The UFO Hotspot Compendium: All the Places to Visit Before You Die or Are Abducted

By Craig Campobasso

The definitive UFO hunter's bucket list of legendary and active UFO and alien hotspots in North America
 
The UFO Hotspot Compendium will take you on your own behind-the-scenes trip to some of the most visited UFO hotspots—areas where aliens and cryptids are spotted, forbidden scary locations, as well as terrifying places only the brave dare to visit.

Based on first-hand information gleaned from MUFON’s trained investigators and researchers, interviews with people who have had extraordinary UFO experiences, and the author’s travel to many of the locations, this book is a guided tour of thirty-five of the most remarkable UFO-related sites: the when, where, backstory, investigations, and things to do when visiting the site. Included are MUFON’s top twenty-five places known for the most UFO sightings, legendary spots known for UFO activity, alien kitsch sites, locations that have the added benefit of sacred retreats, and places you might not want to visit but should know about.

From the Skinwalker Ranch to Area 51 to Joshua Tree, The UFO Hotspot Compendium will be a hit with true believers, the mildly curious, and those intrigued by all things off-planet.  Experience the wonder and terror of alien abduction, a spaceship crash, or a UFO sighting from the safety of your own home.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781633412293

Craig Campobasso

Craig Campobasso is an award-winning filmmaker and Emmy-nominated casting director. He has appeared on many radio shows, including Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, Open Minds with Regina Meredith, and Beyond Belief. He has also appeared on the History channel’s Ancient Aliens. For more information, visit AutobiographyOfAnET.com.

Book preview

Introduction

This book presents a selection of otherworldly incidents handpicked by members of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON). In it, you'll find the most up-to-date stories from the most active UFO hotspots across America and Canada, where benevolent and malevolent extraterrestrials, eerie robotic creatures, and strange cryptid life forms have been witnessed. You'll also find information on the investigations that have taken place into each sighting or event, and things you can do when visiting each location. I also share stories of restricted locales and terrifying places that only the brave dare to visit. Warning! Do so at your own risk!

MUFON is a US-based all-volunteer non-profit organization and the world's oldest and largest civilian group investigating and researching UFO phenomena. When I signed on to write this book, MUFON's executive director sent an email to each state director to solicit their input on UFO hotspots. A wide variety of cases were submitted—from obscure or unknown events, to more famous and classic incidents. I've tried to focus on those cases that are most widely recognized by professional researchers. I've also tried to include locales that are on public property, so UFO tourists can compile their very own bucket list of places they would like to visit and explore.

The book will take you to some of my favorite places—from Giant Rock, where a Venusian ET landed in his spaceship, met with an individual, and shared the blueprints for a rejuvenation building, to the secluded Bradshaw Ranch, where creepy little aliens peered through windows terrorizing occupants. You'll meet created being Valiant Thor and learn about his mission on Earth. You'll read about the Hudson River Valley's mysterious Manta Ray ships and underground bases, and learn about two men who were put into suspended animation and taken onboard a ship by strange-looking robots, then examined by a malicious female alien. And I'll give you some new information on one of the most famous abductions of all time and take you to the most visited UFO hotspot in America, where practically every night UFOs grace the skies.

You'll meet an amateur prospector who interacted with an alien craft on land to his detriment, a man who claims to have decapitated malevolent Grey aliens with a Samurai sword, freakish goblin-like creatures who terrorized a family in their rural home, and a group of men who were abducted by ant-like creatures. You'll discover how humans met Alpha Centaurians face-to-face in a secluded field on Mount Shasta in California, and much, much more.

I've been an unofficial UFO researcher for over thirty-seven years and I am acquainted with the best UFO researchers around. I have gone on investigations and sat in plenty of UFO conferences. I've photographed otherworldly craft, extraterrestrials, and numerous spirits. You'll find some of these images in this book. As my interest in UFOs developed, however, I often wondered why I was so determined to learn about extraterrestrial craft and their occupants.

In 2019, I found the answer when I located my biological father, whom I had never met. Sadly, he had passed away in 2006. Then I met his brother, with whom I have a great relationship to this day. He told me that my father had been in the Air Force and that he had worked for Project Blue Book, the US Air Force study of Unidentified Flying Objects that started in 1952 and was decommissioned in 1970. During that time, the Project investigated over 11,000 sightings. Its main charge was to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to analyze UFO-related data scientifically.

Suddenly, my work for MUFON made perfect sense to me. And the similarities didn't end there. When my father left the Air Force, he ultimately became head of construction for Warner Brothers Studios, building sets for their film and television projects. I've been in the film and television industries since the age of fifteen, as a casting director, writer, producer, and director. It seems it's in the DNA.

In the chapters to come, I summarize some of the best-known UFO incidents that have been reported in the United States and Canada over the years. Part I contains classic cases that have been well-documented, widely publicized, and carefully examined. You'll hear from eyewitnesses to these events, see photographic evidence, read excerpts from contemporary documents, and learn about government and military attempts to cover up and control the flow of information about these extraterrestrial contacts.

Part II contains a selection of other incidents organized by region to make it easier for you to plan your own UFO tourist trip. Each chapter contains suggestions for things to do at the sites and contact information to help you with your planning. At the end of the book, you'll find information on more fun activities and destinations, and a list of resources for those who want to look more deeply into these phenomena.

My hope is that these stories will entertain you, but also that they will encourage you to be open to the incredible possibilities of extraterrestrial contact and what it might mean for our world. Then ask yourself this allimportant question: Are we ready?

Your First Assignment

Go to CitizenHearing.org and watch the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure in which forty researchers, as well as military personnel, agency officials, and high-ranking politicians came together at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, to testify about what they know regarding the UFO/ET cover-up.

UFO photo taken by Sheriff Ackerman, May 24, 1959.

CHAPTER 1

Giant Rock and the Integratron

WHEN: January 6, 1952; August 24, 1953.

WHERE: Landers, California.

George Van Tassel—or Van, as his family and friends called him—bought the land around Giant Rock in 1947. The tract lies fourteen miles north of Yucca Valley about forty-seven miles from Palm Springs. The boulder itself is said to be the largest free-standing rock on Earth, measuring seven stories high and 5,800 feet around.

On January 6, 1952, Van first channeled Lutbunn, a space brother, as they called extraterrestrials of enlightenment back then. On August 24, 1953, he met Solganda, a Venusian male, while running the Giant Rock Airport. During this encounter, he toured a Venusian ship and received information on how to build a rejuvenation building, a structure that came to be known as the Integratron. Construction began on this building in 1958 and the outer shell was completed in 1960. Giant Rock and the Integratron stand just three minutes apart, in an area that was and is known for numerous UFO sightings.

The land on which the Integratron now stands and several acres around it had been homesteaded by a man named Charlie Reche, who became friends with the local Native American tribes. Van became close friends with his neighbor Reche and learned of the history of Giant Rock from him and from the local tribes. The boulder apparently sits on sacred tribal land and the northern and southern tribes met there each year. Van bought the property from Reche for $2,500 on March 15, 1950.

Van was an airplane fanatic and, as a teenager, acquired a pilot's license. When he was in the tenth grade, he was offered a job at the Cleveland Municipal Airport. Later, he moved to Santa Monica, California, to work in an uncle's garage. In 1930, while Van was working at the garage, a German prospector named Frank Critzer stopped by to have his car repaired, confessing that he was unable pay. Van's uncle happily fixed the car gratis and gave the man some money and food. For this kindness, Critzer promised to keep in touch and to cut them in on his future finds. Critzer contacted them a year later to say that he was squatting at Giant Rock and had obtained a mining claim there.

Critzer was a strange man to some. He seemed to be uncomfortable in his own skin, but was friendly with the locals. Van quite liked him. Critzer began dynamiting under Giant Rock to carve out a home. Eventually, he managed to excavate a 400-foot room that featured a living area, kitchen, and bedroom. He used boxes of dynamite as tables and foot stools. Living under the rock guaranteed him cooler temperatures during the unbearably hot summer months. Critzer also graded a landing strip on the site by dragging a heavy flat piece of iron behind his car. This later became known as Giant Rock Airport.

Critzer died in a dynamite explosion at Giant Rock at the age of fifty-four. Several accounts of what happened have survived. One claims that Critzer was falsely accused of stealing dynamite and failed to register for the draft in 1942, while America was at war with Germany. Critzer had served on a submarine in the German navy in World War I. When he arrived in America, he became a naturalized citizen and joined the Merchant Marines. This story is contradicted, however, by a registration card dated September 12, 1918, in Wichita, Kansas, when Critzer was thirty-two. This record lists him as a native-born American. Because of his heritage and the tensions generated by the war, however, a German living under a rock in the middle of nowhere raised suspicions. To make matters worse, Critzer owned a three-dial, A/B-battery Atwater Kent radio that was given to him by a man named Charlie Knoll, who later told Van that the radio wasn't powerful enough to send messages to Germany. The radio did have a superhetrodyne receiver, however, and Critzer had a sizeable antenna set above a nearby mountain that must have raised even greater suspicion.

Living under Giant Rock.

In August 1942, three deputies arrived at Giant Rock to take Critzer to the station for questioning. But Giant Rock is in San Bernardino County and the deputies were from Riverside County, so Critzer told them they had no authority to take him in. Van later said that the man who escorted the deputies to Giant Rock (because the big boulder was not on any map) told him that Critzer argued with them, but that the deputies remained adamant about questioning him. Critzer went into his underground home to get his coat, shut the door, and barricaded the only entrance with a 2 × 4 bar. The deputies took this as an act of defiance, so they tossed a tear-gas grenade through the window. The grenade landed under a table where one of Critzer's boxes of dynamite was stored. The explosion killed Critzer instantly and injured the deputies. The newspapers ran the story that Critzer was a German spy. Van later learned from the FBI that those accusations were untrue.

In his book I Rode in a Flying Saucer, Van noted:

Critzer was unfortunate enough to have a German name while the United States was at war with Germany in World War II. Several individuals who didn't like the way he parted his hair caused him to be investigated numerous times and he was killed in 1942 by a blast of dynamite, supposedly by his own hand.

Van went on to say that Critzer had a calm demeanor and a peaceful mind.

Another version of the story claims that US customs officials investigated Critzer and found suspicious camouflaged hangars on his land. But after careful investigation by military intelligence officials, they found no wrongdoing. Local authorities kept an eye on Critzer and, when the draft age was raised to fifty-five, they seized the opportunity to escort him to register. During Critzer's time away from the rock, they watched for illegal plane activity and possibly rummaged through his belongings.

Harold Simpson, one of the three deputies who traveled the sweltering desert and bumpy dirt roads to Giant Rock, said that, when they asked Critzer to come with them to register for the draft, he declined. Simpson told him they'd have to take him in. Before his departure, Critzer went to the bathroom in his outhouse, and then went inside his subterranean home to retrieve his hat. When he came out, he stood at the entrance holding a flashlight battery to a wire that was attached to a binocular case and another wire that ran along the inside wall of his dugout. He shouted that he was not going anywhere with the deputies and that, if they did not leave, they would all be blown to smithereens. Then, without warning, he detonated the dynamite cache, either by accident or on purpose, and was killed instantly. The deputies were injured.

After Critzer's death, thoughts of the abandoned Giant Rock Airport haunted Van. He longed to commune with nature and yearned for a simpler way of life. He fulfilled those dreams in 1947 when he leased four square miles of land from the Bureau of Land Management and moved his wife, Eva, and three daughters into their new subterranean home under Giant Rock. Van reopened the airfield and built a six-stool restaurant called The Come On Inn, where his wife made burgers and mouth-watering apple and cherry pies.

Van was an aeronautical engineer. He entered aviation in 1927, serving as an airline mechanic for four years. He then went to work at Douglas Aircraft for eight and a half years, and moved on to work for Howard Hughes for another two and a half years, ending up at Lockheed Aircraft, where he worked for almost five years.

Hughes became a frequent weekend visitor at Giant Rock. He loved discussing aviation with Van and craved his wife's homemade apple pie. Van's twenty-four-year career in aeronautics gave him great insight into how craft flew. For his part, Van reported that Hughes never raised his voice, that he was generous and considerate to others, and that he remained true to his principles. Van claimed that his years with Hughes gave him more skill and training than all of his schooling ever had. Little did he know that he would soon be given the chance to examine and learn the mechanics of a spaceship from another world.

A Seventh Sense

Van loved the rhythm of his new life at Giant Rock. He said he had found his true self. As he communed with nature and explored his own inner self through meditation, he became acquainted with the unseen portion of his being and discovered what he called a seventh sense that revealed his true identity to the universe. He connected to what he calls the substance of cosmic composition of true light intelligence or the unseen God.

As Van became receptive to these new vibrations, he began gathering small groups under the rock. Through meditation, they cast out into the cosmos their desire to call in and learn from space brothers and sisters of like mind. On January 6, 1952, he first