Night of the Hunter

Lost in the Woods

Many folk tales tell of hunters who stray into enchanted forests and find themselves at the mercy of otherworldly beings. While our shrinking forests are no longer the uncharted wildernesses they once were, they may yet be the last refuges of the old gods - now reduced to portraying alien tricksters in our prosaic space-age mythologies. One such hunter who found himself turned prey was 28-yr-old Donald Schrum.

On September 4, 1964, Schrum was hunting deer with bow and arrow in the remote Cisco Grove region of California. He became separated from his two companions, and as night fell he realised that he was hopelessly lost.

He climbed a tree and strapped himself to the trunk with his belt so he could spend the night safely out of the reach of predators. Then he saw a light approaching in the sky.

Thinking it might be a search helicopter, Schrum descended from his perch and lit a signal fire. But as the object drew closer, he saw it was a bizarre dome-shaped craft topped by a flashing light. Frightened by the unearthly sight, he hastily climbed back up the tree.

Barking up the Wrong Tree

The terrible trio

The craft landed nearby and a pair of silver-suited humanoids emerged. They walked over to Schrum's tree and stood staring up at him.

They were soon joined by a stocky robot with glowing red eyes. The robot's hinged jaw dropped open, and it puffed a cloud of white vapour up at Schrum, who felt nauseous and blacked out.

He regained consciousness to find the two humanoids shinning up the trunk towards him. Luckily, "they didn't seem to know anything about climbing trees," and their efforts to reach him were hopelessly clumsy.

Schrum kept the humanoids at bay them at bay by shaking the tree and flicking lighted matches at them. However, they were nothing if not persistent.

In desperation, he let fly with his bow and arrow. He scored a direct hit on the robot, which let off a bright blue spark as the arrow struck it. The assailants backed away in momentary confusion but soon regrouped. A second robot now joined them.

A series of flashes passed between the two robots. Then they both advanced on Schrum and knocked him out with another cloud of noxious vapour. Again, he recovered just in time to fend off the humanoids, who were making another attempt to scale the tree.

Stakeout

The bizarre siege dragged on all night. The robots unleashed further gas attacks while the humanoids repeatedly attempted to climb the tree. Schrum fired off two more arrows and also set fire to several small branches, which he hurled down at his tormentors.

"I tried all kind of goofy things... to distract them," he remembered. "I tried yelling and making all kind of noises. When I would shout, these two in human form would look up. All I could see was a black patch of face and the eyes. I couldn't make out any features."

As dawn approached, several more entities joined the group of attackers. Between them, they let off a particularly potent cloud of gas, and Schrum blacked out once again. He woke to find the entities gone and his nightmare finally over.

Alien Theatrics

It seems unlikely that an alien hunting party should fail to capture a single human cowering up a tree. The entire incident seems more like a bizarre act of theatre than a failed abduction attempt.

Considering Schrum was a hunter, it is intriguing that his attackers acted more like wild animals than rational beings. They circle round him and spit 'venom' but make no attempt to communicate or capture him by subterfuge. They are afraid of fire, and like nocturnal beasts they retreat at dawn.

Perhaps the episode was merely a vivid projection of Schrum's unconscious qualms at killing for pleasure. Or then again, perhaps aliens really don't know how to climb trees.

Sources

Peter Brookesmith: UFO: The Complete Sightings Catalogue, p80.
Jacques Vallee: Dimensions, pp105-106.
Timothy Good: Alien Base, pp353-357.
Coral Lorenzen: Flying Saucers: The Invasion From Outer Space, pp74-77.