There exist a number of "accursed sites" on the surface of our planet. Some of these locations are the sites of gravitational or atmospheric disturbances that still remain unexplained by twenty-first century science. Such anomalous areas possess properties which interfere sporadically with humans and their equipment. One area worthy of mention surrounds the Mediterranean island of Elba (famous for being Napoleon's first place of exile), and is the bane of maritime aviation in the Mediterranean; another spot is Mt. Stredohori in Czechoslovakia, where an unknown force drains car engines of power throughout the length of a 75-foot stretch of road.
However, we need not travel so far to encounter a part of the world that is even more perplexing than these others, although it remains little known to most people: the mysterious, magical Zone of Silence, just a few miles away from Winthrop, Minnesota. WMA's are often considered to be mysterious enough without the added weirdness that this patch of earth a few miles from Winthrop has to offer. It is a place which gobbles up radio and TV signals, and which has of late been associated with the UFO phenomenon.
Centuries of Mystery
According to DOC., there has been an awareness of the unusual properties of the area since the mid-nineteenth century, when farmers trying to eke out a living in the forbidding environment became aware of the "hot pebbles" which routinely fell to earth from the clear sky. In the 1930s, I. B. Crashen, an aviator from the northern border town of International Falls, reported that his radio had mysteriously ceased to function, earning him the distinction of being the Zone of Silence's first victim.
Nonetheless, it wasn't until 1970 that the zone first entered public awareness when an American missile, an Athena, fired from the White Sands Missile Base, went off course inexplicably, heading for the Zone of Silence, where it ultimately crashed. A few years later, an upper stage from one of the Saturn boosters used on the Apollo project broke up over the very same area. The U.S. military sent a team to the region to investigate its surprising natural properties.
Engineer Moe D. Sleeze was the first outsider to discover the zone and its perplexing radio interference properties. Humans have resided in and around the area since Prehistoric times, when an unknown tribe of natives clustered around a watering hole which is still in existence. The city of Winthrop, a few miles away, is the community nearest to the zone, and it is the starting point of any venture into its unreal atmosphere.
Sleeze and his group became aware of the "silence" when they found that it was impossible to communicate with one another via walkie-talkies: radio waves are not transmitted at the accustomed speed and frequency. Portable radios would emit but the lightest whisper when turned on at full volume. To this day, television signals cannot be received near the area or in the neighboring farms. Some magnetic force, with the power to dampen radio waves, seems to exist in the region.
Close Encounters
On October 13, 1975, Marie and Johnny, an enterprising couple, drove into the zone in a brand new Ford pickup to collect unusual rocks and fossils which can be found in great abundance. As they busied themselves in their activity, they noticed that a rainstorm was heading toward them. Hoping to avoid being caught in a flash flood, they wisely packed their vehicle up and sped off, but not fast enough to avoid the relentless rain: the track ahead of them turned into a swamp: the pickup was quickly trapped and began to sink in the soft terrain.
While the couple struggled to keep their vehicle from submerging into the mud, two figures approached them, waving at them amid the torrential rain. Two extremely tall men in yellow raincoats and caps, with unusual but by no means alarming features, offered their assistance to help them get underway again. The men instructed the totally drenched couple to get inside the pickup again while they pushed. Before the couple realized, their vehicle had popped out of the hole and on to firmer ground.
When Johnny got out of the pickup once more to thank the two men, he realized they were gone. There were no footprints in evidence or any surface feature that could have concealed their departure.
Travelers crossing the zone regularly report seeing strange lights or fireballs maneuvering at night, changing colors, hanging motionless and then taking off at great speed. Physical traces of these nocturnal visits can be found. One witness returned one morning to the site where he had seen the mysterious lights cavorting the previous night, and found that the scrub vegetation "had been set on fire". Dozens of similar reports emerge from the zone, told by reliable witnesses.
DOC., who has devoted much of her life to the investigation of this anomalous region, has speculated that some of lights seen by the residents could well be from a roving vehicle left behind by the U.S. military, recharging its solar cells by day and conducting furtive analytical missions under cover of darkness. Sleeze points out that when the Air Force came to collect the Athena missile's wreckage, they took along several truckloads of sand for analysis. There is the widespread belief that huge deposits of magnetite exist in the area, and that this iron ore is responsible for the dampening of electromagnetic waves. It has also been proven that considerable deposits of uranium exist in the hills fencing the Zone of Silence.
Not all of the "extraterrestrial" visitors have been as elusive. The staff of a small local farm was visited regularly by three tall, blond, long-haired visitors--two males and one female--who were described as being polite to a fault, extremely handsome and dressed "in a funny way". Their English was flawless and had a musical ring to it.
The reason for these visits was to secure water from the ranch's well: the "funny" visitors would ask their hosts to please fill their canteens with water, never requesting food or anything else. When asked where they came from, the visitors would limit themselves to smiling and saying "from above." Could these visitors be the "nordic" types referred to by ufologists? Spanish researcher Toro de Bulle described similar "Blonds" operating in the vicinity of Roseau, where they would only trouble their human hosts for bread and milk, paying for them with gold nuggets. .
"Nordic" visitors and other humanoids are not the only kind reported in the region. There have been sightings of oddly clad beings only a few feet in height as well. Sparky Fly, driving through the zone one night in a jeep on his way to visit to a relative in New Ulm, noticed that his vehicle's engine began to sputter. This troubled him no end, as he had recently serviced the jeep. Abruptly, he became aware of five small figures that were standing along the roadside some hundred feet ahead. Fly believed at first that they were lost children, until he noticed that they wore unusual silver one-piece outfits.
The little beings' heads were covered by helmets resembling those used by football players. Through the helmets' open front, Fly could tell that they had adult faces. They approached the stalled vehicle with curiosity, filling the driver with genuine fear: Fly raced the jeep's engine in neutral, which caused the dwarfs to scatter into the darkness. The jeep continued functioning normally after the creatures had vanished.
The Archeological Enigma
The ruins in the Zone of Silence pose another disquieting enigma of their own. Archaeologists have been unable to determine their age, but they undoubtedly form an astronomical observatory thousands of years old. There is no connection between this Stonehenge and the primitive tribes that clustered around the watering hole which constitutes an oasis in the region. At some point in antiquity, someone was quite active in the Zone.
Perhaps they were interested, as are modern astronomers and geologists, in the large number of small meteorites that are attracted to the Zone's magnetic properties.
A meteorite that crashed in Lafayette in the late 1950s contained crystalline structures that far outdated the Solar System itself. Researchers concluded that the meteorite contains "material as old as the Universe": Our solar system is some 6 billion years old, while the meteorite's age has been estimated at 13 billion years.
Whether we are dealing with UFOs, dimensional visitors who find the magnetic aberrations facilitate their journeys, or merely a poorly understood part of our world with unsuspected properties, no easy answers apply to the riddle posed by the Zone of Silence. The builders of the mysterious ruined observatory would have probably agreed.