecting yokels.
Two such prodigious examples of which happened in the Cowboy State in the 1970s when UFO hysteria was at its peak.
KIDNAPPED BY SPACEMEN
Abducted Wyoming Hunter Travels 163,000 Light Years To Ausso One’s Planet
Bosler, Wyoming. Population: Fewer than 10.
The dusty old railroad town north of Laramie is perched squarely in the middle of the state’s vast high plains.
Pat McGuire ranched a 5,000-acre spread east of there in the 1970s. Born and raised in Wheatland, McGuire was a Wyoming cowboy through and through, the kind born in a pair of Wranglers with a pearl snap shirt. Handy with horses in a quiet sturdy way and, unlike most of his ilk, he was not given to drink.
A hunting trip with in-laws changed McGuire’s life course. He would never be the same.
While chasing wapiti — elk — in the Tetons in early October 1973, McGuire and his brother in-law became lost. The pair experienced what was later described as an orange glow in the sky. They eventually made their way back their pickup with an eerie feeling and unable to account for several elapsed hours.
It wouldn’t be long before aliens would make contact again. Though, at the time, McGuire just chalked up his hunting experience as “weird.”
Unearthly Visitations
Strange instances of cattle mutilations were in the news across the country beginning in 1974. McGuire had his own close encounter on Aug. 30, 1976, when he found one of his calves dead, missing its nose and ears.
The rancher camped out that night to “catch the culprit.” He and his cousin Mark Murphy witnessed lights streaking across the night sky. They followed the lights, rifles in hand, but could not find where they went or if they landed.
The next morning, they found another dead cow. Again, no tracks. No sign of struggle. Nothing unusual except a dead cow with organs and sex parts missing.
McGuire called the Albany County sheriff, who came out to take photos.
On Sep. 5, a routine head count found a cow missing.
The lights came again Sept. 12. The sky was ablaze in orange, McGuire recalled. Five distinct crafts hovered low to the ground as two others landed. Shadowy figures could be seen through the spaceship’s windows, walking about and pointing outside at the Wyoming cowboys.
The spaceships returned the next night and McGuire was ready. He snapped several photos of the scene. Polaroids. Oddly and predictably, none of them came out.
McGuire was at his wits’ end. He decided to enlist a third witness — a man named Jimmy Ashley — and add a dog named Bear for protection.
One night while camped out on the ranch, Bear started barking. The trio woke and saw a craft had landed again. McGuire recalled Ashley walking right up to it as if in a trance. He touched the ship and was immediately engulfed in flames, although he did not appear to be burning.
Ashley was unharmed but never the same, according to McGuire’s son, David.
McGuire filed a report with the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in 1976, claiming visits from extraterrestrials were a regular thing on his ranch.
Wait, It Gets Even More Bizarre
If McGuire’s story isn’t outlandish enough, it takes a decidedly bizarre turn in late 1977.
Stymied at every turn trying to find water for his ranch, McGuire had run out of drilling companies that would help him. Dozens of failed holes and scores of expert geologists told McGuire he would never find water in the arid prairie basin where his ranch was situated.
Undaunted, McGuire convinced well driller Rick Henderson to try. He promised they would hit water within 10 days. He had a vision.
Whether a dream, déjà vu (which McGuire had frequent vivid bouts with) or an actual recollection of what happened on that fateful hunting trip, McGuire suddenly knew right where to dig.
He piled three rocks to mark the spot and Henderson began drilling. They made it 275 feet, deeper than any other hole McGuire had dug on his ranch, but still had found nothing.
Henderson was ready to quit, but McGuire urged him on. At 350 feet, exhausted, they knocked off for the day. That night while sleeping onsite in a trailer, the two heard a loud knock, then another. Then a third.
They were terrified.
Water began gushing up from the hole. McGuire had hit a deep and dependable aquafer pumping 5,000 gallons of fresh water to a parched prairie where everyone said the rancher would never be able to irrigate.
If friends and neighbors were laughing at McGuire before, they suddenly took notice. So, too, did mainstream media.
McGuire’s appearance on ABC’s Eyewitness News on Mar. 5, 1980, where he said UFOs landed on his property “maybe 25 or 30 times” opened the floodgates. Mass media couldn’t get enough of the Wyoming rancher who met regularly with aliens.
The National Enquirer ran the headline: “Farmer: Aliens Use My Ranch as Their Landing Place” on March 24, 1981. Casper Star-Tribune also published several articles on the local celebrity.
But at home, the ridicule was relentless.
In a recent piece for HuffPost, David Riedel recalled the alienation his father experienced from even his own family.
Hypnosis Drudges Up Dark Memories
Around that time, noted University of Wyoming psychologist and UFO researcher Leo Sprinkle became aware of McGuire’s story. Sprinkle led the rancher through several sessions of hypnosis where McGuire was able to recall more of his encounters.
McGuire called the aliens “Star People.” They were human-like in appearance — about 6 feet tall, weighing around 200 pounds. They had large eyes, thin lips, hairless with no bridge on the nose. Their clothing was black except for a silver belt buckle with a star resembling the Star of David.
The Star People warned of a coming climate apocalypse. They instructed McGuire where to dig for a well. The Star People promised they would bring an underground river from Canada to his ranch if he flew the Israeli flag over his property.
Dozens of sessions with Sprinkle had a toll, it seems. McGuire’s paranoia grew worse. Friends say the jovial Irishman was never the same after them.
McGuire would talk about a star man named Michael who instructed him to father 13 children —o ne for every tribe of Israel. When his wife Wanda balked at No. 9, he divorced her and married a woman named Lynn.
McGuire also claimed he was transported into Ariel Sharon’s body during the Six-Day War. He thought the government put implants in his brain. On and on the wild accusations went until the day Michael wanted McGuire to run for governor in 1982.
“A vote for me is a vote for extra-terrestrials,” McGuire proclaimed during his first election campaign rally at a local shopping mall. He lost to three-term incumbent Ed Herschler by a wide margin, 44,396 to 7,720, in the Democratic primary.
His grasp with reality slipping, McGuire fell into financial ruin. His property was foreclosed on. It is now owned by UW, including the well. Abandoned by friends and family, McGuire died destitute on May 14, 2009, at the age of 67.
Margery Higdon, wife of Carl Higdon, wrote this account of her husband’s alien abduction while out hunting in Wyoming. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Ausso One as sketched by Carl Higdon. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
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KIDNAPPED BY SPACEMEN — AGAIN
Abducted Wyoming Hunter Travels 163,000 Light Years To Ausso One’s Planet
Almost exactly a year after McGuire said he was invited aboard an alien vessel while hunting in Wyoming, another local man made a similar claim.
Everett “Carl” Higdon Jr., a foreman on an oil rig in Rawlins, took off from work one day to go elk hunting in Medicine Bow National Forest. On Oct. 25, 1974, he, too, would have an unexplainable encounter of the fourth kind.
Higdon, 41, married with four kids, was a capable roughneck with 15 years of experience in the patch. The former Air Force veteran of the Korean War was often dubbed “the Wyoming Coyote” by his crew for his dogged ability to keep at anything until he got it done.
That fateful day, he borrowed the company truck and headed 40 miles south for McCarty Canyon. When the road got rough, Higdon parked and took off on foot. At about 4 p.m., he topped a ridge, spotted five elk grazing and hoisted his brand-new 7 mm magnum rifle, taking aim at the bull elk in the bunch.
The next thing Higdon knew it was 11:30 p.m. He was being shaken awake by friends who found him sitting in his truck dazed and incoherent. He remembers blacking out. That was it.
Later that night at the Carbon County Memorial Hospital, nurse Ella Peterson asked him again and again what his name was. Higdon did not know. Nor did he immediately recognize his wife, Margery.
His eyes were red, watery and burning. He was disoriented and his equilibrium was off. He was extremely sensitive to light.
As Higdon slowly began to get his memory back, he recalled pulling the trigger of his rifle and strangely feeling no kickback, hearing no report. The bullet exited the gun in slow motion and then dropped to the ground about 50 feet in front of him.
“That’s crazy,” thought Margery.
Then, while going through his clothes for the wash, she found the bullet in his jacket pocket. It was turned inside-out and flattened — but intact, as if it had struck a very hard object. Ballistics experts were unable to explain what could do that to a bullet.
The March 16, 1973, edition of the San Antonio Star features Wyoming resident Carl Higdon and his story of being abducted by aliens. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
An October 1974 story in the Casper Star-Tribune recounts the alien encounter Carl Hidden of Rawlins had. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Carl Higdon, left, being hypnotized by Dr. Leo Sprinkle on the TV show “In Search Of” in 1978. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
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Encounter Recalled
Again, enter Sprinkle. Through several sessions of hypnosis, the oil field worker recounted a tale that never changed in five decades.
Higdon said he was knocked to the ground somehow. Standing over him was a humanoid figure about 6 feet tall, weighing 180 pounds.
The male-looking alien had yellowish skin, no ears, with eyes small and deep-set. His mouth was thin and lipless with an open slit from which three large blocky teeth were visible. Two short antennae grew from his forehead. The hair on the being’s head was like straw and stood straight up.
He wore a tight black jumpsuit, similar to a diving suit. He also had on a pair of seat belts and a metal belt with a yellow star decoration at his waist. Instead of a right hand, the creature possessed a prosthesis that resembled a power drill of some kind.
“How you are you?” the alien asked in English.
“Pretty good,” Higdon responded, trying to stay calm.
The strange being called himself Ausso One.
“Your sun burns us,” Ausso One said, and then offered Higdon four pills in a small packet for nourishment. Higdon swallowed one out of compulsion, even though he would later say he rarely took even aspirin.
When Ausso One suggested they go for a ride in his cube-shaped spaceship, Hidgon said, “sure.”
The cube ship was windowless, doorless and too small for even Higdon to fit into. But somehow, he was transported inside along with Ausso One, two other alien creatures and the five elk that had been outside.
Higdon said the trip to Ausso One’s planet took less than a minute though it was described as “163,000 light years away.” They arrived at dark and landed near a tower with a flashing light on top so brilliant that it hurt Higdon’s eyes. The tower reminded Higdon of Seattle’s Space Needle. It was conical in shape, about 100 feet tall and made a buzzing sound.
Surrounding the tower, Higdon saw five human-like beings (a middle-aged man, a young girl, two teenage girls and a teenage boy) standing around, conversing.
Ausso “floated” out of the craft with Higdon into the tower and up an elevator. They entered a room where Higdon stood on a platform while a device moved out of the wall, scanned him, then retracted back into the wall.
Higdon was then told he was not what they needed and would be taken back to Earth.
During the encounter, Higdon was told by Ausso that his people would explore Earth at various times to find animals to breed for food. Ausso also spoke of a different sun and seas on their planet that were inadequate for supporting life.
After the examination, Ausso and Higdon reentered the cubicle and returned to Earth. Ausso pointed his “drill-hand” at Higdon’s pocket and floated the package of remaining pills to himself. He also returned Higdon’s rifle.
Carl Higdon and his wife Margery in the 1970s. (Courtesy Photo)
Carl and Margery Higdon’s wedding photo. (Courtesy Photo)
Carl and Margery Higdon in their later years. (Courtesy Photo)
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Back On Earth
Higdon stumbled back to his truck where rescuers found him at about just before midnight. The truck was not in the same place Higdon parked it, it would be noted later. It was in a much more rugged area about 3 miles away that the two-wheel drive could not have navigated. In fact, rescuers noticed no tire tracks leading to the truck.
Upon examination at the hospital, it was found Higdon’s tuberculosis scars were no longer visible on X-rays and he no longer suffered from kidney stones. Otherwise, the 41-year-old was in good health.
The San Antonio Star and many other publications made Higdon’s encounter front page tabloid news early in 1975.
“Life is not the same since I met that man,” Higdon would tell the newspapers.
Higdon never had another encounter.
For years, his story was dismissed as made-up fantasy by a man seeking a bit of notoriety. Yet, Higdon later passed polygraphs tests and never exploited his story for financial gain.
“In my own personal opinion, I find with the cases I’ve investigated there seems to be no evidence of hoax. No evidence of psychotic reaction which would cause an individual to falsely believe that he or she has had an abduction,” Sprinkle told “In Search Of” during an interview in 1978.
“So that I’m left with the mysterious, and sometimes uncomfortable, feeling that the cases are happening as the individuals describe,’ he said. “That is, that they are being taken on board, examined and released by intelligent beings.”
Carl’s wife, Margery, wrote a book about the experience. “Alien Abduction of the Wyoming Hunter” was published in 2017 and is available on Amazon.
Carl Higdon worked through the trauma and eventually returned to the oil fields. He retired in 1997 and relocated to Texas where he was born. Higdon died Jan. 26, 2022, in Temple, Texas of COVID pneumonia.
“It don’t mean a hill of beans to me whether anybody believes it or not. I know what happened to me,” Carl Higdon said. “If people want to take it at face value, that’s fine. If they don’t, that don’t make any difference.
“I just want people to be aware in case something like this happens to them.”
Jake Nichols can be reached at jake@cowboystatedaily.com.
‘My dad was abducted by aliens – I thought he was mad until US Air Force spy spoke out’
David Riedel thought his dad was joking after claiming he got abducted and probed by ‘Star People’ – but whistleblower David Grusch’s testimony in June made him think again
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/us-news/my-dad-abducted-aliens-thought-30340451
- 14:08, 28 JUN 2023
- UPDATED14:14, 28 JUN 2023
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A fella who refused to accept his father’s claim that he’d been abducted by aliens says he now ‘believes’ after the bombshell testimony of a UFO whistleblower.
David Riedel, from Bosler, Wyoming, thought his dad was joking when he told him that he’d been snatched and probed by “Star People”.
But everything changed for the writer after hearing accounts from Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) member David Grusch, he wrote in the Huffington Post on Monday.
READ MORE: US military ‘potentially under threat’ from UFOs, shock investigation finds
David’s father, Patrick McGuire, was a rancher from Wyoming like his daddy and daddy before him.
For decades, he spoke of alien abductions, interstellar prophecy and the insistence that he was “chosen”.
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In a TV broadcast in 1981, his father claimed that a “spaceship” landed on his ranch and decimated his livestock.
Patrick said: “We came up on a cow that was dead. They cut the nose off, tongues out and the sex organs were gone.”
David’s classmates heckled him for his dad’s absurd testimony, and he even joined in with the laughter.
READ MORE
As well as having his livestock butchered, Patrick insisted that he was abducted by the aliens, he referred to as ‘Star People’.
“My brothers and I laughed when our father talked about the implants and their accompanying pain”, David wrote.
“We laughed when he claimed he could barely walk after what the Star People did to him.”
After the alleged abduction, Patrick said that the Star People revealed to him of a coming climate apocalypse.
READ MORE
The aliens matched all the common tropes and cliches of a 1980s sci-fi movie. The “five foot hairless being” had eyes like “colourless pools”, David’s father told him.
Patrick’s extra-terrestrial ramblings left his son with nightmares, as David explained: “At every turn, every nightfall, through any locked door – the Star People could take anyone, even me.”
Thinking his dad was mad, David’s laughter stopped after former US Air Force officer and intelligence official David Grusch gave a bombshell testimony about UFOs in June 2023.
READ MORE
He covered everything from covert conspiracies and recovered craft to Nazi research and “non-human origins”, Grusch revealed to NewsNation.
David said: “Almost everything the whistleblower related, my father related to me in similar fashion at some point in my life.”
Previous questioning whether his father had “sickness” or all his claims were in fact “lies”, now the award-winning writer began to accept that his allegations may be true.
David wrote: “My father saw UFOs. Not one, once, like a dinner guest might claim after a few glasses of wine, but many times.
PAT McGUIRE, MY FRIEND
PAT McGUIRE DIED MAY 14, 2009
This article was written by Bonnie McGuire.
https://thechurchofufology.blogspot.com/2011/07/pat-mcguire-my-friend.html
TODAY I FOUND OUT THAT PAT HAD PASSED AWAY ON MAY 14, 2009. I WAS IN SHOCK. PAT WAS A GOOD FRIEND AND SPENT MANY NIGHTS AT OUR HOUSE. HE WAS EXCEPTIONAL AND MADE ME LAUGH. HIS EYES WOULD SPARKLE AND YOU WOULD KNOW HE WAS TEASING. I AM GLAD HE WAS MY FRIEND. THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER PERSON LIKE HIM. I WILL MISS HIM. AT LEAST NOW HE KNOWS THE ANSWERS. – Aileen
Many years ago we were visiting relatives in Wyoming, and I asked an aunt if she knew anything about the strange cattle mutilations reported throughout the west. She quietly nodded and brought out some news clippings about a Cousin’s personal experiences concerning cattle mutilations, his abduction and other events connected with UFO’s. According to detailed accounts in The Casper Star-Tribune (6/29/80, 9/28/80, 6/2/83) his adventure began when he felt a compulsion to dig a well on his ranch, a 1,100 acre parcel situated about 30 miles north of Laramie near Bosler. The prairie basin area is about 7,200 feet above sea level, and (in 1971) was mostly covered with sagebrush. Most people didn’t think there was any water, and well digger companies refused to drill for what wasn’t there. Pat was convinced there was water, so he and a friend built their own rig and started drilling. A geologist was helping Pat in the final days of digging the well. Pat had invented a special drill blade to cut through the rocky ground. One evening there was a huge bang on the side of the trailer house where Pat and the geologist were sleeping. The geologist was scared to death. Pat jumped out of bed and into his boots. He hit the floor running and yelling, “the water is here, the water is here.” Sure enough the well gushed 8,000 gallons of pure, soft water per minute.
His neighbors thought he was crazy, but their jokes turned to awed disbelief when they realized he’d tapped into an underground river at 350 feet. Pat was able to turn his sagebrush ranch into an oasis of irrigated grassland. His was the only land in the area with enough water for cash farming. Neighboring ranches failed to find any water. The next summer Pat planted crops. Through difficulty he got the water wheels to water the crops. In the mornings he would go out to inspect the equipment. More often than not he would find that someone had tampered with the wheels and he would have to repair them. He did see someone once at night through his telescopic scope. Pat never did figure out who was sabotaging his water system. After the crops were harvested Pat took them to the elevator. It was a prime crop, perfect in every way. All the elevators were full so they stockpiled the crops on the ground. When it was time to sell the crop someone had mixed a lot of other types of crops into his. The buyers said it was tainted and would not take it. Pat had been counting on the money from the crops to pay for the ranch and the water system. After that everything went downhill for him.
We remembered seeing a strange story on television’s “That’s Incredible.” In October 1973, a man elk hunting with his brother-in-law in Wyoming’s Teton Mountains became lost for six hours. When he was found he couldn’t remember anything during those hours. At the time we didn’t realize the man was Pat. It wasn’t until 1978 that Pat began to realize what happened. That’s when he met Dr. Leo Sprinkle, a noted parapsychologist and UFO authority at the University of Wyoming. Under hypnosis, Pat recalled being lost in a snowstorm while hunting Elk in the Tetons near Jackson, and of being taken aboard a spacecraft into an oval room, where aliens telepathically instructed him to plan for the well. The aliens appeared to be humans about 6 feet tall, weighing around 200 pounds. They had large eyes, thin lips, were bald and had no bridge on the nose. Their clothing was black except for a silver belt buckle with a star resembling the Star of David. Pat wasn’t sure about them being from outer space, or another dimension, but their craft was propelled by a sophisticated magnetic system. If the destination was a distant planet, the system simply locked onto the planet, and the planet’s magnetic pull drew the craft to it at tremendous speed. They could hover motionless indefinitely, or perform impossible maneuvers.
The aliens told him that they were monitoring his well for some reason. Once he tried to shoot at them, but they paralyzed him from the neck down until they left, so he decided to leave them alone. Dr. Sprinkle believed his experiences, descriptions of the craft and beings, because they were similar to the accounts of about 200 others he’d worked with.
In 1980 Pat invited Dr. Richard Fleck from the University of Wyoming, Star-Tribune newspaper photographer Richard Foertsch and reporter Greg Bean out to the ranch to “watch the show” as Pat called it. That night they camped on a hillside overlooking the vast basin where the farm was with cameras ready to photograph their first UFO. Around 3:00 a.m., a strange sequential light flashing blue, red, yellow and white appeared on the horizon. It moved straight up and down…several hundred feet at a time. Then stopped and rocked back and forth across the sky. For about fifteen minutes the object continued it’s cosmic dance and then flashed across the sky. According to the reporter, “The landscape was too dark to allow a photograph with perspective, and the object was too far away to recognize any exact detail.” The witnesses weren’t certain about what they saw, but felt less skeptical.
Pat’s sister said she didn’t believe him either when she and her husband first moved there, “But when one of the things lands in the field in front of the house, or hovers directly overhead, it’s hard to ignore.” At first Pat’s children were frightened, but eventually got used to the intrusions. The craft were about 300 feet wide and 60 feet tall. The Star-Tribune reported that the only time Pat was frightened was after he and his brother-in-law saw a hovering craft pick up a young calf one evening in 1976. He thought it was a government craft. He became determined to catch whomever was doing it. Night after night he watched and sure enough one night a light from a craft came down an picked up a calf. At that point he was watching through his telescopic lens on his rifle. He started to squeeze the trigger. At that moment he became completely paralyzed. He could only move his head. An entity named Michael allegedly appeared for the first time right beside him. Pat almost had a heart attack. The entity was six feet tall, and wore a black, skin tight jump suit that looked like spandex material. He wore a belt with the insignia of a six pointed star on the buckle. Two weeks prior to the incident, two of Pat’s cows had been mutilated within a few miles of the house. After that there were no other mutilations or other aggressive actions, so the family felt relatively safe.
A 1983 article by Peter Rondinone in Anuti Matter magazine (p. 151) related that Wyoming’s Governor Ed Herschler defeated Pat (in 1982) after one of the most bizarre gubernatorial primaries in American history. During his first rally in a shopping mall, he yelled, “A vote for me is a vote for extra-terrestrials.” The governor expressed dismay that the 8,000 votes for Pat proved a lot of people in Wyoming had seen UFO’s. However, Pat thought his UFO pro-Israel claims made some people think he was nuts. In fact, his children were asked by classmates if that crazy man was their father. Things got worse. On June 2, 1983, Pat notified the Star-Tribune that he was going to file suit in the federal court at Cheyenne against the CIA, the FBI and Air Force intelligence. His complaint was that these agencies suppressed information that UFO’s working with an unnamed foreign power were vandalizing his property. He asserted that the FBI said they knew who was doing it but they couldn’t tell him. The overall result was that he suffered complete financial ruin and the State Loan Board foreclosed on his property. According to one of his acquaintances, “The land was confiscated and sold at auction to the Federal Land Bank…Last we heard it was sold to the University of Wyoming.”
His experience was so bazaar that relatives don’t want to talk about it. The more we read about his contacts with the entity Michael, the more schizophrenic he appeared to be. His recollection of the “men in black,” seems to have occurred during his 24 hypnotic sessions with Dr. Leo Sprinkle, after which he followed the political directives of the entity Michael. This prompted me to visit Sprinkle’s web site. Researching on the Internet is like stepping inside an encyclopedia shopping mall. I found it interesting that the University of Wyoming psychologist also recalled having been on board a UFO when he was a boy. “It happened when I was a fifth grader in a small town in Colorado. I was aboard a space vehicle of some kind, looking out a large window at the stars rushing by. A tall man (at least I believe it was a man) was standing beside me, his hand resting on my shoulder…He said to me, ‘Leo, learn to read and write well. Then, when you become a man, you can help people learn about their purpose in life.”
Many scholars wonder about the effects of hypnosis on those subjected to it. Consequently, criminal evidence obtained in this manner is no longer acceptable. Pat’s strange experiences became reality after hypnosis. The aunt who gave us the newspaper articles wrote us that, “This McGuire never drank or smoked that I know of. He had a real nice wife and children. He wanted to do big things….and went up this side of Laramie and drilled a well. It put out a terrible big stream of water. I saw him plug the pipe so kids wouldn’t crawl in it…” She mentioned that after he got in with Dr. Sprinkle he changed, wound up divorcing his wife and married someone else. “The Federal government took part of his place on top, and the State took the other part.” She said, “He didn’t talk about the UFO’s anymore, although they were reported all over the country…”whether this is real or imagination…time will tell, I suppose.”
The result of Pat’s strange experience was summed up by his friend who wrote, “Through the years I have observed him going through many disheartening events until today he is a broken man, without hope. If ever there was a person that needed help and compassion from his fellow man, it is Pat. The last time I saw him the laughter was gone and I found it hard to coax a smile out of him. Pat is an Irishman and you all know how they love to laugh. When he laughs the sparks jump right out of his bright blue eyes. He is a great person to be friends with.”
It appears that Pat wanted to get to the bottom of things that were happening on his ranch, so he went to an expert at the University for help. Instead of getting better, things went from bad to worse.
AND NOW MY ARTICLE I WROTE ABOUT PAT (While he was still with us)
Pat McGuire, Laramie, Wyoming rancher became a good friend during our stay. In fact we bought a snowmobile from him. We became very familiar with his contact story as he came to stay overnight with us at Arlington, Wyoming several times.
To know Pat is to love him. He is so funny; that is — when he is happy. In the last few years he has not been very happy due to the treatment he has received in Laramie. Pat and I have always had a special relationship laughing and joking. At this point there are only a couple of people in the UFO field Pat will trust. He has been treated shabbily by UFO researchers.
Pat’s story began when he was living on his 5,000 acre spread. He kept a lot of livestock on his ranch. One night he observed a UFO picking up one of his calves. He thought it was a government craft. After that night he had quite a few mutilatons. He became determined to catch whomever was doing it. Night after night he watched and sure enough one night a light from a craft came down and picked up a calf. At that point he was watching through his telescopic lens on his rifle. He started to squeeze the trigger. At that moment he became completely paralyzed. He could only move his head. Michael, his contact, appeared for the first time right beside him. Pat almost had a heart attack. You would too. Michael is one of the gray/white skinned aliens, only in his case he was six feet tall. He wore a jump suit that is skin tight, of black, what looked like spandex material. Around his waist he wears a belt with an insignia of a six pointed star on the buckle.
Michael told Pat not to shoot. From that point on Pat has been contacted by Michael. Michael told Pat he works for the Supreme Being and he is the archangel Michael. Pat is not the only one to have seen Michael. I know of two other people who have definitely seen him.
Pat was instructed to dig a well on his property. Michael told him if he placed three rocks that they would bring the water right to where he placed them. It took Pat seven years to get the materials together and complete what he had been instructed to do. All the while he was working on the well he was to fly the Israeli flag over it. He also was to buy a tank motor to run the well as he would need something big. When he fired up that motor you could hear it for miles! Everyone wanted to know how Pat would know how to fix the motor if something went wrong. That is a story in itself.
From the beginning Pat was picked up by Michael’s ship. He was put into Ariel Sharon’s body. In Sharon’s body he was in the Six Day War in Israel, and in many battles the Israeli’s fought. As Sharon he was in the tank corp. Pat learned how to work on tank motors. He even hurt his leg in one battle. Sharon limps from that injury AND SO DOES PAT!
Pat needed a loan from the bank to buy equipment for his ranch. Some of that equipment was the water sprinkling system which he planned to use to raise crops. Alcoa Aluminum wanted to find water on the property too. They dug 26 test holes – everywhere but where Pat told them to. They said there was no water there. The bank then would not finance Pat.
A geologist was helping Pat in the final days of digging the well. Pat had invented (through help from his alien friends) a special drill blade to cut through the rocky ground. One evening there was a huge bang on the side of the trailer house where Pat and the geologist were sleeping. The geologist was scared to death. Pat jumped out of bed and into his boots. He hit the floor running. He was yelling, “the water is here, the water is here.” Sure enough it was. 8,450 cubic feet per minute.
Later Michael told Pat that they brought an underground river from Canada in 10 minutes. At the point where the well was dug it made a turn upwards. This was the biggest well ever dug in the United States. Alcoa was off by inches. Of course, they weren’t supposed to find the water, Pat was.
The next summer Pat planted crops. Through difficulty he got the water wheels to water the crops. In the mornings he would go out to inspect the equipment. More often than not he would find that someone had tampered with the wheels and he would have to repair them. He did see someone once at night through his telescopic scope but again he was prevented from firing. Pat never did figure out who was sabotaging his water system.
After the crops were harvested Pat took them to the elevator. It was a prime crop, perfect in every way. All the elevators were full so they stockpiled the crops on the ground. When it was time to sell the crop someone had mixed a lot of other types of crops into his. The buyers said it was tainted and would not take it. Pat had been counting on the money from the crops to pay for the ranch and the water system. After that everything went downhill for him.
Religion has been an important part of Pat’s life. He is Irish Catholic. During his marriage to Wanda they had eight children. Eventually about the time of everything going downhill Wanda became pregnant with the ninth child. She was very upset because at this point they couldn’t afford the children they had. When she took this attitude Pat was instructed to divorce her. Wanda miscarried. There is a statue of the Virgin Mary and Jesus on a hill overlooking the ranch. That is where the baby is buried.
Pat was told he was to bring forth into this world 13 children. One for every tribe of Israel. After he divorced Wanda he married a wonderful girl by the name of Lynn. They had two children. One was name Ariel Sharon and the other one is Michael.
Michael gave Pat instructions to find seven pure men to make a journey to a safe place he and Pat picked out for any future eventualities. Pat was instructed not to ask anyone that had anything at all to do with an abortion, whether it was to lend the money for one, or the cause of having one done, etc. Pat was to lay in supplies in this safe place. As far as I know he has never taken the journey.
Michael made it clear that abortion is one thing that the “Supreme Being” is very upset about. He even instructed Pat to send a telegram to the Israelis stating that if they didn’t stop abortion in Israel that Michael and the Supreme Being’s forces would not help Israeli pilots in the wars they are constantly fighting. Pat did as he was told.
Pat was also instructed to run for governor of Wyoming. Again he did as he was told. He was given press releases by Michael to send to President Reagan. Also press releases for Pat’s campaign and what THEY wanted stated in the papers.
It was in this way that one of the persons who also saw Michael, came to have that experience (whether she wanted it or not). The young lady was to provide a press release for the campaign but she had been putting it off because of other pressing matters. She attended the University or Colorado. One evening she was walking across the campus. Right in front of her Michael appeared. He said, “I am Pat McGuire’s Michael. Why haven’t you written the press release? I want it done — now!” She was so frightened that all she could do was go to her room and start typing. While she was writing the article Michael again appeared to her in her room. This time she was so upset that after that press release she quit the campaign. She told Pat she no longer wanted anything to do with Michael, or Pat.
Pat was instructed by Michael to quit campaigning. Even at that, he still garnered 15% of the total vote for Governor.
He had been instructed to visit the Indian reservations up north. He met a lot of Indians who were interested in supporting Pat as Governor. On the day of the election there was one of the worst snow storms in the history of Wyoming. No one on the reservations could come down out of the hills to go vote.
Everyone asks why did Pat have to go through so many hurtful things. We don’t have the answer.
We have noticed that contactee’s lives are more stressful and hard to deal with than most persons. Perhaps we have more to learn in one lifetime than other people. How can we be compassionate in every situation if we haven’t been there before the people we are trying to help?
Pat’s life now is one step above poverty level. We don’t think it is fair. But we cannot see the future, only God can do that.
Posted by P. Urialat 3:17 PM
6 comments:
Unknown said…
Hi, Do you happen to have any more photos of Pat?September 5, 2013 at 8:14 AM
Unknown said…
I knew Pat very well when I lived in Laramie. I worked there and our company built the power plant for the University of Wyoming.
Pat was always upbeat, Never Drank and was one of the finest men I’ve ever had the opportunity to know.March 13, 2019 at 8:57 PM
Friend of Pat McGuire said…
Funny, I just thought of Pat McGuire. Hadn’t thought of him for years. I used to cook at truck stop in Laramie, early to mid 90’s. Pat McGuire used to come in and I would talk to him for hours about his ranch, and the cattle mutilations. He had a couple of scrap books with photos of mutilated cattle, articles of him in magazines. He claimed to have had alien and or government implants in his head, and a whole bunch of other stuff. I had some audio recordings, but they’re long gone. Anyhow, he said the best way to communicate with the aliens was to go out some place far away from town, and meditate, and they would come… He was really nice. I’m glad our paths crossed.March 25, 2019 at 10:29 PM
Unknown said…
I was going to pharmacy school in Laramie. In Oct 1980 I got to meet with pat from 3pm to 6pm. He told me a lot about the ufo’s that were visiting. Pat was gracious and kind. All good memories.January 14, 2022 at 9:48 PM
