The Mojave Incident
Steve and Dawn Hess planned a romantic and fun camping trip to the Mojave Desert in October of 1989.
What was supposed to be a relaxing getaway turned into a night of horror when unexpected visitors from the sky paid them a visit. The couple experienced red-eyed gremlin creatures, tall thin white entities, and a blinding white light from a floating craft before losing consciousness.
But, is their story believable? Listen now.
What would you do if you saw something in the sky you couldn’t explain?
Would you shoot at an alien as it approached your camper?
What would you do if you were abducted by aliens and subject to testing?
What is up, Bizarros?! This week we dive into the Mojave Desert Incident.
What Is the Mojave Desert Incident?
This story starts in October of 1989.
Married couple, Steve and Dawn Hess, decided that they wanted to spend some quality time together, and they decided to take a trip to the Mojave Desert.
The Mojave Desert is located in the Southwest United States, actually near the Sierra Nevada Mountains, so you know Penelope is lurking around. Maybe that is where she vacations, too.
So, the couple wants to enjoy this relaxing getaway away from their young children who are hanging out with their grandparents.
The plan was to drive west, hit up some gambling, and then go camping under the stars.
They arrived at what was supposed to be a fairly chill and remote campground and discovered that it was super packed. This bummed them out; not only was it really loud and kind of rowdy, but it was ruining their romantic getaway vibes.
So, they decided to drive off the beaten path to an area a bit more secluded.
The area ended up being a valley between Tabletop and Woods Mountains.
It is secluded, and they are all by themselves to enjoy each other’s company and the millions of stars they are able to see in the sky.
The First Sighting
They started a fire and cooked up a little dinner as they sat back and just gazed up at all the twinkling stars the night had to offer.
As Steve began cleaning up their meals, he noticed something strange in the sky.
There was this tiny ball of light that was moving over Tabletop Mountain.
Now, this is something that could easily be explained away as a plane or maybe even a satellite or something like that, but he remembered just the visual of this ball of light immediately gave him an unsettling and uneasy feeling in his stomach.
For some reason, he became completely enamored by this gliding light, which to him looked like a singular star moving about in a sea of other stars.
He almost found himself in a trance watching it and wasn’t snapped out of it until Dawn called out to him.
He shook his head, regaining his composure, and tried to direct Dawn’s attention to the light. But when he looked back, it was gone.
He still felt uneasy about the whole thing and did his best to shake it off. After all, he was on a romantic and relaxing trip with his wife and wanted it to remain that way.
They cleaned up dinner, poured some wine, pulled out their chairs, and decided to fully take in the sights and do some more stargazing.
As they started pointing out the constellations and the occasional shooting star, they noticed that there was a particularly bright star that seemed out of place.
Somehow it seemed to call attention to itself, then it very clearly separated from the other stars in the sky once it started moving.
Then, it seemed to almost duplicate itself. Then it duplicated again. Eventually, the couple counted nine lights in total, which made an M formation as they glided across the sky.
Dawn and Steve were stunned, but their initial thought to rationalize what they were witnessing was that it was just some sort of fleet from the nearby Nulles Air Base.
Perhaps they were practicing nighttime maneuvers.
But then, as they looked on, small red lights descended from the larger white ones and began silently gliding toward the desert below, blinking and pulsating as they lowered.
It was then that they noticed something else strange. All of the nighttime sounds of the dessert had completely ceased.
It was like a veil of silence had descended upon them and swallowed them whole.
They weren’t able to dwell on this too long, however, because, within a few moments, the red lights had approached them.
The Red Lights Descended
They circled above Dawn and Steve and reconfigured into different formations. Their flashing red lights intensified.
At this point, Dawn began to panic. Every impulse in her body told her to run away as fast as she could, but she was frozen with fear.
The lights pulsated faster and faster until suddenly they completely went out.
The surroundings were pitch black, and it took moments for their eyes to adjust.
With the lights out, Dawn and Steve’s other senses were heightened, and they heard a noise in the distance.
Something was moving around them.
But it felt off. Like something unnaturally scurrying around them.
They heard the noise again but in a different direction. This made it clear to the couple – whatever was out there, there was more than one.
Breaking out of their trance, Steve tried his best to move past his crippling fear and grabbed Dawn. They dashed into their camper.
Steve grabbed his hunting rifle.
He wasn’t thinking properly, and there was no way for him to properly process what was happening, but he knew they were in danger and felt like they were being targeted.
Maybe even hunted.
Cautiously, Steve looked in the distance, holding his rifle tight. He could see what looked like glowing red eyes circling them.
He gritted his teeth and felt sweat pouring from his face. At one point, something jumped onto the hood of the camper and darted off into the distance.
Steve was about to take a shot at one of the red-eyed shadow entities, but Dawn insisted that he didn’t. She told him that she had a really strong feeling that it would be a terrible idea to shoot at them.
She claimed that this feeling wasn’t her own, that it was very possible deep down she wished for him to shoot, but this thought about not shooting at them was being projected into her mind.
Not sure what to make of anything, Steve slowly lowered his rifle. They just simply stared off into the darkness.
The couple can only assume this increased the creature’s confidence because as soon as Steve lowered his rifle, they got closer and closer to the couple and the camper.
The Alien Encounter In The Mojave Desert
It was then that Steve and Dawn realized these were no random wild animals, no coyotes or anything like that.
They were nothing like anything the couple had ever seen in their wildest imaginations.
They were small red-eyed gremlin-looking creatures.
As if Steven and Dawn weren’t already petrified out of their minds, this realization seemed to push them even further into a nightmare of terror.
The creatures seemed to sense this, too, as they grew bolder and bolder, getting close enough to jump on the camper and bang on its side.
They could faintly hear some type of gibberish, alien language that they couldn’t decipher.
While this was happening, nine very tall, thin, and translucent beings with large black eyes seemed to appear out of nowhere in the darkness and approached the couple.
The closer these tall entities got, the more visions and thoughts were forced into the couple’s minds.
It was hard to perfectly explain what their visions and the words circling their head were as it all happened too fast. At the same time, a large, bright object descended from the sky and hovered very close over their camper.
Within seconds, the camper began shaking violently. Objects fell off shelves, and everything rattled and fell out of place.
A fog seeped into the camper and made it difficult for the couple to accurately see around them. However, one thing pierced through the fog – the light from this hovering craft.
It got brighter and brighter until Steven and Dawn completely lost consciousness.
The Morning After
When they woke up, they were still in their camper.
The morning light shone brightly, and there was no sign of any spaceship, red-eyed gremlins, or tall translucent beings.
Not only that but there were no signs of these entities. Steve stalked around the camper, hoping to find footprints, marks on the camper, a landing mark – anything he could grasp onto to prove what they had experienced the night before.
After searching outside the camper, they searched inside. Other than objects being misplaced from falling due to the shaking, there was nothing.
Then, they searched themselves.
They ended up finding two red pin pricks on Dawn’s neck that she was sure had not been there the day before.
Trying to calm down, they decided to talk things through. Every description perfectly matched what the other had experienced.
Then, they got to the light. To each other’s dismay, neither Steve nor Dawn could remember anything after that blinding white light from the craft.
After regrouping as much as they could, they decided to get the hell out of there.
As many questions as they had, they weren’t willing to wait around another day to potentially find out.
They quickly packed up and got out of there as fast as they could, driving home mostly in silence and trying to process what they had been through.
They didn’t talk about their experience the next few days. Neither of them was sure how to approach the topic, and they both felt if they ignored it, maybe it would just make the memories go away.
However, the opposite happened.
The Alien Encounters Continue
Both Dawn and Steve had horrific nightmares about their encounter. Not only that, but they experienced physical symptoms like headaches and nausea.
Paranoia started creeping into their minds. Sure, they got away. But what had happened? What if they were still watching them?
While driving around their home or walking around at night, they’d peer up in the sky and swear they saw a bright light following them.
Feelings of being watched became overwhelming. They started hearing strange noises both inside and outside their homes.
Needless to say, this was hard to cope with. Although, they did everything they could to put up a brave shield for their children. They didn’t want them to know what had happened or be fearful.
However, one day Steve and Dawn were sitting down when their kids mentioned something to them that chilled the couple to their bone.
Their children mentioned seeing little red-eyed monsters prowling around their room at night.
Steve and Dawn were shocked and horrified. They felt helpless. A few nights later, they were woken up by panicked and bloodcurdling screams from their son.
They rushed into his room and found him suspended in the air, twirling in a circular motion.
On a different night, while preparing for bed, Dawn swears that unseen hands pushed and accosted her.
The couple felt desperate. They had no idea what to do or how to stop it all from happening.
They decided that hiding from the answers wasn’t working. They were tired of living in the unknown.
They wanted answers. So, they opted to undergo hypnosis with Dr. William Anixter.
They were frightened to potentially unearth any traumatic memories that their subconscious had buried, but they felt they had no other option.
After a series of sessions, Dr. Anixter was able to uncover what had occurred during their lost time after the bright hovering light.
According to Steve and Dawn, they had been brought aboard a massive craft of some kind and subjected to a battery of medical experiments and tests, many of which were quite painful and one of which had left those red marks on Dawn’s neck.
At several points during the hypnosis sessions, Dawn was seen to speak in a voice that was not her own, as if she were channeling an outside force, and on one of these occasions, she allegedly eerily and cryptically said “I know where the Universe ends.
Our Universe ends when its matter stops mattering to us and starts mattering to them.”
So, that is the end of the Mojave Incident. Their story ended up being written about in a book, Searchers: A True Story, by Ron Felber, who had extensive conversations with Steve and Dawn.
But that’s not all we got!
We have a few more encounters and unusual UFO-related stuff surrounding the Mojave Desert.
Mojave Desert Alien Encounters
Tassel Encounter and the Integratron – The SUN
From integratron.com –
The Integratron is the fusion of Art, Science and Magic
Here is a description from the website:
“The Integratron, circa 1954, is located in Landers, California, 20 miles north of Joshua Tree National Park and 90 miles SW of the Mojave Desert.
Its creator, George Van Tassel (1910-1978), claimed that the structure is based on the design of Moses’ Tabernacle, the writings of Nikola Tesla, and telepathic directions from extraterrestrials.
This one-of-a-kind 38-foot high, 55-foot diameter, all-wood dome was designed to be an electrostatic generator for the purpose of rejuvenation and time travel.
The location of the Integratron is an essential part of its functioning.
It was built on an intersection of powerful geomagnetic forces that, when focused by the unique geometry of the building, concentrate and amplify the earth’s magnetic field.
Magnetometers read a significant spike in the earth’s magnetic field in the center of the Integratron.
The Integratron is privately owned by three sisters who have been part of the restoration and maintenance of the structure and property for more than 30 years.
Their focus is to restore and preserve the structure while sharing its amazing acoustical properties with the world via the Integratron Sound Bath.
This unique structure was listed in 2019 on the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service.”
Here is a quote from The Sun Article:
The Integratron’s story begins when Van Tassel moved to the Integratron site in 1947.
After years of meditating under a nearby boulder known as Giant Rock, Van Tassel claimed to have been contacted by a Venusian being called Solgonda.
Van Tassel’s account, as recorded on the Integratron’s Web site, is as follows:
“I asked the man what he wanted, thinking his car might have given him trouble, and he walked into our remote field as many others have done.
At the same time, I sat up in bed. Beyond the man, about a hundred yards away, hovered a glittering, glowing ship, around eight feet off the ground.
The man said, `My name is Solgonda; I would be pleased to show you our craft.”‘
Van Tassel, who, in addition to building the Integratron and hosting UFO conventions, founded an organization called the Ministry of Universal Wisdom, reported his close encounter occurred on Aug. 24, 1953. The time was around 2 a.m.
He began construction of the Integratron in 1957. The two-story domed structure resembles an observatory without a telescope.
Van Tassel died, or in the words used at the Integratron, had a “short circuit” in 1978.
In addition to building the Integratron, Van Tassel held UFO conventions around his desert home, where he also established the Giant Rock Interplanetary Airport and the Come On Inn, where those in search of extraterrestrial life could find a meal.
Sound baths are held in the building’s upper chamber, which was opened to the public on Saturday.
Sound bathers enter the Integratron from the building’s first floor, which is a single circular room and aside from the historical exhibits on the wall, resembles a circular living room.
From the first floor, the guests remove their shoes and take turns climbing a staircase to the second floor and finding spots to lay down on blankets.
Laying on one’s back, one can stare at the building’s central ring, which in the Integratron’s spacey context, can be imagined to be a device that emits a teleporter beam.
One participant, Terry Kuwanoe, 52, of Rolling Hills Estates, compared her minutes spent in the sound bath to “heaven on earth.”
The sound chamber has its own multicultural shrine for visitors who have felt as if the sound bath has been a particularly profound experience.
Upon the shrine, basically, a table covered with artifacts and trinkets, are objects that include an image of Jesus Christ, a small figurine of an angel, and a photograph of the Dalai Lama.
Here is a description of the sound bath from the website:
“This is an unforgettable sound experience for those who seek deep relaxation, rejuvenation, and introspection. All Sound Baths are 60-minute sonic healing sessions that consist of a brief introduction to the Integratron and its history and sound qualities, 35-40 minutes of 22 quartz crystal singing bowls played live, and
the balance of the hour to integrate the sound and relax in the sound chamber to ambient music.
You will be resting comfortably in the deeply resonant, multi-wave sound chamber while a sequence of quartz crystal singing bowls are played.
Each bowl is keyed to the energy centers or chakras of the body, where sound is nutrition for the nervous system.
The results are waves of peace, heightened awareness, and relaxation of the mind and body.”
David Hastings UFO Encounter 1985
HuffPost
David Hastings was a British pilot who flew a Cessna Spymaster plane over the Mojave Desert with his co-pilot, David Paterson.
The date he flew over the desert was September 9th, 1985.
Here is a quote from David Hastings:
“We were sitting there enjoying the sunshine when we both suddenly saw this speck out on the horizon at our 12 o’clock position.
This speck suddenly grew extremely quickly until we saw this huge shadow go over the top of us.
But the most amazing thing about it was there was no noise and absolutely no movement or turbulence at all. We looked at each other, saying, ‘What the hell was that?’”
At this point, both Davids felt that something was flying in the air off to the left side of their plane, but they couldn’t see anything.
Hastings walked to the back of the plane and grabbed his camera and then returned to the cockpit. He quickly snapped two photos out of the window.
He still couldn’t see anything with his eyes, just the left wing of the plane and the ground below.
So, instead, he took it to Walgreens and bought a $7 candy bar haha I don’t know where he developed it, but when the images did eventually get developed when they landed in San Francisco, they discovered something else in the photo.
Another quote:
“One picture showed what we expected to see — the aircraft wing and the ground.
But in the second one, there was this [cigar-shaped] thing. We were both convinced that it was not a manmade object.
Several pilots have seen UFOs in England, so it didn’t surprise me, but I was surprised that we actually got a picture of it.”
Mojave Triangle UAP – April 2021 – The Black Vault (source)
“On May 23, 2023, investigative journalists Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp released exclusive footage of a UFO, dubbed the “Mojave Triangle UAP”, hovering over the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms – Camp Wilson.
The event, which took place on April 20, 2021, between 8:20 pm to 9:30 pm PST, is labeled by Corbell as a “mass UFO sighting” and said to have over fifty eyewitnesses.
The object, captured on iPhones and infrared, is described as a silent triangular-shaped craft, estimated to be between half the size of WHAT? Oh yeah, they use our measurement system here at BTB – a football field and a three-bedroom, two-story house!
Following the sighting, Corbell stated there was a “significant air and ground response,” which he further claimed was a search and reconnaissance effort related to the UAP event, lasting approximately three hours.
Given the location of this sighting within the restricted airspace of an active United States military installation, it is believed by Corbell that a significant amount of data, including radar, thermal, electro-optical, and signature intelligence, was accumulated.
However, later the same morning that the footage appeared online, The Black Vault pointed out that on the date of the sighting, April 20, 2021, the Weapons and Tactics Instructor (WTI) course 2-21 was well underway at the same location.
This course involved the deployment of numerous aircraft and ground troops during a seven-week total training exercise.
Complete Statement from Pentagon
“I can confirm that there were military aviation assets in the Twentynine Palms, California, airspace, and a Weapons and Tactics Instructor Course was being conducted at the time. There is no record of communication with the base range control concerning a UAP sighting nor of the allocation of any base resources to investigate a UAP sighting. AARO does not have a record of this alleged event and cannot verify the authenticity of the report.”
— Susan Gough, Department of Defense spokesperson
Embarrased-serve-90 – My Close Encounter in the Mojave Dessert
It’s the summer of 2000, and I’m on my way to Vegas to visit friends for the weekend.
I was living in San Diego at the time, but rather than take the 15 the whole way, I wanted to break up the drive, so I instead went from San Diego to Twentynine Palms to have lunch at my favorite pizza place from when I was younger (I had the misfortune of having to live there for six years as a Marine brat), and then from there I took the back way to Vegas, which takes you through Amboy and also the Mojave National Preserve, which is where my encounter took place, as marked in the attached pic.
I don’t remember exactly what time it was, but definitely sometime between 5 pm and 630 pm; the sun was starting to set, but it was still more daylight than not, but still dark enough that the lights from the craft were brighter than they would have been 20 minutes earlier.
I’m speeding along at 70+mph, and suddenly my car fills with swirling blue & red lights that are bouncing off every mirror, so I assume that I’m about to be pulled over for speeding.
But when I look in my rear-view mirror, there’s no cop car or anyone behind me, so I look to my side window thinking the cop is passing me on my side, but again, nothing; but the lights haven’t stopped.
Confused as shit at this point, I look behind me to confirm whether my eyes are deceiving me, but again nothing, but the lights are still going.
When I turn my head back around with my eyes on the road is when I see it off to the left (around the spot marked with the explosion sticker on the pic), hovering maybe 20 – 30ft off the ground with lights swirling all around it.
One of the main things that stuck out during the experience and has always stayed with me was that the craft didn’t look steady. It seemed to be rocking back and forth to one side as if it couldn’t keep its balance.
As I said earlier, I was at a distance of about four or five car rows back from the screen at a drive-in theater.
The left lane and a bit of desert were all that was between us, but to be clear, this wasn’t me seeing a light or something in the sky that might be a UFO; this was a UFO up close and in front of my eyes, full stop.
Now, I’m not a ufologist and don’t have the vocabulary to properly describe craft and their parts, so please forgive me if the following description sounds like something from a child.
It was a saucer-shaped craft (but a thick one, if that makes sense), with a wide panel wrapped around the side, with lights either in the panel or on the edges (that part I don’t remember clearly), and then there were the top and bottom parts in the middle, and each of those seemed to be about the same size.
All in all, I’d say the saucer was as wide as a semi-truck trailer is long, and then from top to bottom of the middle parts, about as tall as a one-story house.
As I’m driving by and witnessing this, I’m in a complete state of shock. I don’t remember if I even attempted to slow down or I just hit the gas, but all I could think and kept repeating to myself was, “what the hell is happening!? Why am I seeing this?” and wanted the moment to pass as quickly as possible.
Passing by and staring at it while I was in shock, I thought I was witnessing one of two things:
1 A secret military project that went off-course, and I absolutely should not be seeing this if I don’t get away as quickly as possible, I’m going to be visited by people who will ruin my life and paint me as crazy or who knows what else depending on what I saw.
2 An actual alien UFO (I had no idea of the woo side at the time), in which case I needed to get away from as quickly as possible because I was alone in the middle of the desert and could have easily been abducted and disappeared, and then they’d put me back and then I’d get visited by people trying to paint me as crazy and traumatize me twice.
So no, I did not try to stop and make contact with it.
I kept staring at it as long as I could and then through the rearview mirror until I was out of distance, but no way was I going to get myself any further involved in the situation, and in light of all the cancer and burns people get, it’s a decision I can look back on and say was a good call.
Anyway, as I continued driving, but still fully in shock as I could still see the lights in my rearview mirrors and bouncing around my car, I came across one of those yellow diamond signs with nothing but a ?, which I later learned means visitor center, but had no idea at the time and was in such a state of shock I thought it was there to reinforce the experience I just went through as if that was a common occurrence and someone put the sign there as a marker.
Of course, that sounds ridiculous, but I was a stupid 19-year-old kid; it was that same sign that recently let me find the exact location on Google Maps.
I wouldn’t say that I was scared by the experience, but more shocked as it radically shifts your idea of what reality is. Imagine that you suddenly came across a live dragon – it’s so far out of your expectations that the only reaction can be shock as the experience is changing the way you view the world.
You’d think that after the experience, I would have immediately jumped down the UFO rabbit hole, but no; if anything, I tried to repress it and never think about it, until the DOD videos started coming out, and I started going down the rabbit hole, and now the experience is something that I think about every day.
Not that I never thought of it before then and suddenly remembered a UFO experience after the DOD videos; of course, I never forgot the experience, but since it’s something I couldn’t talk to without sounding crazy, I thought it best to stuff it as far down as possible.
Looking back at it, there were two things that really stood out, one being the unsteadiness of the craft (which is why at the time, part of me wanted to believe it was military; I thought aliens would be better than that), and the other being the lights.
For me, the craziest part about the lights was that, for at least the beginning of the experience, they seemed to be almost detached from the craft itself.
When I thought I was being pulled over, there were about 20 seconds of lights before I ever saw the craft, and there was no way the craft was there earlier, and I didn’t see it.
There were lights; then the craft appeared out of nowhere where it hadn’t been seconds earlier, though I did not see the actual moment it appeared.
Were Steve and Dawn Hess The Victims Of An Alien Abduction In The Mojave Desert?
What do you think, Bizarros?
Did Steve and Dawn get terrorized by goblin-like creatures?
Were the translucent beings tall thin whites?
Did their quiet weekend turn into an unearthly nightmare that they later remembered through hypnotic sessions?
Let us know what you think about the Mojave Desert Incident in the comments.