PARANORMAL HAPPENINGS IN SEDONA AREA

THE SAGA OF SECRET CANYON
By Tom Dongo

I have had indirect offers from two international magazines that specialize in paranormal and/or New Age subjects to do an article about Secret Canyon. I responded with a flat no.

I have avoided writing anything about Secret Canyon because I have felt that the subject was just too sensitive (and dangerous) in a number of ways. Whatever it is, or was in Secret Canyon has been very quiet. Perhaps it has been closed down or deactivated.

Sedona has undergone a population and construction explosion in recent years, so it is possible that is the reason for the lack of or cessation of activity. Too much pressure, maybe.

I don't know the definite origin for the name Secret Canyon and I'm not sure if anyone else does either.

Secret Mountain dominates the Secret Canyon area. Many of Sedona's major canyons basically terminate at or near Secret Mountain. They include Lincoln, Loy, Hartwell, Red, Fay, Boynton, Long, HS, Bear Sign and Secret Canyon. Secret Mountain is a sort of hub, like half a wagon wheel when viewed on a topographical map of these ten canyons.

Around 1920, several of the early ranchers of this area were riding horseback deep into Secret Canyon, probably looking for stray cattle. Some time during the day, the canyon became slowly filled by a dense bank of fog. Anyone who has lived around here for a long time and hikes the canyons will tell you that fog never occurs in the canyons. Once in a while, after a heavy rain or snow storm, thin fog will waft through a canyon, usually for only a few minutes. Evidently this particular fog was so thick the ranchers had to stop for the day and were a bit disoriented as to exactly where they were. Sudden dense fog materializing from nowhere is very typical of paranormal and UFO/alien activity.

During World War II, thousands of Chinese soldiers disappeared in China after a strange fog bank engulfed them. The same thing happened to a detachment of British soldiers in Europe storming a hill in 1944. Nothing of the British soldiers was ever found. In the China incident, all of the war equipment was strewn around but the soldiers were gone. This is not a rumor; it happened, and it has been written about in a number of books. It's well documented.

The two ranchers, while inside this fog, began to hear a great roaring sound which they thought was a freight train. They thought that somehow they had become lost and were near the Santa Fe Railroad tracks west of Flagstaff. Then an incredibly bright ball of light came off the rim of the canyon and descended down into the canyon. I don't know if anything happened right after that because that is all of the story I have. The next morning the fog cleared and the ranchers found that they were indeed still in Secret Canyon. That is the earliest unusual activity that I know of having occurred in Secret Canyon.

So it has been going on for some time. It did not begin with the advent of New Agers. Since 1920, many people have had very strange experiences in Secret Canyon. I've been asked innumerable times what I think it is that exists or existed in Secret Canyon or on Secret Mountain. My guess is that it is, or was, either a portal or some type or an entrance to an underground base or tunnel system of some sort. UFO activity here has always been clustered in the general vicinity of Secret Mountain/Secret Canyon. In fact, because I keep an unscientific account of this, I would say that 80% of all UFO activity in Arizona occurs near or in Secret Canyon or around Secret Mountain. The portal, or whatever, is/was centered about two-thirds of the way into Secret Canyon, a distance of about three miles from the mouth of the canyon.

Secret Canyon is about seven miles long in its entirety. The center of the activity may actually be on the side of Secret Mountain near Secret Canyon. Both areas are in quite remote locations. Some of the incidents that have occurred in Secret Canyon follow:

A number of hikers deep in Secret Canyon have been gripped suddenly by an overpowering fear and have literally run all the way out of the canyon. This includes a battle-hardened British Royal Marine who, before that, had not believed anything he had heard about Secret Canyon. This activity is entirely suggestive of some sort of device that is switched on. Sub-sonic sound waves perhaps, or some type of ELF (extra low frequency) device may account for this. People have had machine guns stuck in their noses in Secret Canyon (and in two other canyons) and have been told to turn back by men in black uniforms and, in two cases, by men wearing orange jumpsuits with a large insignia on either the right or left chest area. Very sloppy work by someone.

Sounds like hikers with great imaginations just getting a bit carried away? Not quite, and here's why. I have a friend who is retired from army Intelligence and he has told me that, in fact, elite army units or teams, have been (or were at one time) very active in the Secret Canyon/Secret Mountain area. I inquired of him if he thought aliens might be involved in this mysterious activity, in conjunction with the US Military. He answered in the affirmative. There is more to this but I am not going to go into it here.

As a point of interest, Navajo Army Depot, a munitions storage area now generally deactivated, lies only a few air miles north of Secret Mountain. The depot is about six miles long by five miles wide. A local wilderness guide was deep in Secret Canyon several years ago when he was knocked off his feet by something invisible (like a ray) and crawled on his hands and knees a quarter of a mile before he could get back on his feet. Unearthly buzzing sounds have been experienced by many hikers and campers who have said that these sounds have originated from deep in the ground. I've experienced this phenomenon myself and it is a very weird sound. Jet engine-like sounds going on and off have been heard in the area. At least a half dozen times UFOs have been seen slowly flying about Secret Canyon, shooting blazing beams of light into the canyon as they were probing for something. Some of the witnesses to this were camped in Secret Canyon and the UFOs flew right over them. I wrote at length about these incidents in both The Alien Tide and The Quest. Whenever I talk on this subject, I always point out that 99.9% of the hikers and campers who have ventured into Secret Canyon or onto Secret Mountain have had nothing adverse whatsoever happen to them. They enjoyed perfectly normal hiking or camping trips; so there is no real reason to avoid this area if you are inclined to go there. However, you will never find me camping in Secret Canyon -- not in the back half anyway. So that's about it for Secret Canyon. There is a lot more but it's too wild and unverifiable to repeat here. I just hope that paranoia buffs don't get carried away with this.

SOLDIER'S PASS INCIDENT

I experienced an incident recently, probably not connected to Secret Canyon (but it could be), that I will briefly mention here, in closing. I found a piece of aircraft fuselage about four feet long and two feet wide and painted a lime green color. This was in the area of Soldier's Pass. Several days after I found it, I took it up to the Sedona Airport terminal and just happened to meet an FAA official who is a pilot and aircraft mechanic, who was standing in the lobby. I was impressed. After examining it, he said that it probably was from a twin=engine Cessna that had crashed on Wilson Mountain in 1980. But, coincidentally, a friend of mine and a friend of his, a number of years ago near Loy Canyon, found small wreckage pieces of what an aircraft mechanic said was part of a Korean War-era jet fighter. It had evidently hit the ground at a high rate of speed. I asked him if the pieces had any paint on them. He replied that some pieces had lime green paint on them. There have never been any reports, news paper or otherwise, of a jet or jet fighter crashing in the area.
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• SHE WAS AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL
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  I have wondered for many years, why do I have so many encounters like this one. I have six books full of these sorts of things. Most were witnessed by other people as the incident occurred.
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  Recently, to make a long story shorter, I was hiking with a friend near Sedona in an obscure area that is rarely visited by hikers. Flagstaff, at 7,000 ft, had just had 80 inches of snow and the melting runoff at lower elevations was way above average. Most of the normally dry creeks were now raging rivers from the snow melt.
  We were looking for a 1000 year old Sinagua Indian petroglyph site. Hot, sweaty and confused I was standing on the rim of the gorge looking 100 feet down at he torrent of water trying to remember how to find the site. I looked up and walking towards us about a hundred yards away was a tall, thin, attractive blond haired woman. She was wearing bright red pants and a bulky white wool sweater. She was not wearing a hat. I looked for her dog. Almost always woman hiking in out-of-the-way areas will have a big dog with them. No dog.
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  "What in the hell is she doing out here?!" I remarked to my friend.
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  Where the ground had not dried yet there was three or four inches of grease like mud.
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  The blond woman had on low street type shoes.
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  The pretty blond woman walked up to us. She said a few words I could not hear because she spoke so softly. She stopped speaking and I said, somewhat impatiently."Do you know where the petroglyphs are?" Again she spoke so softly I could not hear her. Before I could think of anything to say she began to walk over to the rim of the cliff above the creek. The woman's face was completely expressionless as she spoke. Very odd. I remember thinking.
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  She pointed to a slot in the cliff. I could see that it was the old, now almost abandoned trail down to the petroglyphs. We had earlier walked right by it. We both thanked her and started down the nearly vertical trail.
  We made our way to the bottom. Upon arriving, there was the 1000 year old rock art we had been seeking. The water was roaring so loud it was hard to talk to and hear my companion ten feet away.
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  I shot several dozen photos of the rock art. I turned and was startled because the tall blond woman was standing right behind me. I had not seen her come down the steep trail. Not strange, I thought, because the water was so loud and I was totally preoccupied with photographing the petroglyphs.
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  I glanced up at the precipitous, rocky trail wondering how she got down here so fast. She showed no signs of exertion.
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  She began speaking softly again and as close as I was I could not hear what she was saying. I caught a couple words and knew that it had something to do with the Sinagua rock art. She was quite pretty and I was somewhat mesmerized and confused by her totally expressionless face. I stood there trying to think of something to say. My hiking friend called to me and I shouted back and forth with her for not more than two or three minutes.
  
• I turned back to the strange blond woman and she was gone. I walked over and looked up the trail and she was nowhere in sight. I was again puzzled and perplexed. Not once did it occur to me, of all people, that she might have been an extraterrestrial. If you read my books this sort of thing has happened to me, and other people I know, before.
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  All I can say is......next time I WILL be ready, no matter what diversions are going on around me.
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• Thank you Tom for both of these articles. Check out Tom Dongo's UFO & PARANORMAL BLOG