The Ririe Carjackers: Guy Tossie and Willie Begay, Idaho, 1967

Ririe is a small town northeast of Idaho Falls, on US Highway 26. On Thursday, November 2, 1967, two 23-year-old men were heading south on that highway. Guy Tossie was the passenger, and Willie Begay was at the wheel. NICAP's account calls them Navajo ranch hands, while a later retelling identifies them as Shoshone-Bannock. The discrepancy is unresolved.

About 9:30 p.m. A sudden blinding flash of light in front of their car. The car came to a stop without Begay applying the brakes.

Ahead, hovering 5 feet above the highway, was a small domed disc. It was about 8 feet wide, shaped like two saucers joined together. A row of alternately flashing orange and green lights ran around its rim, and it bathed the area in vivid green light. Through a transparent dome, the men could see two small occupants.

The dome flipped open. One creature emerged, apparently floating to the ground. It went to the driver's side and slid behind the steering wheel. The two men shrank to the right.

It was about 3½ feet tall and hairless. Its oval face was heavily pitted and creased, the skin wrinkled "like a cantaloupe." Large ears sat high on its head, and its small round eyes had no pupils. The mouth was a slit, the lips barely visible, and there was no visible nose. It wore tight-fitting coveralls and a pack that rose above and behind its head.

Then the car moved. It was taken well out into a field of stubble wheat, while the craft kept its position ahead. Neither man could tell whether the being was driving or the craft was towing them. When the car stopped, Tossie bolted for the Hammon farmhouse a quarter mile away. A light followed him.

He saw his shadow run ahead of him, as if illuminated from behind. Begay stayed. The being made sounds that were high and rapid, like a bird. Then both beings rose back into the craft. It departed in a zigzag ascending pattern, with a yellow flame-like emission from its underside.

The farmer, named Willard Hammon in most versions, came back with Tossie, and in one account his son Bob came too. They found Begay in the still-running car with his eyes tightly shut, in a state of near shock. Hammon then followed the young men home in his own car. The whole episode had lasted about 15 minutes. That same evening, farmers in the area reported cattle bolting, and some also reported lights.

Both men gave voluntary statements to a county deputy sheriff, and the Idaho State Police opened an investigation. C. Reed Ricks of Idaho Falls, a NICAP field investigator, took up the case. Ricks obtained a similar account from an anonymous witness who said he had encountered a small craft and being later that night. NICAP published the case in Strange Effects from UFOs, its 1969 special report by Donald Keyhoe and Lore, and again in Richard Hall's The UFO Evidence, Vol. II in 2001. Its 1967 entity list records an "aggressive encounter."

No formal hoax finding or sceptical analysis has surfaced. Later fan wikis, which gave the case its name, the "Ririe Carjackers," added that the two men were driving home after a night of drinking. That claim does not appear in the NICAP accounts. The case is still listed as unexplained. It is a rare close encounter in which the occupant did more than watch the witnesses. It took their car.