ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Shirley:
This is Shirley McNull, a friend of the Aztec Public Library. I am here in Cedar Hill today with some nice folks. They are going to talk about some of their experiences with UFOs including a conversation with a gentleman who went to the crash site or witnessed something at the crash site in Hart Canyon. Today is Saturday the 25th of November, year 2000.

Sylvia:
We're Charles and Sylvia Pargin. We lived at Chimney Rock which is 17 miles southwest of Pagosa Springs when we saw the one we really witnessed. Charles had someone tell him about the one that happened down here, the crash at Hart Canyon. It was Lloyd Lock of Durango, Colorado. He owned a garage there, and when he found out about it he immediately came down here to see what was going on. They were already wrapping it up and wouldn't let him too close to the site. He told Charles a little about it.

Charles:
He said the police were there and they were very secretive about it and didn't want it to be known publicly.

Sylvia:
Was it the next day they hauled it out? I think it was. I don't know that we know too much more about that because Mr. Lock died a long time ago.

Shirley:
Do you know if anybody told him not to tell about it?

Charles:
No, I don't think they did.

Sylvia:
I think he was down there right after it happened. He got in his car and came. I don't know how he found out about it, but he did and he was there right at the beginning. We didn't really realize how exciting it was at the time. And yet, we did, too, when they said there were little people on it.

Shirley:
Were you living here at the time?

Sylvia:
No, we still lived near Pagosa Springs.

Shirley:
So he wasn't able to go to the actual site because they wouldn't let him?

Sylvia:
Yea, he said something about that he had to stop at a road but he could kind of see what was going on Still, he said they were putting it under canvas at the time he got there. That's just what we got from him.

Shirley:
How long ago did he die?

Sylvia:
I guess it's been twenty years, hasn't it?

Charles:
Between '63 and '70, somewhere in there I think.

Sylvia:
That's a long time ago.

Charles:
I think that's about all we could say about that other one.

Sylvia:
It is too bad someone didn't talk to him earlier but no one did anything then.

Shirley:
Now you can tell about your Chimney Rock and, in the mean time if you think of something else about this other site, feel free to talk about it.

Sylvia:
On the one we saw, we owned Pargins Lake which is Capote Lake now at Chimney Rock. I was out hanging up clothes and it was in the winter time but we didn't have much snow because I could go out to the clothes line. For some reason I didn't hear a sound but I guess I picked up my basket and turned to go to the house and looked up at the sky. Here was this great big silver thing sitting up there, northeast.

Charles:
Well, it was west and a little south of where we lived, almost over Chimney Rock.

Sylvia:
Not when I first saw it. It was the other direction. I just stood there looking up at it. All at once Charles' dad was very, very interested in these flying saucers. We have a book on them that he bought. He's been gone many, many years. We wished at the time, we said, "Oh if that had only been there." So, anyway, when I really thought, I ran to the house and I hollered, "Come around here, guys. There's a flying saucer!" It was just kind of in fun.
Charles, I don't know, maybe he was up. They were working nights on Wolf Creek Pass. He and our son-in-law and our daughter all dashed out the kitchen door. I said, "Look!" They just looked a minute at where it was then. It went like a streak right towards Chimney Rock. Just past it, it stopped dead still and sat there. We were all looking up in the sky at it, wondering what in the world could this be. Charles remembers it turning. If I remembered it, I've forgotten it now. But he thought it made a couple of circles, just in the same place, not big. All at once it shot, just like a bullet, clear across the sky and it was gone in nothing flat.
That was really something for us. We just couldn't get over it. Of course, we told everybody we knew and they laughed at us because we had seen a flying saucer. We knew it was and we marveled at it because we had been interested in them a long time on account of Charles' dad. It was sort of in fun at times that we talked about it.

Charles:
The way I remember it, we could see it just a little south of Chimney Rock. It just sat there and all of a sudden it shot through the sky and stopped almost right straight over us. It sat up there for a while. Our son-in-law who was there says, "It's an optical illusion. We didn't see anything." But we knew we did.

Sylvia:
There were four people seeing the same thing and how could it be an optical illusion?

Charles:
It sat up there for maybe a minute and all of a sudden it made two or three circles and then just shot off southeast. It was gone before you could count to ten.

Shirley:
Was it round?

Charles:
Round, yea.

Sylvia:
Exactly like the ones you see in pictures. Afterwards when we saw pictures of those big silver things it was just exactly like that.

Shirley:
It was silver?

Sylvia:
Yea.

Shirley:
And this was in broad daylight?

Sylvia:
Yes, in the morning, probably about 11:00 in the morning.

Shirley:
Was it pretty high over you when it hovered?

Sylvia:
Oh, yea. It was high and yet it was plain, really plain.

Charles:
It was a sight that I will always remember and always be glad that I happened to see it.

Shirley:
You're really sure it just wasn't an illusion?

Sylvia:
Oh, no, it wasn't. It really wasn't. We saw it.

Charles:
We never did hear anybody else say anything, that they had seen it or anything.

Sylvia:
Of course, I don't know that I had read that book at that time so I might now have thought too much about it. But we still have the book around here somewhere.

Shirley:
About what year would that have been?

Sylvia:
Weren't they married about '57?

Charles:
Yea.

Shirley:
Were you scared?

Sylvia:
No. We weren't scared, 'cause I didn't think anything about it doing anything or anybody coming down out of it.

Shirley:
Little green men...

Sylvia:
Yea, ha, ha.

Shirley:
Have you seen any other strange things in the sky that you remember?

Sylvia:
I don't think so.

Charles:
You just can't imagine or believe, from where that thing was sitting up there, how fast it went to get out of sight.

Sylvia:
So they really have something, whoever is handling that.

Shirley:
And that was in the days of fairly slow planes. They didn't have the technology we've got now.

Charles:
I guess that's about the size of it.

Shirley:
That was a good talk. Got anything else that you can think of?

Sylvia:
I don't think so. I thought several times about going down to the library and telling our little story but I just never did.

Shirley:
I've seen a few in my day, too.

Sylvia:
Have you?

Shirley:
Yes.

Charles:
Where about did you see it?

Shirley:
Well, when I was a little kid, I remember seeing...you've heard of the large number of them that flew over Farmington...we saw them. We lived on Southside Road and we would watch for them. They would fly down the river, several of them. We didn't know what they were, had no idea.

Sylvia:
I don't know that we ever watched close enough to know whether we might have seen anything else, although we're always fairly interested in what's going on up there in the sky. Even here we've seen those planets that just look so low. Charles and I thought last summer that this one had a platform or something behind it. I guess it was just the glow of it because we thought it was sitting up there and somebody was doing something. She called into the college and asked the what was going on up there in the sky. They said it was a planet.

Sylvia:
Right now, coming up from the east, just below Orion, is Sirius, the Dog Star. We thought several times it was a flying saucer because it will glow green and red and kind of look like it is going round and round. It is supposed to be the way the light is coming through the atmosphere, but it looks really like a flying saucer.

Sylvia:
Well, this thing Charles and I watched was right off out in there when we're in the house, but we couldn't see it because of that big tree. So then, last Spring, here the thing is, sitting over here. I said to Charles, "There's another one of those things out there." He said it was just a star.

Shirley:
What's your opinion of why the government refuses to admit that there are things out there that can't be explained?

Sylvia:
I don't know. I read something in the paper just recently where this man said there is something, and why won't the government tell us about it. I don't know why they keep it a secret.

Shirley:
There probably have been millions of people who have seen them.

Sylvia:
All those stories we have read.

Shirley:
Down in Mexico, Mexico City, I guess there are quite a few of them and thousands of people have seen those things. The government still says, no, they don't exist.

Charles:
Well, I'd like to see one again. I'd take a little more time and think more about it than we did that first time. That time it was just there and then it was gone.

Shirley:
You would be surprised at the number of people that do studies on them that would love to see one just one time. So think how fortunate you were to get to see one.

Shirley:
Especially back in those days when very few people know about them.

Charles:
And to think that our son-in-law was there and he saw it too and said it was just an optical illusion. There was nothing to it.

Shirley:
Does he still believe that? Does he still think that's the case?

Charles:
I suppose he does. I don't know.

Shirley:
Do you have anything else to add?

Sylvia:
I don't think so. I knew it wouldn't take but thirty seconds to tell our story.

Shirley:
You told a nice story and we thank you for sharing.

Charles:
I'd like for one to land out here and I could take a ride in it.

Sylvia:
You know I used to think that but now I think about that and I'm kind of nervous about going with them. I don't think I'd want to. I don't know where they're from. They don't know our language and we don't know theirs. I've seen that movie from Roswell and the little guy laying out there.

Shirley:
Oh, the "Alien Autopsy"?

Sylvia:
Yes.

Charles:
At that time the funny paper had Buck Rogers. It wasn't so far fetched after all.

Shirley:
No, it wasn't. It certainly wasn't. Well I guess science fiction has come true. I've read where they describe them in the bible and on petroglyphs so they have been around forever apparently. Those people were aware even that far back.

Charles:
And I hope I live long enough to really see one close up.

Shirley:
We hope the government will fess up finally.

Sylvia:
You know all those pilots that have seen them real close but they still deny it, the government does.

Shirley:
Alien abductions, a lot of people have been through that. They say it is mass hysteria, which doesn't make sense to me.

Sylvia:
There was that one that was taken down into Arizona. I remember that story. It was news for several days.

Shirley:
I think he was abducted around Flagstaff.
Well, thanks for sharing. We appreciate it.

Charles:
You are sure welcome.

Shirley:
I can tell that you really enjoy telling these stories.

Sylvia:
We hardly ever tall anybody. They look at you like...we are getting old now and we don't want them to think we're goofy.

Shirley:
I don't think you're goofy.