What sets Gerald Anderson apart from the thousands of other American's, including scores of Ozarkers, who say they've seen UFO's or even insist they've been kidnapped by creatures from outer space?

Why are Gerald Anderson's childhood recollections stirring international interest among UFO researchers whose reputations have been built on healthy skepticism and willingness to debunk hoaxes?

Because of little things he has to say and how he says them.

Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist who has lectured on more than 600 college campuses about UFOs, describes Anderson as "a really significant, potentially the most important" witness to what both men believe was the aftermath of one of two space craft crashes in New Mexico in mid-summer 1947.

Friedman is co-authoring a book based upon several years of painstaking investigation into the haunting mystery. He was startled, upon meeting Anderson for the first time only a few months ago, to hear the Springfieldian echo details of the yet to be published research.

"There's no way he could know some of these things unless he had been there at the time," Friedman believes.

Example: only days before first talking with Anderson, Friedman coaxed a heretofore reluctant New Mexico mortician into recounting a run-in he'd had in 1947 with an especially unpleasant red-headed captain who was heading up a team recovering bodies from a hush-hush aircraft crash. Anderson, too, spoke of a red-headed captain with a mean disposition. Friedman says the descriptions of the ornery officer provided by the two match precisely, although Anderson and the mortician never have met.

In sketches of the desert crash scene drawn by Anderson in Springfield following a hypnosis, a lonely windmill appears in the distance. When Friedman later arranged for Anderson to return to New Mexico to pinpoint the long-ago crash site, no such windmill could be see on the horizon-- until, almost by accident, the windmill wa spotted behind tress that had grown up during the 43 years since Anderson was last there.

"I got shivers over that one," says John Carpenter, who has extensively debriefed Anderson over the past 4 months and went along on Anderson's return trip to New Mexico in October.

Carpenter holds degrees in psychology and psychiatric social work from DePauw and Washington universities and trained in clinical hypnosis at the Menninger Institute. He's in his 12th year of work at a psychiatric hospital facility in Springfield.

"When Gerald tells his story, it's not just a story -- it's his life he's telling you, intermixed with his feelings and his beliefs and all that is Gerald," Carpenter says.

"When someone is spinning a hoax or tale, they only give you enough to raise your curiosity. Not Gerald. He gives you everything, in detail, much more than you ask him for. He'd be setting himself up to be found out if it wasn't true. He's so confident, he goes so much further than a hoaxer would ever dare."

Carpenter puts great stock in Anderson's recountings under hypnosis. "It's what he didn't say that was significant." Carpenter says, explaining that despite clever prodding, Anderson never committed a hoaxer's mistake of "recalling" something that shouldn't be a part of his own memory.

"And when he's under hypnosis, all the bigger, adult words drop out when he describes events from his childhood," Carpenter found. "He relates what he was in child-like terms."

Carpenter also detected "genuine amazement" when Anderson heard what had been dredged from his subconscious memory under hypnosis. "The look on his face was priceless when he realized he'd produced details he'd forgotten on a conscious level so long ago."

Most subtle but perhaps most telling, in Carpenter's view, was Anderson's reaction to being accepted as a viable witness to an extraordinary encounter with a spacecraft and creatures from beyond Earth.

"He was so grateful at being taken seriously. You could see the relief and release after all those years, and the great hope that other people would take him seriously too, once and for all."

Ironically, Friedman points to Gallup Poll results indicating that 60 percent of Americans who have college degrees say they believe UFOs are real. With such a receptive constituency, why would government officials persist in what Friedman calls the "Cosmic Watergate" -- the cover-up and denial of the New Mexico crashes? Perhaps, some speculate, because it would be too embarrassing now to admit that some supposedly made-in-USA technologies actually were plagiarized from confiscated spacecraft.

Friedman emphasizes that he's not as interested in uncovering past misdeeds as he is in encouraging future progress.

"I believe we should have an 'Earthling" orientation rather than nationalistic orientation. The easiest way to demonstrate the wisdom of this is to prove that life forms from other planets are coming here. If we can do that, then everyone will be forced to look at our world differently, as a part of a galactic neighborhood."

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The second part of the Springfield newspaper, dated December 9th, 1990 is as follows:

Titled: Fact or Fantasy? Springfieldian seeks validation of UFO encounter 43 years ago.

Written by: Mike O'Brien

ALSO NOTE: the actual newspaper article shows a scene of the UFO crash drawn by Gerald Anderson and also a sketch of a creature he believes was a visitor from another galaxy.

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To a 5-year-old kid from Indianapolis, the mountains and mesas and vast scrubland surrounding Albuquerque seemed an alien world. "I was in awe" recalls Gerald Anderson of his arrival in New Mexico with his family in July 1947. "I was in the wild frontier. There were real, live Indians out there." Then says Anderson, on his second day in the Southwest he bumped into real,live creatures from a truly alien world.

There were four -- two dead, on dying, one apparently uninjured. The creatures were about 4 feet tall, with heads disproportionately large for their bodies by human measure and almond-shaped, coal black eyes. They huddled in the shadow of 50-ft-diameter silver disk - a "flying saucer" that had crashed into a low hillside on the rim of what locals call the Plains of San Augustin.

Anderson, a former police chief at Rockaway Beach and Taney County deputy sheriff who now works as a security officer in Springfield, is adamant about events on the hot midsummer day so long ago. "I saw them. I even touched one of the creatures. I put my hand on their ship. And I wasn't alone - my dad, my uncle, my brother and my cousin all saw the same things. And so did a lot of other people. But they aren't talking.

Anderson is talking, publicly, after 43 years of silence. Among those listening most intently are some of the foremost researchers into unidentified flying object (UFO phenomena. These experts say Gerald Anderson appears to be an important link in a frustratingly fragmented chain of evidence concerning the most famous - or infamous - chapter in UFO annals: the so called "Roswell Incident."

No one denies that "something" happened in July 1947 in central New Mexico, cradle of U.S. nuclear and rocket technology. However, military authorities insist reports of strange craft in the sky and bizarre wreckage on the ground were traced at the time to an errant weather balloon and other manmade or natural circumstance.

Nonetheless, over the years, persistent whispered rumors grew into published articles and books, even movies, which fanned speculation that what actually occurred was a visit by creatures >from another planet - an intergalactic expedition that turned to tragedy on the high desert and then into a massive cover-up in the highest circles of the U.S. government.

Anderson says he was unaware of ongoing fascination and controversy over the strange episode from his childhood until one evening this past January when he was flipping through channels on his television set and stumbled across the popular program "Unsolved Mysteries."

"I wasn't looking for any unsolved mysteries - I have enough mysteries in my life that are unsolved, and I don't need any more," Anderson jokes. He is a burly, barrel-chested man standing 6-4 and carrying a muscular 250-plus pounds, with reddish hair and a ruddy complexion creased from easy laughter.

"But, bingo! On comes this story, and everything was wrong," Anderson recalls of the TV show. On sudden impulse, he dialed an 800 phone number that flashed onto the screen. "I guess I figured that if people were still interested in this thing, they might as well get it straight" is the only explanation he can muster for speaking up after years of keeping mostly mum on the matter.

"These people don't know what they're talking about," Anderson told the operator on the other end of the long-distance line. "The shape of the craft is totally wrong. 'And how do you know that, sir?" she asked. ' I saw it, I was there,' I told her. "Whoa!" she said. "Thee are some people who will want to talk to you...'"

Anderson's phone soon was ringing with calls from UFO researchers around the country. One in particular, Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and popular lecturer who had advised the "Unsolved Mysteries" producers, was struck by correlations between Anderson's recollections and obscure details Friedman uncovered while sleuthing for a book to be published next year.

Friedman, who lives in Canada, contacted John Carpenter, a Springfield professional therapist who in his spare time serves as a director of investigations for the local chapter of Mutual UFO Network, a nationwide organization of UFO researchers. At Friedman's request, Carpenter conducted extensive in person interviews of Anderson, including sessions under hypnosis.

The results excited Friedman. "Powerful stuff!" he exclaimed upon hearing interview tapes. Friedman arranged airline tickets for Anderson and Carpenter to join him in New Mexico to pinpoint the crash site.

Anderson says the flight was his first return to New Mexico in more than a quarter-century. After pointing the pilot of a chartered helicopter to a spot in the desert 75 air miles southwest of Albuquerque, Anderson gazed at a hillside, strewn with boulders the size of Volkswagens and dotted with a few gnarled pinion trees, that he says he saw in the summer of 1947.....

A NEW HOME

The Anderson family arrived in Albuquerque from Indiana on July 4, 1947. they took up temporary residence at the home of one of Gerald's uncles, Guy Anderson. Gerald's father, Glen, was about to take a job as a master machinist involved in nuclear weapons design at the super-secret Sandia base on the outskirts of town.

" Ted told my brother, ' I know where there's plenty of moss agate.' So we all piled into a 1940 Plymouth - Uncle Ted, my cousin Victor (Ted's 8 year old son), my brother, Glen, my dad and myself. We went out into this area where the moss agate was supposed to be - followed two ruts into the desert, bounced along out there for a while, and ended up on top of a ridgeline. We parked the car and started to walk down an arroyo (gully) and dry creek bed and out onto the plains.

A STRANGE DISCOVERY

"But we came around a corner and right there in front of us stuck into the side of this hill, was a silver disc. There were some remarks like"There's a crash up here! Something's crashed up here! And then someone saying 'That's a goddamn spaceship!" "We all went up there to it. There were three creatures, three bodies, lying on the ground underneath this thing in the shade. Two weren't moving and the third one obviously was having trouble breathing, like when you have broken ribs. There was a fourth one next to it, sitting there on the ground. There wasn't a thing wrong with it, and it apparently had been giving first aid to the others.

Anderson animatedly acts out the fourth creature's reaction when the family members approached. "It recoiled in fear, like it thought we were going to attack it," anderson recounts, covering his face with crossed arms. The adults tried to repeatedly to communicate with the frightened creature, Anderson says, but there was no audible response to greetings spoken in English and Spanish.

A few minutes after the Anderson clan happened upon the bizarre scene, six other people arrived - five college students and their teacher. They'd been working on an archaeological dig around cliff dwellings a few miles away and had decided to hike over after seeing what they thought was a firey meteor crashing the night before. The professor, a Dr. Buskirk, tried several foreign languages in unsuccessful attempts to coax a verbal response from the creature, Anderson says.

The sun had climbed to a midday peak by this time and recalls anderson, "to a kid from Indiana, it was hot brother, let me tell you." He chugged a chocolate flavored soft drink an hour earlier and the sweet soda pop was churning uncomfortably in his stomach. so he sought shelter in the shadow of the spacecraft. "It was 115 (degrees) out there that day. But around the craft, when you got close to it, it was cold. When you touched the metal, it felt just like it came out of a freezer."

SOMETHING WASN'T RIGHT

Anderson also touched one of the creatures lying motionless on the ground - and it, too was cold. In his child's mind, he had thought the figures looked like dolls. But when he felt the cold skin, " I knew something wasn't quite right. Yuck!.

Anderson says he ran to the crest of a nearby knoll to take stock. A pickup truck arrived on the ridge, and a fellow whom researchers believe was a civil engineer named Barney Barnett joined the curious audience. "I remember thinking he looked like Harry Truman. In 1947, every kid knew what Harry Truman looked like," Anderson says.

After a few minutes, Anderson summoned the courage to again creep close to the strange saucer. It was then more chilling than the surface of the craft of the skin of the corpse; The upright creature turned and looked right at me and it was like he was inside my head - as if he was doing my thinking, as if his thoughts were in my head."

Anderson remembers a mental sensation of falling and tumbling end-over-end. "I felt that thing's fear, felt its depression, felt its loneliness. I relived the crash. I know the terror it went through. That one look told me everything that quickly," he says with a snap of his fingers.

Other things began happening quickly about this time, Anderson says. A contingent of armed soldiers suddenly appeared. The creature, which had calmed down after its initial fright, "went crazy" at the sight of the soldiers. Thinking back on the creature's plight today brings on the "awfulest, horrible feeling," Anderson says.

"His situation was hopeless. He knew it. He'd just lived through a nightmare that most of us wouldn't be able to psychologically stand. He'd watched two of his crew, his friends or maybe even his family die. He's watching another one die. He knows there's no chance of rescue, because the military is here and his people aren't going to be able to get him.

"God only knows how far away from home he was, and he knew he was never going to see - if they have loved ones - his loved ones again. He was totally alone on a hostile planet, and the only people who where showing him kindness were being run off by the military at weapon-point. "As a kid, I was aware of what being afraid of the dark was like., and the feeling I got from him was that feeling multiplied a million times. It was scary. It was terrifying.

SOLDIERS ON THE SCENE

Anderson says he lost sight of the creature as the soldiers swarmed over the site. The civilians were brusquely shoved from the craft. Anderson remembers shouts and threats. His uncle Ted threw a punch at one of the GIs. "Things got very tense, very dangerous," Anderson says. "The soldiers ushered us out of there very unceremoniously. Their attitude, to describe it at best, was uncivilized."

Anderson has an especially vivid memory of a tough-talking red haired Army captain and an equally gruff black sergeant. "They told my dad and my uncle, who also worked at Sandia, that if they were ever to divulge anything about this - it was a secret military aircraft, they said - then us kids would be taken away and they'd never see us again." It seems an outrageous threat in hindsight, Anderson concedes. But at the time, he reminds, "These people had machine guns and you listened to what they said."

Another recollection strikes Anderson as odd today: The soldiers didn't appear surprised about the otherwordly craft and creatures. they didn't gawk, slack-jawed and awe-struck as the Andersons had done. "The soldiers weren't saying, 'Gee, look at that!" They were very cognizant of what they were looking at. They knew what it was.

And it soon became apparent, Anderson says, that the Army knew what it wanted to do with the find. "there was a battalion of military, a real invasion force, when we got back up on the hilltop. There were trucks, there were airplanes - they had the road blocked off and they were landing on it. They had radio communications gear set up. There were ambulances, and more soldiers with weapons."

In the days that followed, all of New Mexico was abuzz with talk of strange lights in the sky, strange echos on radar, strange doings in the desert. On July 7, new reports told of remnants of an unidentified aircraft found by a rancher near the town of Roswell, N.M. about 150 miles east of the hillside where the Anderson's stumbled upon the saucer.

Although several witnesses said it was like nothing they'd ever seen before, military officers insisted the metallic pieces came from an ordinary weather balloon.....

A WEATHER BALLOON?

Forty three years later, Anderson smiles wryly when reminded of the Army's pronouncement, "A lot of people wondered why, if it was just a weather balloon, the military put the pieces under armed guard and flew them in a B-29 to Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio," he observes.

Anderson believes the wreckage scattered near Roswell and the barely damaged saucer on the Plains of San Augustin are connected. "There was a gash in the side of the disc we saw, like it had been crushed in," he says. "The contour of the craft would fit into that gash perfectly - like another one of these things had hit it. I think two of these discs had a mid-air collision. One exploded and feel in pieces near Roswell, and the other crash-landed where we found it.

With all evidence confiscated and the military steadfastly sticking by the weather balloon explanation, the story faded from the news by July's end. And Gerald Anderson says he tucked away the memory as he grew into manhood. "I learned you just don't go up to the average person on the street and say, "Damn, know what I saw?" The guy will go, "Get away from me, fool! Are you crazy?" In later life, he didn't mention it even to his wife until a few years after their marriage.

Anderson joined the Navy in the late 1950s and served a dozen years in posts around the globe. He lived for a few years in Colorado, working as a paramedic and working toward a college degree in microbiology. In 1979, he moved to Missouri to better raise his daughter away from what he terms the "druggy" atmosphere of Denver. In addition to his law enforcement posts, Anderson has worked for two southwest Missouri trucking firms as a driver and instructor.

Anderson also has been active in the Episcopal Church. He recently was elected to the vestry at Ascension Episcopal in Springfield and is studying toward becoming a deacon. A gold crucifix - a cross complete with a figure of the martyred Christ affixed to it - suspended from a chain around Anderson's neck is testimony to his faith.

NO CONFLICT IN BELIEFS

Although he concedes his account might make some fellow churchgoers uncomfortable, Anderson sees no conflict between what he saw with his eyes and what he believes in his heart: "When you're talking about the concept of God, you have to be talking in the context of a universal situations, a deity that built the whole universe. And why should we assume that this speck of sand in the backwater of space would be the only place that an all-perfect, almighty God could create life?"

In fact, Anderson says he "wouldn't be one bit surprised to find out that, wherever this creature came from, there they have a very strong concept of a supreme being. Because of my contact with the creature showed a high degree of civilized sophistication, gentleness, compassion - all of the things we hold as ideals."

Of the five anderson men who ventured into the desert that day in 1947, only Gerald is still alive. Age, illness and accidents claimed the other four in recent years. But not only andersons were at the scene, Gerald says, and he hopes his decision to come forth, albeit belated, will encourage others to tell what they know and spur official revelations about the captured craft and creatures.

"I want to see the government stand up and say, 'Look, we're not alone in the universe.

Let's make a 'Star Trek' really happen. Let's do go out there and explore the universe. That may be our only salvation. Because with what's doing to this Earth, we're not going to make it much past the year 2000."

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