Selman Graves and the Paradise Valley crash claim
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
Selman Graves and the Paradise Valley crash claim
| Date | October 1947 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Military encounters (topic) |
| People | Selman Graves, Timothy Good, Frank Scully |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 39 |
| Year | 1947 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1947 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
The Paradise Valley crash claim is a story that a flying saucer came down north of Phoenix, Arizona, in October 1947. The witness associated with it, Selman E. Graves, said that while hunting and exploring old mines that month, he saw "a large aluminum dome-shaped thing sitting upright in the desert", with men and trucks nearby.[3] He did not connect it with a crashed spacecraft until 1952, when he read Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers. Scully's book included an informant's story of two small bodies recovered from a crashed craft in the area.[3] The British author Timothy Good published Graves's account in his 1987 book Above Top Secret, in a chapter titled "Paradise Valley, 1947".[1][4] A local legend adds that the craft lies buried under the Dreamy Draw Dam near Piestewa Peak, but the dam was built for flood control in 1973.[1][2]
Graves's account
- The hunt. According to a 1997 Newsday article, in early October 1947 the 22-year-old Graves and his 16-year-old brother-in-law were rabbit hunting and exploring mines in what is now the Cave Creek Recreational Area north of Phoenix.[3]
- A later retelling says the group had planned a hunt from a friend's ranch. The friend told them the planned area was "restricted" by the military, so Graves and two others went to explore some mines instead.[4]
- The dome. From the top of a prominent hill, looking back towards the friend's ranch, Graves saw something to the west that "made no sense then and still haunts him five decades later".[3]
- It was "a large aluminum dome-shaped thing sitting upright in the desert". He said, "I thought it might be some kind of observatory dome, except why should a dome be down at that elevation?"[3]
- Using the ranch for scale, he estimated it was about 36 feet (11 metres) across and perhaps a mile away.[3]
- The men. Graves remembered five men and two trucks near the dome, one of them a 2½-ton military-type truck.[3]
- Making the connection. Graves said he never thought he had seen a crashed spacecraft until he read Scully's book in 1952.[3][4] He came to believe that the person who alerted the military, according to Scully, was his friend at the ranch, a military veteran.[4]
- Cover-up claim. According to Michael Shellenberger's 2024 timeline for Congress, citing Good's book, Graves also said the federal government sponsored a state project that moved a nearby road and bulldozed the land to cover the crash site.[6]
- What Graves saw. The earlier version of this article said Graves saw a damaged disc-shaped craft and two small humanoid bodies being removed by the military. Shellenberger likewise says Graves "witnessed the recovery of a crashed craft and two humanoid 'bodies'".[6] In the 1997 account, however, Graves described an intact-looking dome, five men and two trucks. The two bodies came from Scully's informant, not from Graves.[3] The same summaries call Graves a pilot, which the other sources read here do not mention.[6]
Scully's version
- Behind the Flying Saucers. Scully's 1950 bestseller included a crash near Phoenix in October 1947.[1][2][3]
- According to Newsday, Scully wrote of the Cave Creek incident and cited an informant who said two humanoid bodies, about four and a half feet tall, were recovered. One was sitting inside the craft and the other was halfway out of the hatch.[3]
- Phoenix New Times says the book placed the crash in the Dreamy Draw area. In that version Silas Newton and "Dr. Gee" said they had pulled two bodies from the wreckage and kept them in a freezer until the Army collected them.[1]
- A FOX 10 Phoenix report says that in Scully's telling the saucer "bounced, skipped, and landed miles away in Cave Creek or Paradise Valley".[2]
- Discredited sources. Scully's informants, Newton and "Dr. Gee", were later exposed as confidence men, which undermined the story.[1] (The earlier version of this article identified "Dr. Gee" as Leo GeBauer.) Some researchers, Good among them, have argued that Scully was a genuine researcher who was at times deliberately fed disinformation.[4] See Aztec UFO crash.
- Two crashes or one. Phoenix New Times describes two reported crashes near Phoenix in 1947, one at Dreamy Draw and one at Cave Creek. In Good's version, the craft first came down at Dreamy Draw and then "somehow bounced or hopped" to Cave Creek.[1]
The Dreamy Draw legend
- The story. A long-running local legend holds that a 36-foot saucer crashed at the foot of Squaw Peak, now Piestewa Peak, and that the government built the 455-foot Dreamy Draw Dam over it.[1][2] Another version says aliens on board died and their bodies were taken away.[2]
- The facts. The Dreamy Draw Dam was built in 1973 to protect surrounding neighbourhoods from monsoon flooding, a quarter of a century after the supposed crash.[1][2] "That's where the theory kind of falls apart," said the UFO researcher Alejandro Rojas, who also interviewed a park ranger about how the dam was made.[2]
- The area. Dreamy Draw is now a desert recreation area next to Piestewa Peak. It was once heavily mined for mercury.[1]
Assessment
- Rojas. Rojas, host of Open Minds Radio, said that all he could find were rumours and one witness who claimed to have seen something "either in Cave Creek or Paradise Valley or Dreamy Draw". That witness died before Rojas could speak to him.[2] He added that the witness was said to have been an unsavoury character with little credibility, and that the UFO community "relies heavily on anecdotes", especially for the early years.[2]
- Single witness. Graves's account was given four decades after the event, in an interview with Good, and repeated to the press fifty years on.[3][4] No documents or named corroborating witnesses support it in the sources read here.
- Context. 1947 was a busy year for sightings in Arizona and elsewhere. In July William Rhodes photographed an object over Phoenix and said government agents borrowed his negatives and never returned them.[2] See Rhodes UFO photographs and Roswell incident.
People and topics
- Selman Graves — Pilot who told author Timothy Good he saw a crash recovery near Paradise Valley, Arizona, in October 1947.
- Timothy Good — British author of books on UFO secrecy including Above Top Secret and Need to Know.
- Crash retrieval — The alleged recovery of crashed non-human craft by governments.
- Frank Scully — Variety columnist whose 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers told of crashed saucers and dead aliens.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
- Hillenkoetter letter of 24 September 1947 (24 September 1947) — A letter attributed to the CIA director allegedly names Air Force and Navy intelligence units as leads on recovered objects.
- Mexican mystery missile (1947) (October 1947) — An unknown missile allegedly crashes in Mexico and the State Department is said to seek the wreckage.
See every 1947 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Alleged UFO crash site at Dreamy Draw — Phoenix New Times · phoenixnewtimes.com · archived copy
- Did a UFO crash in the Valley? — FOX 10 Phoenix · fox10phoenix.com · archived copy
- Newsday, 6 July 1997 (on crash claims) — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- 10 claims of recovered extraterrestrial craft — Listverse · listverse.com · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony to the House Oversight Committee (13 November 2024), p. 39 · oversight.house.gov
Categories: 1947 | Beings bodies | Crash retrieval | Crashes retrievals | Frank scully | Military encounters | Selman graves | Timeline event | Timothy good | Unidentified flying object
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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