Page Content (OCR)
explain the blast. occurrences were the result of mass hysteria. Although it is difficult to say how people felt in private, public opinion sided with those who wrote off the "Thing" as a lot of malarky. But some of the effects could not be denied by any intelligent observer. The UPI carried an account of Terry Simpson, a Westminster resident and truck driver. "| was driving along Westbury Road in Warminster at 5:25 A.M. with a load of fruit," his account begins. "Then all of a sudden there was a close, blinding light just to my left. It was not a searchlight, I'll swear to that. It lit up my cab and blinded me for a split second. | had to jam on my brakes tight and skidded off the highway. | jumped out and got a good look at the light. It seemed to be a thing of substance. It was overhead and shaped like a ball. It was dancing about. There was no shaft of light beneath as you'd get from a searchlight's gleam. | kept looking until it suddenly went out - blew out like a candle - with funny, frizzling noises. It shook me up all right. | got the hell out of there." At 1:55 A.M. on September 5th, some of the scoffers at the mass meeting were awakened by what they termed a "tremendous explosion." About 30 people, most of them men, described a 200-foot, orange- colored "mushroom" of smoke, with a glowing orange center. An orange light flooded the city, which in some sections changed "night into day." The explosion shattered many War-minster windows, and Bill Curtis, a resident used to hearing the firings from a nearby military range, said that he had never heard any artillery like it. "Our house was like a ship rocking in a big sea," Curtis said. Army officials could not Lately all manner of strange happenings have been! blamed on the weird force. Everything from the mysterious appearance of a spring-fed pool of water in someone's back yard to a thistle that grew to the height of 12 feet has found its explanation in "the Thing." Although no one of any scientific repute has investigated the Warminster reports, many of the residents themselves feel that the force can only be caused by something from "outer space." In groping for an explanation for the dozens of mysterious happenings, many citizens agree with Mrs. Dora Horlock, who says of the 12-foot thistle that grew outside her cottage: "Something must have dropped out of the sky to make it grow so big."