Mario Woods incident at Ellsworth AFB (1977)

Mario Woods incident at Ellsworth AFB (1977)

Date	November 1977, about two weeks before Thanksgiving; alert at about 1:30 a.m.
Location	Launch Facility November-5, near Newell, South Dakota; November Flight, 44th Missile Wing, Ellsworth AFB
Witness	Mario A. Woods Jr., Security Alert Team member, 44th Security Police Squadron (served at Ellsworth 1975–1979)
Object	Silent, glowing reddish-orange sphere "roughly the width of a Wal-Mart building", hovering low over the site
Claimed effects	Pressure on the chest, voices, small figures, nearly four hours of missing time, vehicle found by Newell Lake dam
Published by	Robert Hastings, ufohastings.com
Corroboration	None published; partner unnamed, no official records released
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Remote viewing & psi (topic)
People	Mario Woods, Robert Hastings
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 82
Year	1977 in UFO history
Timeline	1977 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	3

Mario Woods, a former U.S. Air Force missile security policeman, says that in November 1977 he and his partner met a huge glowing sphere at a Minuteman missile site near Newell, South Dakota, and lost nearly four hours. They were later found in their truck miles away, beside a reservoir dam.^[1] Woods gave a written account to the researcher Robert Hastings, who published it as an apparent "UFO abduction at an ICBM site". Woods later retold the story, with some differences, on a podcast.^[1][2] No Air Force record of the incident has been released, and the other people involved have not come forward.^[1][3]

Background

Woods, whose full name Hastings gives as Mario A. Woods Jr., served at Ellsworth Air Force Base from 1975 to 1979 with the 44th Security Police Squadron. Hastings says he holds Woods's DD-214 service record, confirming that Woods was at Ellsworth in 1977 as a missile security policeman.^[1] A later podcast report calls him a staff sergeant.^[2]

• His post. In November 1977 he was on the night shift (6 p.m. to 6 a.m.) as a Security Alert Team member at the November Flight launch control facility, a few miles north of Newell. His partner was a sergeant who outranked him and so led the team; Hastings's published version blanks out the partner's surname.^[1]
• Hastings's framing. Hastings introduces the account against the pattern he says he has found in interviews with more than 160 veterans. In those cases an alarm at a silo sends out a two-man security team, which finds a UFO hovering overhead; the men are then debriefed, warned to keep silent and often transferred.^[1]
• Publication date. The earlier version of this article dates his publication of the Woods case to September 2017. Hastings's article itself says he had been interviewing veterans for 44 years, which is consistent with that date.^[1]

The light

Woods said it was a clear, very cold night with snow on the ground, about two weeks before Thanksgiving; as a newlywed he was looking forward to the holiday.^[1]

• First sighting. Around midnight, outside for a cigarette, he noticed a very bright "star" he had not seen before, about 30 degrees above the horizon. He first took it for a helicopter or a B-52 on a low-level training run. It shimmered and pulsed, and he watched it for about 20 minutes.^[1][2]
• Nobody believed him. His partner laughed when told. So did the flight security controller, who relayed messages between the response team, the launch officers below ground and Wing Security Control at Ellsworth.^[1]
• Signalling. When the light reappeared further north, Woods had the idea of signalling to it, as ships do at sea; his father had been a merchant seaman. He flashed the facility's roughly 15 sets of perimeter spotlights six to eight times.^[1]
• The light responds. Standing outside with his partner, Woods saw the light go out, though the sky was clear. It then reappeared further north and brighter, as though closer. He signalled it again, and later it was gone.^[1]

The sphere at November-5

At about 1:30 a.m. the team received a "Sit-4" alarm from Launch Facility November-5, the site closest to the control facility and to Newell. Woods explained that a Sit-4 meant the site's outer-zone antenna and underground support building had been penetrated, or had alarmed for an unknown reason.^[1]

• Setting out. They drew their code tables, weapons and ammunition, were briefed by the launch crew and set off in an F-150 police pickup.^[1]
• Light over the silo. Nearing Highway 79, Woods saw the bright light apparently near the missile site, seven or eight miles away, and told his partner it was over November-5. They did not report it by radio.^[1]
• The object. Turning onto the site road past Newell, they saw a silent, huge, glowing reddish-orange sphere hovering only 15–20 feet above the site. Its colours constantly swirled and churned. Woods estimated it was "roughly the width of a Wal-Mart building".^[1]
• The documentary comparison. He said it looked just like a computer-generated scene in Hastings's documentary UFOs and Nukes: The Secret Link Revealed.^[1]

Missing time

They stopped short of the security gate. Woods then described the following sequence:^[1]

• Pressure. He suddenly could not breathe, as if something were pressing on his chest. His partner sat with both hands on the wheel, staring ahead blankly, surrounded by "some kind of glow" and also gasping.
• The flashlight. Woods climbed half out of the window and shone his three-cell flashlight at the object until the pressure eased, then slid back in, holding his M-16.
• Figures and voices. In a daze he saw shadows to the right of the truck and heard voices in his head repeating "Do not fear". He thinks he remembers five or six small figures walking toward the vehicle, with a taller one behind who seemed to be in charge. Then, he believes, he passed out.^[1]
• Waking. The next thing he knew, seemingly a minute later, the radio was asking for their status. When he said they were about to enter the site, the controller asked where they were. Stepping out, he found they were not at November-5 at all. The truck sat in soft mud beside a tall concrete wall, though the ground should have been frozen. As the sun rose he saw it was the dam of Newell Lake, a reservoir north of Newell and "quite a few miles" from the launch facility.^[1]
• Found. Their radio signal had been triangulated, and security teams from neighbouring flights had been sent to find them. The teams who met them said they were under orders not to discuss it. His partner did not respond at all, so Woods moved him into the passenger seat and drove back.^[1]
• The lost hours. At the debriefing, Woods said, he was told nearly four hours had passed and that six back-up teams had been searching for them. He realised they had never got past the site's gate.^[1]

Hastings's introduction puts the dam about five miles from the site.^[1]

Aftermath

• Debriefing. Woods said his partner was in "a pitiful condition", made no sense at the debriefing and was assigned to base duty. Woods filled out an Air Force Form 1000 UFO sighting report before he was allowed to sleep.^[1]
• Interview and tests. The next day the 44th Missile Wing's commander interviewed him, with a man in civilian clothes whom he took to be from the Office of Special Investigations. He had to give a urine sample, and two skin samples were taken because he was inexplicably sunburned.^[1]
• The partner's account. About two weeks later, Woods said, the partner visited his apartment. He said he had heard many voices telling him not to be afraid while lying down somewhere outside the truck, and had seen Woods's mittens on the floor beside him. Woods checked his bag and found the mittens were gone.^[1]
• Marks. Woods reported two identical small puncture-like marks that he cannot explain, under his left armpit and above his left ankle. He sent Hastings photographs of them.^[1]
• Transfers. Woods was moved to Kilo Control near Sturgis after a few weeks. His partner was transferred elsewhere about a month after the incident.^[1]
• Later life. Woods said he had nightmares and heard stories of other sightings and cattle mutilations in the missile fields. He also had to walk out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind during its truck scene.^[1]

The podcast version

Retelling the story on the Disclosure Team podcast, as reported by BroBible, Woods gave a somewhat different picture:^[2]

• The object. It was "the size of a Walmart building, and as long as an aircraft carrier", only about 10 feet off the ground. It dwarfed the C-5 Galaxy transports he had flown in, and lit the area "like standing in a welder's light".
• The orb. A ball four to five times the size of a beach ball appeared just above the truck's hood and darted about "like a ping pong ball".
• The beings. He saw "four beings, three small and one tall", about 20 feet away, moving together. One small figure held a rod with a glowing yellow tip.
• Time and place. He came to "five hours later", with the truck on a dam about 10 miles away. It faced the only direction it could leave by, with no tyre tracks leading in.
• The report. Back at base he told his story without mentioning the beings, and was ordered to sign a non-disclosure document.^[2]

The written account instead gives five or six small figures and a taller one, nearly four hours, a distance of "quite a few miles" and an object 15–20 feet up.^[1]

Assessment

• Hastings's view. Hastings, who spoke with Woods several times, considers his recollections "credible if incomplete". He said he was trying to find others present that night.^[1]
• Hypnosis. Hastings arranged hypnotic regression sessions for Woods, while acknowledging that the technique "remains controversial". He hoped to learn whether the partner had driven them to the reservoir in a daze or the UFO had moved the truck, and whether more memories of the figures would emerge. He promised a follow-up article.^[1][3]
• Single-source account. The partner's statements, the debriefing, the sighting report and the medical tests are known only through Woods. No Air Force document or second witness has been published, and his two tellings differ in several details.^[1][2]

People and topics

• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Mario Woods — Air Force security policeman who described a 1977 encounter at an Ellsworth AFB missile site.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Robert Hastings — Researcher who has collected accounts of UFOs at nuclear weapons sites, author of UFOs and Nukes.

On the Timeline

• Daniel Sheehan and the Blue Book photos (1977) — Attorney Daniel Sheehan says he was shown classified Blue Book material at the Library of Congress.
• Carter request and NASA's UFO decision (1977) (13 December 1977) — A NASA safety chief writes that a possible UFO fragment was studied at Los Alamos.

See every 1977 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References