Fitzgerald: The day space aliens visited Stockton

By Michael Fitzgerald
Record Columnist

I took a couple days off last week, and so missed National Alien Abduction Day, March 20. Believe it or not, Stockton has a significant place in Alien Abduction studies.

According to experts — ufologists, or whatever they call themselves — the first documented case of attempted alien abduction occurred, yes, outside Stockton.

The following story is chronicled not only in books such as "Alien Contacts and Abductions" by Jenny Randles but also in pioneer Stockton newspapers.

"THREE STRANGE VISITORS

"Who Possibly Came From the Planet Marsµ

"Seen on a Country Road by Colonel H.G. Shaw and a Companion"

That was the headline of the Stockton Evening Mail of Nov. 25, 1896.

According to the Mail, this Colonel Shaw, a former editor at the Mail, and a young man named Camille Spooner were riding a horse-drawn buggy back from Lodi. It was dark.

“We were jogging along quietly when the horse stopped suddenly and gave a snort of terror," Shaw said.

"Looking up we beheld three strange beings. They resembled humans in many respects, but still they were not like anything I had ever seen. They were nearly or quite seven feet high and very slender. ”

These ‘beings’ wore no clothing, Shaw reported. Instead, they were “covered with a natural growth hard to describe. It was not hair, neither was it like feathers, but it was as soft as silk to the touch.”

Shaw sensed the silken strangers meant no harm. “They seemed to take great interest in ourselves, the horse and buggy, and scrutinized everything very carefully."

Shaw approached them.

“Their faces and heads were without hair, the ears were very small, and the nose had the appearance of polished ivory,” Shaw said. Their mouths were tiny, “while the eyes were large and lustrous.”

Shaw added: “They were possessed of a strange and indescribable beauty.”

Ever the newsman, Shaw asked the aliens where they were from. “They seemed not to understand me, but began — well, "warbling" expresses it better than talking.”

Shaw touched one.

“Placing my hand under his elbow (I) pressed gently upward, and lo and behold I lifted him from the ground with scarcely an effort. I should judge that the specific gravity of the creature was less than an ounce.”

Each alien carried a shoulder bag attached to a nozzle. “Every little while one or the other would place the nozzle on his mouth, at which time I heard a sound of escaping gas.”

Here is where Stockton entered the annals of alien abduction lore. Inaugurated the annals, in fact.

“One of them, at a signal from one who appeared to be the leader, attempted to lift me, probably with the intention of carrying me away,” Shaw said.

But the aliens failed. “Although I made not the slightest resistance he could not move me, and finally the three of them tried it without the slightest success.

Whipping out egg-shaped lights — “some sort of luminous mineral” — the beings revealed a startling “immense airship” hovering nearby.

“It was 150 feet in length at least, though probably not over twenty feet in diameter ... pointed at both ends, and outside of a large rudder there was no visible machinery.”

Off to the ship they headed, “not as you or I walk, but with a swaying motion, their feet only touching the ground at intervals of about fifteen feet.”

Springing 20 feet up to the ship, the aliens whizzed off. “It went through the air very rapidly and expanded and contracted with a muscular motion, and was soon out of sight."

And that is how Stockton became a charter member of the Alien Abduction Club.

It would be easy to scoff at Shaw as a rustic fabulist … except exactly this sort of programming constantly airs on outlets such as The History Channel. Humans grasp the truth with one hand, while with the other they seize the nozzle and woof from that alien gasbag.

"I have a theory, which, of course, is only a theory,” Shaw said, “that those we beheld were inhabitants of Mars, who have been sent to the Earth for the purpose of securing one of its inhabitants.”

— Contact columnist Michael Fitzgerald at (209) 546-8270 or michaelf@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/fitzgeradblog and on Twitter @Stocktonopolis.

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