FRANK SLOTTA

FROM THE PAGES OF THE CANADIAN UFO REPORT
An article by John Magor

What happens in a UFO close-encounter case when a witness loses all sense of time and place? Does that necessarily mean an "abduction" has occurred?

Naturally it does not. If anyone were to observe the witness in some cases of alleged abduction, it might seem that nothing whatever has happened, including the sighting itself. Yet conceivably an alien influence has indeed been present or nearby which, for reasons of its own, has implanted the sense of action entirely within the mind of its subject. In such cases the "witness" has little choice but to become secretive about his or her experience, no matter how utterly real it seemed or what strong impressions it left.

No doubt many cases of authentic origin have failed to go on record for that reason, just as many dishonest cases have made the grade because the witness had a lively imagination or could tell a convincing story.

In the case I have chosen for this space, the witness had little to back him up. He was alone during his experience and there was no physical evidence that anything strange had happened. But he did have certain very positive things going for him.

First, other witnesses shared in an unusual sighting that preceded his experience. Second, he was a night-watchman with a good record for being reliable, yet his experience made him late for work. Third, he did not discuss the incident with anyone except his wife until asked to do so much later. Fourth, he made a strenuous effort after the incident to find evidence that would confirm what happened.

This is how the case is reported in my book, "Aliens Above, Always."

Frank Slotta of Edgewater, British Columbia, in the "Playground of the Gods" country (it seems to be an area in the Canadian Rockies favored by UFO visitors), doubts he will ever know how so much time passed as he stared at a strange thing hovering beside the highway one night in July, 1975. But he does know that he was unaccountably more than an hour late for his job as a night-watchman and that there was a lighted window on the "thing" that held him spellbound.

"I can't get it out of my mind" he told us more than three months later.

Frank's experience started as he was driving his wife, Lynn, home from work at the Radium Hot Springs Lodge. Also in the car were their daughter, Linda, and two young men who lived nearby. All five saw what happened after they had traveled a mile of so along the highway connected to the road from the Lodge.

"That light's moving," Lynn said, pointing to what at first appeared to be a star above a ridge to their right. Frank thought it was just because the car was moving, but he stopped where they could have a better look and they rolled down the windows.

"The light moved a little more," Lynn explained, "blanked out, then all of a sudden it was over the hill above the power station." (She was referring to a transformer unit beside the highway.)

It was a curious incident but not quite enough to convince the group, anxious to get home, that they should stay there and watch. After all, lights at night are usually open to various normal explanations.

As it happened, however, Frank had to return along the same route a few minutes later for his watchman's shift at the Lodge. So naturally he was more on the lookout than usual for anything strange... and as he came around a bend in the highway near the power unit, there it was.

"I looked up and saw the light, real close, right above the power station," he said. "So I slowed right down and then I saw there were three strange-looking sort of orangey beams shining down. They were large and I could see everything, even the needles on the pine trees."

By the time Frank had come to a stop he realized he was parked in the middle of the road, he pulled to one side to continue watching.

As he stared, momentarily wondering why other cars did not stop, the source of the lights came down until it was among the trees and he could discern its shape.

"It was a double-shaped deal about 40 feet wide maybe more. On top there was a part with rectangular windows, lit from the inside, and below there was a larger part with lights shining out from the rim."

In a drawing he made while we talked, Frank also showed three lights shining down, and it was evidently these that provided most of the illumination. We concluded the lateral beams may have been caused by the vertical lights shining through openings in the rim and diffused through the trees as the witness did not appear sure there were two distinctly separate sets of lights in the lower section. As he pointed out, he had only a few seconds to watch before the bottom lights were obscured by the ground.

But more than that it was the top part of the vehicle that held his attention. About half as wide as the bottom part, it was six to eight feet high, with a long window in the center that seemed to hypnotize him.

"For some reason I couldn't take my eyes off it," he said. "Twice while I looked I saw a shadow moving by as if there was somebody inside. I couldn't see a head or anything. It was just a shadow and it seemed that maybe there was more than just one."

With his window open, Frank noticed that throughout the incident the craft made a rhythmic swishing noise which he imitated for us through his lips. It had an uncanny similarity to the sound reproduced by witnesses in other cases we had described for Canadian UFO Report.

At last, realizing he would be late for work, he looked at his watch and saw that unbelievably he had been there for more than an hour.

"I thought it was more like ten minutes," he said, obviously still puzzled.

But continuing on to the Lodge about a mile away, he allowed himself one more look as he left the car. He knew it was unlikely he would see anything as the object had been on the other side of the ridge near the highway. But miraculously there it was in the distance, looking even more brightly lit than before. Apparently it had moved upward as he left, almost as if it wanted to exchange one last glance.

Frank phoned home as soon as he entered the Lodge, and his wife and daughter remembered the time was about 1:30 a.m. He had intended to start work at midnight!

Thinking the rest of the night about what he had seen, Frank returned to his place by the highway at the first opportunity the next morning. As he had expected, there was no sign of the strange craft but curious to see if it had left any traces on the ridge, he found a back road that took him part way up to the top and laboriously he climbed the rest of the way until he was at the exact place of his sighting.

"But there was nothing," he said. "I spent an hour looking around but there wasn't a sign it had been there. So it must have been in the air all the time even though it looked as if it was on the ground."

However, Frank did make one discovery of interest. He found there was a power line pole at the spot where he figured the object would have been. It appeared, in fact, that the craft must have made its hovering stop right next to the pole. So we are left with a picture of our visitors perhaps helping themselves to a supply of electricity just as they have been observed to do on other occasions.

It was an intriguing aspect of the case but still more so was the lingering effect on the principal witness after staring at that center window. He repeated several times that it seemed to grip his whole attention, and we had a strong impression that something unsaid about his experience was still bothering him. His wife, Lynn, believed he had told us everything he could remember and we felt she was right.

Yet something about his experience, perhaps beyond conscious memory, seemed to defy expression. This thought occurred to us again when Bill Allan, a friend and UFOlogist who joined us later with his wife, presented a selection of his UFO slides. Frank looked at the pictures on the screen like one lost to everything else around him.

We wondered then if those shadows inside that window had managed some kind of communication - or perhaps even a contact - with their totally absorbed witness in the missing period of time that made him late for work.
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When I lived in Calgary, Alberta, Bill Allan was the only UFO investigator I met there. He had been a Mathematics teacher in the high school. When he retired he moved to Kelowna, B.C. He joined with APRO out of Tucson, AZ. I visited him in Kelowna and I will always remember the pictures of the Ogopogo taken in the lake that he had gathered. There were many sightings in Lake Okanagan of the creature similar to Nessie. I often wonder what happened to all of the research files he had. Maybe like APROs, they ended up in someone's garage never to be seen again.

Sunshine