The appearance of the lovely Diane in the "little white church in Los Angeles" is only one side of the miracle that occurred on April 29, 1955.  Out on the Desert where your author resides during resort season, another miracle had happened. Mrs. Barbara MacDonald, a member of the Ground Observation Corp, a civilian agency attached to the Air Force reported that her skywatchers had broadcast four strange ships seen high in the desert skies during the week of Diane's visitation.  There was no chance for error here . . . no exaggerated rumors, for all sightings were the result of observers detailed to duty, Air Force volunteers whose task it is to spot and report any unusual happening or any alien ship seen in the skies.  These skywatchers, working different shifts, all gave the same account.  Mrs. MacDonald reports that H. A. Mooney, a young man well trained in sky phenomena and only recently out of the Navy, stated he saw a huge ship very high over the desert skies and travelling at a startling rate of speed.  Although the ship was of gargantuan size there was no tail fire and it was absolutely noiseless.  Mooney stated it revealed a long row of odd-looking portholes from which streamed radiant fire.  It vanished into nothingness before his eyes.

Mrs. MacDonald further relates that a few nights later, Jan Carlyle, secretary of a prominent Palm Springs attorney, another duly appointed skywatcher, reported a similar happening.  This ship was virtually the same in appearance.  It was described as unusual in size — the same long row of portholes and travelling at fabulous speed.  It too was noiseless.  Repeating substantially the same story as young Mooney, the ship vanished into thin air while the watcher's eyes were upon it.

Again Mrs. MacDonald tells of another similar incident.  Rickey Anderson, another skywatcher and a decided unbeliever in the "saucer theory," reported a few nights later the appearance of two such ships traversing the desert skies.  He described the light streaming from the portholes as a luminous blue-white light.  The ships were travelling in an easterly direction and he followed them over the little town of Thousand Palms, California, but like the others they disappeared into the invisible beyond.

Your author has been reliably informed that all four sightings have been duly classified by the Air Force as "unidentified flying objects."

Again, a few nights later the townspeople of Desert Hot Springs, California, a health resort located ten miles from Palm Springs, were alerted by a different kind of craft.  Playing the skies, almost directly over my home, Joe and Marian Merrick made this sighting report:

"It was 7 o'clock in the evening," say the Merricks.  "We were sitting on our front porch when suddenly we saw a strange object in the sky, the forepart of the ship a huge orange disc, the tail portion made up of blue-green lights which seemed to flash a luminosity over the desert sky.  It was broad daylight and visibility over the broad expanse of open desert made the sighting stand out in bas relief.

"We watched it for quite a long time.  There was no wind.  A quiet still desert evening.  Then as suddenly as it appeared it took off at great speed and disappeared into thin air."

Joe and Marian Merrick,

Desert Hot Springs, California.

 This sighting was confirmed by countless other individuals but I quote from the lips of Mrs. Agnes Gentile.  "My little granddaughter saw it first.  She looked upward and screamed.  There was this fantastic thing — a huge ball of orange fire with a long tail of brilliant blue-green light.  It so frightened the children they ran screaming into the house."

The story of Carl Anderson of Long Beach, California, a Navy employee, is equally remarkable.  On April 4, 1954, his wife Stella and their two children, Betty Ann and Bobby, were camped for the night on the desert a few miles from Desert Hot Springs.  Asleep in their tent, they were suddenly awakened just in time to watch the tent walls mysteriously disappearing, their eyes riveted on a large shining disc hovering about eighteen or twenty inches from the sandy earth outside.  At the same time their bodies were held in a vice-like grip from which they could not escape.  They describe the craft as having windows or portholes through which shone a fluorescent light.  They did not see anyone alight from the disc, but they did hear voices.

 

After what seemed to them an interminable length of time, they all relate they heard a slight humming sound, and the dim fluorescent glow took on first an orange cast, then red.  It started to rise straight up, slowly, then with an accelerated speed.  As it did so, the lighting changed to a bluish-white, finally disappearing into the nothingness.  The walls of the tent again closed in upon them and their rigid bodies relaxed once more.  Carl believes this seeming state of paralysis was merely their protection against some unknown but powerful ray.

 

This story is fully told in TWO NIGHTS TO REMEMBER (New Age Publishing Company [1956]).