Carl Higdon's Forgotten Encounter

Why It Matters for Today

If you are just getting into the topic of alien abductions or more benevolent alien encounters, many people would recommend starting with the classic Betty and Barney Hill case of 1961. I actually think that the best introduction to the topic is the abduction of Carl Higdon in Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming in October of 1974. Hopefully this essay gives you enough information to conclusively say that you don’t know how to feel about his story, but that there are some odd features that cannot be dismissed.

My goal is to both resurrect interest in this case and to show what truly grappling with an encounter looks like. It starts by putting all of the information known about the case on the table, such that we can all agree we are working with the same variables and storyline before we even begin to question or judge the validity of the supposed storyline. Once this is done, I’ll then point out the things that stand out and where there may be areas of interpretation.

Carl Higdon’s Encounter On October 25th, 1974

I’ll start by saying that the key sources of information I have gathered for this are from the Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO) which wrote a chapter on this case in their book Abducted published in 1977 from pages 25 to 38 of the book. Then, after 40 years, the wife of Charles Higdon, Margery, published a short 80 page book telling the story of the encounter from their perspective. More on the epistemic value of these sources later on - for now - let’s just get a basic understanding of what actually happened:

In The Run Up To The ‘Encounter’

Carl Higdon is an oil field worker in Rawlins, Wyoming with a wife of more than 15 years and kids. He decides to go Elk Hunting in Medicine Bow National Forest. Carl drives into the Park, and parks his two-wheel drive truck at the start of a winding road he plans to hike up into. The Game Warden drives up and they share a cup of coffee and have small talk. Carl says goodbye, leaves his truck where it is parked (and where the Game Warden can see) and begins to walk up the winding road with his rifle under his arm. Following the road, going up and down hills, Carl comes to a clearing where he sees five elk. He sets up his rifle, and aims his gun at one of the elk….

The Encounter Begins

At the moment of firing the bullet, Carl remembers time stopping - noise disappears from around him - and he watches the bullet as if in slow motion move out of his gun, go 50 feet towards the elk, and then drop to the ground. In his wife’s own words:

“‘How can this be? A 7mm travels over 3600 feet a second and he WATCHED it come out of the rifle…go a few feet… and fall to the ground!’ (3)

Confused, Carl walks over and retrieves the bullet (or whatever is left of it) and puts it in his canteen pouch. Before he can do anything else he hears a noise behind him, and turns around to see a bizarre looking humanoid being:

‘The man was about six feet tall. He had straw-colored hair - that stood straight up. He had two strands of hair, in the front - that looked like antennas. His face seemed to go back into his neck like he had no chin. His face was yellowish. He was dressed in a black suit, kind of what a scuba diver would wear. His legs were bowed.’ (4)

According to Carl, the being who identifies himself as ‘Auzzo 1’, asks him if he is hungry, and after Carl says he is a bit hungry, four pills float over to where Carl is standing. The being encourages Carl to take one, claiming they were ‘four day pills’ to sate his hunger’. Carl does so - but he is not sure why. The being then asks Carl if he would like to go with him - and once again Carl affirms the being’s suggestion (although he is not sure why).

At this point Carl appears to be transported. According to the APRO report, they write:

The man pointed to an appendage which came out of his sleeve, and at this juncture, Mr. Higdon said he found himself in a transparent cubicle along with Ausso. He was sitting in a chair with bands around his arms (Apparently holding him in the chair which resembled a high-backed bucket seat) and with a helmetlike apparatus on his head that looked somewhat like a football helmet, except that it had two wires on top and two on the sides leading to the back. On a sort of console opposite his chair, Higdon said he saw three levers of different sizes which had letters on them and which Ausso manipulated. When Ausso pointed his appendage (which was cone-shaped) at the largest lever, it moved down, and the cubicle began to feel like it was moving. After they took off, Higdon said he saw a basketball shaped object under the cubicle which he took to be the earth. (26)

From Carl’s own perspective, he writes the following about his experience of transportation:

“‘I can’t turn around, but, I sense the five elk behind me. They are reflected in the glass overhead like a mirror. They’re in a cage. They are motionless… I am looking….down at my pickup sitting on the hill. This being waves his hand…and my pickup disappears….Next, I look down and see a blue ball, it looks like… a huge marble.’...Then…Light…BRIGHT LIGHT. I can barely keep my eyes open. The LIGHT IS SO BRIGHT! My eyes start to tear profusely.’ (page 6)

The next thing Carl knows, they ‘arrive’ at what is described as a 90 foot tall tower with a brilliant rotating light. As Carl says “It is….kind of like the Space Needle at the World’s Fair. But….the LIGHT IS BRIGHT! I can barely see!”. Notably, beneath the tower are ‘normal people’ who look just like Carl, and seem to be at ease talking amongst themselves.

A second entity arrives, and together with Auzzo 1, the two entities float Carl into a large room with a wall whereby an examination is conducted. Carl then explains:

‘They say, I am not what they want. They will take me back.’ (7).

Carl is then floated back out of the room, and back into the extremely bright light. It is on the way back to the forest that there is an interesting dialogue between Auzzo 1 and Carl:

“‘Auzzo One tells me, they have been coming to earth for many years. They come in search of fish and animals. Their food is in the form of pills. One pill will last for three days. They make the pills from fish and animals. Their ocean is yellow. All the fish have died!’ (8) ‘He shows me a land mass map of his planet. He tells me, ‘We are 163,000 light miles from earth. The nine planets of our solar system supply the magnetic force for our power.’ (8)

Furthermore, Auzzo One displays a fascination with Carls’ hunting rifle:

‘He takes my rifle. He studies it. He said he would like to keep it. It is a primitive weapon. But, he is not allowed to. Primitive…I just bought it! He tells me that they wear black because our sun burns them. The patches are symbols of their planet. He said he is a hunter.’ (8)

The last thing Carl sees is the forest underneath him. Auzzo One tells Carl that ‘He will see him’ and then floats Carl down to the ground below. Carl lands on the side of a hill. His foot slips, and he falls and hurts his shoulder. This is the full extent of Carls’ encounter with Auzzo One.

The Aftermath of the Encounter

Much to Carl’s surprise (and everyone who eventually gets involved), when Carl returns to the forest he has absolutely no recollection of who he is or where he is. He sees the pickup truck nearby (in the rut off the hill), and gets the company radio working to call for help:

After some difficulty, I figured out how to use the radio. I talk to the person on the other end. He wants to know….who I am and where I am. I don’t know! Who am I? Where am I?’ (9)

Carl does not know how the car works, despite driving the very same car that day. A search party is put together with 4-wheel drive vehicles, with the Game Warden telling the Sheriff where he saw Carl and his pickup truck earlier that day. As the party embarks to find Carl, they struggle for hours in getting to his location because of the difficulty in the landscape. Carl’s wife explained the search parties struggles in the following way:

‘See Him? HELL, we aren’t even into the area yet! We keep getting stuck and have to pull each other to keep going. It’s a HELL of a mess in here! After what seemed like hours, Don again called to the search party. He asked if they had come to him yet. The reply came back, ‘Hell No! We are still getting stuck. The road is narrow, and curves around the trees. It is a mess. It is slow going. We will call you when we get to him!’

Suffice is to say that Carl and his truck were not in an easily accessible area of the park. After hours of searching Carl is finally found. Carl’s behavior at this point remains weird.

• He remains dazed: He looked dazed. He looked up through the windshield, and in a sing-song type of voice, he said, ‘They took my elk. They took my elk.’ (19)

• He Reacts Strongly to Someone Touching Him: Margery took off her coat and… tried to drape it over his shoulders….He moved back crying. ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!’ (20)

• He bolts from the vehicle when the car lights are turned on: Carl bolts and runs from Bud’s pickup! The deputy sheriff runs to the side of the ditch…..’The Lights…OH GOD…THE LIGHTS’

• He shows physical symptoms that confuse the search party: ‘His eyes are watering profusely. His shoulder hurts. He keeps asking for his three day pills, the ones that…just float to you. THE LIGHTS - THE LIGHTs. THEY BURN! THEY BURN! Carl seems to be in an amnesic state. He doesn’t know who he is. When his wife asks him his name, he says, ‘They keep calling me Carl. Who is Carl?’ (24)

In summary, Carl is deeply disturbed, reactive to light of any sort, and completely at a loss as to where he is, or who he is. According to Carl’s wife, this remains the case for a number of days until his daughter comes to visit him in the hospital - upon seeing his daughter, Carl’s full memory returns to him.

At the hospital the Doctor (Dr. Tongco) runs a drug and blood test on Carl, only to find that he has no drugs in his system and that he has no broken bones. Before Carl’s wife leaves for the night, ‘Carl drew a picture of the Being on a piece of paper. He then wrote ENDER and then drew a fork in the road. He then wrote Saltillo Street. Carl said, ‘That is all he can remember.’ He was tired.’

Now at this point most researchers would consider the ‘event’ to be over. But there were actually a number of ‘high strangeness’ events that happened to both Carl and his wife after the event that should be included in any serious analysis of what happened:

#1 The Bullet Remnant

The first event has to do with the remnants of the bullet:

The night after Carl is taken to the hospital, Carl’s wife Margery finds the piece of metal in his pouch. The next morning, the phone rings with people asking about Carl. In one of those calls someone recommends that Margery takes the metal to the Sheriff to get it looked at. She follows this recommendation, and the Sheriff gives her the following analysis:

It is a shell casing. I’ve never seen one in this condition. It looks like it has been turned inside out.’ ‘He handed it back to Margery and verified, It is a 7MM mag shell.’ (29)

APRO’s metallurgy consultant described the bullet in the following manner:

‘Only the copter jacket of the bullet was found and it was greatly mangled; the lead slug was missing. The jacket was examined by Dr. Walter Walker, APRO’s consultant in metallurgy, who could only say that it had struck something extremely hard with great force. Higdon points out that the 7mm bullet is so powerful it can completely transit a standard telephone pole.’

Later on, Margery has professional photos taken of the bullet remnant, with the original metal safely stored at the University of Wyoming. Shortly thereafter the photography studio burns down, the metal remnant of the bullet goes missing from the safe at the University of Wyoming. This is after photos have been taken, and the sheriff and APRO consultant looked at the object.

#2 UFOs After the Event

One night after Carl’s recovery he suggests that he and Margery go for a drive. Carl drives south to a hill, seemingly with purpose (but no real idea of why he was going there). Upon arrival they observe a UFO, along with a strong smell of sulfur:

‘As Carl, Margery and Mike arrived, there was a bright green light in the sky. It looked like a large upside-down ice cream cone…Then the smells…terrible, horrible smells…like dirty, dirty, socks and then Sulphur. The smells were HORRIBLE! Carl drove to the top of the hill and shut the motor off. He said, ‘I am late, I was to be here a few minutes earlier.’ (50)

After this event, Carl is followed by lights as seen by his work crew and members of the town.

‘On numerous occasions, on his way to and from work, there have been lights following his pickup. This has also been seen by his crew….The town people are more aware of the strange lights in the skies.’ (52)

#3 Waking Up at Night

On one occasion, several days after the event Carl has a bizarre night experience whereby he tells his wife that he is present in the south of town, where these beings are again taking wild game:

‘Several nights later, Carl woke his wife, and asked her to put her hand on him. He said, ‘I know it is weird, I am in bed with you; yet I am out south of town. They are telling me ‘Look for a Black Box’. They are taking wild game. It is like they want me to know that they can contact me whenever they want. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?’ (51)

#4 Mysterious Healings

The only other worthwhile detail of high strangeness worth mentioning is that of the healing that Carl underwent after he recovered his memory from the encounter. According to his wife:

‘Carl had been passing numerous kidney stones before the experience. He had scars on his lungs. Since the experience he no longer has kidney stones and the scars are gone from his lungs.’ (61)

Now, before jumping onto each detail and strangulating it with a theory, I just want to pause and make sure everyone is aware of what we are looking at with Carl:

We are dealing with high strangeness of almost all of the circumstances surrounding the random bullet residue. We are dealing with lights in the sky - well after the event, and repeatedly - compulsions to drive, and the smell of sulfur. And we are dealing with mysterious healings and continuous night time encounters with supposedly the same entities. Any serious researcher would use this information as a basis for cross-analyzing how these variables line up with other encounters (hint: there are many parallels).

Now let’s complete our review of the case by taking into account the psychological evaluation of Carl by Dr. Sprinkle and the psychiatrists involved, as well as Carl’s own reaction to his experience:

The Study of Carl Higdon by Leo Sprinkle and APRO

Thanks to the involvement of APRO in the Carl Higdon case, there were a number of psychological tests done on Carl shortly after the event:

First and foremost Dr. Howdeshell met with Carl and later provided Dr. Leo Sprinkle, with her evaluation of the psychiatric interview. As he writes, “In her opinion, there was no psychiatric illness or condition which might account for Carl’s strange experience.’ (APRO, 31)

The Strong Campbell Interest Inventory Profile (SCPII) on Carl showed that:

He chose items which indicate that his ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ are similar to those men who are interested primarily in ‘realistic’ activities. Technical and outdoor activities. His scores also show a pattern of related interests in scientific and social service activities. His scale score on mechanical activities (71) is ‘off the scale’ and in my opinion, reflects his basic vocational interests.’ (32)

The Sixteen Personality Factors Test (16 PF Test) on Carl showed:

“A pattern of scores which indicates that Carl chose items in a manner which is similar to the pattern of scores of people who are viewed as ‘sober’ and serious and as relaxed and composed.’ (32)

The Adjective Check List (ACL) profile of Carl showed:

“A pattern of scores which is primarily in the average range with the lowest score on the scale called ‘Number checked’.‘The individual with low scores tends more often to be quiet and reserved, more tentative and cautious in his approach to problems and perhaps at times unduly taciturn and aloof.’ (33)

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profile of Carl showed:

“A pattern of scores in the average range, thus there is no indication of deception or of neurotic reactions. However, there are three scores of interest: the scores on scales 3 (Hysteria), Scale 7 (Psychosthenia) and Scale ES (EgoStrength). The score of scale 3 (Tscore = 37) could indicate a tendency toward a behavior pattern of displaying little worry or anxiety, or a tendency towards being relaxed in regard to responsibilities. The score of Scale ES (T score = 62) could indicate a tendency toward unusual ‘ego strength’ or the inner resources needed by an individual in order to deal effectively with a traumatic or distressing experience.(33)

Now to cap it all off, the polygraph test conducted with Dr. Leo Sprinkle and the polygraph examiner showed a mixed result:

‘The recordings indicated that stress reactions were observed in response to the crucial equations about Carl’s UFO experience. However, there was difficulty in interpreting the responses. The examiner indicated that the chart patterns could be interpreted as an indication of attempted deception, if the tracings were viewed as responses to the questions about facts or physical events. On the other hand, the examiner indicated that the results could be an indication of stress reactions to the questions which may have reminded the examinee of his own doubts about the reality of a distressing experience.’ (30)

This greatly confused Dr. Sprinkle, who did not come to any conclusion as to whether this indicated a shortcoming in Carl’s character (who willingly participated in the polygraph test) or if it indicated a shortcoming of the Polygraph itself (when dealing with encounters with entities who can influence the mind of the person involved).

Short of the questions surrounding the Polygraph, the psychological examinations find Carl to be a sane, stable, and not crazy person. Now let’s look at what Carl himself thought of his experience:

Carl’s Own Perspective

In the days after the event, Carl displayed shock and disbelief in his own memory of the experience.

‘When Carl came home from the hospital, he kept repeating, ‘I must be crazy, this is too bizarre!’ He himself can't believe what happened. He is positive he had to have dreamed it. The memories that are coming back to him are just too bizarre.’ (71)

In sharing with others, what was told to him by the entity, Carl again reinforces his belief that he himself must be crazy:

‘Carl says, I don’t know if you want to talk to a crazy man or not. I must be crazy, but I was taken 163,000 light miles from here and was brought back….‘I don’t mind if Rick doesn’t mind talking to a crazy man because I must be crazy. This is just too bizarre.’ (33)

The effect on Carl lasted some time, with him reportedly remaining unsure of himself, and taking time off work in the aftermath of the event:

‘Carl is very unsure of himself, and at times he doubts his own sanity. He walks everywhere he goes. He will not drive the pickup. He does not go back to work. He is scared he might harm someone. He awakens at night and swears that he must have dreamed this.’ (34)

After 43 years, Carl’s remaining advice for those who have encounters is straightforward and repeated multiple times in the book written by his wife:

‘Talk with someone you can trust.’

‘Don’t dwell on it.’

‘Then get on with your life.’ (60)

And get on with his life, he did, retiring in 1997 after 48 years working in the oil field.

Some points of commentary on the above I would ask the reader to keep in mind: Carl displayed (like many who suffer encounters) the belief that they themselves must be crazy, because of the impossibility of what they experienced. While he participated in the testing and evaluation asked of him by Dr. Leo Sprinkle, including undergoing hypnosis, he did not drastically change his life after his encounter. He did not profit from his encounter. But he and his wife waited 43 years (after they retired) to publish an 80 page book that you can get on Amazon for $9.89.

More importantly, according to our known definition of sanity, despite Carl’s own pronouncements of his craziness, we don’t have any actual data to suggest that Carl did have any psychological pathologies to suggest he was crazy. This is the rock and hard place moment for many abduction researchers.

What do you do, when an event happens that is so unbelievable, to the extent that the person who experienced it believes themselves to be crazy….Yet there is no data to suggest the person is suffering from any psychological ailment?

As you will see in future essays, this key question comes up time and again.

What Stands Out From The Carl Higdon Encounter and Why It Matters For Today

You could say that this is the ‘fun part’ of our analysis of Carl Higdon - where before we pronounce from the ivory tower whether this event is ‘true or not’ - we can at least point out the interesting features of the event that grab our attention.

I’ll start with one that you might not have been thinking about, but remains highly relevant for future research into abduction encounters:

Point #1: The myth of cultural imagination. After Betty and Barney Hill’s 1961 Abduction with small grey aliens, many people liked to claim that the cultural imagination from this encounter significantly influenced other encounters in the 70s and 80s. Well the Carl Higdon Case is an immediate challenge to this hypothesis: The entity, the behaviors, and the messages that Carl experienced have no precedent in the literature. There are however, many similarities that emerge later on (interest in animals, smell of sulfur, high strangeness after the event, etc.) as smaller details in the literature of abductions and encounters.

Point #2: The Physical Effects and Circumstantial Evidence. Logically, we face a number of conundrums in trying to evaluate this case at face value:

• How did Carl’s two wheel drive truck get stuck in a rut, with no tracks leading in or out?

• How did he even get the truck up there when it took multiple 4 wheel drive vehicles hours to get to the same area?

As Carl’s Wife says:

‘I saw the ruts the search crew made when they went in to get Carl with four wheel drives - Carl’s pickup was a two-wheel drive. The crew had to put logs to get Carl’s pickup out of the mud hole where his pickup had been deposited - where only four wheel drive could go’, and then with difficulty.’ (65)

• Why and how did the vegetation around Carl’s truck display signs of being burned?

Carl’s Wife adds: ‘I saw where he shot at the elk - where the vegetation had been seared with high heat.’ (65)

• How did the bullet ‘implode’? Even if Carl was trying to fake such a thing, how could one do that?

• Why did Carl lose all memory for three days?

• Why did Carl’s eyes hurt so much after his encounter?

• Where could Carl have gotten the idea of traveling 163,000 light years?

Point #3: The High Strangeness After The Event. It’s one thing for odd happenings to take place to an individual at a single point in time. It’s another matter, when high strangeness continues to happen well after the event is over. To this I am referring to the compulsions to drive to the hilltop, the lights in the sky that follow Carl’s vehicle at night, the disappearance of the bullet from the safe at the university of Wyoming, the burning down of the photography studio that took the photos of the bullet, the messages at night Carl reported to his wife, and Carl’s mysterious healings. Long after Carl recovered from the event, weird happenings seem to have continued for no apparent reason. How do we explain this?

Point #4: Consistency Over Time. This final point is one that I encourage the reader to not dismiss out of hand. One of the best ways to gauge the authenticity and motivations of an unknown actor is to observe his behavior before and after an event. We might believe that there are indications of malpractice if an actor's behavior, fortunes, or circumstances change drastically after a claimed experience.

Well, unfortunately for our skepticism, Carl Higdon simply went back to his old life after his encounter. As he said himself in his advice ‘Get On With Your Life!’. This makes it very difficult to rationally claim he sought attention or fame for his encounter, when he simply returned to work after recovering, and waited 43 years to write a short and cheap book on his experiences.

How Can We Rationally Evaluate the Carl Higdon Case?

My goal at this point is not to tell you what I think about this case. It’s to show you what options are rationally available to pursue, after dissecting the case and getting into the weeds of the details. These options are for both proponents and skeptics alike.

The raw data from this case limits the rational avenues of both attack and defense. In other words, there is no denying that something actually happened. After all, cars don’t magically move to random hard to access areas of a national park, people don’t randomly lose their minds for a couple of days, and bullets don’t randomly implode on themselves.

These options simply help soften the blow for those of you looking for more mundane explanations than the story reported by Carl.

Option 1: A Sophisticated Military Operation. In short, you could argue that from the moment the bullet froze and ‘time slowed’ down, everything that Carl experienced was a military operation. It could be a directed energy weapon, or an experimental form of psychic warfare and holographic projection (There is no known evidence to connect those phenomena to what actually happened, it’s just what is commonly tossed around when explaining advanced military operations in conjunction with this topic). Now, there is zero evidence of the military being involved in any facet of this encounter - no black helicopters, no men in black after the event, no warnings from military dressed folk, but some people still sleep better at night believing that because MK-Ultra was real, they’re better off betting on all of these strange happenings being the government than the alternative…..which is what exactly?

Option 2: Naturally Induced Hallucination (that somehow transported the truck and inverted the bullet). Others may be inclined to believe that all of this was some type of hallucination on behalf of Carl. The noosphere, or the ‘collective unconscious’. Unfortunately, this would drastically re-write our understanding of the mind and the relationship between mind and matter, because somehow the truck moved, the bullet imploded, and Carl’s eyes became extremely sore – and most of the time that doesn’t happen from a non drug induced hallucination. Remember, there were no drugs in Carl’s system when this happened, so the hallucination avenue is limited to saying that if it happened, it had to have happened in such a way that Carl entirely forgot he moved his car, imploded a bullet, and developed sensitivity to light. We would need to find a drug that leaves the system within a day or so (the time it took for him to be found and tested) to really strengthen this theory. But what about the aftereffects? How does a hallucination make the bullet disappear from the safe at the University of Wyoming? Or the compulsion to drive to a hill at night? Or the lights that follow his truck after the fact on multiple occasions?

Option 3: Evidence of a highly sophisticated hoax: The hoax thesis would be that all of the parties involved - the Sheriff, the Game Warden, Carl, his Wife, the Doctors at the Hospital, the Nurses, Dr. Leo Sprinkle and APRO Consultants, are all involved in hoaxing the public to create belief in this story. Carl would be an incredible actor, capable of faking his disorientation for a couple of days, and as part of the hoax the truck was moved ahead of time ...with no tracks and extreme difficulty in placing it in a remote location? The trouble with the hoax hypothesis is that it requires all parties involved to be in on it for zero reason and with zero benefit to any party after the fact. Nothing changed in the lives of those affected, with the exception that Carl questioned his sanity for a while, before moving on with his life. Usually a hoax only makes sense if there is a derived outcome: Money, fame, framing of a crime, etc. This would be a hoax with no real benefit – or impact - whereby the hoaxers felt the need to double down 43 years later and write an 80 page book about their original story? (Sticking to the story so to speak).

Option 4: The story, as reported, is what actually happened. This hypothesis goes like this: ‘Well instead of trying to debunk the actual story, let’s just go with it and say for a second that this did happen, and that it might be true.’ What can we do in this case? We can hold onto the details of the story (163,000 light years away - 9 planet solar system, the type of being, the variables connected with the encounter) and cross reference them with other similar stories in the future or discovered scientific facts of our time.

Example: If you ask ChatGPT - ‘What is a solar system that is 163000 light years away that also has 9 planets in it?’ It will tell you that this is the approximate distance of the Large Magellanic Cloud (a dwarf galaxy) approximately 163,000 light years away. Is this proof? No, but it would be very interesting if we found a 9 planet solar system in this galaxy at some point in the future!

This approach is not instantly satisfying, and it’s clearly not going to provide hard and fast conclusions, but it is an honest way of dealing with an event that is both hard to explain and hard to debunk.

Closing Thoughts

I hope you keep the Carl Higdon case in mind as an example of how to think through a case. Notice in this approach we aren’t trying to rationalize why the being acted a certain way, or said a certain thing. We are just taking all of it at face value, filing it away, and making sure that we don’t omit important after-effects or events that took place beyond the primary encounter. We equally can say that something very odd happened that should upgrade our understanding of what is possible: His car did move. His mind was lost for a time. The bullet did implode.

Something happened to Carl Higdon - and if you truly are interested in understanding what it was, the best approach would be to remember the details of his case as we research other cases going forward.