The San Luis Valley (SLV), (located in South central Colorado and North central New Mexico), is the largest alpine valley in the world. Zebulon Pike was the first white American to cross the Sangre De Cristo Mountains into this 120-mile-long-by-forty-mile wide territory. The four-thousand-square-mile, semiarid desert valley floor sits at an average elevation of 7,600 feet, over a mile and a half above sea level, and averages less than five inches of rainfall per year.
Its entire wishbone shape is ringed by majestic forested mountains on all sides. Along the entire eastern side of the valley stands a solid wall of rock soaring to heights of over fourteen thousand feet–the imposing Sangres de Cristos. The second youngest mountain range in the continental United States, the peaks owe their jagged appearance to their relatively young age. The Valley is also just 50 or so miles from Archuleta Mesa and the notorious Dulce, New Mexico/Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation in Rio Arriba County NM—alleged location of an “alien/human underground base.”
What is a “Hot Spot”?
Our strange planet features thousands of enigmatic locales that have a history of unexplained events, such as bizarre aerial activity, strange phantasmal creatures and other inexplicable phenomena—myths, legends, stories and current events that are all centered around specific locations. East, west, north or south, it doesn’t matter where you travel on this blue globe hanging in space, there is undoubtedly a paranormal “hotspot” region near you.
Generally, these areas appear to have fairly similar characteristics:
- Unusual geophysical properties
- Rare weather phenomena
- Waves of anomalous, unexplained aerial activity that have been observed for generations
- Myths and legends that define the Hot Spot area as containing Native sacred sites
- Unique sub-cultural belief systems around the paranormal, religion and the occult
- Crypto-creature and dimensional doorway reports and stories
- Government/Military presence i.e., bases, military operations areas, MTRs, black facilties
- A local attitude of indifference and apathy to anomalous aerial sightings because they’re seen so often
North America features more than its share of hotspot regions—some more celebrated and documented than others. A partial listing of North American hotspot regions should include: the infamous “Skinwalker Ranch” 
inside the Uintah Ute Indian Reservation; New Mexico Highway 70 (and the mountains around the Mescalero Apache Reservation); the White Sands Missile Range; and Mothman country back east in the Ohio River Valley around Point Pleasant, West Virginia. While we are on the East Coast there’s also the Hudson River Valley region with its mysterious dolmans and underground caverns and tunnels; the mysterious eastern tip of Long Island, New York; the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania and magical Seashore State Park in Virginia Beach, Virginia. There are also many other locations, too numerous to mention.
Hot-Spot Locations: Monitoring Ground-Zero
These pivotal specific regions are also a sociologist’s undiscovered goldmine, however, few long- term studies have been mounted to scrutinize experiencers who live in these locales. After personally interviewing hundreds of witnesses of these types of events, I have begun to suspect that the experiencers themselves are as important as the incidents of weirdness they experience. In addition to so-called paranormal events, hotspot areas of the world also appear to feature unusual geophysical properties that may account for their higher than normal incidences of unusual events. These geo-energetic elements, when defined and studied, could potentially provide further motivation to scientifically investigate the full width and breadth of these hotspot regions’ unexplained activity. Without question, there appears to be an emerging public interest in these specific locales (and the events they feature) and word about the documented activity has been slowly filtering out into the mainstream.
At the top of North America, in the southern Rocky Mountains, you’ll find Colorado/New Mexico’s San Luis Valley (“SLV”)—one of North America’s premier hot spot locations. I spent ten years from 1992 to 2002 investigating and documenting unexplained events that occurred in and around the SLV. I uncovered thousands of stories from the recent past and hundreds of current reports of the unexplained; many of these gems now encrust the extensive database I developed covering this crown jewel of paranormal hotspots.
Hotspot regions such as the San Luis Valley are veritable magnets for reports of paranormal events. But unfortunately, any attempt to define what constitutes a truly “paranormal” event is wrought with perilous philosophic and scientific challenges, and a lack of hard, scientific data. Prior to my arrival, knowledge of past reports of unexplained activity had not traveled out into the mainstream beyond the valley. When I moved to the mysterious San Luis Valley in 1989 little did I realize that I would spend the better part of the next fifteen years investigating, researching and documenting around a thousand unusual events—all occurring within the well-defined confines of this specific area. Looking over my extensive database chronicling these events, I suppose you could say the key was coordinating efforts and communicating with an assortment of local law enforcement officials, a skywatcher network, other amateur and professional investigators and local newspaper reporters.
Utilizing these techniques and sources, SLV residents documented and investigated an intensive seven-year wave of unexplained phenomenal events between 1992 and 1999. As a result of this effort, this forgotten region at the top of North America was named the Number One per capita UFO hotspot by the Computer UFO Network (CUFON), with 257 sightings per 10,000 in population; along with Bucks County, PA, it could be called America’s most active UFO sighting region.
For twenty-plus years, one of my goals has been to install a web of high-resolution video cameras around the San Luis Valley. Back in the early 90s when I first conceived of this surveillance net, the cost for gear and the level of existing affordable technology made the project too costly to undertake.
Today, with the advent of low cost/high resolution cameras and the Internet, this surveillance net is now possible. With the help of several members and benefactors from MUFON OC this dream has become a reality. UFODAP has installed the first of seven proposed cameras on cell-towers and mountaintops and the team has conducted a successful two-week test. Customized tracking and synchronization software is being developed and the team envisions a Spring 2011 launch date for the first triangulated array. Along with the 30X optical zoom, 360 degree, pan/tilt cameras, the team has designed a scientific approach that includes recording magnetometers, gravitometers, ELF audio recording, passive radar (if possible) and later, FLIR systems—all three senson packages coordinated with customized, Internet-based detect and record motion, follow motion, auto zoom and GPS coordinate tracking software and 24/7 event monitoring.
Why locate the system in the San Luis Valley? That’s easy! From 1992 through 2000 almost every conceivable type of UFO craft was reported numerous times by San Luis Valley residents and visitors. Silver, red, orange, green, white and blue lighted “spheres” were seen along with all sorts of traditional saucer-shaped craft. Huge black triangles were also reported by law enforcement and in one incident, the silent triangle was observed accompanied by “military helicopters.”
Space constraints prohibit even a quick overview of the hundreds of documented UFO sightings in the SLV that I have investigated there.
A History of UAP/AAO/UFO Sighting Events
Reports from the late 19th century and early 20th century suggest undefined aerial phenomena have been witnessed in the SLV (and elsewhere) for generations. These reports, made prior to the first conventional aircraft flights in the region, obviously cannot be dismissed as misidentified human aerial activity. Anecdotal research of these isolated historical events cannot prove or disprove their high-strange nature, however it appears that a long time ago, something intelligent, with the aid of high technology, seems to have singled out humanity for unknown purposes. And, with daily sighting reports piling up around the world, it appears they are as busy as ever!
Documented UFO sightings in the San Luis Valley number in the thousands but there are a number of specific, historical reports that deserve mention. According to a San Francisco newspaper article that appeared in September 1948, a San Luis Valley resident named Grant Edwards, Sr. had been showing amazing daylight UFO footage of multiple objects to civic groups around the SLV Edwards had just been given a new 8mm movie camera. That August afternoon, he unwittingly became the first US civilian ever to film multiple daylight UFOs. Edwards evidently presented the film to several dozen people before the film was appropriated by “the FBI” six months later in early 1949. I received confirmation of this historic film from several witnesses of the film, including Grant Edwards’ son who, at the time I interviewed him, was a County Commissioner. He corroborated the film’s authenticity, telling me on-the- record, “Yes, my Dad was the same Grant Edwards who filmed the UFOs.”
Cattle Mutilations!
In the realm of the paranormal, the San Luis Valley is most notorious as the “birthplace of the cattle mutilation phenomenon.” The first widely publicized case of this type occurred right in the heart of the SLV, but what makes this distinction compelling and perplexing is that the case in question featured a horse, not a cow. In the thousands of cases of animal mutilation that have since been reported around the world no other remains have ever been reported in the same horrific condition as those of “Snippy the Horse.” Not a popular subject with the casual “true-believer” crowd, ever since the Snippy case occurred in September, 1967, the scourge of “cattle mutilations” has quietly spread around the Western beef-eating world. Since 2002, over 2,000 cases have been reported in Argentina and Brazil alone, and estimates of the pervasiveness of the mystery most often cite the number of cases worldwide to well exceed 10,000. Since 1967, around 200 official reports have been filed by SLV ranchers, but the total number of local SLV cases may be closer to 1,000.
Although “misidentified scavenger action” may explain many of these reports, most ranchers are skilled, knowledgeable outdoorsmen who know what is a mundane livestock death and what is truly high-strange. It stands to reason that they would not invite the scorn often associated with claims of animal mutilation upon themselves and their families. Couple this with dozens of reports of unusual military-style helicopter activity in and around mutilation sites and you have a truly puzzling scenario that is not easily studied, debunked or denied.
Growing interest in these regions has begun to attract scientific examination, but more world-class investigation and analysis needs to be conducted. There is something weird and wonderful going on in our reality, and in the early 21st Century, quality documentation of unusual events will put the mainstream scientific community on notice. Whether they like it or not, hotspot regions are worthy of 24/7 on-site scientific study and the SLV Camera Project is a major step in the right direction. This type of effort is our most direct path to explore and research what could truly be called “The Unknown”—those blank places on old seafarer maps where they wrote, “Here be Dragons!”
Your donation will go to help the San Luis Valley UFODAP monitoring project team finance and maintain this groundbreaking scientific effort.
For mor information or media inquiries, contact Christopher at cob@tmv.us or 607.731.7773
