On the evening of October 17, 1973, Falkville Alabama chief
of police Jeff Greenhaw received a call from an anonymous woman claiming she
had seen a UFO sail over her house and land in a nearby field. Though hesitant
to go out when he was already off duty, Chief Greenhaw got in his car to have a
look. When he arrived at the field no UFO could be found, so he decided to
drive around the area to see if there was anything in the area.
While cruising down a dirt path, Greenhaw spotted a person
standing on the side of the road. Thinking it might be someone in need of help,
he got out and approached the figure. Up close, however, he discovered that the
being was completely covered by some sort of metallic outfit. To quote
Greenshaw himself:
“It looked like his head and neck were kind of made
together... He was real bright, something like rubbing mercury on nickel, but
just as smooth as glass. Different angles give different lighting.... When I
saw him standing in the middle of the road I immediately stopped the car and
asked if he was a foreigner, but no sound came out of his mouth.”
Thinking quickly, Greenshaw ran back to his truck, grabbed
his camera and snapped several photographs of the creature before it ran off
into the night at speeds supposedly faster than a normal human could go.
And what exactly do Greenshaw’s photos depict? Well....
source: http://obscurban-legend.wikia.com/wiki/Falkville_Metal_Man |
It’s pretty clear from this photo that the “alien” is
nothing more than someone in a metallic asbestos or radiation suit. It is worth
noting that this sighting came only a few days after the more famous alien
encounter along the Pascagoula River in Mississippi detailed in the previous
entry. Perhaps this “encounter” was staged in an attempt to ride on the fame of
the mummy-robot story.
The question, though, is whether Greenshaw was in on the
hoax or just an innocent bystander. If
the former, his participation in the events brought him nothing but misfortune.
His report on the encounter was widely ridiculed and eventually led to his job
as chief of police being terminated. Whether or not Greenshaw knew the being
was just a prank, that ending seems rather harsh.
Let’s imagine for a moment, though, that the Metal Man
actually WAS a genuine extraterrestrial (or perhaps extradimensional) entity.
Could the metallic exterior have been a space suit for an entity that was not
used to Earth’s atmosphere? Or is the creature’s similarity to the Pascagoula
mummy-robots more than superficial? Could it also have been some sort of
synthetic being? Perhaps a slightly different model of the Pascagoula creatures?
Maybe it was a probe sent out to explore an environment its creators could not?
Greenshaw does describe the being as
having stiff, robot-like movements.
Encounters with other apparently mechanical alien beings
have been reported on multiple occasions. These creatures come in a surprising
variety of shapes.
For example, in 1977, Antonia La Rubia of Paciencia, Brazil
reported being abducted on his way to work by beings with metallic scales and
tentacle-like arms. Each entity stood upon a single leg with a flared base that
La Rubia described as looking like the base of a barstool. Each creature also
carried a belt of syringe-like instruments. One of the beings used a syringe to
zap La Rubia with a blue light and carry him into a waiting space ship. Inside,
the robots used a piano-like device to show him a series of images, some of them
depicting himself being examined by blue lights from their instruments (though
La Rubia’s account makes no mention of him actually being examined. Perhaps
those memories were removed by the robots?).
They also drew some of his blood before returning him to Earth.
Another 1977 encounter with apparently robotic beings occurred
in Prospect, Kentucky. While driving home one night Lee Parish spotted a
rectangular craft hovering in the sky. When he finally arrived home he
discovered a half hour gap missing from his memory. Under hypnosis Parish
recalled being brought aboard the strange craft where he was confronted by
three blocky, mechanical creatures. The largest being resembled a “tombstone”
and had a single jointed arm jutting out of it. Another, shorter being was pure
white with a rough “head” and arms that did not move. Though the beings never
spoke, Parish got the impression that this one was somehow the leader. The
smallest being was bright red and had a single, unjointed limb projecting from
it.
The red and black machine-creatures examined Parish (the
black one apparently causing a painful cold, burning feeling when it’s limb
contacted him) while the white being observed. Once the machines were done with
their examination they merged with one another and vanished, at which point
Parish was returned to his car.
Yet another strange encounter with mechanical aliens occurred
in 1951 over the skies of Georgia. Pilot Fred Reagan was flying his plane when
he was sucked upwards by an unknown force and crashed into a lozenge-shaped
UFO. Reagan immediately found himself teleported inside the craft, where he was
met by three foot tall metal aliens that he described as looking like asparagus
stalks.
The beings apologized for the crash and gave him a medical
exam to make sure he was not injured. During
the procedure, so Reagan claims, they found cancer within his body and removed
it as an apology for the trouble they had caused. The robots then deposited him
safely in a field next to the wreckage of his plane. On an unnerving side note,
Reagan died less than a year later due to brain tissue damage which was
believed to have been caused by exposure to high levels of radiation.
This variety of unusual robotic beings raises some
interesting speculative questions. Is each type sent out by a different alien
species? Or is it possible that there is just one investigating alien species
and each variety of robot is simply a different design used for a specific
purposes that the humans do not comprehend?
SOURCES
Cryptopia article on the Metal Man
True Tales of the Unexplained article on the Metal Man
Bogleech article on the Asparagus rods, The Prospect Monoliths, La Rubia Barstool Robots and other obscure extraterrestrials.
A report on the Prospect Mechanical Monoliths
A report on the La Rubia Barstool Robots
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