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| Earl D. Jones Passes From: Loren Coleman <lcoleman.nul> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 08:52:50 -0400 Fwd Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2004 12:35:48 -0400 Subject: Earl D. Jones Passes From Ohio-based investigator Ron Schaffner, 24 Aug 2004: ---- I have just been informed today that former UFO and Bigfoot investigator, Earl D. Jones died last Saturday of cancer. He was a Vietnam veteran. Many of you might not recognize this name, so allow me to shed some light on the contributions that Earl accomplished during the late 1970's and early 80's. I met Earl in 1976 during one of the regular meetings of the Ohio UFO Investigator's League. He had been investigating some follow-ups to Northern Kentucky UFO reports from the great 1973 wave. His reports that were given to the group were very detailed in every aspect. He was willing to do all the hard work to get to the truth of any particular report. As this time, I was the principal Bigfoot (and other strange creature) investigator for OUFOIL. Back in the 70's there were no real Bigfoot groups in the east. Most Bigfoot reports were investigated by the UFO groups. Earl was very anxious to get involved with this research too. After all, in theory, it should be easier to document and obtain evidence that was ground level. In the course of several years, Earl and I traveled all over Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and West Virginia investigating, interviewing and documenting reports of that time period, including the great flaps of 1977, 1978 and 1980. Earl was very instrumental in the investigations of several high profile cases of that time. See: http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/henschen.htm http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/richland.htm http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/minerva.htm http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/kentucky.htm http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/vinton.htm http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/bigdog.htm http://home.fuse.net/rschaffner/fouke.htm In my opinion, Earl was one of the best trackers I ever knew. He had a natural instinct on how to handle law enforcement and the media. He was a great organizer and helped form some of the ideas of an Ohio coalition of researchers. Earl was also a sketch artist and was very good at drawing composites from eyewitnesses. Some of his drawings have become very familiar within various works - specifically, the Minerva Hominid composite. I can still recall the situation that occurred to us during our departure back to Cincinnati from our second Minerva trip. Earl's car mysterious caught on fire and we barely escaped with our equipment before the car was engulfed in flames. Some have said that it was not an accident, but to this day, I still think it was a short in the electrical system We traveled to Washington state in 1981 to get to the bottom of the Ray Wallace fiasco that was being believed by other Ohio folk. In our attempt to get the truth out on this and a case the year before, Earl became frustrated with research. He still attended a lot of UFO meetings and such, but he rapidly became involved with other interests. I lost track of Earl about 1990, or so and neither one of us were in contact. Tonight, his wife, Margie called to tell me what happened. I feel its my duty to spell out these words on my keyboard to let the rest of the research community know of Earl's accomplishments. I suppose its like when others leave us that were involved with this phenomena. It gives us time to pause and think of what we have done with our lives over the years. My most memorable times of my life were investigating reports of strange phenomena with Earl and our many travels together, whether it was by car, camping, or backpacking. Please feel free to forward this to other individuals and mailing lists. I encourage it. Sincerely, Ron Schaffner Creature Chronicles Location: VirtuallyStrange.net |
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