The Transparent People Encounter

“The Transparent People”

Location. Old Tappan, New Jersey
Date: 1962 Time: 23:30
The witness a farmer named Frederick von Krueger was getting ready for bed. He undressed and went right to sleep. His next awareness was that he was standing naked outside of his house in the yard—no idea how he got there. He was walking out from the house and past a round metal storage building he had there. He felt that he was walking involuntarily but wasn’t resisting it. Ahead of him he saw what he thought at first was his round building, but then realized that he’d passed it already. Coming closer, he saw it was “two soup bowls inverted one atop the other” with a small dome. And it had landed in his field.
During this time, his wife, who had not gone to bed, heard what she thought were voices outside, but couldn’t understand anything said. She searched the house for her husband, and finding the bed empty, assumed that he’d gone outside, possibly talking to someone. She called out, got no answer, no further conversation occurred, and she let it go. Meanwhile Von Krueger found himself standing next to the vehicle and almost on top of a “platform” of softly luminescent “ivory” with various colors swimming within it. Upon stepping onto this platform he was raised into the craft. Once inside the inner corridor was bathed in a low intensity light. He describes this as something like ivory, but his words give more the impression of something pearlescent. He wandered a bit down the corridor and entered a room, which contained a gray-colored chair.
He felt compelled to sit in the chair facing what seemed to be a curtain of hanging disks just in front. The chair then moved “into” the soft disk-wall and he found that he merged into it like a mold. Once completely inside the mold, two soft objects fitted over his ears and he fell asleep. As von Krueger regains his feeling of self-conscious mobility, leaves the ship, and steps onto a location like but not identical to Earth. It is at this moment that he jumps off the craft to the ground that he turns and has a fairly good look at two of his “captors”. His description is terribly inadequate. All you can divine from his words is that they were humanoid in shape and looked as if they were made of the same light (pearlescent and somewhat transparent) that he’d experienced everywhere onboard. When von Krueger jumped he floated gently to the ground. This area of the planet was desert and mountains, almost entirely of red sedimentary rock. Scrub brush scatted about and trees ran up hillsides. Above the mountains in the distance was a bluish haze. Four other of the creatures were standing somewhat near a huge tunnel entrance which was mechanically carved out of the mountain. Von Krueger hesitated for a long while, but as they were not paying any attention to him, and he currently saw no other option, he entered the tunnel. The tunnel was extremely long and lighting was dim, coming from somewhere above. Von Krueger walked along hugging one side, mainly un-met and uneventful. Finally he came to an offshoot where you could see down at the end a lake of water (all this apparently still inside the mountain). At the bottom of this side passage, he found a bench by the lake. There he rested and tried to think. There was no sound, no birds, and no animals of any kind. Out in the lake there seemed to be a geyser spraying shimmering water, dancing like a thousand glittering mirrors. Von Krueger felt at peace her. This place, due at least to the dancing geyser, had life; the rest of the planet, the tunnel, the transparent people, seemed like parts of a tomb.
During this time von Krueger saw two separate “people” emerge from doors in the mountain wall and walk right by him. He then saw two of them emerging in a canoe from a dark cave area, cross to an archway out in the lake and disappear behind it. Von Krueger was puzzled and concerned that these beings apparently didn’t care whether he was there or not. He wandered briefly to the lake shore and saw small fish therein. This led to a concern as to whether other more dangerous things might be in there, and he backed away. Ultimately, he decided that even the pleasant lake was a dead end and went back up the tunnel. At the entrance the four beings were still standing about, and still taking no notice of him. They never moved nor spoke. He made his way over to the pearlescent platform and jumped on it. Into the vehicle he went—no sign of the beings anywhere. He found the room with the chair and the curtain of disks. He sat, the curtain encompassed him…and he slept. Apparently he then found himself back on his field again and returned home.

HC addendum
Source: William J. Eisenman, “The Transparent People”