In 1947 pilot Kenneth Arnold spotted a number of strange objects in the sky, which reporter Bill Bequette of the Pendleton East Oregonian dubbed "flying saucers." Arnold repeated his story of the first major UFO sighting of the modern era in a lecture entitled "How It All Began," which was reprinted in The Proceedings of the First International UFO Congress (1980). He began investigating flying saucers and other mysteries in his spare time, and he came upon the following odd story:
An Ellen Jonerson over in Canby, Oregon, a University of Oregon graduate and a very intelligent person, actually saw a little man. She was stunned to see this little man walk across their breezeway and, standing straight up, pass underneath the running board of a '37 Dodge car. He couldn't have been more than nine inches tall and he had features like a man. He wasn't threatening. He was very dark skinned; he had on a type of little romper and a sort of plaid shirt. She got a good look at him and when I asked her if she didn't feel like she'd like to get closer to him, she said, "I think I should have run over and grabbed the little fellow." But he walked out into the grass and she never saw him again. [1]
Janet and Colin Bord write of a similar tiny man in North Carolina:
It was also a young boy, eight-year-old Tonnlie Barefoot, who first saw the tiny entity of Dunn, North Carolina (USA), when he was playing in a field of dried cornstalks near his home on 12 October 1976. He saw the little man "not much bigger than a Coke bottle," dressed in black boots, blue trousers, and a blue shiny top, with a black "German-type hat" with a pretty white tie. He seemed to be reaching for something in his back pocket, then froze, squeaked like a mouse, and ran off fast through the cornstalks. He left some footprints 2 1/4 inches long and 1 inch wide with bootmarks in them. On 25 October, twenty-year-old Shirley Ann McCrimmon also saw a little man, as she came home from a party just before daybreak. He wore boots and a thin garment, and his skin was light brown. He shone a tiny bright yellow light across her eyes, and ran away when she screamed. The dogs also barked at him. [2]
The present writer had a curious dream about the time of the Dunn sightings: A little alien humanoid with a green and white face was running around the house, zapping me with a tiny laser beam while I in turn kept swatting at him with a broom. I doubt there was any relationship, but I find the reference to "a tiny yellow light" intriguing.
1. Arnold, Kenneth. "How it All Began." In: Curtis Fuller, editor. Proceedings of the First International UFO Congress. (Warner Books, 1980), p. 26.
2. Bord, Janet and Colin. Unexplained Mysteries of the 20th Century. (Chicago: Contemporary Books, Inc., 1989), pp. 155-157.