[From: Sky Tracker: a conversation with Ray Stanford © 20013 ]
Christopher in BOLD
Project Starlight International CHAPTER EXCERPT: start page 66
After Soccorro we [decided] to build lighted systems out in the Arizona desert to attempt to signal UFOs and (if possible) to get them [to land]. But it wasn’t so much a process to try and deceive them and make them think that there was a real UFO down there in trouble or something . . .
. . . it was like you were fishing for aliens with a lure . . .
Yes, like we were kids trying to learn how to fish and find some bait to attract them [chuckles]. I’ve always said, ‘in life, it’s what you do with what you’ve got that counts.’ That’s all you can do. Well when we started off we were a group of mid-twenty-year-olds. There was one guy [Earl Thomas] who owned a health food store in Phoenix who was well disposed financially, but the rest of us were volunteers ---nobody was professional, nobody was paid. They were willing to work . . .
We started out initially by manufacturing 1,500 good quality votive-sized candles and the health food store owner donated 1,500 white paper bags and we went out to the desert [November 1967] to a place owned by the US Government called Veckle Wash that we got permission to use. We set up the paper bags with sand in them in each one of them in the shape of a UFO with streaks behind it as if it was coming down and we put on the side of it, the symbol that had been described by [Lonnie] Zamora saw [during the Socorro Incident]. We made this out of the 1500 candelarias . . . we set up.
Nothing happened [chuckles] except that a huge number of helicopters came from the north after we had this [lit shape] going. They came pretty near us, maybe a half-mile away before they finally turned off. We were concerned that they were going to land and . . .
. . . blow all the candles out.
I don’t know what they were doing but they had to have seen us because the [lit symbol] was quite visible.
Reminds me of the Cash-Landrum case. Linda Howe might say they were actually UFOs masked, pretending to be helicopters . . .
Yeah right! [laughs] whatever the case, we didn’t see any UFOs on that occasion. We decided to go electronic and be more sophisticated about it . . . This was our first trip down there.
I had moved Phoenix back to Texas in May of ’67 but stayed in contact with the group that we called Project Starlight International. It was the beginning of something that became quite sophisticated later on in Texas.…The weekend [of our second trip to Veckle Wash, AZ] approached and I drove to Arizona where we had quite an experience . . . the lights were being stored in a garage, so we rented a trailer and we attached it to a four-wheel drive vehicle . . . we packed the trailer and started loading these lights on.
[Ray describes a weird synchronistic event where local bank robbers were reported wearing orange jumpsuits—just like his PSI Team.]
The next thing we knew there were several police helicopters zooming in on us and police cars coming down the alley where we were loading. Both in the helicopters and from the cars there were guns sticking out of the windows aimed at us . . . if you don’t think that puts a start in you . . .
That’ll put some starch in your shorts!
That’s right . . . What we found out (after they realized we were not the robbers) was that one block away there was a bank in a major shopping center and two guys, for unknown reason, decided bright orange jumpsuits were the things to wear to rob the bank. And they took off heading in our direction! If two guys were going to rob a bank, would you put bright orange jumpsuits on? I’m not sure if that’s the way to rob a bank.
. . . isn’t that what you end up wearing after you rob a bank and get caught? [Laughs]
Well on the desert we always wore bright orange jumpsuits so we could see each other well. Just in case somebody got bit by one of those sidewinder rattlesnakes out there we would be able to spot them if they fell down on the ground. So there we were with these uniforms on--loading up the trailer and the SUV and here come all these cops with their guns drawn. Where they [robbers] ended up, I don’t know, but I know where the cops ended up!
It’s pretty scary when, for unknown reason, two or three helicopters with automatic weapons pointed at you--right out the door and cop cars are coming down both ends of the alley with their guns drawn. [chuckles] That was the exciting start of Project Starlight’s final attempt at signaling UFOs from the desert, but it wasn’t the last exciting, weird thing that happened.
In order to get to the Veckle Wash (where we had the event) we had to drive down a highway that runs through an Indian Reservation. As you go down this highway there’s something on the right that’s very important to the government, so important, it’s not allowed to be marked on maps. It’s known as the US Navy [Gila River] Space Surveillance Station/Network. When you drive past it, there’s a small building and a vast array of these strange-looking antennas stretched out across a wide area of the desert. It’s all enclosed by a chain-link fence w/ barbed wire on top.
We were approaching the entrance—headed south and on our left, directly across from where one would enter through a gate, and there was a 18-wheeler (semi-truck) parked across from the entrance. I was on fire. There were quite a number of cars stopped and people staring at this thing. They were staring, not just because it was on fire, it was so weird. I’ve never seen (except for magnesium) metal burn. All the metal on this truck was burning. Literally burning! It was really bizarre. It was glowing brilliantly. We had a great time constraint because we had to go down and get all this electrical equipment and the array of wires and set up before night fall, so we didn’t have time to stop and see what was going on.
We went down that highway until it hits the interstate [Highway 8] that goes East-west, across toward Yuma [AZ]. We turned west then we went toward where there is a bridge the goes over what’s called the Veckle Wash. We turned off on a little dirt road . . .
Why did you choose that particular location?
It’s very isolated and way south of any lights. All the light from Phoenix was blocked from it by the south mountains. It’s a very dark area of the desert that is flat and open. It was government [-owned land] and we actually received permission to use it.
We went in there on the 4-wheel drive road and set up large 18X10 walled tent, all the wires and sockets, put the light bulbs in, got the generator positioned and [set up] the sequencer. That night we fired it up. It was a thrill to see our light system going. Working just perfect. We had telephoto cameras set up but we didn’t see any UFOs. Always four in the group maintained a watch while the others might rest if they wanted too. I went in and tried going to sleep but I [couldn’t].
In the wee hours of the morning I began to get this feeling that I had noted every time when I had encounter a UFO--usually before I encounter UFOs, I called it uforia. We didn’t know this at the time but it was how the extremely low frequencies of the magnetic field act upon the body. I described it as a sense that there’s a UFO around. So I told this guy just as he was about to say “let’s go out and take a look around.” Well we went out but we didn’t see anything.
I should break in at this point and relate that when we got back to Phoenix, the paper the next day had an interesting account. At the very time when I had gotten this uforic sensation, some men driving a produce truck from Yuma going east on the [nearby Interstate Highway [8] had seen and reported, an object they described as shaped like the [egg-shaped] object Lonnie Zamora saw land and take off from the ravine [near Socorro, NM] on April 24, 1964. They saw it moving right-to-left across the highway. South-to-north. They said they were right over the bridge at the Veckle Wash when that happened! It was coming right at us. At the point where they saw it was no more than a half-mile –probably quarter-mile. So, if they were telling the truth, there was a UFO heading in our direction. For whatever reason, we never saw it. I don’t believe that was a hoax. Nobody knew we were out there trying to signal UFOs. Of course we didn’t know about this until we got back to Phoenix.
When we left we left the lights out in the desert. They still may be out there today. [chuckles] He head back north on that road that went past the Space Surveillance Station. When we passed it we slowed down. Where the truck had been; both the cab and the trailer were dust. There was nothing but a pile bout 6 to 8 inches thick of white/gray ash in the exact shape of the truck. The whole thing had been turned into white powder! It was just spooky!
When we got back into town--I was visiting from Texas, I called down to the Maricopa County Sheriff and asked them if they could tell us anything about it and they said, “it’s not in our county.” It would have been another long-distance call [to call Pima County] and since I was staying with one of the high-schoolers who went on the trip, I didn’t want to tell this kid’s mother about the truck that was destroyed by mysterious means so I didn’t [make a second] call. She probably thought he was nuts enough going and trying to attract UFOs with a light system.
. . . yeah out in the desert with a bunch of guys that looked bank robbers in orange jumpsuits.
I should have called. I have never been able to get that out of my mind. Understand; there was no metal [truck] frame left. It had not been hauled off. There were no tracks in the ash as if it had been dragged. If the rubber had been disintegrated the rims would have left tracks if had been pulled by a wrecker and there was no sign of removal . . .
. . . not to mention the engine block.
It all apparently turned to powder! The only thing I can relate this to was an article in Fate magazine, years ago, and I don’t know whether to take any stock in it, or not. I forget who the author was but it told about a really interesting case down in Mexico.
Reportedly, a guy saw some small diminutive (seemingly) aliens outside of a UFO and I don’t remember the details but his truck ended up getting zapped by something and completely disintegrated except, strangely enough, the passenger seat that was not burned at all!
Of course this reminds me of stories you read about . . .
. . . spontaneous combustion.
Certain things are not touched! Whether the [Mexico UFO] story was true or not, I don’t know but this is the only thing I could relate it to in the literature that might have a parallel to what we perceived in this event. Whether our perceptions were accurate or not, I don’t know –this is what we saw. [END OF EXCERPT]
?