The Herbert Schirmer Alien Abduction

On December 3, 1967, while on night patrol, twenty two year old Ashland, Nebraska, policeman Herbert Schirmer saw red lights atop of what he thought was a large truck parked near the junction of highways 6 and 63.

Moving a little closer he realized the object was definitely not a truck, trucks didn’t hover eight feet off the ground. Instead the object, disk-shaped, metallic, with a walkway around its circumference and red lit portholes seemed definitely otherworldly.

As the patrolman watched, the UFO allegedly rose higher on a pillar of flame, all the while emitting a screaming sound, before flying directly over his car and into the night. A glance at his watch revealed it to be 3 a.m. He wrote in his notebook “Saw a flying saucer at the junction of highways 6 and 63. Believe it or not!”

Soon after his sighting Schirmer began to feel ill, experiencing headaches, a large red swelling on his neck and an uneasy feeling of missing time. The Condon Committee, [1] hearing of his encounter, requested that he come to Boulder, Colorado; Schirmer accepted and on February 13, 1968, underwent regressive hypnosis administered by University of Wyoming psychologist Dr. Leo Sprinkle.

The session's findings were surprising, a number of new details coming to light: Apparently as the police officer had neared the craft both his automobile engine and radio had failed. Diminutive alien crewmembers had then emerged and taken Schirmer aboard where they had explained (telepathically) that they were from a nearby solar system, were presently based on Venus and that their propulsion system was some sort of reversible electromagnetism its energy obtained by tapping Earth's power grid. Later, before releasing the befuddled human, they had assured him they would return twice more and that someday he would “see the universe.”

The Condon Committees' assessment, “project staff has no confidence that the trooper's UFO experience is real.” Although, Dr. Sprinkle did state that he thought Schirmer, “believed in the reality of the events he described.”

After returning to Ashland, Schirmer was appointed police chief the old chief having resigned. A tumultuous two months followed, during which, he was ridiculed over the alleged encounter, dynamite was tossed in his car and his wife, presumably unable to deal with events, left him.

Struggling to cope the policeman sought relief in further regressive hypnosis, the hypnotist he chose, Loring G Williams, utilizing different techniques, was apparently able to shed some additional light on the incident, the new information gathered, documented in two books by Eric Norman "Gods, Demons and Space Chariots" and "Gods and Devils from Outer Space."

Deciding whether or not Schirmer’s experience was real or imaginary is a matter of individual choice; however, the lack of hard evidence or a corroborating witness does seem to suggest something a little more earthly, perhaps an overactive imagination or an hallucinatory event of the type associated with sleep paralysis. As for Herbert Schirmer, real or not, the whole episode was definitely a life altering experience.

[1] The Condon Committee was the project name given to a scientific study of Unidentified Flying Objects conducted by the University of Colorado under contract to the United States Air Force between 1966 and 1968. Chaired by distinguished physicist Edward Uhler Condon its members were drawn from amongst the very brightest in the scientific community (albeit many with no previous knowledge or a negative perception of UFOs).

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