Report Type: Close Encounter of the Third Kind / Alleged Contactee Experience with Craft Ride Date: July 4, 1950 (Fry later sometimes cited 1949) Time: Evening (after missing bus to Las Cruces festivities; around dusk/night) Location Name: White Sands Proving Ground (now White Sands Missile Range) GPS Coordinates: Approx. 32.5° N, 106.4° W (near Las Cruces, New Mexico desert area)
What Happened: Daniel W. Fry, an engineer/technician (rocket electronics specialist) employed at White Sands Proving Ground, missed the last bus to nearby Las Cruces for Independence Day celebrations. Finding his quarters too hot, he took a walk into the desert along an unfamiliar path. He claimed a ~30-foot diameter, 16-foot high oblate spheroid (lens/disc-shaped) craft landed silently in front of him.
Fry reported communicating telepathically (or remotely via voice) with an entity named "Alan" (A-lawn), who said he was operating the craft from a "mother ship" approximately 900 miles above Earth. Invited aboard, Fry allegedly took a rapid ~30-minute round-trip flight to New York City and back (totaling thousands of miles), during which he experienced weightlessness and advanced technology demonstrations. Alan provided philosophical/scientific information on physics, Earth's prehistory (including Atlantis and Lemuria), civilization foundations, and warnings or guidance for humanity.
Fry published his account in the 1954 book The White Sands Incident (sometimes bundled with Alan's Message to Men of Earth / To Men of Earth). He became a prominent figure in the early 1950s contactee movement, founding Understanding, Inc., and promoting metaphysical and extraterrestrial contact themes. The story is one of the classic "contactee" cases of the era, alongside figures like George Adamski. Skeptics view it as unverifiable or fabricated; supporters cite Fry's technical background and consistency over time.
Additional Context/Details: White Sands was (and is) a major U.S. military rocket/missile testing site, linked to V-2 programs post-WWII, atomic research proximity (Trinity Site), and frequent UFO reports in the late 1940s–1950s due to experimental aircraft, balloons, and high activity. Other notable White Sands-area events include Cmdr. Robert B. McLaughlin's 1949 Navy team sightings of metallic spheres pacing and maneuvering around missiles/balloons (detailed in True magazine, 1950), which lent credibility to local aerial phenomena claims.
Fry's encounter is distinct as a personal contact/ride claim rather than a distant sighting.
