The Gary Wilcox Encounter: The Fertilizer Case

Newark Valley is a village in Tioga County, in New York's Southern Tier. In 1964 Gary T. Wilcox, aged 27, ran a dairy farm there. Two years later the Elmira Star-Gazette called him "a serious farmer who has no time for publicity and no interest in practical jokes."

Friday, 24 April 1964. Shortly after 10 a.m. Wilcox was spreading fertilizer in a field. Something sat at the edge of the woods. "The first thing I noticed was that it was off the ground."

It was oblong, resembling an egg. Approximately 20 feet long, 4 feet high, and 15 or 16 feet wide. Aluminium coloured. Smooth, with no rivets or seams. He touched it. The metal, he said, was "harder than aluminum." There was no vibration. No sound. No heat.

Then two figures seemed to come out from under the craft, though no entrance was visible. Each stood about 4 feet tall in a seamless garment with a full head cover. Each carried a metal tray about a foot square, holding alfalfa, roots and soil.

"Don't be alarmed, we have spoken to people before." They said they came from Mars. It was too rocky for things to grow there, and they wanted organic materials. For about two hours they asked about manure, fertilizer and how his tractor worked. Wilcox struggled to explain what he heard. "Their voices did not sound like a voice I could describe."

The craft began to rise slowly into the air, with a sound he compared to a car motor idling. It glided a little. At about 150 feet it suddenly raced off to the north and was gone within seconds. That afternoon Wilcox left a 75 lb bag of fertilizer by a small tree near the landing spot. By the next morning it was gone.

On 28 April a neighbour, Priscilla J. Baldwin, interviewed Wilcox. Her notes are the earliest written record. Officer George Williams of the Tioga County Sheriff's Department questioned him and visited the site. Sheriff Paul J. Taylor filed a report that included a statement signed by Wilcox. In November, Walter N. Webb, an adviser to NICAP, interviewed him again. APRO is also said to have investigated. In October 1968 the psychiatrist Berthold E. Schwarz interviewed Wilcox at home. His article "Gary Wilcox and the UFOnauts" appeared in Flying Saucer Review in 1969.

No hoax accusation or confession has turned up. The versions do differ, though. The 1964 Star-Gazette reported that the beings spoke "perfect English," while later tellings have Wilcox unable to describe their voices. Schwarz found "only one set of tractor tire tracks when there should have been two." Later writers added radiation burns and a prediction about astronaut deaths, claims the earliest records do not contain. Whether Project Blue Book ever held a file remains unknown.

Later that same day, at Socorro, New Mexico, Lonnie Zamora reported an egg-shaped craft and two small figures in white coveralls. The two cases are almost always told together. In 1966 the Star-Gazette compared Wilcox's sketch with one by Frank Mannor of Michigan. Wilcox went on to work at IBM and never made money from the story. It is still remembered as the fertilizer case. A close encounter with visitors who wanted to talk about farming.