STANLEY INGRAM

A MOMENT OF TRIBUTE TO STANLEY INGRAM
By Brent Raynes

This is a tribute to a man in the UFO field whom we genuinely loved and respected and were so glad to have known as a friend.

In 1974, Stan co-authored a book entitled UFO s Over the Tennessee Valley, with W.A. Darbro, a space scientist employed by NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. Though he intended to write a second book, it never was in the cards.

Though gone he is not forgotten. As a tribute to this fine Southern gentleman I am presenting a review of what I think were some of his most impressive cases. A number of these were described in his book, and a number of them would have been described in his second book had time and tide provided him the opportunity.

June 1952. 11 p.m.Little Spring Creek, Hickman Country, TN

Then 22-year-old Carl Haynes investigated some “weird music and lights” that he at first thought was “a bunch of drunks having a wild party” on a nearby creek bank. Instead though he came upon “four or five...little men” who were “dancing and singing” around a “space ship” to musical instruments something like “bagpipes.”

The men, Haynes told Stanley in 1973, appeared to be 4 1/2 - 5 feet tall. Asked about their voices he said, “High pitched--like children would make.” The UFO gave off various colors “that you couldn’t describe-orange and blue looking glow ... just so bright you couldn’t stand to see them.”

About ten minutes after Haynes had positioned himself where he could spy on the happy saucerers they stopped their singing and dancing and began “putting things in the space ship.” “... they knowed I was there,” Haynes said. “.. they came as far as the creek. ...that water is all that saved me.”

Later the men climbed onto the UFO, which was described as like two saucers stuck lip to lip. Rising into the air in a corkscrew rotating motion it flew off with a whistling noise.

“The Twilight Zone”

Mr. Ingram once recalled, “...sometime in 1973, I heard that three young men... were on their way from Nashville to Lexington, KY, to a basketball game. They drove into a “yellow fog.” Suddenly they were in a strange country. Then just as suddenly they were driving into Lexington ahead of time. Each one thought he had dreamed this. One said something that alerted the other two and they found they had all had the same ‘dream.’ Furthermore, the auto did not use enough gasoline to have driven there. I have talked with _____ about this and he said it’s like a dream. ‘Isaw strange animals. ...It’s been 6 or 8 years. I just can’t remember much. It was so strange. We just joked about ‘The Twilight Zone.’”

Sometime late 1960s.Memphis, TN

One P.B. awakened just after midnight. Drawn to the backdoor of her home she looked outside and saw a saucer shaped UFO come out from behind a cloud and approach. Almost instantly it appeared at close-range. “Stanley, it was huge,” she exclaimed. Two tubes extended slowly from the top of the saucer and then “round balls” came out of the tubes and hovered over the object. Stan recalled, “Finally, after a supreme effort, she screamed. (Husband) came running. The UFO vanished before he could see it. She was real upset over it. Called the police and later wentdown for an interview. They seemed to have one special officer who investigated UFOs.”

1969-70?Tennessee

Stanley interviewed a respected businessman and his son who described a close encounter. The man said, “There was a globe of some kind on top and it was all lit up and there sat the little man just as plain as I see you. He looked about 2 1/2 to 3 feet all.” The son added, “His head looked too big for his body.”

July 1972. 4:15 a.m.Pulaski, TN

Mrs. Jerrie McCrary’s car was pursued by a UFO. Mrs. McCrary picked up a lady passenger, and together they headed for Huntsville, AL. Mrs. McCrary was to visit her father. The UFO followed the women from Pulaski down Highway 31 to Ardmore and then Highway 53 towards Huntsville. When they turned off onto a Jeff Road the UFO disappeared. “It just disappeared right before our eyes,” McCrary recalled. “The body part was more or less grayish, metallic color and I would say it was... 15 by 17 feet. On top was a brilliant white light and about halfway up the ship.. was what appeared to be windows--a row of small windows all the way around it. ...Underneath the windows there was a piece of metal or whatever that just seemed to extend out..”

February 20, 1973. 7:30 p.m.Grassey, AL

Mrs. Bob Springer and her son were driving to a ball game when a UFO “paced” their car. Mrs. Springer said, “The thing followed us all the way and when we came back we soon saw it again and here it came! Suddenly it just shot across the field and “swooped” down and I screamed, “It’s going to land on us--it’s going to land on us!” I shot the gas to the car but I couldn’t get away from it so when we got to a house we ran up the drive and ran to the house screaming for them to come out. It went on out across the field. Never been so scared in my life!”

September 30, 1973, 2:15 p.m.Shores Community, south of Pulaski, TN

A man out deer hunting when a bright whitish glowing ball landed gently on three brightly polished legs that retracted out from the body of the UFO. It sat there silently, except for two beeps it made. “I couldn’t see a seam, crack, or rivet in the thing anywhere. It was perfectly round and I would say it was seven feet through the middle.”

“... suddenly a door appeared--all of a sudden there it was...It began to let right down to the ground, hinged from the bottom and it made a ramp.” He expected something to come out, but nothing happened. The incident lasted about five minutes. When it left it took off at a tremendous speed. “It left so fast I couldn’t see it after it got to 100 feet in the air--it just disappeared. It left that fast.”

The hunter then rushed into the field where the object had been. The UFO had left a lingering “whitish vapor” and when he breathed this in he felt discomfort. “...my chest started hurting--couldn’t breath--felt like my lungs were too full--wanted to burst. But when I got back out of it and got some fresh air I felt all right.
This case developed and eventually split Stanley and his co-author scientist friend Darbro. For the hunter later went on to claim UFO “rides,” meeting a humanoid race of beings named Plantoes, outrageously claiming to be from a planet by that name hidden from us by our own sun, living in our own solar system. Darbro, I was told, could swallow none of this. And then on March 9, 1974, Stanley’s own 14-year-old daughter Becky began, she claimed, hearing a strange noise in her head, and like the hunter went on to claim “rides,” meetings with the Planto visitors, and even the harassing “men in black,” dark suited men of mystery who some say are government agents, some say are from the UFOs, and others insist are just a lot of nonsense. (Remember this was in 1973!)

In the beginning, when Stanley first began writing about UFOs early in 1973 in his Moment of Truth column in the Pulaski Citizen he created quite a stir and a lot of folks, I’ve been told, took what he was then writing pretty seriously. But when he began writing about the Plantoes he lost it. It was an obsession that soon swallowed him.

One writer who visited Stanley and investigated the Plantoes tales that cropped up wrote his article in a national magazine, stating: “Finally not a few of the townspeople now consider Ingram their former city judge and citymanager, to be something of a village idiot.”

Though his local reputation was in ruin Stanley didn’t much care. He was a fighter and fought for what he believed in, to the bitter end if necessary. He was kind hearted and ready to listen to and believe anyone.
As a UFOlogist it was his undoing. I remember an occasion of accompanying Stanley on an investigation of a new case where I was actually embarrassed and upset. Instead of beginning an interview with careful questioning Stanleybegan telling these folks the long story of his personal discoveries, of the Plantoes, MIBs, etc.

Stanley claimed to have had quite a few UFO sightings over the years. He did go on to develop a kind of nervous tic like phenomenon that he said was contact with a Plantosian entity. His hand would twitch one impulse for no and two for yes, for example. “This is not my subconscious,” he tried to explain to me. “We disagree on a lot of things and I never know what she is going to ‘say’ next.”

Recently I spoke on the phone with Becky, who is living in another state now. She repeated that all of her claims of saucer “rides” and MIB brushes were true. “A lot of people gave me... a hard way to go, and that was tough growing up like that,” she said.
To be continued