THE CAPE MAY INCIDENT 
by John A. Keel 
Throughout 1966 and 1967, I investigated a long series of unusual UFO incidents in the state of New Jersey. Reports on most of these cases have gone unpublished but have been circulated privately to responsible researchers around the world. The following article is condensed from my extensive review of a strange series of situations in Cape May, N.J. I purposely withheld this report from print for two years, waiting to see if similar or identical events might occur elsewhere. Several of the apparently trivial or even coincidental details in this case have now been repeated consistently throughout the U.S. even though they have received no publicity and are largely unknown to the ufological mainstream. The telephone “wrong numbers” have become a common correlative factor in many cases, to cite an example. The inexplicable radio signals are another. 
Ivan T. Sanderson summarized very briefly the appearance of “Tiny,” described here, in his book, Uninvited Visitors (page 163), but I never intended to publish the full report since it was certain to raise more controversy, and was inconclusive. Now, however, we have corroborative incidents from many other areas and I feel that publication of this report might lead other researchers to more fruitful investigations in their own locales. Essentially we seem to be dealing with an elaborate and carefully executed plan designed to attract little or no notice even among ufologists. The use of telephones, automobiles and other mundane objects has been ignored by UFO-philes obsessed with the extraterrestrial concept. In fact, 90 percent of all the techniques employed by the UFO-related entities are impressively ordinary and unobtrusive. These techniques can be easily overlooked by investigators who fail to extract every minute detail from the witnesses. And it is necessary to collect and scrutinize the details from many such cases before the broader “plan” becomes apparent. 
In the Cape May incident, as in so many others, you will see that the objects sighted are of less importance than the other events surrounding this family. 
The witnesses: 
Edward Christiansen (40) & Arline Christiansen (wife) (38) 
Children: Connie (17); Debby (13); Eric (9) 
Gwendoline Martino (26) (Arline’s sister) & Debbie Martino (7) 
The locale 
Wildwood Crest, New Jersey, is actually located on a thinly-populated island near the tip of Cape May, a peninsula in southern New Jersey. Several good highways link Wildwood with the mainland and the entire area is a popular summer resort and haven for yachtsmen. The U.S. Coast Guard maintains a number of large installations nearby. Directly across Jarvis Sound there is a large Coast Guard “Electronic Station” which is fenced off and guarded. Two very high antennae are located at this station and few of the local inhabitants have ever been inside the grounds. No one knows precisely what the function of the station is, or what kind of equipment it contains. This station and its towers are plainly visible from the Christiansen residence. 
In the wintertime this entire region is rather desolate, isolated, and most of the summer homes are closed. The total population of the island is about 8,000, spread over four small communities. 
Sighting No. 1, November 22, 1966 (Wednesday), 7:45 p.m. The seven witnesses listed above were driving southwards along the Garden State Parkway at a point just north of Mayville, when they all observed a large luminous object directly in front of them and falling straight downwards. It was bright red, green and white and plummeted straight down until it disappeared from sight. Their first reaction was that it was a crashing airplane. They continued driving until they were parallel to Burleigh, N.J. They then saw a large glowing sphere hovering just above the treetops a few miles to the front and right. Thinking that it was a fire from the crashed plane, they pulled over to the side of the road and stopped (it is illegal to stop on a four-lane parkway...but they did anyway). 
All the witnesses got out of the car (a 1966 Cadillac) to watch. Traffic was light, but several other cars did speed past them. They later estimated that the object was hovering over, or near, the small private airport near Erma, N.J. As they watched, the object began to move and they realized that it was not a fire but was some kind of flying sphere. The object seemed to move southwards a few miles, then executed a very sharp turn, flew back and passed directly above the witnesses. It was silent. They could not estimate its size or altitude, but it was apparently quite large and was flying low. As it approached their position, three powerful “headlights” became visible on the “front” of the object. These lights appeared to be elongated and passed from the top of the craft to the underside. The object disappeared northwards. The women became somewhat hysterical and their excitement alarmed the children. Two of the children began to cry. They all returned to the car and drove home to Wildwood Crest. 
Air Force interest 
They were all naturally puzzled and confused over what they had just seen. Edward Christiansen did not believe in flying saucers and was sure there was a natural explanation. His sister-in- law,Gwendoline Martino, decided to call the local Air Force base at Palmero, N.J. She spoke to an officer there and he seemed quite interested in her story and asked several questions. An hour later the family received a long-distance phone call from another Air Force base (none of them can remember the name of the base or the names of the officers) and they were all interviewed at great length by “three or four officers.” They were told that their conversation was being taped and the questions followed a pattern which suggested the officers were filling out detailed forms on the other end of the line. However, all the witnesses were disappointed to find that the Air Force would not give them any information or answer their own questions. As usual, it was a one-way channel and the witnesses learned nothing from the Air Force. 
The radio signals 
Mr. Christiansen owns a cabin cruiser and has a portable CB radio which, when not in use, is kept in a case. He does not keep it on his boat, but stores it at home when not in use. 
Later on the night of the first sighting, Mrs. Martino was preparing for bed. Her sister and brother-in-law were already sleeping. Mrs. Martino was in the bathroom when she suddenly heard a loud radio signal...a series of dots and dashes. She assumed that her brother-in-law had accidentally left his radio on. She continued to hear the signals as she entered their bedroom and awakened them. (She didn’t understand the radio and didn’t want to tamper with it) However, Mr. and Mrs. 
Christiansen were unable to hear the signals...and the radio was turned off and was in its case. 
The signals faded. Mrs. Martino went to bed baffled. 
The next day Mrs. Martino called a radio program on WMID, Atlantic City, and related the sighting of the night before in a beeperphone conversation which was aired on a program moderated by Mike Potash. Other people called in and verified the sighting, claiming they had also seen the object. One couple told of having seen a car-full of people parked by the Garden State Parkway watching the object...obviously they had seen the Christiansen family. 
A full account of this sighting was published in the Sunday Press, Atlantic City, N.J., on December 25, 1966. Mike Potash wrote the piece. 
Sighting No. 2, December 9, 1966 (Friday). Two weeks after the first sighting, another object appeared in the vicinity of the Christiansen home. Ed Christiansen had decided that the first incident was a combination of falling stars, man-made satellites, and airplanes. The second sighting, however, turned him into an avid UFO believer. 
Soon after 10 p.m. on the night of December 9, Mr. and Mrs. Christiansen were preparing to get into their car outside their home at Wildwood Crest when a brilliant white object flashed overhead, coming in from the Atlantic. It streaked overhead at a very high speed and then suddenly performed an “S”-shaped manuever directly over the towers of the Coast Guard electronic station. While the amazed couple watched, the object came to a sudden stop and hovered for several seconds over the towers. Then it shot straight up into the air into the starlit sky and “disappeared among the stars”; but it left a large cloud of smoke behind which lingered for several minutes and slowly dissipated. The sudden manuevers of the object left no doubt that it was not a satellite or other known object. The witnesses were badly shaken. 
Soon after this experience, the Christiansen family drove to Florida to spend the Christmas holidays. They were gone for about three weeks. 
Meanwhile in Cherry Hill, N.J. 
Mrs. Martino and her daughter, Debbie (7), were preparing for a short trip to Europe. Early in December, Mrs. Martino received a phone call which went like this: 
Female voice with slight accent: “Hello, Gwen...” 
Gwen: “Yes, this is Gwen...” 
Voice: “Gwen Stevens?” * 
Gwen: “No, this is Gwen Martino.” 
Voice: “You’re not Gwen Stevens?” 
Gwen: “No...you have the wrong Gwen.” 
Gwen hangs up. 
The woman called back again on two successive nights. The conversation was always the same. Gwen Martino has an unlisted phone number. 
Coincidence: A woman attempting to contact a Gwen Stevens dialed a wrong number and got another woman named Gwen. The same woman then made the same mistake twice again. 
Gwen Martino forgot this minor series of incidents until I asked her if she had received any unusual phone calls or wrong numbers recently. 
[ * Mrs. Jennifer (Jen) Stevens of Scoharie, N.Y., has never heard of this family nor does she have any knowledge of the incident (except for the anonymous item in Ivan Sanderson’s book). She was not active in UFO research at the time of this sequence of events.] (Editor’s Note: Mrs. Stevens became the founder of the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Investigating Committee, and edited UFO­Skywatch magazine. Like the Christiansen family, her family came to experience similar inexplicable events after a UFO sighting, complete with odd phone calls, an MIB encounter, and poltergeist manifestations) 
Phase Two: Motel Power Failure 
The Christiansen family started driving back from Florida on January 7, 1967. Late on the night of January 8, they decided to stop at a motel outside of Richmond, Virginia. Driving north on Highway 95­an eight-lane speedway­they saw a sign indicating there was a motel at the next turn-off. They turned off and drove two or three miles before they came to a rather old motel where they checked in. There were a few cars in front of the bungalows near the office, but they were assigned to rooms in the rear where there were no cars parked. (None of them can remember the name of the motel, but it was not a member of one of the large chains) 
During the night, Ed Christiansen got up to go to the bathroom and discovered that none of the lights were working. His daughter, Connie (17), in an adjoining room, also had the same experience. They all thought it was odd that a motel should turn off its power during the night. But none of them really were too concerned with this incident until I asked them to retrace every step of their trip home during my interview. 
Remember, the motel was directly outside of Richmond, Virginia. 
Part Two: The Strange Visitor 
To summarize the foregoing: the witnesses saw a UFO on November 22, 1966, and their observations were later verified by other witnesses in the area. Their report was made public on radio station WHID on November 23 and was published in detail in an Atlantic City newspaper a month later, while the Christiansens were in Florida and Mrs. Martino was in Europe. 
Mrs. Martino received a series of three “wrong numbers” after the first sighting, all asking for “Gwen Stevens.” 
There was a power failure, or a power shut-off, in the motel at which the Christiansens were staying outside of Richmond, Virginia. 
Let us now move on to January 9, 1967 (Monday). The route from Richmond, Virginia, to Wildwood, N.J., is long and circuitous. Wildwood, as stated earlier, is isolated on the tip of Cape May and is a long way from Highway 95...one of the main arteries which passes through several states, traverses the length of N.J. near the western border of the state and ultimately passes into New York City in the north. 
The Christiansen family arrived home in the middle of the afternoon of January 9. 
I should mention that they had recently changed addresses and had moved into a new house some distance from their old home. Neither their new home or phone number was listed in the current phone book. Nor was their address given in the newspaper story which had appeared two weeks previously. 
They settled down rather wearily to unpack after their long drive. They entered their house by the back door. The front door was still heavily bolted and locked, the way they had left it when they had gone to Florida. 
A knock at the door 
A knock at 5:30 p.m. brought Arline Christiansen from the kitchen where she had been preparing a lazy spaghetti dinner for her family. Her daughter, Connie, had first glanced out of the window to see who was knocking. 
“If it’s a salesman, don’t answer,” Arline had said. Connie reported: “It’s the strangest-looking man I’ve ever seen,” and so Mrs. Christiansen had gone to the door, unbolted and unlatched it. It was growing dark and was bitter cold outside. There was no car on the road outside (the Christiansen house is removed from other houses and settled areas), but there was a man standing on their doorstep. 
“Does Edward Christiansen live here?” the man asked. Arline admitted that he did. “I’m from the Missing Heirs Bureau,” the man continued. “Mr. Christiansen may have inherited a great deal of money. May I come in?” 
Mrs. Christiansen was taken aback and hesitated. 
“Mr. Christiansen may have inherited a great deal of money,” the man repeated. “I would like to ask him some questions. It will take about forty minutes.” 
It was an approach that was hard to resist. Mrs. Christiansen stepped back and invited the stranger in, calling out to her husband. 
Edward Christiansen is 6 ft. 2 in. tall and heavy set. The stranger towered over him and must have been at least 6 ft. 6 in. He was also enormously broad. He wore a furry hat “like Russians wear”, but, unlike Russian hats, it had a black visor on it. His hat was black and he wore a black coat with two ordinary side pockets in it. It was a very long coat and seemed to be made of thin material...two thin for the cold weather. 
The stranger entered and removed his hat. Ed, Arline and Connie all stared at him. He repeated that the interview would take only forty minutes. For credentials, he flashed a card which bore his picture and some writing. Later, none of the witnesses could recall what the writing on the card said. 
Edward Christiansen told him at the outset that a mistake had been made...that he could not believe that anyone had left him any money. The man assured him that he might, indeed, be the Edward Christiansen he was seeking and, in order to verify it, he would like to ask some questions. He removed his coat. There was a badge on his shirt pocket which he quickly covered with his hand and removed, placing it in his coat pocket. 
“It looked like a gold or brass badge,” Connie told me. “But it wasn’t an ordinary police badge or anything like that. We just got a glimpse of it...but it seemed to have a big ‘K’ on it with a small ‘x’ alongside and there were some letters or numbers around the edge. It was obvious that he didn’t want us to see it.” 
Description of visitor 
Height: 6 ft. 6 in. to 7 ft. tall 
Weight: Very heavy...maybe 300 pounds 
Dress: He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt made of a Dacron-like material. No jacket or coat (unusual considering how cold it was outside). His trousers were of a dark material, grey or black, and were a little too short. They rode high up his calves when he sat down. He wore dark socks and dark shoes with very thick rubber soles. 
Head and face: His head was unusually large and round but his face seemed angular, pointed. He had black hair which was closely cropped to his head, as if his head had been shaved and the hair was just growing in again. There was a perfectly round spot on the back of his head as if that area had recently been shaven. His ears seemed to jut out because of the lack of hair. His nose and mouth seemed relatively normal, but his eyes were large, protruding (“like thyroid eyes”) , and set wide apart. 
Body: His body was very broad...fat. 
Arms and legs: His arms and legs were unusually thin in comparison to the grossness of the rest of his body. 
Complexion: His skin was very pale, almost a deathly white, and no body hair was visible on his arms or legs, nor did he appear to have any trace of facial hair. 
Special features: One of his eyes appeared to have a “cast,”like a glass eye. His eyes did not seem to move in unison. 
Connie and Arline were most fascinated by a strange feature on his leg. When he sat down his pants legs rode up his calves, revealing a long thick green wire attached to the inside of his leg. This wire or cord came out of his socks and disappeared up under his trousers. It appeared to be indented into his leg and was covered by a large brown spot at one point on his calf. Connie, a bright 17-year- old girl, seemed to have studied him the most carefully and gave the best description. However, I interviewed all three witnesses separately and at great length and found that all their descriptions agreed. 
Speech: His speech was very strange. His voice was high and “tinny” and it seemed odd to all the witnesses that such a voice should come from such a large man. He spoke in a dull, emotionless monotone in clipped words and phrases, “like a computer.” Connie said that he sounded as if he were reciting everything...that it seemed he was giving carefully-memorized speeches. 
I should mention here that all of the witnesses thought they were being visited by a human being, albeit a most unusual one, and that it never occurred to any of them that he could be anything else. None of the witnesses were familiar with contactee stories, although, like nearly everyone else, they had heard that “little men” were piloting the saucers. In short, they did not connect this visit in any way with their UFO sightings. They were, in fact, rather puzzled by my great interest in the story of this visitation. 
The missing heir interview 
After the man had introduced himself (none of the family could remember his name: they all said it was something common like Brown or Smith, but they did remember that he said his friends called him “Tiny” ­ which we will call him in this report) the family dog, Gigi, snarled and barked at him. He spoke to the dog and calmed it. Before he left he was scratching the dog’s ears and petting it. 
When Tiny had seated himself, Mrs. Christiansen told him that they were about to eat and asked him if he wished to join them. He replied that he was on a diet but that he would like a glass of water in about ten minutes. He seemed to wheeze, they all noted, like a man with asthma. He appeared to have difficulty breathing. 
He produced a small notebook and a pen and once again explained that the interview would take about forty minutes. Ed Christiansen repeated that he could not believe he was an heir and that it was all a waste of time. Tiny assured him that it was not, and he also carefully explained that this was not a confidence game of any kind. He was looking for an Edward Christiansen who was due to inherit a large sum of money and he would need information about Ed’s past history to determine if he was the man. He then proceeded to ask a long series of questions. He wanted to know if Ed had any scars or birthmarks (a reasonable question for a missing heirs investigator) and when Ed said he had a scar on his back from an operation, and an appendix scar, Tiny asked for every detail...the length, width, and exact position of those scars. He also wanted a list of all the schools Ed had attended, and so on. He showed no interest in Ed’s marital or family history, nor in Mrs. Christiansen. At one point he did ask the couple if they would be willing to fly to any place in the United States to collect the inheritance, explaining that they would have to be present when the will was read. Ed and Arline agreed that they would make themselves available for such a trip. 
Plastic 
Tiny told them that he was from Richmond, Virginia. He did not have a car, he admitted, but had met a “plastics salesman” in the Elks’ Club in Richmond. The “plastics salesman” was driving to New York and had offered him a lift. The salesman had dropped him off at the Christiansen home and had “gone for coffee” but would pick him up later. Later the Christiansens wondered about this story since it seemed unlikely that a friend casually met in a bar would drive hundreds of miles out of his way (as I pointed out, Wildwood is far from the route to New York City) to take a stranger on a mission. They also wondered why Tiny was so poorly dressed for the bitter cold weather. 
Tiny also asked Ed for full details about the automobiles he owned. (He has a pick-up truck and a 1966 Cadillac. He is a prominent local businessman.) 
Pill 
According to Connie, Tiny’s face gradually grew redder and redder as he talked and after a few minutes he turned to the girl and said: “May I have that glass of water now?” Connie fetched the water for him and he took out a large yellow capsule which he gulped down. He returned to normal after taking it. 
As he asked questions, Tiny appeared to write down Ed’s answers in his notebook. All of the witnesses said that he seemed to be writing in some kind of rapid, indecipherable shorthand. (None of them were able to duplicate the symbols he used.) 
The names 
Tiny mentioned three specific names and asked Ed if he recognized any of them. Ed did not and when I interviewed him a month later he was only able to remember one of them­“Roy Stevens.” Connie said that she thought another of the names was “Taylor” but she wasn’t sure. In any case, they were all relatively common names and, since the family attached little importance to the visit at the time, they all forgot. (I recited a number of names in the UFO field, like Desmond Leslie, George Adamski, and so on, but none of these names sounded like those mentioned by Tiny.) 
Coincidence 
It is important that Ed did not know about Gwendoline’s “wrong numbers” in December when she was addressed as “Gwen Stevens.” Nor had Gwen heard about the three names, including “Roy Stevens,” until I brought this up in my interviews. 
During part of Tiny’s interview with Ed, Arline and Connie left the room and giggled amongst themselves about the strange man’s appearance. 
The car 
Finally, less than an hour after he arrived (it was probably precisely forty minutes), Tiny closed his notebook and put on his hat and coat. He told Ed that they would be notified by mail within ten days and told whether or not Ed was the missing heir. Arline was in the kitchen when the man left and she decided she was going to watch him and see where he went. She went out of the kitchen door and stood in the dark watching Tiny as he walked towards the road. “His shoes squished loudly as he walked,”she said. When he reached the road, he made a gesture with his hand and a black 1963 Cadillac drove through the trees and pulled up. Its headlights were out and she could not see the driver. Tiny climbed into the car and it drove away, its headlights still out. 
The phone call 
The next morning Ed was alone in the house when the phone rang. He answered and a female voice spoke to him. It sounded like a local call, not long distance. “We have located the Edward Christiansen we were looking for in California,” she said, after she explained that she was calling about the interview of Mr. ----- (Ed doesn’t recall Tiny’s name) of the night before. Ed told her that he had felt sure he wasn’t the right one, thanked her and hung up. When he told his family about the call, they all dismissed the incident from their minds until my interview with them. 
The riddle 
As Tiny was standing by the door, about to leave, he recited a riddle to Connie and Ed. “He rattled it off very fast,” Connie told me. “It all rhymed and it was very long­it took him ten minutes to tell it­but it didn’t make any sense to us.” Ed remembered it as involving dogs: it was about “dogs piddling here and piddling there and piddling all over.” Tiny did not explain the riddle. Connie and Ed could not answer it. He said good night and left. 
Analysis 
We have here a remarkable set of circumstances and coincidences. 
Coincidence 1: The Christiansens originally planned to return home two days later than they actually did. None of their neighbors or friends expected them back on the 9th. It is remarkable that Tiny should turn up a few hours after their return. 
Coincidence 2: It is odd that Tiny claimed to be from Richmond, Virginia, a town they had passed through the night before and where they had experienced a power failure in a motel. 
Coincidence 3: Strange that Gwen should receive a “Gwen Stevens” phone call and that Tiny should mention the name “Roy Stevens.” Neither Gwen Martino or the Christiansens know anyone named Stevens. 
Coincidence 4: Tiny’s visit came exactly one month after the family’s UFO sighting of December 9. This thirty-day “cycle” has occurred in other cases I have investigated. 
Tiny’s story of how he came to Wildwood does not make much sense, nor does it seem plausible that Ed would receive the phone call from the woman only a few hours after his visit. That “Missing Heirs Bureau” certainly moved fast! 
Speculation 
The three names and the riddle were possibly clues thrown out to test the Christiansens. They did not respond. Perhaps one day they will meet someone else who will repeat that riddle, and then they will know. 
The easiest way to gain entrance to someone’s home would be to use the magic word money. Who would turn away a man who promised them an unexpected inheritance? A “missing heirs investigator” could also get away with asking personal questions about scars, health, and so on. Ed Christiansen has lived in the Wildwood area all his life. He has not moved around enough to become “missing.” 
The victims of this kind of interview would certainly be curious about the outcome and the easiest way to get them to forget about the whole incident would be to call them immediately afterwards and tell them that it was all a mistake. This is exactly what was done. 
This could be a cunning method for collecting specific data about specific people without producing unusual curiosity. On the other hand, a person involved in such a scheme would not have been so deliberately obvious­that is, if Tiny were an Alien, it would have been reasonable for him to cover up his difference in physiognomy­he could have worn a wig to cover that strange shaven spot. He could have worn long socks to hide the cord on his leg. He could have been dressed for the weather. If the Aliens can obtain Cadillacs, they can also obtain conventional clothes. 
Could cases like this indicate that a terrestrial agency, such as the CIA, was carrying out these interviews with men whose dress and appearance would seem unusual to the people interviewed? The government, i.e. the Air Force, did know about the first sighting. Could this be a scheme to turn the witnesses into “contactees” and thereby discredit their sightings? If so, it failed in this case. 
Or can we assume that Tiny was an Alien and that he had followed the Christiansens from Richmond, Virginia? If so, why was it important for him to obtain special information about Ed Christiansen? 
My Interview with the Witnesses 
On February 25 I met with all the witnesses at Gwen Martino’s apartment in Cherry Hill, N.J. I have been investigating a series of strange UFO incidents in that area and I had no idea that I would stumble on to this story. We talked at great length about their sightings of November and December, and they went into minute detail about both events. 
One of my standard questions is: “Did you have any strange visitors or phone calls after the sightings?” They all looked at each other and then launched into this story. I separated and interviewed each person and from their accounts I assembled the present report. Gwen is a strikingly beautiful blonde of 26, now separated from her husband. She is obviously well-to-do and is above average in intelligence. Ed Christiansen is a successful businessman, aggressive, opinionated and a big talker. Daughter Connie (17) is very intelligent and observant, a good witness. 
Postscript, March 4, 1967 
In subsequent telephone interviews with the Christiansen family (after filing my initial report) I was told of two more significant incidents. 
On January 13, 1967 (four days after the January 9 “interview”), Mrs. Martino was visiting her sister and brother-in-law. Everyone had retired. Gwen was sharing Connie’s room. About 3:00 a.m. they heard a strange sound, as if someone were hammering on metal with a rubber mallet or, possibly, walking over a metal surface. These sounds seemed distant at first and then grew louder until they were deafening. “The whole house seemed to shake,” Gwen said. She started to get up to investigate but the sounds stopped immediately. As soon as she was back in bed, they began again. Both Connie and Gwen admitted being frightened. The house is secluded and such sounds had never been heard before. They debated whether or not they should wake up Ed Christiansen (who is a very heavy sleeper). Gwen started to get up again, and again the sounds stopped. They seemed to be directly outside the house. Finally the sounds faded away. 
The next day they examined the house and grounds but found nothing unusual. At no time did they relate these sounds to any kind of UFO phenomena. They were baffled, having never heard anything like it before. 
Two evenings later Connie and her 19-year-old boyfriend were alone in the house with the younger children when, at about 10 p.m., they again heard this strange hammering sound, followed by heavy footsteps on the thick layer of snow outside the house. The boyfriend went to a window and pulled a curtain aside to look out. He briefly glimpsed a strange figure hurrying across the snow away from the house. This figure was tall and wore what seemed to be a long white cape. It rushed across the lawn to a fence about 5 ft. high and proceeded to leap effortlessly over the fence and disappear on the other side. The young people did not go outside to investigate. 
When Mr. and Mrs. Christiansen returned home shortly afterwards they found all the young people very distraught. 
The next day they examined the area for footprints. There were large human footprints deeply imbedded in the snow, leading to the fence and continuing on the other side. Those footprints went on to another building some distance away and stopped abruptly at the wall of the building. There were no other footprints around the building (an abandoned shed) and the witnesses were puzzled as to where the person could have gone. 
None of the witnesses have ever heard of Howard Menger and the stories he told in 1957.