“You could tell it was sort of reptilian-ish, but at the same time you could not point out discernible scales. Throughout its head in different places, it sort of had little bumps. It was very smooth. It was very dead.”
– Thomas C. Sheppard, Chief Yeoman, U. S. Navy (Retired)
March 17, 2006 Albuquerque, New Mexico – Last year I began reporting about the research that former New Mexico State Representative, Andrew Kissner, did in the 1990s about the history of White Sands Proving Ground. Employees at White Sands and the Naval Research Lab housed there, leaked information to Andy about the American government’s missile and artillery attacks on unidentified aerial discs that the Base Commander called “peculiar phenomenon.” See other Earthfiles reports listed below under More Information.
Rep. Kissner was told that from the 1940s onward, some of those discs crashed and were retrieved, along with their occupants. The most famous publicly reported crash was between Roswell and Corona on July 4, 1947. Our own government’s TOP SECRET/MAJIC documents about the UFO crash retrievals have been leaked to investigators and describe the beings as “extraterrestrial biological entities.” The acronym is “EBEs”, or “EBENs.”
Since filing these reports at Earthfiles and Dreamland, I have received dozens of e-mails from people who have served in U. S. military or intelligence and who have described their own firsthand knowledge about government cover-up of an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. One recent communication is one of the most detailed so far from a man who served in the U. S. Navy from September 1975 until his retirement in 1995 as an E-7 Chief Petty Officer, Chief Yeoman. His name is Thomas Colman Sheppard, born in 1957. He is going on the record because he, like so many others, strongly feels that the public should be told the truth.
We’re going back thirty years to Thanksgiving night in 1976. Tom was stationed at White Beach Naval Base at the southern tip of Okinawa, Japan. At the time, he was a Seaman Apprentice to the staff of Commander Amphibious Group I. He was in the Administration building with two other men, Robert Toppen and Craig Howard. Howard was mechanically gifted, but a fellow who liked to prove he could get into sensitive areas that were off limits. Toppen would later become a Naval officer.
Howard had gotten into the vault that contained classified material and was yelling for Toppen to join him. Tom Sheppard watched as Toppen ran by into the administration office that contained the vault.
Interview:
Tom Sheppard, U. S. Navy Chief Yeoman (retired 1995): “What had evidently occurred was that Howard – and he had done this before – had evidently again broken into the Command’s vault door where classified material was kept. I saw that door open and I knew the Chief Yeoman who was in charge of that and I thought to myself, ‘Oh, this don’t look good.’ If Chief James Seeley sees this – I mean, it’s going to explode, OK?! We’re going to be in big, deep trouble here.’
So, both Toppen and Howard went into the vault and I’m just out there in the main office by myself. This is not a very big building either. It’s an old style concrete building that probably had at the most 15 rooms. The Admin area where we were in was at the far right end in the front, if you faced the building. They (Howard and Toppen) were in that vault for about five minutes and they came out.
I said, ‘I want to see, too, you know!’
They said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. You can’t see this.’
But when Toppen came out – and this is kind of important, OK – when he came out, he kind of had tears in his eyes and made the comment, ‘It’s true.’
Well, that really got me going. I wanted to know what’s true, right. So, I said, ‘Howard, listen here. If you don’t let me come in or check it out whatever this is, what’s going to stop me from getting hold of Chief Seeley?’
He thought about that and said, ‘All right, come on in. But you’ve got to keep this under wraps.’
So, I go in that vault with him and it’s very small. It’s about half as big as my kitchen. There’s the filing cabinets and safes all lined up around the walls there. In the middle of the floor is a table. On that table, he had a file spread out. In that file were photographs. He handed me one and said, ‘This is what it’s about.’
Four Photographs of Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EBEs)
Photograph # 1 – EBEs
I didn’t know what I was looking at. One was a photograph of a truck with an alien body in front of it on the ground and the truck had slats. You could tell it was in the desert. The other alien was in the truck looking out, but you could just barely make him out because of the shadows from the slats. (To far left of photograph were a man’s legs in jeans and boots.)
SO WHAT YOU MEAN, TOM, IS THAT THE ONE IN THE TRUCK IS CLEARLY ALIVE?
Yes.
THE ONE ON THE GROUND?
It’s dead.
ARE YOU LOOKING AT B&W PHOTOS?
Absolutely. And on the back, they had security markings.
DID THEY HAVE DATES?
I don’t remember. They had those big stamps and one of those stamps at the very top on the back of the photograph said: ‘TOP SECRET/MAJIC’ and MAJIC was spelled with a ‘J.’ I remember commenting to Howard, ‘Look here, they can’t even spell magic right.’ That’s something that you say it, it’s a funny thing, and then later it dawned on me. It’s one of those things you don’t forget.
WAS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT THAT FILE THAT WOULD GIVE YOU ANY POSSIBLE TIMELINE OF WHEN THESE PHOTOS WERE TAKEN?
Yeah, the truck in the photograph had to be in the 1930s to 1940s. It was an old truck. Other than that, that’s about it. I don’t recall any dates in any of the correspondence of the file. But the file looked old. It had that old style onionskin paper, you know? And it was browned and some of it was not browned and some of it was sort of – well, it just looked like an old file.
LET’S GO BACK TO THE PHOTOGRAPHS AND IF YOU COULD TAKE EACH ONE AND TELL AS MUCH DETAIL AS YOU CAN REMEMBER ABOUT EACH PHOTO.
Well, Linda, you know the alien they have on display down there in the Roswell museum that they have from that movie. It’s pretty close to that – maybe a little bit shorter. But it had that lima bean looking head, those skinny little sort of sunken eyes, hardly any mouth, kind of a baby nose, no ears that are discernible, as you would know ears. It was really creepy looking. Obviously a reptilian creature.
WHEN YOU SAY REPTILIAN…
It looked like snakeskin or something like that.
WERE YOU LOOKING AT SCALES?
You couldn’t even say it was scales, Linda. It was just sort of bumpy.
IS THERE ANY REPTILE ON THE EARTH THAT YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THAT MIGHT COME CLOSE TO THE SKIN YOU WERE LOOKING AT?
It was like a white snake. From a distance, you can’t really discern the scales. They just sort of mesh and blend together. It could have been anywhere from white to light brown to orange to who knows what?
BUT IT WAS LIGHT IN COMPARISON…
Light in color.
… IN COMPARISON TO THE OTHER COLORS AROUND?
Absolutely.
HOW FAR FROM THE CAMERA WAS THE BODY ON THE GROUND AND THE BODY IN THE TRUCK?
The photographer had to be about 8 to 10 feet back. You could see all of the back of the truck from about the cab door on back. And you could see all the way up to the top of the slats.
THESE ARE OPEN SLATS SORT OF LIKE A RANCHER OR FARMER WOULD USE?
Right. To tell you the truth, I didn’t see the creature inside the truck until Howard actually pointed that out. You could just barely make him out in there.
SO IT’S THE ONE ON THE GROUND YOU ARE SEEING THE DETAIL IN.
Yes.
WHEN YOU USED THE TERM ‘REPTILE,’ IS THAT WHAT CAME TO YOUR MIND BACK IN 1976 WHEN YOU FIRST SAW THAT PHOTO?
I couldn’t even imagine. I even said to Howard, ‘What is this?’
He said, ‘Well, what do you think it is?’
I said, ‘I don’t even know!’
He said, ‘It’s an alien creature from outer space.’
I said, ‘No, it is not!’
He got a little angry with me and goes, ‘My God, you’re looking right at one and you can’t even believe it.’ It was definitely not a human being, I’ll tell you that straight up.
WAS THERE A CAP OR ANYTHING BEING WORN, ANY LEOTARDS, ANY SHOES? CAN YOU DESCRIBE THIS BODY?
No, it didn’t have anything that looked like clothes on. It sort of looked like it had damage along one of its thighs on the side that was closest to the truck.
SO, THE BEING IS LYING FLAT ON THE GROUND NAKED, RIGHT?
Yes.
IT’S NOT LAYING ON A BLANKET OR TARP OR ANYTHING?
No, not in this one.
ARE THE EYES CLOSED?
Yes.
IS THERE ANYTHING ABOUT THE EYES CLOSED WHERE YOU COULD SEE THEY WERE BIGGER OR DIFFERENT SHAPED THAN A HUMAN?
You could. Just like that guy down there in that museum – it’s sort of the same socket that’s kind of almond-shaped. But in the middle, you could see just a slit, like a slant.
WAS THERE ANY NUMBER OR MARKING ON THE TRUCK?
No. It was one of those old – a Ford or Chevy. I didn’t notice.
IT COULD HAVE BEEN A 1930s OR 1940s MODEL?
Absolutely.
WHAT WERE YOU SEEING BEHIND THE SLATS IN THE TRUCK AFTER YOUR COLLEAGUE POINTED IT OUT?
You could just make out its head and it was sitting on a bale of hay.
THE NON-HUMAN ENTITY WAS SITTING ON A BALE OF HAY?
Yes, but the angle of the sun at the time was giving a lot of shadow from the slats. So, you could barely make him out, but you could tell he was sitting – he, or whatever it is – it was sitting down in a sitting position and you could see that its eyes was open.
WAS THERE ANY LETTER, CORRESPONDENCE, DOCUMENT THAT WENT WITH THIS PHOTOGRAPH THAT WOULD EXPLAIN WHY SOME BEINGS FROM OUTER SPACE – ONE WOULD BE SITTING ON A BALE OF HAY IN THE TRUCK AND ONE LAYING DOWN ON THE GROUND?
I didn’t read any of the documents, honestly. They were old. I did notice the classification markings. There were huge classification stamps and there were signatures on those stamps. They were at the top and bottom of that photograph (on the back). It did number the photograph with a blank-of-blank number in the middle.
DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT THE NUMBER SAID?
No.
THE STAMP WAS STAMPED RIGHT ON THE FRONT OF THE B & W PHOTO?
No. Everything that was stamped on the photograph was on the back of the photograph.
THAT’S WHERE YOU SAW TOP SECRET/MAJIC?
Yes, I saw it there and I saw it on some of the documents, too.
DID THE DOCUMENTS HAVE TOP SECRET/MAJIC STAMPED AT THE TOP AND THE BOTTOM?
They were typed. I didn’t discern it that good because I was in that vault for maybe 5 minutes. Everybody started getting nervous and started to put things up and get the heck out of there.
BEFORE WE GET OUT OF THE VAULT…
Yeah, we’ve got three more photographs.
Photograph # 2 – EBEs
LET’S GO TO PHOTOGRAPH NUMBER TWO.
Photograph number two is at the hangar and you’ve got three aliens on skids that have some sort of mat on it. They are in the hangar, right near the door. You could tell it’s one of those old-styled hangars with the curved corner. You could see that. You could see the lines from the top of the hangar where the window is with those long panes. They gave off a shadow and you could see those lines going down on the ground. One alien looked pretty good.
MEANING?
He looked like he was basically intact.
BUT ALIVE OR DEAD?
Dead.
AGAIN, NUDE LIKE THE OTHER?
Nude, yeah. I never saw any sort of clothing on any of these aliens.
SO, THE ONE ON THE GROUND IN THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH AND THE THREE ON THE PALLETT IN THE HANGAR IN THE SECOND PHOTOGRAPH – THE BODIES ESSENTIALLY LOOKED EXACTLY THE SAME?
One did. But the other two looked badly beaten up or charred.
WERE THEY ALL THE SAME SIZE?
You couldn’t tell because you had the one alien on the slab. This photograph was taken of them – you couldn’t see the other two that good. You could see the first one and then on the other side is the other alien and on the other side of that one is the other alien.
The other two aliens looked like they were sort of crumpled up. They had all kinds of bad stuff happened to them. One of them’s head – it was all charred, but not completely charred. Just spotting of char. One of them looked like a huge gouge was out of its side. The other one looked like a huge gouge was out of its leg. But there was various degrees of charring to them, like they had been burned to some extent. They weren’t flat laid out. They were kind of crumpled up, like in a fetal position of some sort.
BUT THE ONE CLOSEST TO THE PHOTOGRAPHER IN THE PHOTOGRAPH…
He was laid out.
SORT OF LIKE THE ONE LAYED OUT NEXT TO THE TRUCK?
That’s correct. I would assume, based on that, that it was the same one that was on the ground near the truck in the first photograph.
IT LOOKED THAT SIMILAR TO YOU?
It looked that similar, yeah.
WAS THERE ANYTHING ON THAT PHOTOGRAPH THAT WAS EITHER MARKED WITH A DATE OR NUMBER OF STAMP DIFFERENT FROM THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPH?
No, but again, there were legs and feet. They were standard military shoes and khaki pants.
SO, MILITARY.
Yes, absolutely.
WAS THERE ANYTHING JUDGING FROM THE SIZE OF THE SHOES AND PANT LEG IN RELATIONSHIP TO WHERE THE PHOTOGRAPHER WAS STANDING A FEW FEET AWAY FROM THAT FIRST ONE LAID OUT THAT WAS NOT BURNED THAT COULD GIVE YOU A BETTER SENSE OF THE SIZE OF THAT ONE.
I can give you a good guess on that. They had to be between 3′ 8″ to 4′ 2″.
BASED ON?
Based on my memory of where they were laid out and the size of the skid was probably as big as my kitchen table where I’m at right now. They just about fit evenly on that.
Photograph # 3 – EBEs
THEN LET’S GO TO PHOTOGRAPH NUMBER 3.
You have an elongated body shot and a head shot. These two photographs are completely black except for the aliens. In Photograph 3, it was laid out on sort of a gurney or stretcher or something. The photo didn’t catch much of that. It just basically caught what is laying down on something and you could barely see it was on a gurney. It was just from head to toe, side angle, complete side. No top angle, just complete side from head to toe. And there it was.
WHAT DID THE SKIN LOOK LIKE THERE?
The photographs weren’t that good because the flash, it seemed like, kind of made it shinier. It wasn’t a very good photograph.
WHEN YOU SAY THAT PHOTOGRAPH # 3 WAS DARKENED, EXCEPT FOR THE PROFILE SIDE OF THE BODY, DO YOU MEAN IT WAS AS IF SOMEONE HAD PURPOSEFULLY BLACKED OUT EVERYTHING AROUND THE BODY? OR HAD REDUCED THE LIGHT?
It did appear that way.
SO YOU COULDN’T SEE ANY SURROUNDINGS?
No, absolutely not.
IF YOU ARE IN THE PHOTOGRAPHER’S SHOES, HOW FAR IS THE CAMERA?
Maybe 12 feet. It covered its (EBE) length was about 4 feet long again. It had that weird lima bean-shaped head that concaved into a small jaw. You could tell there were eyes. You could barely make out the nose. You could barely make out any ear. It did have a very skinny neck that was about 4 inches long. It did have very skinny arms. Its arms actually went way down, like past its knee when it was laid out like that.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU GET TO THE LEGS AND FEET?
The biggest part of the leg is where the torso comes right to it and then it tapers all the way down to its feet. I do remember its hands were very long. I think it had four fingers, no discernible thumb, but if it was there, it was sort of higher than the rest.
DID THOSE FINGERS LOOK HUMAN? OR WERE THEY DIFFERENT?
The fingers were just creepy, OK! (laughs) They just sort of had a different angle to them and weird tips. If I was to say it had sort of a suction cup-looking tip, that would be the best description. I know that kind of throws people off, but you’d have to see it to understand it.
NO, IT DOESN’T. THERE HAVE BEEN MANY DESCRIPTIONS OF SUCTION CUPS AT THE END OF THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL BIOLOGICAL ENTITY FINGERS.
I didn’t know that.
SO, IF I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE SAYING, AT THE END OF THESE VERY LONG, TAPERING FOUR FINGERS, THERE WAS SOME KIND OF A FLARING THAT WOULD PERHAPS REMIND YOU OF A SUCTION CUP?
In a way. I’d just never seen anything like this. It was just creepy! It creeped me out. (laughs)
CAN YOU THEN GO ON FROM THE WAIST DOWN? WERE THERE ANY GENITALS?
Genitalia, I could not see any. On the alien that was in the best shape, there was either shadow or it wasn’t there. He just looked like a Ken doll. It just wasn’t there.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE LEGS AND FEET?
OK, coming off the torso was its major parts, if there was any body to it there. Then it just sort of went from thick to thin all the way down. Even where it got to its feet – their feet looked liked they had sort of mangled and folded into themselves. You know how if an animal dies, have you ever seen where their feet sort of crumple into themselves?
THEY SORT OF CURL UP.
Right, they kind of curl up. Well, that’s what I remember the most. They were curled in toward the body.
COULD YOU SEE TOES?
Yes, I remember there were toes.
WERE THE TOES DISTINCTLY SEPARATED LIKE A HUMAN’S? OR WERE THEY DIFFERENT?
They were kind of clawish. I don’t remember if there were any toenails, but you could tell there were toes. I don’t remember how many there was, but I did count those fingers. I remember that.
Photograph # 4 – EBEs
GO TO PHOTOGRAPH # 4.
It’s the head shot and it’s taken about 3 or 4 feet away from its head. It’s slightly at an angle and captured about most of its neck. That’s where it cuts off.
When you look at that little sucker down there in the Roswell Museum, you’re pretty much looking at the same guy. Whoever gave those guys in that movie the information about what these aliens look like, they did a pretty good job. That’s basically what I saw. That’s the truth!
DID THE CLOSE-UP ON THIS HEAD SHOW THAT SORT OF MOTTLED WHITE SNAKE SKIN LOOK THAT YOU SAW WHEN THE BODY WAS LAYING NEXT TO THE TRUCK?
Yeah. You could tell it was sort of reptilian-ish, but at the same time you could not point out discernible scales. Throughout its head in different places, it sort of had little bumps. It was very smooth. It was very dead. The eyes had the outline of the oval and the slits in the middle which were very thin. It’s almost not discernible. The nose was like a little hardly any nose at all. You could barely make out any nose holes. The mouth is seriously just like two pieces of skin pressed together and there’s a slit.
HOW WIDE WAS THE LINE?
Maybe at the most 2 inches.
ANYTHING THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN AN EAR?
Its ear I would describe as just a little nib, kind of a nipple.
AND THE NECK?
A lot of lines.
LIKE WRINKLED?
Wrinkles.
WHAT DID HOWARD SAY TO YOU IN THE VAULT WITH THE PHOTOS IN FRONT OF YOU?
I was taken aback, as you can imagine, and I asked him, ‘What am I looking at here?’
And he told me, ‘Aliens from outer space, you big dummy.’
I said, ‘This can’t be.’ I just blew it off, it’s just a bunch of B. S.’
And he said, ‘My God, you are looking right at it and people won’t believe, can’t believe it. But that’s what it is.’”
The three men thought they had been able to enter the vault and look at the TOP SECRET/MAJIC photographs without anyone finding out. But on the Monday after that 1976 Thanksgiving weekend, Tom Sheppard was summoned to Chief James Seeley’s office. Robert Toppen and Craig Howard were ordered to the Chief of Staff’s office. What happened two weeks later is perhaps an insight into the methods our government has used to keep military and intelligence people quiet and controlled concerning the extraterrestrial presence.
Tom Sheppard’s experiences continued in Part 2 and on Dreamland Radio.
More Information:
Editor’s Note: Somewhat different, but alleged EBE photographs below, were also distributed on the internet in 1995 with Chinese text that indicated the retrieval location was near Leshan, China, in 1970.
For more information about “peculiar phenomenon,” UFO crash retrievals and extraterrestrial biological entities, please see the following reports in Earthfiles Archives. Also see my books in the Earthfiles Shop.
- 03/09/2006 — Part 14 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 02/28/2006 — Part 13 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 02/19/2006 — Part 12 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 02/17/2006 — White Sands Navy Radar Operator Saw Discs Circle V-2 Rocket Launches
- 02/27/2006 — Part 4: Military Voices Reply About Government Interaction with UFOs
- 02/22/2006 — Part 3: Military Voices Reply About Government Interaction with UFOs
- 02/21/2006 — Part 2: Military Voices Reply About Government Interaction with UFOs
- 02/07/2006 — Part 1: Military Voices Reply About Government Interaction with UFOs.
- 02/05/2006 — Part 11 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 01/29/2006 — Part 10 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 01/17/2006 — Part 9 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 01/09/2006 — Part 8 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 01/03/2006 — Part 7 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/31/2005 — Part 6 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/27/2005 — Part 5 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/24/2005 — Part 4 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/24/2005 — Part 3 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/21/2005 — Updated: Part 2 – Peculiar Phenomenon, Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/19/2005 — Part 1 – Peculiar Phenomenon: Early United States Efforts to Collect and Analyze Flying Discs
- 12/10/2004 — Part 4: “Peculiar Phenomena,” V-2 Rockets – and UFOB Retaliation?
- 12/10/2004 — Part 3: “Peculiar Phenomena,” V-2 Rockets – and UFOB Retaliation?
- 12/07/2004 — Part 2: “Peculiar Phenomena,” V-2 Rockets – and UFOB Retaliation?
- 12/04/2004 — Part 1: “Peculiar Phenomena,” V-2 Rockets – and UFOB Retaliation?
Websites:
Majestic 12 Documents: http://www.majesticdocuments.com
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