Honey, Aliens Shrunk the Kids

With a title like that, I really can't blame you for clicking on this article, and I really hope that you won't be disappointed. Today I have another case from the UFOs Northwest archives which involves the apparent abduction of an 18-year-old and his brother by otherworldly beings, which seemingly resulted in the two young victims becoming spontaneously shorter overnight...

The New Gloucester Abduction

It was 1973, the dreaded Year of the Humanoids, when an anonymous witness, his brother and two other friends - who were driving close to the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Maine - suddenly became aware of a bright UFO following them, visible in the window of the driver's side of the car. They were on the road towards Middle Range Pond when they first saw it, and they promptly decided to make a 'sharp left' towards Oxford, Maine in what was presumably an attempt to evade the odd object. After they got to the Oxford Plains Speedway, they turned around and headed back the way they had come.

They had just reached the apple orchard by the intersection between Route #26, Outlet Road and Quarry Road (the latter of which was known as Shaker Village Road at the time) when they noticed that they had seemingly slipped into the Twilight Zone. There were no other cars on the busy and usually well-travelled road, and the Sun had gone down 'awfully fast'. The stars were apparently abnormally large in the night sky, with the witness saying that it felt as if he could 'reach out to them'. The world around them appeared to have gone completely silent - with the usual chirping of the crickets being totally absent. In this odd state, the witness could feel and hear his heart pounding in his ears, and he said that it was like they 'were inside a vacuumed bottle'.

The UFO suddenly made itself visible once again - hovering above what is still the only tree that is placed slightly ahead of its fellows in the orchard. It was a large, round object which 'lit up orange' and was totally silent. The four dumbstruck witnesses just sat and stared at the aerial enigma for what they thought at the time to be roughly one hour. However, when they finally decided to return home, the person who would later report the incident to UFOs Northwest noticed that 'it became daylight way too soon', and requested that his brother - who was driving the 1967 Tan Chevy Nova in which the group was travelling - redirect them to the Auburn, Maine police department so that they could report the bizarre happening. However, they were apparently about to witness further strange events.

This is sadly where the narrative gets a little cloudy. The witness said that he would write back to the organisation detailing his further experiences, but failed to do so if I am interpreting the records stored on the organisation's website correctly. However, he did describe (confusingly in an earlier letter) the bizarre physiological effects that this event had on him and his brother. Trying to report their abduction - it was an abduction, the witness clarifies, saying that they 'were taken onboard' and released one day later - was apparently a mistake. Instead, he elected to go to a local hospital for a checkup, seeing as his nose was bleeding, the whites of his eyes had gone a 'deep orange', and his lungs ached when he breathed. He was understandably 'very concerned' about this, but his shock would only get greater when the nurse read his height as 5ft 9 inches, seeing as he was supposed to be over 5ft 10 inches tall. Telling her that she was incorrect, he had the nurse re-check the measurements only to find that he had seemingly lost an inch of height overnight.

Map of the terrain around the abduction

When he and his brother returned home, their mother was apparently very vocal in her alarm at the state of her children. She demanded to know what had happened and remarked that they were both shorter and that she wanted to know what had happened to their eyes. Presumably panicking at this point, the witness ran to his bathroom mirror and was horrified to note that, indeed, he 'didn't look right'. In an effort to prove to the local authorities that this had happened, he implored them to check his high-school medical records and the photographs taken on his eighteenth birthday, roughly two weeks before the apparent abduction event. He asked them to compare how he looked now and how he was recorded as being back then. 'How many 18-year-olds lose an inch overnight?'

Analysis

I'm not sure what to make of this case. I know that at least one case in which the height of a UFO witness spontaneously changed after the event, and so this report is not unique. The language used by the witness in the letters transcribed on the UFOs Northwest website make me think that he is either possibly executing a rather-immature hoax, or is genuinely emotional and panicked to an extreme degree by the memories he now possesses. I think that I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one, especially since he said that 'the emotional experience of my abduction never stops'.

Source

UFOs Northwest - Man Recalls Abduction Experience, He Sustained Injury from Experience

Where Did Lillian Carney Go?

An old photograph of the Aroostook River (circa 1920)

One Sunday - August 8, 1897 to be precise - Mr and Mrs Carney decided to go out blueberry picking in the Mullen Bog, which is apparently situated just west of Aroostook River in Masardis, Maine. This entire region is surrounded by dense forests and secluded lakes, and is just 15 miles from the Canadian border. They brought their daughter, Lillian, with them. She was only six years and five months old at the time, and so when she wandered away from her parents a search party was quickly organised. She would not be seen again until 46 hours had elapsed - and she had a bizarre story to tell her rescuers.

An Unnatural Sunshine
As soon as her parents realised that she was missing and that she could not be located after an initial hour of searching, they called for assistance - and were rewarded with an extensive search that lasted until midnight that night. On Monday morning, 200 concerned citizens joined the search effort - combing every inch of the forest 'without finding a trace of the lost child'. The distraught family and their friends ended up staying in the dense woods throughout both nights.
One day later, on Tuesday morning, 300 men turned up to the ever-growing search effort. It was roughly 10am when one Mr. Burt Pollard found Lillian 'two or three miles from where she started'. She seemed to be perfectly calm and collected, and was asking for her mother. There were some wild berries in her hand, but she said that she wouldn't want to eat them for fear that they might negatively impact her health. Guns were fired as joyful signals and the steam whistle at the Simpson Mill sounded to alert people that the child had been found. Tired but satisfied, everyone returned to their daily business.
When questioned about what she had seen while missing, she said that 'the sun shined all the time in the woods' - which has struck many a researcher (including David Paulides) as being extremely odd. The original newspaper source felt the need to clarify that the moon had been shining brightly for some of the time she was alone in the woods, but this also strongly implies that it was also partially cloudy for some duration of the period. When further asked about her experience, she claimed to have heard some people talking a day previously (these were presumably the search party) but had kept still for fear that they might've been 'tramps'. She also claimed to have seen 'little things' roughly the size of her cat, but had clapped her hands to scare them away. The newspaper speculated that these could've been rabbits.
It is interesting to note the similarities between this 1897 case and the more modern Missing 411 phenomenon. People who are victims of this bizarre phenomenon usually swiftly vanish without a trace, and then turn up (either alive or dead) quite close to where they originally disappeared from. This is certainly true for Lillian. Another odd link between this case and the Missing 411 phenomenon is the activity of berry-picking, which has been noted by David Paulides as being a strange constant in several cases.
We also have the manner in which the child seemed to have been unaware that anyone was looking for her, and remained perfectly calm throughout the whole ordeal. I would almost say that she experienced something like a jump forwards in time - there one moment and then not there anymore until 10am on Tuesday morning. Where did she go? Well, Paulides implied on a podcast called Where Did the Road Go? that he is of the opinion that the so-called sun seen by Lillian was actually some artificial light-source. What would artificial lights have been doing in the 1800s?

Sources
Lewiston Evening Journal - Aug 12, 1897
'The Devil's in the Detail' interview with David Paulides on Where Did the Road Go? Podcast