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Cisco Grove / Donald Shrum (AKA 'Schrum') Incident (California; 1964)

amarok2005

amarok2005

Ephemeral Spectre
Joined
Aug 26, 2005
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I was referring to the "Cisco Grove Incident" in Northern California. In September 1964 Donald Shrum and two other men went bow hunting in the Tahoe National Forest. Shrum got separated from the others and decided he would have to sleep in the wilderness. He climbed a pine tree and used his belt to tie himself to the trunk, so he would be safe from wild animals. To make a long story short, a UFO landed on a nearby hill, and two humanoid creatures -- then two "robots" (resembling Tony Stark's first primitive Iron Man armor) appeared out of the underbrush and spent the whole night trying to get Shrum out of the tree.

The Cisco Grove incident was mentioned in various books by Carol and Jim Lorenzen, John Keel, and others -- but Shrum always refused to elaborate on it (he even refused to let his real name be used). This frustrated me, because it was almost my favorite CE3K (excepting the Hopkinsville goblins). It was even adapted (loosely) for the '70s TV show PROJECT UFO:


Fortunately, near the end of his life, Shrum allowed authors Noe Torres and Ruben Uriarte to tell the story in their book Aliens in the Forest (2011).

I remember Jim Brandon, in Weird America, remarking that not only do bow hunters seem to have more encounters with the paranormal that other people -- they seem to have the weirdest encounters. And David Paulides has noted that bow hunters seem to go missing more often that other hunters . . .
 
SPOILER ALERT!
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Too bad I'm not Shrum, or I'd say, "I didn't get away, they killed me! (With apologies to Lord Dunsany.)

Essentially Shrum just hung on till dawn, at which point the entities left. They depended mostly on some sort of gas spewed forth by the robots that would knock the hunter out for a few moments (and make him vomit), but he had secured himself well to the tree and just hung limp until he recovered. Once or twice the humanoids actually tried to climb up to him, but he made such a crazy, ape-s__t racket that they retreated. He fired his remaining arrows at them, threw his keys and loose change at them (the humanoids gathered these up -- oooo, shiny!), and used a box of matches to burn his hat, clothing, and paper money, and set fire to the dead leaves and pine needles heaped around the tree (as depicted in the PROJECT UFO episode).

The authors suggest the UFO occupants were confused by the sheer primitiveness of Shrum's attack -- UFOs can knock out cars and electricity and apparently even mess up firearms, but not arrows. And there's the pulp SF trope of aliens/future people being so advanced they don't even know what fire is, since they never have to use it.
 
Thanks! But there's a perfectly rational explanation for - er, OK, there's no rational explanation for that, it's nuts. The only comparable thing I can think of is the climbing up a tree to escape danger bit in Tolkein.
 
amarok2005 said:
SPOILER ALERT!
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#
#
Too bad I'm not Shrum, or I'd say, "I didn't get away, they killed me! (With apologies to Lord Dunsany.)

Essentially Shrum just hung on till dawn, at which point the entities left. They depended mostly on some sort of gas spewed forth by the robots that would knock the hunter out for a few moments (and make him vomit), but he had secured himself well to the tree and just hung limp until he recovered. Once or twice the humanoids actually tried to climb up to him, but he made such a crazy, ape-s__t racket that they retreated. He fired his remaining arrows at them, threw his keys and loose change at them (the humanoids gathered these up -- oooo, shiny!), and used a box of matches to burn his hat, clothing, and paper money, and set fire to the dead leaves and pine needles heaped around the tree (as depicted in the PROJECT UFO episode).

The authors suggest the UFO occupants were confused by the sheer primitiveness of Shrum's attack -- UFOs can knock out cars and electricity and apparently even mess up firearms, but not arrows. And there's the pulp SF trope of aliens/future people being so advanced they don't even know what fire is, since they never have to use it.
Click to expand...

That Project UFO episode only showed one robot. And it was pretty clunky.
 
Hey! That was Robby the Robot, star of stage and screen! -- More or less. I like how its arm stretched like a flexible vacuum cleaner hose when it picked up the arrow. I wondered how Robby ever picked up anything if he dropped it.

Guess '70s TV budget didn't allow for many aliens or robots. Their "Hopkinsville aliens," iirc, were cardboard cutouts passed in front of the camera to create silhouettes. :cool:
 
GNC said:
Thanks! But there's a perfectly rational explanation for - er, OK, there's no rational explanation for that, it's nuts. The only comparable thing I can think of is the climbing up a tree to escape danger bit in Tolkein.
Click to expand...

Reading about this case always stirred a hint of recognition, as if I'd read about something similar before.

Turns out the thing I was vaguely remembering happened in 19th century Wales:

https://www.mysteriousbritain.co.uk/hauntings/the-gloddaeth-ghost/

Here we have:

- a "hunter" (well, in a sense), out at night in a wood
- he climbs a tree
- he is besieged in the tree by a humanoid "being" with eyes "burning like fire"
- the "being", nevertheless, doesn't appear to be able to work out how to climb trees
- the "being" disappears at daybreak

There are a lot of similarities here, albeit in a 19th century narrative context. It seems unlikely but I wonder if Shrum could possibly ever have read Owen Elias' book, or perhaps a collection of ghost stories or similar that drew on it?
 
Excellent find! Maybe it's an archetype of some kind?
 
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GNC said:
Excellent find! Maybe it's an archetype of some kind?
Click to expand...

Cisco Grove is certainly a really bizarre case, assuming it's not simply a tall tale.

My first thought is that given the nausea and loss of consciousness Shrum may have had some kind of stress induced seizure: his full account stated that even before seeing the "UFO", he had heard rustling in the bushes and was worried about bears. Perhaps he then had a hallucinatory episode, possibly coinciding with an actual bear turning up and also seeing a bright meteor. That would be quite an unusual sequence of events (but less improbable than being molested by a gas-emitting alien robot). I suppose the main difficulty is that a determined bear could easily have climbed the tree.

Maybe in these situations the brain does tend to fall back into certain archetypal patterns. I can imagine hiding up trees from danger is something we understand on a fairly instinctual level. Or you might fall back on things you had read (hence my wondering if there was any way Shrum could have read the Elias Owen story).

The other option might be some misperception of a military training operation or similar involving a helicopter, some sort of gas, and people wearing protective clothing.
 
BS3 said:
My first thought is that given the nausea and loss of consciousness Shrum may have had some kind of stress induced seizure..
Click to expand...

“[Epileptic] Seizures can occur when you're awake or asleep. Sometimes they can be triggered by something, such as feeling very tired.

A simple partial seizure can cause:

  • a general strange feeling that's hard to describe
  • a "rising" feeling in your tummy – like the sensation in your stomach when on a fairground ride
  • a feeling that events have happened before (déjà vu)
  • unusual smells or tastes
  • tingling in your arms and legs
  • an intense feeling of fear…”

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/epilepsy/symptoms/

maximus otter
 
 
This is also a strong possibility.

One thing I do know is that Roy Craig, who was chief investigator for the Condon Committee, was hugely unimpressed with the case, despite examining one of Shrum's arrows (he said it appeared to have been broken by a force from the side, rather than by hitting something). He also mentioned that Shrum described seeing figures illuminated by "moonlight" when the records showed that this was a moonless night. His feeling was that it never happened.

One of the key aspects of the case "mythos" is that when Shrum spoke to Air Force personnel they were extremely keen to suggest alternative explanations, such as a practical joke. Is it possible that Shrum had stumbled into a field test of a type of nerve agent or other chemical? That would actually explain a lot of it, including Shrum's own behaviour.
 
Look at the image of a 1940s US Navy "Chemical Warfareman in protective gear" on this page:

https://news.usni.org/2014/12/03/brief-list-old-obscure-obsolete-u-s-navy-jobs

Seems a reasonable fit to the two non-robotic Shrum entities.

The robot, I have no idea, but perhaps we could hypothesise someone dressed in slightly more heavy duty protective clothing and actually carrying the apparatus that was producing the "gas".

The UFO, originally thought to have been a helicopter, could have been - a helicopter. I note Shrum described the entities as examining pieces of vegetation as they approached. Were they looking to assess the effects of a substance? They must have been horrified to be confronted by a panicked, bow-wielding man in a tree.
 
maximus otter said:
The moon was waning, and in its last quarter.

maximus otter
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Here's what Craig said : "The ephemeris showed that the moon was new at 4:35am on 6 September 1964, so it would have set just before sunset on September 5 and there would have been no moonlight". He does say that the date might have been wrong, though - he was working from the Lorenzens' account and a tape recorded interview with an anonymous Shrum.
 
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