What Really Happened in McCarty Canyon?

What reportedly happened near McCarty Canyon

Everett “Carl” Higdon Jr. was a Rawlins, Wyoming oil-field foreman, a Korean War Air Force veteran, married with children, and described in later local reporting as a capable outdoorsman and experienced worker. On 25 October 1974, he borrowed a company truck, drove south towards McCarty Canyon in the Medicine Bow National Forest area, parked when the road became difficult, and continued on foot. Around 4 p.m., he said he saw five elk, raised a 7 mm magnum rifle, and fired at the bull. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

The first oddity in the story is the shot itself. Higdon later recalled that he felt no normal recoil and heard no proper rifle report; the bullet appeared to leave the gun in slow motion and fall to the ground roughly 50 feet ahead of him. His wife, Margery, later found a flattened, turned-out bullet in his clothing. Local and later accounts say ballistic experts could not explain the damage, although publicly accessible summaries rarely provide the full chain of custody, the laboratory reports, or enough technical detail to judge that claim independently. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

The second core feature is missing time. Higdon’s next clear memory, in the basic public chronology, was being found at about 11:30 p.m. or shortly before midnight, dazed and incoherent, in his truck. He was taken to Carbon County Memorial Hospital, where accounts describe him as disoriented, unable at first to give his name or recognise his wife, with red, watering, light-sensitive eyes and poor equilibrium. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

A third striking claim concerns the truck. Later retellings state that it was found roughly three miles from where Higdon had parked it, in rough ground that a two-wheel-drive vehicle should not easily have reached, with no obvious tyre tracks leading to it. This is one of the most important corroboration claims because it does not depend solely on what Higdon remembered; however, the strength of that point depends on details often missing in popular summaries: who mapped the original parking place, who inspected the route, what the ground conditions were, and whether any contemporaneous sheriff, search-party, or insurance documentation survives. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

The “Ausso One” story and why hypnosis matters

The most elaborate part of the Higdon case is the account of the being and the journey. Under later questioning and hypnotic regression, Higdon described a humanoid male figure about six feet tall, yellowish-skinned, with no ears, small deep-set eyes, a thin mouth, large blocky teeth, short antennae, straw-like hair, a black tight-fitting suit, and a drill-like appendage in place of one hand. The being allegedly called himself “Ausso One”, spoke English, offered Higdon pills, and took him aboard a small cube-like craft that seemed impossible to reconcile with its reported internal space. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

In the extended narrative, Higdon, Ausso One, other beings, and the five elk were somehow transported inside the craft. Higdon reportedly said they travelled to a planet 163,000 light years away, arrived near a bright tower, and that he was examined by a device before being told he was not suitable and would be returned to Earth. This is the part of the case that attracts the most attention, but it is also where the evidential basis becomes weakest, because the reader has to separate immediate post-incident confusion and fragmentary recall from later regression-enhanced detail. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

R. Leo Sprinkle’s role is central. Sprinkle was a University of Wyoming psychologist whose professional interests included counselling, hypnosis, UFO contactee experiences, and parapsychology; his papers are held in the American Heritage Center’s archival collections, which include UFO and contactee research material. His major published treatment of the Higdon case was “Investigation of the Alleged UFO Experience of Carl Higdon”, printed in Richard F. Haines’s 1979 edited volume UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral Scientist, with related earlier reporting in Flying Saucer Review. [Archives West]archiveswest.orbiscascade.orgSource details in endnotes. [Archives West]archiveswest.orbiscascade.orgSource details in endnotes.

That gives the case a documented research trail, but not a simple evidential upgrade. Hypnosis was widely used by UFO investigators in the 1970s and 1980s, but later psychology and forensic literature has been much more guarded. Modern reviews of false memory research emphasise that people can form confident memories of events that did not occur, especially under suggestive conditions; forensic hypnosis literature warns of a trade-off between more recall and reduced accuracy, with confidence sometimes increasing regardless of truth. [Frontiers]frontiersin.orgSource details in endnotes.

For the Higdon case, that means the basic field incident and the later “planet journey” should not be weighed equally. The stronger questions are: Was Higdon genuinely found disoriented? Was the truck in an anomalous position? Was the bullet physically unusual in a way that could not be produced conventionally? The weaker questions are the interstellar distance, tower, examination room, and detailed dialogue with Ausso One, because those details rely heavily on recovered or elaborated memory. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable [Gideon Reid]gideonreid.co.ukGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up AboveGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up Above

The best evidence and its limits

The Higdon case is often called credible because it has more than a strange story. There was an allegedly damaged bullet, a search and recovery episode, hospital attention, a truck-location claim, a witness who apparently did not build a major career from the story, and a long-term insistence by Higdon that something extraordinary had happened. Local reporting also notes later claims that he passed polygraph tests and did not financially exploit the incident, though those points are not the same as proof of the event itself. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

The bullet is the most memorable physical item. Sprinkle reportedly regarded it as important evidence, and later sceptical discussion of the case also treats it as the central physical puzzle. A photographed damaged bullet is not, by itself, enough to establish a UFO encounter: investigators would need secure provenance, comparison tests with the same ammunition and rifle, metallurgical analysis, and a documented exclusion of mundane deformation methods. In the accessible public material, the bullet is intriguing but under-documented. [Gideon Reid]gideonreid.co.ukGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up AboveGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up Above

The medical claims are also difficult to grade. Accounts say Higdon was disoriented, light-sensitive, and examined in hospital; they also report more dramatic claims that old tuberculosis scars no longer appeared on X-rays and that kidney stones were gone. The first category — confusion, eye irritation, disequilibrium — is compatible with many possible causes, including shock, exposure, injury, or an altered state. The second category would require contemporaneous medical records before and after the event, not just retelling, because it is too medically significant to treat as established from anecdote alone. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

The truck-location claim may be the most practically testable element, but it is often repeated without the underlying terrain record. If a two-wheel-drive truck really appeared in a place it could not have reached, with no tracks, that would be a strong anomaly. If the route was merely difficult, if there were alternate access points, or if later memory compressed the search geography, the evidential weight drops sharply. The accessible record leaves this as a serious but unresolved corroboration point rather than a settled fact. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

Official investigation versus private UFO research

A common misunderstanding is to treat every well-known American UFO case as if it had a Project Blue Book file. Higdon’s 1974 encounter happened after Blue Book had closed. The National Archives states that Project Blue Book closed in 1969 and that it has no information on sightings after that date; the U.S. Air Force fact sheet likewise says the programme was terminated on 17 December 1969. [National Archives]cdn.nationalarchives.gov.ukSource details in endnotes.

That does not mean no one investigated Higdon. It means the known research trail is mainly private, local, journalistic, and ufological rather than a formal Air Force case file. The key named researcher was R. Leo Sprinkle, with references also to investigators Rick Kenyon and Robert Nantkes in summaries of the case literature. Sprinkle’s materials and related UFO conference recordings are represented in archival holdings, including a 1980 “Rocky Mountain UFO Conference on UFO Investigations” item mentioning Carl Higdon and Pat McGuire. [Reddit]reddit.comOpen source on reddit.com.

This distinction matters. A private investigator can preserve testimony, organise interviews, and gather impressions, but a private case file does not carry the same evidential status as a transparent official investigation with published primary documents, laboratory appendices, and independent review. Conversely, the lack of a Blue Book file after 1969 should not be misread as debunking the incident; it mainly reflects the administrative reality that the U.S. Air Force had already ended that programme. [National Archives]cdn.nationalarchives.gov.ukSource details in endnotes.

Sceptical readings: hoax, altered state, and cultural borrowing

There is no single settled sceptical explanation for the Higdon case. The simplest possibility is fabrication, but that explanation has to account for the apparent immediate distress, the search-and-hospital episode, and Higdon’s long-term consistency in saying something happened. The counterpoint is that consistency and sincerity do not establish objective accuracy, especially when the most dramatic details emerged or developed through hypnotic regression. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

A second possibility is an altered state or medical episode during a remote hunt, followed by confusion, memory gaps, and later narrative construction. This would fit some parts of the story — disorientation, missing time, light sensitivity, and fragmented recall — but it does not neatly explain the bullet or the truck if those claims are taken at full strength. Because the public record lacks enough primary documentation, the altered-state explanation remains plausible but incomplete rather than decisive. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

A third line of sceptical analysis looks at science-fiction parallels. Writer Gideon Reid, building on earlier observations about fiction and UFO narratives, argues that several features of Higdon’s story resemble earlier fiction, especially Maurice Renard’s Le Péril Bleu and its English-language derivative “Up Above”: a strange aerial removal, transparent confinement, an odd stillness, seeing Earth below, captives or animals, and even a flattened bullet against an invisible barrier. Reid’s comparison is not proof that Higdon consciously borrowed the story, but it is a useful caution against treating every unusual narrative detail as independent evidence of a real event. [Gideon Reid]gideonreid.co.ukGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up AboveGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up Above

That cultural-borrowing argument is strongest against the later, story-like architecture of the case, not necessarily against the initial episode. Many UFO cases contain a mixture of immediate experience, later interpretation, investigator influence, and cultural vocabulary. Higdon’s case is especially vulnerable to this layered reading because it combines a physical outdoor incident with regression-derived cosmic travel details. [Gideon Reid]gideonreid.co.ukGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up AboveGideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up Above

Why the case still holds attention

Higdon’s story has endured because it is not just a generic flying-saucer sighting. It has a vivid setting, a specific date, named people, an apparent search-and-rescue aftermath, a damaged object, medical claims, a distinctive entity, and a documented place in the UFO-abduction research culture of the 1970s. It was also public enough to appear in newspapers and later television: local reporting refers to a Casper Star-Tribune story from October 1974, later press attention, and a 1978 In Search Of segment in which Higdon and Sprinkle appeared. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

Its weakness is the same thing that makes it memorable: the narrative grows more extraordinary as it moves away from the immediate recovery scene and into hypnotically accessed detail. The bullet, truck, hospital state, and witness demeanour are the parts most worth preserving and checking against primary records. The interstellar journey, planet, tower, examination, and dialogue may be important to Higdon’s experience, but they are much harder to treat as external evidence. [Cowboy State Daily]cowboystatedaily.comalien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainablealien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable

For a case dossier, the Higdon contact belongs beside other close-encounter and abduction branches not because it proves alien contact, but because it shows how a UFO case can become evidentially complicated. It has more texture than a lone light in the sky, yet it also demonstrates why chronology, source provenance, hypnosis, and chain of custody are decisive. A fair assessment should neither dismiss Higdon as merely foolish nor accept the story whole. The defensible conclusion is narrower: something troubling appears to have happened to Carl Higdon during an elk hunt on 25 October 1974, but the available public evidence does not establish that the cause was an extraterrestrial abduction.

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Endnotes

1. Source: archives.gov
   Title: National Archives Project BLUE BOOK
   Link: https://www.archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos

2. Source: reddit.com
   Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/sb30zl/this_abduction_case_from_1974_might_be_the/

3. Source: reddit.com
   Title: carl higdons alien encounter of 1974 and its
   Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1iw7139/carl_higdons_alien_encounter_of_1974_and_its/

4. Source: reddit.com
   Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/wsqdi8/honest_opinion_and_thoughts_from_skeptics_ufos/

5. Source: archives.gov
   Title: project blue book 50th anniversary
   Link: https://www.archives.gov/news/articles/project-blue-book-50th-anniversary

6. Source: newspapers.com
   Title: casper star tribune carl higdon ufo
   Link: https://www.newspapers.com/article/casper-star-tribune-carl-higdon-ufo/32950536/

7. Source: cowboystatedaily.com
   Title: alien abductions of 2 wyoming men in the 1970s remain unexplainable
   Link: https://cowboystatedaily.com/2023/09/30/alien-abductions-of-2-wyoming-men-in-the-1970s-remain-unexplainable/

8. Source: gideonreid.co.uk
   Title: Gideon Reid Carl Higdon’s Trip Up Above
   Link: https://gideonreid.co.uk/carl-higdons-trip-up-above/

9. Source: archiveswest.orbiscascade.org
   Link: https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark%3A80444/xv805708

10. Source: frontiersin.org
    Link: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1327196/full

11. Source: gideonreid.co.uk
    Title: science fiction and the carl higdon alien encounter story
    Link: https://gideonreid.co.uk/science-fiction-and-the-carl-higdon-alien-encounter-story/

12. Source: Wikipedia
    Title: Project Blue Book
    Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book

13. Source: cryptidz.fandom.com
    Title: Ausso One
    Link: https://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Ausso_One

14. Source: high-strangeness.fandom.com
    Title: Ausso One
    Link: https://high-strangeness.fandom.com/wiki/Ausso_One

15. Source: archive.org
    Link: https://archive.org/stream/ExtraordinaryEncounters_201809/Extraordinary%20Encounters_djvu.txt

16. Source: archive.org
    Title: Project Blue Book Indexes
    Link: https://archive.org/details/ProjectBlueBookIndexes

17. Source: britannica.com
    Title: Project Blue Book
    Link: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Project-Blue-Book

18. Source: mcnallyjackson.com
    Link: https://mcnallyjackson.com/book/9781981812899

19. Source: archiveswest.orbiscascade.org
    Link: https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark%3A80444/xv805708?q=R.+Leo+Sprinkle

20. Source: cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk
    Link: https://cdn.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/briefing-guide-12-07-12.pdf

Additional References

1. Source: youtube.com
   Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvwYBEZH2I
   Source snippet

   Man's Shocking ALIEN ABDUCTION from Wyoming in 1974...

   Published: October 25, 1974

2. Source: youtube.com
   Title: Carl & Margery Higdon | The Carl Higdon Alien Abduction Story
   Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=789LVh-GF1Y
   Source snippet

   Carl Higdon abduction 1974 Carl Higdon Abduction, 1974 Think Anomalous...

3. Source: kpl.gov
   Link: https://www.kpl.gov/catalog/item/?i=ent%3A%2F%2FERC_215_8682%2F0%2F215_8682%3AHOOPLA%3A18505238

4. Source: youtube.com
   Title: The Alien Abduction of Carl Higdon
   Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDx0uMPivJY
   Source snippet

   Then and now ~ Carl Higdon talks about his alien abduction during hunting, Wyoming, October 25, 1974...

   Published: October 25, 1974

5. Source: youtube.com
   Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnC_jjAenFg
   Source snippet

   Carl & Margery Higdon | The Carl Higdon Alien Abduction Story...

6. Source: researchgate.net
   Link: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/13946572_Creating_False_Memories

7. Source: academia.edu
   Link: https://www.academia.edu/84918836/Forensic_Hypnosis

8. Source: archivesfoundation.org
   Link: https://archivesfoundation.org/documents/50-years-ago-government-stops-investigating-ufos/

9. Source: af.mil
   Link: https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Article/104590/unidentified-flying-objects-and-air-force-project-blue-book/

10. Source: podimo.com
    Link: https://podimo.com/en/shows/my-dark-path/episode/626eb9e7-ea89-5b7c-a162-87339b3db060