My UFO Story: Mystery at Big Lake

"And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the color of amber, out of the midst of the fire.

- Ezekiel 1:4

Ezekiel saw the wheel and spoke of it as a mystical vision.

Was Ezekiel's vision a sign from God? Or did it signify something entirely different? Something the prophet was incapable of explaining?

Since the earliest of recorded history, man has seen and reported things that could not be explained. In the sea, on the land and in the sky. The bizarre and unexplained have always been dismissed as myth, vision and fantasy.

The great mountain gorilla was once just a crazy story - not unlike Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster - told by madmen and savages. It is only in the modern era that gorillas have been accepted as the most common attraction at any municipal zoo.

Mermaids were just manatees, not sea borne lovers as many sailors had hoped. Leviathans and other denizens of the deep have been identified as whales and large squid, nothing more.

Even the Bermuda Triangle is losing its mystery as scientists begin to fathom that its bubbling depths sink ships more often than the devil, aliens and ghosts.

Troy was a myth until it was discovered, what then of Atlantis?

Mysteries give life depth. It is our nature as rational beings to try and solve those mysteries. It is all a part of the great adventure of the mind.

Council Bluffs is not without its own mysteries. One of the greatest unsolved riddles in this sleepy railroad town occurred on Dec. 17, 1977, when Kenny, 17, and Carol Drake, 16, and Carol's brother Randy James, 12, were driving Kenny's Dodge Challenger to the Richman Gordman store on North 16th. According to a Daily Nonpareil story dated Dec. 18 of that year, several witnesses in addition to Drake, saw a bright red object fall from the sky toward Big Lake. When Kenny, Carol and Randy saw the object, they went with great haste toward the lake. On the dike along the road between the lake and the railroad tracks, was a molten "blob" of glowing orange metal. The pool of metal was slowly running down the sides of the dike and was too hot to touch.

According to an article published in the now defunct Omaha Sun on Feb. 9, 1978, Kenny Drake, who is now dead, saw four men about 18 or 19 years old drive by the site in "a tiny foreign car." As they passed the three on the dike, they asked if "they saw that thing fall out of the sky, too?"

The car turned around and drove by the sight again without stopping. This fact would become more relevant later on as the possibility of a hoax was discussed and who, if anyone, might have perpetrated such an act and how.

"It looked like a great big sparkler at first. Then it cooled down and seemed like lava, glowing and bubbling. I thought it was a meteor," said Kenny in the Sun article.

Randy James is still alive and living in Council Bluffs. He said he is not now and never has been "a real UFO buff."

He said that he hasn't really talked about what has been referred to as "The Big Lake Incident" since he spoke to Dick Ulmer for the Sun story in 1978, not for any reason dramatic or suspicious - though Kenny told the Sun that he had purportedly received a call from the United States Air Force insisting that he never mention his sighting again.

"Basically, we were heading down North 16th, and we saw what kind of looked like a ball of fire streaking from the sky. It appeared to come straight down. We saw a flash so you could tell it kind of hit the ground," Randy said. "Maybe it was space junk. We stayed there with the fire department and picked up a couple of pieces. There was a blue crystal in the middle of the pool of metal. When it cooled down a bit, we picked up a piece of the metal about the size of a toothpick and couldn't break it."

The bluish crystalline pieces were not affected by the heat, according to both Randy and Kenny.

At the same time that Kenny, Carol and Randy were driving up North 16th, Mike and Criss Moore were driving east on Broadway. Just as they crossed 16th, they saw what Criss described as "a big round thing hovering in the sky below the tree tops."

"It was hovering. It wasn't moving," Criss told investigators.

Criss also told the Sun she saw "red lights around the perimeter of the object, blinking in sequence."

A middle-aged couple who saw the event and spoke to investigators by telephone, but refused to be identified for fear of ridicule said they saw "a bright red object rocket to the ground near Big Lake."

Former Fire Chief Jack Moore, father of Mike Moore, was called out to the scene where the grass had caught fire and the ground was smoldering. He told the Nonpareil in a story at the time that Kenny told him "something red fell out of the sky to the southeast, hit the ground and exploded in flame."

When he arrived on the scene, Moore said he found a grassy area about four by six feet on a levee off Big Lake to be covered by a mass of molten metal, said the Nonpareil article.

"It was running, boiling down the edges of the levee. The center of it was way too hot to touch," Moore said at the time.

It should be noted that calls were made to Eppley Airfield as well as Offutt Air Force Base by investigators, according to the Sun. They could not explain the phenomenon as an air crash.

Astronomer and Nonpareil Columnist Bob Allen was a secondary witness to the event. He heard about it by the next day, Sunday, and went to take a look at what remained. Overnight, most of the metal had been chipped away, but a few pieces remained.

Allen did several things that would later make the Big Lake incident important to another investigator. The first is that he took a sample of the metal to Griffin Pipe to have the metal analyzed. He also sent a sample to Ames Lab at Iowa State University. Both said the metal was simply high-carbon steel of a very terrestrial origin. Part of it seemed to be slag, the kind of metal used widely in manufacturing.

Allen also sent samples to the Foreign Technologies division of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and received a letter from Col. Charles H. Senn who confirmed that the object could not have been space-borne because of the lack of an impact crater; could not have been part of a satellite because the metal was too common and space debris does not become molten or glow; the USAF had no interest in the case.

Meteors fall from the sky as stones and even the earliest of space craft were made of light metals with a high alloy content. The molten metal of Big Lake was far too primitive to be a satellite of human manufacture.

Part of an airplane perhaps? Even if the metal had come from an aircraft not noted by Eppley or Offutt, it would not have fallen in a semi-molten state.

All of this leads to one explanation that would satisfy the theory that a hoax had been perpetrated. Remember the four unidentified men in the small car who seemed only vaguely interested in the flash, but not enough to stop?

Perhaps they had planted the metal in its molten form or melted it using Thermite then set off a flare to attract attention but didn't count on the quick reaction time of Kenny, Randy and Carol who would have practically caught them in the act?

This was also right at the time that "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" was in theaters. In fact, Mike and Criss Moore joked about having seen the movie only the night before in the Star article. Perhaps imaginations were running wild and one thing seemed like another.

But in any event, a hoax would have taken a tremendous amount of effort to pull off just for a few laughs. For one thing, molten metal is hard to come by. It can't be transported easily and certainly not in "a small foreign car" with four men in it.

Allen concluded that the use of Thermite to melt the metal at the location would have been extremely unlikely as no local sources of the material were available at the time and considerable amounts of ice should have been present on the ground around the metal had pranksters attempted to cool the metal with water as was indicated by surface structures on the metal itself.

And so we are left with what we began, a mystery.

If the Big Lake incident is a hoax, it is one of the most cleverly perpetrated hoaxes requiring the perpetrator to be simultaneously smart enough to pull off the hoax while being simple-minded enough to be amused by a prank that just as easily could have gone unnoticed. The pranksters would also have had to be willing to spend a great deal of time, energy and money.

In many ways, this incident has not drawn a great deal of attention. It certainly doesn't garner much attention even locally.

The incident did catch the attention of Jacques F. Vallee, noted computer scientist, astronomer, astrophysicist, writer and member of the Society for Scientific Exploration where he has studied unidentified aerial phenomena.

In a report entitled "Physical Analyses in Ten Cases of Unexplained Aerial Objects with Material Samples" presented at the Pocantino Conference in Tarrytown, N.Y., in September 1997, Vallee used what he calls "the Council Bluffs case" along with descriptions of nine other similar events from around the world to describe what he speculates could be part of a liquid metal electrical system in which the high conductivity of liquid metals makes them an attractive means of current collection, according to the author, that could also be a part of a nuclear design for a flying object's power plant using direct energy conversion rather than a heat driven engine such as a plane uses.

Put simply, magnets could move liquid metal inside a "magnetohhydrodynamic" generator instead of gasoline being used to move pistons to create motion. The MHD generator would be quiet and could explain why even base terrestrial metals might be found associated with such a strange phenomenon.

Sadly, we might never know what fell from the sky on Dec. 17, 1977. Bob Allen and Randy James agreed that one explanation has yet to be fully explored. It is possible, according to both men, that what fell to earth that night did land on the levee.

It is possible that what fell to earth actually fell in Big Lake and what ended up on the levee was merely a splash that wouldn't have left a crater.

"Look in the lake," said Allen. "Get your scuba gear on and look in the lake."

Things going bump in the night (Saturday, October 04, 2003[?])

I want to just keep on saying this every day until Thanksgiving. You'd think by age, 57 and a half, it wouldn't come as such a surprise any more that the days get shorter and shorter as winter approaches, but every year ... "I can't believe how dark it is already."

I also can't believe how Halloween seems to get started earlier and earlier every year now, too, like it's Christmas. That starts unreasonably early every year as well, but at least with Christmas there are great fat gobs of cash to be made. If there's one thing I know about human beings it's that we will do anything for cash or - as the kids are calling it this month - "cheese" or "cheddar."

But is there really that much cheddar cheese to be made with Halloween? Sure, it's a bump for the economy, but there are only so many costumes, bags of miniature candy bars and plastic skulls one can buy unless one happens to be Rob Zombie.

Even Loan City on 35th and W. Broadway seems to have gotten into the spirit of Halloween, and I must admit I can't wait to see what they do for Christmas that will liven up our city's entranceway.

You can only do so much for Halloween a full month in advance of the actual holiday, because it is a very time-specific holiday. The spirits don't even start THINKING about getting out of the house until after the 5 o'clock news.

Halloween is definitely one of my top three favorite holidays of the year. The other two are Boxing Day and Ascension Sunday.

Halloween is the last of the great pagan brouhahas that still has any notion of "getting a little worked up" left in it. Not that long ago, Christmas was the biggest night to raise hell. I'm not even kidding about that.

Today, all of our holy days are boring. They are just becoming days when we repress our emotions even more than the rest of year. Thank God we can still have a good family argument at Thanksgiving. "Eating and crying ... you're like a crazy person! What's wrong with you? Have some more gravy and stop that!"

Ah gravy, is there nothing you cannot cure?

Halloween is one of those holidays where we do all sorts of stuff for reasons that completely baffle us if we bother to think about it. The answers are pretty interesting, too, I must say.

First off, Halloween is not really a dark or evil custom. It comes from the Celtic feast of Samhain (pronounced SOW-win or SOW-ween and definitely not SAM-hane), according to Peg Aloi, associate editor of Obsidian Magazine and an expert on pagan customs. Oct. 31 is right between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice. It is a conceptual, celestial tug o'war. Most of our ancestors really paid attention to astrology because they lived off the land and in compliance with the seasons. Also because indoor plumbing, heated office buildings and TV had not yet been invented.

It was a time to "commune with the dead," a practice that was viewed with particular suspicion by the Church, but was probably no more bizarre than our practice of leaving cookies out for Santa Claus or flowers on graves. In fact, leaving food out for deceased ancestors or inviting them to dinner was just part of the spirit of the holiday.

Because the veil between the worlds was thin, fortune-telling was also big at this time of year. Bobbing for apples is traditionally a way of telling if someone would have good fortune or not. It stands to reason since having a big mouth has always been a pretty good indication of one's BS-ing skills.

And talk about fun ... check out this speed-reasoning:

Squash make for good lanterns. They are plentiful, cheap, last a reasonably long time and taste great baked. Spirits in Irish folklore were often given names such as Jack of the Green, John O'Dreams, Jack in the Pulpit. A flame that flickers on Samhain night is supposedly one that is being touched by a spirit. According to Aloi, "Jack-O-Lantern" or "Jack of the Lantern" is an old Irish folktale about a man who is unable to enter heaven or hell and so is condemned to wander the night with only a candle in a turnip by which to see. So by extension, one might carve a pumpkin and put a candle in it just to see if those ancestors have dropped by or not.

Breathe!

Dressing up like ghosts was seen as a way to lead spirits back out of town once you were done with them, and many cultures have begged for candy and other treats for a variety of reasons. There really isn't any mystery there. Bribing people not to vandalize your house? Same thing, only it used to be much bigger at Christmas time.

This is a fine time of the year, though. Even with all our streetlights and modern, food-storing appliances, it's easy to see how our ancestors could get all riled up and spiritual at this time of year. As the days grow shorter and the nights get longer, the mind - conditioned by eons of instinct - cannot help but offer forth its darkest thoughts.

So, if you've gotten this far, I want you to call or write me with your ghost stories. The good stuff. The real southwest Iowa, swear-to-God-it's-true stories of ghosts and other bizarre happenings of the season. Then, I will write about them. Sound good? You bet it does.

- Greg Jerrett is a Nonpareil staff writer.

Mr. Big, Friley's spooky fiend (10.30.00)

From the Iowa State Daily, a little local ghost story written by me

The legend of Mr. Big is one that has made the job of every security guard and Food Service employee working in Friley Hall just a little harder -- especially when the sun goes down. Details of the story were gathered from student security officer Marie Chase and an Ethos Magazine story by Lana Gertsen.

The tale goes like this:

One dark night, Friley security guards were doing their rounds in Food Service. It was 1 a.m. -- the witching hour. While checking all the locks, the unsuspecting guards were surprised to see a well-dressed man over 6-feet tall with a cape and top hat standing at the end of a dark corridor. The guards shouted out to the intruder, "Hey, you, stop!"

The man ran and the security guards gave chase. When they got to the end of the corridor, the man was gone. The guards turned to find the man at the opposite end of the corridor they had been standing in when they first saw the man. He could only have gotten there by running past them. The guards never saw him pass them in the narrow corridor. They would have.

Once again, calling out, the man ran. The guards searched all of Friley Hall to find this strange, late night visitor, but to no avail. He was gone.

Later that night, a clue emerged. Finding no trace of the man anywhere else in the building, one of the guards shined his flashlight into a hole in a brick wall that sealed off an old, disused incinerator room. There was no way into or out of the bricked up room.

The flashlight shone against the opposite wall and there, against the dusty brick, over 6-feet off the ground, was the chalk outline of a man's head complete with top hat. Next to the outline was written in the cold red stone, "I am Big."

Earling site of last sanctioned exorcism (10/28/2003)

Warning: The following story contains references to spiritual matters
of an extremely frightening nature. Readers with heart conditions,
children and those who are otherwise ill-at-ease with detailed
descriptions of demonic possession and its associated behaviors
may not wish to continue reading beyond this point.

In 1928, an exorcism was performed in a convent just north of the peaceful hamlet of Earling. It was one of the last exorcisms officially sanctioned by the Catholic Church. The case was reported in several famous pieces of literature. One is a 48-page booklet called "Begone Satan" by the Rev. Carl Vogl, a witness to the event. The second is a book, "The Devil Rocked Her Cradle," by David St. Clair. The third is a novel inspired at least partly by this exorcism and one other in Washington, D.C. The book is called "The Exorcist" by William Peter Blatty and it inspired a film of the same title, which is considered to be one of the most frightening horror films ever made.

The truth is a difficult thing to preserve after so many years, but Papal records do acknowledge that the exorcism of Emma Schmidt did take place at the Convent of the Franciscan Sisters over a period of 23 days, an unusually long period of time. The convent is gone now, but the controversy remains.

It is said that Emma Schmidt had been possessed most her life, according to "Begone Satan." Born in 1882, Schmidt's Aunt Mina was reputedly a witch "who had placed a spell on some herbs which she placed among the girl's food." A Capuchin priest, Father Theophilus Riesigner, performed the rites of exorcism on her the first time in 1912, but she became possessed again "due to the curses hurled against her by her wicked father." The Earling exorcism was performed in three stages between Aug. 18 and Dec. 22, 1928.

According to Vogl in "Begone Satan," Emma Schmidt was a God-fearing woman who began to experience some very unusual things. Though she wanted to go to church, she felt as though something inside of her was preventing her from going, some "interior hidden power."

"She was conscious of some sinister inner voices that kept on suggesting most disagreeable things to her," according to Vogl's "Begone Satan." "These voices tried their utmost to arouse thoughts of the most shameful type within her, and tried to induce her to do things unmentionable and even to bring her to despair. The poor creature was helpless and secretly was of the opinion that she would become insane. There were times when she felt impelled to shatter her holy water font, when she could have attacked her spiritual adviser and could have suffocated him. Yes, there were suggestions urging her to tear down the very house of God."

By the time Father Riesigner approached his superiors about the Earling exorcism, Schmidt had not known a peaceful night's sleep for 26 years because of the voices inside her.

The modern debate is between those who believe Emma Schmidt to have simply been insane versus those who believe her to be a true example of demonic possession. It is not the position of the Daily Nonpareil to advocate one position over the other. However, the evidence for possession, the evidence that convinced a Capuchin priest and inspired decades of controversy, books and film was that Emma blasphemed whenever holy relics were brought near her. She foamed at the mouth. She made a variety of animal sounds. She was able to detect blessed food and rejected it. She spoke and understood Latin and other ancient languages in which she had no formal training. On at least one occasion, she levitated to the ceiling in front of witnesses.

During the exorcism, nuns were made busy in removing bucket after bucket of unusually foul smelling waste and green vomit from the woman who had eaten nothing in days.

A pea-sized lump moved freely underneath Emma's skin. Voices emanated from inside her chest identifying themselves as various demons, threatening participants with bodily as well as spiritual harm.

"Her body was completely distorted, swollen so badly that the nuns feared she would burst," according to the Web site, "Haunted America." "Emma's head swelled and turned red, her eyes bulged from their sockets and her lips protruded to twice their normal size. Sometimes she seemed to float above the bed, other times, her weight became so great that it bent the bed's iron frame."

According to Rev. Vogl's account, a hideous smell as well as the many loud noises drew the curious from Earling while at the monastery, an "epic battle" was raging.

"It was during this time that the poor woman admitted during her periods of rest that she had visions of horrible battles between the good and evil spirits. Countless numbers of evil spirits continually arrived. Satan tried his utmost not to be outdone this time. The good angels came to assist at the exorcism. Many approached seated on white horses and under the leadership of St. Michael, completely routed the infernal serpents and drove the demons back to the abyss of hell."

As the exorcism continued, the evil spirits appeared to be losing ground although it was noted that they often try to fool the exorcist by pretending to leave the body of their victim.

"Their bold, bitter demeanor gave way to more moaning and despairing tones. They could not bear the tortures of exorcism any longer ... Father Th. demanded in the name of the Most Blessed Trinity that at their departure the devils should give a sign by giving their respective names ... Father Th. shouted, 'Depart, ye fiends of hell! Begone, Satan, the Lion of Juda reigns!' ... (Emma) fell upon the bed ... a piercing sound filled the room ... voices saying, 'Beelzebub, Judas, Jacob, Mina,' could be heard. And this was repeated over and over until they faded far away into the distance. 'Beelzebub, - Judas, - Jacob, - Mina.' To these words were added: 'Hell--hell--hell!' Everyone present was terrified by this gruesome scene. It was the long awaited sign indicating that Satan was forced to leave his victim at last and to return to hell with his associates."

There was much rejoicing and it is said that Emma was able to attend mass and partake of all manner of holy rituals after that time.