Why is the south-central part of the state such a hotspot for paranormal activity?

Three miles north of the town of Hooper, Colorado — population about 100 — a white tower rises out of the desert. Centrally located between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east and the San Juan Mountains to the west, the viewing platform provides observers with an unobstructed view of a large portion of the San Luis Valley.

More importantly, though, the tower allows viewers to watch the sky above the valley. That’s where the valley’s most interesting visitors seem to originate. For as long as it has existed, the site has been a prime location for spotting unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.

The death of a horse

The San Luis Valley first emerged on the world stage as a site of unusual occurrences in September 1967 when something killed Nellie Lewis’ horse, Lady, at her brother Harry King’s ranch just north of Alamosa.

Courtesy of NASA. The San Luis Valley in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico as seen from space.

When the horse didn’t come home one day, King went looking for it and found a grisly sight. Lady was lying on her side, her head stripped to the bone. A strong odor of acetone surrounded the carcass, which upon closer inspection, had cuts to its flank that seemed so precise that King didn’t believe they could be made by a wild animal. The bones, according to the Alamosa News, looked as though they had been exposed to the sun for years. A later investigation by pathologist Dr. John Altshuler found that the animal was missing its brain, lungs, heart, and thyroid. Further, there was no material in the spinal column and there was no blood — anywhere.

Lady’s hoofprints ended about 100 feet from her final resting place. Burns were found in the surrounding area, and bushes within a circle 20 feet in diameter were crushed to within 10 inches of the ground. A three-foot diameter circle of indentations two inches across and six inches deep was found pressed into the ground. Lewis found gelatin-like green globs on the bushes and a piece of metal covered in horsehair. Upon touching the items, her hands burned until she could wash them. When Duane Martin, a United States Forest Service employee, tested the area with a Geiger counter, he found the burn marks, the globs, and the metal object were radioactive.

Nick Gonzales/DGO. When it comes to the paranormal, the San Luis Valley is known primarily for UFO sightings and cattle mutilations.

According to local news reports, residents and visitors reported strange happenings in the area around that time — including a man saying his car was followed by a top-shaped object, a college student’s rear tires blowing out as he approached an object in a field, and two sheriff’s deputies being followed by an orange sphere. The Condon Committee (a group funded by the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study reports of UFOs) sent another pathologist, Dr. Robert Adams, to examine the horse. Adams concluded Lady’s death had “no unearthly causes, at least not to my mind.” Several weeks after the case was publicized, two local college students claimed that they had sneaked out to the pasture and shot Lady’s carcass in the rear.

The horse, Lady, which came to be known as Snippy after press coverage confused her with her sire, made international news, becoming one of the most famous cases of animal mutilations — a phenomenon that continues to this day in North and South America, though usually involving cows, not horses. Paranormal investigator Christopher O’Brien, who has written three books on unexplained activity in the San Luis Valley and one on cattle mutilations, said over 200 reports of cattle mutilations have been filed by SLV ranchers but he estimates the actual number of cases may be closer to 1,000.

An uncanny valleyO’Brien first became interested in the valley in 1992 after hearing tales of strange sightings by locals – and then having his own. He describes an encounter in which something crossed about 250 feet from his path as he was driving.

“This thing zipped right in front of our car. It looked like something out of a bad sci-fi movie or like the Jetsons. It was a little 12-foot craft, and I just went, ‘Wow.’ It looked like a fishing lure being reeled-in and skipping through the air,” he said.

Nick Gonzales/DGO. The view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains behind Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, west of the UFO Watchtower.

On Dec. 9 of that year, there was another sighting in which at least 18 people in Crestone had the same experience. O’Brien didn’t witness that one — he was playing with his band — but when everyone at a New Year’s party he later attended was talking about the same event, he went to the Crestone Eagle and asked if he could write an article. In the two weeks that he spent investigating the sighting, he uncovered enough material to write a book, he said.

Between then and 2002, O’Brien investigated over 1,000 paranormal events in the San Luis Valley. These covered everything from haunted sites and legends to cryptids like Bigfoot to occult crime to secret military activity. The big two categories in the SLV, though, are UFO reports and cattle mutilations. He has researched between 600 and 700 of the former and around 200 of the latter, he said. They extend to almost every geographical extent of the valley, including as far west as Del Norte and South Fork and as far south as Taos, New Mexico.

For interactive map and for the rest of this article please use source link below