The Cisco Grove Incident
| Incident Name: | The Cisco Grove Incident |
|---|---|
| Incident Date: | September 4, 1964 |
| State/Provence: | California |
| City/Town : | Cisco Grove |
| Country : | USA |
On Friday, September 4, 1964, Donald Shrum and two friends from his job at Aerojet made camp in a remote section of wilderness near the Loch Leven Lakes in an area called Cisco Grove, roughly 60 miles northeast of Sacramento, CA. The three men had planned a relaxing weekend of bow hunting for deer, but those plans would change later that evening as Shrum experienced an exhausting and terrifying UFO close encounter of the worst kind.
As night approached, Shrum got lost and separated from his hunting buddies and found himself isolated on a bluff almost a mile from camp. An experienced woodsman, Shrum decided it would be wiser to spend the night in a tree safe from predators rather than trying to find his way back over rough terrain in the dark. Seeing an unusual moving light on the horizon, Shrum built three signal fires to attract what he thought were his rescuers. The fires did seem to attract this object’s attention, but not the kind anyone wants. Beyond his wildest imagination and expectations, he would soon find himself in an all-night battle to save his life or at least his freedom. As Shrum perched in his pine tree 12 feet off the ground and quietly observed this light, he realized it was something like a headlight on a massive cigar-shaped craft. A smaller ship emerged from one of this mothership’s large rectangular ports and took a position some distance to his north.
Shortly after that, Shrum could hear rustling in the brush heading his direction. What emerged were a combination of beings he described as humanoid and wearing space suits and at least a couple of what appeared to him as clunky robots who seemed to be on a mission to study the flora. Once they had noticed Shrum in the tree, however, a few of these weird beings seemed intent on abducting him for reasons he feared to ponder. Until daybreak, Shrum would fight off these intruders with everything he had at his disposal. Shooting arrows and lobbing flaming personal items at them only seemed to delay their trying to climb his tree in between assaults with a mysterious white gaseous mist that would render him temporarily unconscious. Perhaps ironically, it was employing primitive means to counter advanced technology, but whatever the unfathomable cause, it worked.
Donald Shrum lived to tell his tale but only after decades of PTSD and secrecy to protect his reputation. While this story may seem unbelievable to you, the United States Air Force certainly believed it and went so far as to rake away all the evidence, literally. What remains is one of the most bizarre and disturbing testimonies in UFO lore – one man’s battle against extraterrestrials at Cisco Grove.
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| Humanoid and Robot as illustrated in ‘Aliens in the Forest: The Cisco Grove UFO Encounter’ |
It was September 4th of 1964 and 28-year-old Donald Shrum and a group of friends were bow and arrow hunting at Cisco Grove in Placer County, California. Amidst the excitement of the hunting, Shrum had somehow become separated from the rest of his party – and decided to sleep in a tree for safety as nightfall approached. However, his peace wouldn’t last long as he saw a white light that moved with a zig-zagging motion through the trees at a low altitude. At first, Shrum thought that it was a helicopter, and so he jumped down from the tree and began lighting flares to attract attention to himself – under the assumption that his friends had launched a rescue party. Eventually, the light turned towards him and came to a stop about fifty yards away from the tree.
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| Donald Shrum |
As the object landed, he realised that it was clearly not a helicopter, and was instead something completely alien (pun intended) to him. The UFO was apparently cigar-shaped and around the size of a 14-story building – according to a description of the incident given by two ufologists on Coast to Coast AM. A smaller scout ship was expelled from the large craft, which landed nearby.
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| Mothership and Scout Craft as illustrated in Noe Torres’ book ‘Aliens in the Forest: The Cisco Grove UFO Encounter |
Now frightened, Shrum clambered back up into the tree for safety (or to gain a better vantage point, depending on which account you look at). After a short period of time, three beings approached the tree. Two of them were humanoids – described as being a little over five feet tall, with a silvery uniform that covered their heads. The description given on Coast to Coast AM also suggested that the entities wore something similar to welding goggles. The third approached slightly later in the encounter and resembled a classic sci-fi robot. It was darker in colour and had two reddish-orange eyes. In place of a mouth, the robot had a slit-like opening that would ‘drop’ open like the door of an oven. Shrum’s shock soon turned to panic as the entities began to shake the tree, attempting to dislodge him from his perch. He vividly remembers that the ‘robot-like’ entity would let its lower jaw drop, before reaching inside the rectangular gap thus revealed – and emit a puff of smoke in Shrum’s direction. This smoke would then spread like a mist and would make him lose consciousness when it reached him.
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| Humanoid and Robot as illustrated in ‘Aliens in the Forest: The Cisco Grove UFO Encounter’ |
When Shrum came back to consciousness again, the beings were still trying to get him out of the tree and he felt nauseous. He attempted to scare the entities away by throwing bits of lighted clothing and matches at them, which momentarily caused them to back away before continuing their assault. Somehow, he also observed that audio signals from the UFO seemed to be influencing the behaviour of the occupants. Finally – in a finale to the first confrontation that is worthy of an action movie – Shrum managed to load and shoot an arrow at the invaders and hit the robot. This impact caused a spark to fly off the creature, indicating that it was indeed metallic. He shot two more arrows at the beings, each time causing them to scatter and back away from the tree.
However, not even this daring retaliation would give the aliens cause to retreat, as they were soon joined by a second robot which once again used white vapour coming from its mouth to render Shrum unconscious. When Shrum woke again, the two non-robot humanoids were climbing the tree. He managed to dislodge them by shaking the tree and throwing various objects at them. These bizarre attacks continued, on and off, for most of the night. As dawn approached, yet more humanoids arrived on the scene – and a large volume of the strange smoke made Shrum black out once more.
When Shrum next woke, the aliens were finally gone but he was only hanging from the tree by his belt. He was soon rescued and reunited with the hunters – one of whom (Vincent Alvarez) had also become lost during the night and seen the same UFO, corroborating part of his story. Unfortunately, Donald Shrum was the only one who saw the otherworldly invaders that night.
