Posted On: October 22, 2022

This is another case where a UFO disk crashed.  This time in Paradise Valley, north of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1947. The craft was thirty-six feet in diameter, and two humanoid bodies were retrieved, one sitting inside and the other halfway out of the hatch.

In January 1987 Timothy Good spoke to former businessman and private pilot Selman E. Graves, who witnessed part of the recovery operation with two friends during a rabbit hunting trip on a Saturday morning in early October 1947.

The incident took place at Cave Creek, Graves told Good, in the northwest section of Paradise Valley, on property owned by his friend Walt Salyer whose son was Graves’ brother-in-law.

Graves arrived at the house with four others, expecting to be met by Salyer who was to join them on the hunting trip. "When we arrived that morning, Salyer and his wife were away. He’d been living in the basement and had just completed an upstairs section so we made ourselves at home. He came back about twenty minutes later and was kind of distressed to find us there, which was unlike him, He told us that we couldn't go due west of there, that it wasn't a good time to hunt there, and that the Air Force had restricted the area, that if we fired our guns in that direction we could hit someone, and so forth. "We told him we were interested in going to the Go John Mine, at right angles to what was the Cave Creek Road. This place today is called Carefree, it didn’t exist then, and Cave Creek was just a couple of small shacky homes."

Graves and two others from the hunting party went ahead on horseback, leaving Salyer and two other men at the house. "We said we’d meet them at the River Road, which was just at right angles, and his property sat on the corner there", Graves recalled.

"There were some mine shafts, what you might call an outcropping, and a small hill, and we went up there and the three of us could look back and see everything that was taking place. From this vantage point you could see Salyer’s house and I could see the corral very clearly, and his water tank, and so you had perspective there as to size. And there was a large, I can best describe it as a large aluminum dome-shaped thing there, which was roughly the size of the house, it was measured to be thirty-six feet in diameter.

"We could see that there were pitched buildings, tents, and men moving about. We at that time didn’t have any idea what we were looking at. We thought it might have been an observatory dome, except why would they have it down there on that piece of ground?

"We didn’t leave there until probably about 10 to 10:30 at night, so we were actually around there a good twelve hours. Graves said. The three men later met up with the others at Salyer s house. The others had bypassed us on the road and went on up to the Go John Mine. We never went to the mine at all", he explained.

Selman Graves told me that he thought little about the incident until he read Scully’s book years later, and was astonished to learn of the Paradise Valley recovery. Later he met Silas Newton, one of Scully s informants, who provided further information. "Supposedly there were a couple of small humanoids, about four and a half feet tall, that were reported to have been there," said Graves.

"What I tied that in with was Salyer’s great anxiety about our going near the deep freeze! It was abnormal, I expect that probably what happened was that Salyer, (an ex-military man), was the first one to see this object and notify the authorities. If you want to make a conjecture, perhaps they thought, ‘Jeepers! What are we going to do with these bodies? How are we going to keep them?’"

 "My brother-in-law said that he saw afterward a ‘vehicle’ and wondered if it was part of what we had viewed, not knowing what it was, and this military flatbed truck going from the Cave Creek Road south which at that time would have been the most logical was for them to get out of there. It seems to me that it would have had to have been something to do with the military or Air Force, There wasn't anything else so I presume that that was actually sections [of the object] being trucked out."

The Cover-Up

The lengths to which the authorities went to literally cover-up the landing Site are quite remarkable. "Right after the war", Selman Graves told Good, "they made a topographical of that area in little quarter quadrangles, and they showed the site on it because, the marks in the desert stay quite well: it takes a long time for them to erode. In that short span of time they made another quadrangle and you couldn't get hold any more of the original one. They changed the location of Cave Creek Road: they moved the thing east and you wouldn't even know there had ever been another road there now, unless you were really familiar and had really studied around. Also, there were some changes to the new River Road and the grading of it."

"The federal government sponsored a project through the state, subsequently the state came in and told the county area of what was going to be Carefree that they had to locate some satisfactory spot for refuse disposal, and what they did was take the site of the landing and dig it up with a bulldozer."

Selman Graves, further advised that he personally witnessed the bulldozing operations years later. "I went in to observe what was taking place. The ditches were somewhat helter-skelter. They were not doing a methodical digging, burning, burying, and in other words digging a new excavation. It was kind of helter-skelter, or just, mucking up everything, destroying, and so on. While I was watching it, a fellow, rather well groomed for a bulldozer operator stopped the machine, got off and came over and asked if he could help me. I said, Well, I'm just interested in what you're doing.

I find it rather interesting because for what you’re supposed to be doing, you're not really using a system that would go with it. Oh of course we are, he said. ‘No you’re not,’ I said. ‘Look at what you’re doing here. How long has this been going on anyway?, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘something like eight years. That’s a long time, I said. ‘It doesn’t look like that sort of an operation. 'Oh yes,’ he said. ‘It’s the way we’re doing it.'

"I said, ‘You’re sure about that time? It can’t have been that long.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I’m quite sure.’ I said, ‘Isn’t that odd. I was here about a year ago and there was nothing going on here. I guess you’re mistaken.’ He laughed and said, ‘That’s right. I guess you’re right. I’m mistaken.’ "Then he became more talkative, and told me that he’d done this operation for them in a place over on the Arizona, California border between Kingman and Barstow.’

This site was the scene of a recovery operation in May 1953, as we shall shortly learn. The most convincing evidence that Scully’s claims are fundamentally sound has been provided by the Canadian government scientist Wilbert Smith, who stated in a 1950 top secret document that the subject of flying saucers was classified higher than the H-bomb, and that "their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush."

Smith’s informant was Dr. Robert Sarbacher, a consultant to the Research and Development Board, and in his handwritten notes made after the interview Smith recorded the following, dated 15 September 1950:

Smith: "I have read Scully’s book on the saucers and would like to know how much of it is true."

Sarbacher: "The facts reported in the book are substantially correct."

Smith: "Then the saucers do exist?"

Sarbacher: "Yes: they exist."

Smith: "Do they operate as Scully suggests on magnetic principles?"

Sarbacher: "We have not been able to duplicate their performance."

Smith: "Do they come from some other planet?"

Sarbacher: "All we know is, we didn’t make them, and it’s pretty certain they didn’t originate on earth."

Smith: "I understand the whole subject is classified."

Sarbacher: "Yes, it is classified two points higher even than the H-bomb. In fact it is the most highly classified subject in the US government at the present time."

Smith: "May I ask the reason for the classification?"

Sarbacher: "You may ask, but I can’t tell you."

My Take: This was around the time when the US military realized that they could bring down the UFOs with certain direct radar beams. This one doesn’t have too much to go on. Still, it’s very interesting.

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988

Posted On: October 22, 2022

This is another case where a UFO disk crashed.  This time in Paradise Valley, north of Phoenix, Arizona, in 1947. The craft was thirty-six feet in diameter, and two humanoid bodies were retrieved, one sitting inside and the other halfway out of the hatch.

In January 1987 Timothy Good spoke to former businessman and private pilot Selman E. Graves, who witnessed part of the recovery operation with two friends during a rabbit hunting trip on a Saturday morning in early October 1947.

The incident took place at Cave Creek, Graves told Good, in the northwest section of Paradise Valley, on property owned by his friend Walt Salyer whose son was Graves’ brother-in-law.

Graves arrived at the house with four others, expecting to be met by Salyer who was to join them on the hunting trip. "When we arrived that morning, Salyer and his wife were away. He’d been living in the basement and had just completed an upstairs section so we made ourselves at home. He came back about twenty minutes later and was kind of distressed to find us there, which was unlike him, He told us that we couldn't go due west of there, that it wasn't a good time to hunt there, and that the Air Force had restricted the area, that if we fired our guns in that direction we could hit someone, and so forth. "We told him we were interested in going to the Go John Mine, at right angles to what was the Cave Creek Road. This place today is called Carefree, it didn’t exist then, and Cave Creek was just a couple of small shacky homes."

Graves and two others from the hunting party went ahead on horseback, leaving Salyer and two other men at the house. "We said we’d meet them at the River Road, which was just at right angles, and his property sat on the corner there", Graves recalled.

"There were some mine shafts, what you might call an outcropping, and a small hill, and we went up there and the three of us could look back and see everything that was taking place. From this vantage point you could see Salyer’s house and I could see the corral very clearly, and his water tank, and so you had perspective there as to size. And there was a large, I can best describe it as a large aluminum dome-shaped thing there, which was roughly the size of the house, it was measured to be thirty-six feet in diameter.

"We could see that there were pitched buildings, tents, and men moving about. We at that time didn’t have any idea what we were looking at. We thought it might have been an observatory dome, except why would they have it down there on that piece of ground?

"We didn’t leave there until probably about 10 to 10:30 at night, so we were actually around there a good twelve hours. Graves said. The three men later met up with the others at Salyer s house. The others had bypassed us on the road and went on up to the Go John Mine. We never went to the mine at all", he explained.

Selman Graves told me that he thought little about the incident until he read Scully’s book years later, and was astonished to learn of the Paradise Valley recovery. Later he met Silas Newton, one of Scully s informants, who provided further information. "Supposedly there were a couple of small humanoids, about four and a half feet tall, that were reported to have been there," said Graves.

"What I tied that in with was Salyer’s great anxiety about our going near the deep freeze! It was abnormal, I expect that probably what happened was that Salyer, (an ex-military man), was the first one to see this object and notify the authorities. If you want to make a conjecture, perhaps they thought, ‘Jeepers! What are we going to do with these bodies? How are we going to keep them?’"

 "My brother-in-law said that he saw afterward a ‘vehicle’ and wondered if it was part of what we had viewed, not knowing what it was, and this military flatbed truck going from the Cave Creek Road south which at that time would have been the most logical was for them to get out of there. It seems to me that it would have had to have been something to do with the military or Air Force, There wasn't anything else so I presume that that was actually sections [of the object] being trucked out."

The Cover-Up

The lengths to which the authorities went to literally cover-up the landing Site are quite remarkable. "Right after the war", Selman Graves told Good, "they made a topographical of that area in little quarter quadrangles, and they showed the site on it because, the marks in the desert stay quite well: it takes a long time for them to erode. In that short span of time they made another quadrangle and you couldn't get hold any more of the original one. They changed the location of Cave Creek Road: they moved the thing east and you wouldn't even know there had ever been another road there now, unless you were really familiar and had really studied around. Also, there were some changes to the new River Road and the grading of it."

"The federal government sponsored a project through the state, subsequently the state came in and told the county area of what was going to be Carefree that they had to locate some satisfactory spot for refuse disposal, and what they did was take the site of the landing and dig it up with a bulldozer."

Selman Graves, further advised that he personally witnessed the bulldozing operations years later. "I went in to observe what was taking place. The ditches were somewhat helter-skelter. They were not doing a methodical digging, burning, burying, and in other words digging a new excavation. It was kind of helter-skelter, or just, mucking up everything, destroying, and so on. While I was watching it, a fellow, rather well groomed for a bulldozer operator stopped the machine, got off and came over and asked if he could help me. I said, Well, I'm just interested in what you're doing.

I find it rather interesting because for what you’re supposed to be doing, you're not really using a system that would go with it. Oh of course we are, he said. ‘No you’re not,’ I said. ‘Look at what you’re doing here. How long has this been going on anyway?, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘something like eight years. That’s a long time, I said. ‘It doesn’t look like that sort of an operation. 'Oh yes,’ he said. ‘It’s the way we’re doing it.'

"I said, ‘You’re sure about that time? It can’t have been that long.’ ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I’m quite sure.’ I said, ‘Isn’t that odd. I was here about a year ago and there was nothing going on here. I guess you’re mistaken.’ He laughed and said, ‘That’s right. I guess you’re right. I’m mistaken.’ "Then he became more talkative, and told me that he’d done this operation for them in a place over on the Arizona, California border between Kingman and Barstow.’

This site was the scene of a recovery operation in May 1953, as we shall shortly learn. The most convincing evidence that Scully’s claims are fundamentally sound has been provided by the Canadian government scientist Wilbert Smith, who stated in a 1950 top secret document that the subject of flying saucers was classified higher than the H-bomb, and that "their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush."

Smith’s informant was Dr. Robert Sarbacher, a consultant to the Research and Development Board, and in his handwritten notes made after the interview Smith recorded the following, dated 15 September 1950:

Smith: "I have read Scully’s book on the saucers and would like to know how much of it is true."

Sarbacher: "The facts reported in the book are substantially correct."

Smith: "Then the saucers do exist?"

Sarbacher: "Yes: they exist."

Smith: "Do they operate as Scully suggests on magnetic principles?"

Sarbacher: "We have not been able to duplicate their performance."

Smith: "Do they come from some other planet?"

Sarbacher: "All we know is, we didn’t make them, and it’s pretty certain they didn’t originate on earth."

Smith: "I understand the whole subject is classified."

Sarbacher: "Yes, it is classified two points higher even than the H-bomb. In fact it is the most highly classified subject in the US government at the present time."

Smith: "May I ask the reason for the classification?"

Sarbacher: "You may ask, but I can’t tell you."

My Take: This was around the time when the US military realized that they could bring down the UFOs with certain direct radar beams. This one doesn’t have too much to go on. Still, it’s very interesting.

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988