Thursday, September 26, 2024

Kingman UFO Crash and Michael Schratt

Christopher Mellon’s email chain that mentioned the Kingman UFO crash retrieval set many wheels in motion. I have been of the opinion for a long time that the crash is based on a single witness. David Rudiak and I have been researching the case which has taken us down several rabbit holes. One of them was an interview with Michael Schratt. He was talking about Harry Drew, who, apparently was the Kingman resident expert on the crash.

Michael Schratt


Learning this, I thought Schratt would be a good guest for the radio show/podcast version of A Different Perspective. I sent him a note, mentioning my interest in Kingman and we agreed on a show on September 18. Before we started the recording, I mentioned we would be talking about Kingman but he said he wanted to talk about Len Stringfield’s crash/retrieval research.

Well, we did both.

My main interest at that time was a long report that had been written by Ray Fowler about Kingman. I had been surprised that the file included a long interview with the original witness, Arthur Stansel. While those who wrote about the Kingman crash, and I include myself in that group, quoted for the first part of the Stansel interview, we ignored the second part. This was called, “A Man Who Made Contact.”

Here Stansel said that he had been part of a group of five who studied many things paranormal. He talked about astral projection and how he had contacted alien beings around our section of the galaxy. I did a post about that which you can find here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-kingman-ufo-crash-connumdrum.html

To me, this was somewhat problematic. Yes, Stansel had an impressive CV, but this side trip into weirdness seemed to negate some of that. I bring this up because, after Mellon’s email chain, there were several television reports about it including one conducted by a TV station in Phoenix. The reporter there had the Fowler file. I recognized the drawing that accompanied that file. I wanted to know if the reporter had seen the second part of the interview. I have never received a reply, which is not surprising. Local television news has no concept of follow up investigation. Once the initial story is reported, they have no interest in doing any more research.

I mention all this because Schratt had a copy of the Fowler file, which he received from Harry Drew who was the curator of the museum in Kingman where the file is housed. I pressed Schratt on this point because I thought it important. Had Harry Drew edited the file before putting it into the museum’s collection. Schratt didn’t think he, Drew, would do that, but it was clear to me that he, Schratt, didn’t have both parts of the interview.

Kingman, Arizona. Photo by Kevin Randle


We talked about Kingman for the first two segments of the show and then turned to the work that Len Stringfield had done. We agreed about that. We both understood that many of the cases cited in Len Stringfield’s Status Reports were single witness. We knew that he gathered the stories, published them, hoping that someone else would take an interest and follow up. Stringfield wasn’t endorsing all the reports, he was providing the information he had been given. You can listen to or watch the discussion here:

https://www.spreaker.com/episode/a-different-perspective-with-kevin-randle-michael-schratt-kingman-ufo-crash-crashes--62038779

https://youtu.be/FjYQlUIGmlw

But, as I say, the important part of the interview, at least to me, was the discussion of Kingman. On this, I’m the glass is half empty guy. To me, at the moment, the Kingman tale is reduced to a single witness and that is Arthur Stansel. David, and Michael Schratt seem to be the glass if half full guys.

We are still following the leads. David has uncovered a great deal of information, much of it from newspaper articles, that suggest several strange incidents around Kingman in the early 1950s. I’m not sure where all this is going but it is certainly creating a very complex tale that might completely implode at the end of the trail… or it might not.   

2 comments:

William G. Pullin said...

My glass is empty when it comes to the Kingman case, but in the words of Christopher Hitchens, I like surprises. Hope you are doing well Kevin.

David Rudiak said...

"I found it interesting but I also wonder if the orb is not a tracer round from another aircraft not see on the film."

That's the main problem from my cursory examination. Where's the plane firing back? If it were gunners on the bombers, then the lights should appear to come from the direction of the bombers, but they don't. And why only one light at a time instead of one right after another if they were tracers? Also if you were looking at tracers being fired at you, i.e. head-on, would they necessarily be that visible or that discrete? Tracers from the POV of the firing plane typically look like streaks of light trailing behind the round, not discrete orbs, from my almost nonexistent experience. Anybody have any thoughts on questions raised here?