Herbert Schirmer, Ashland
A Nebraska police officer reported a saucer hovering over the highway, then under hypnosis described being taken aboard.
1967 CE · 41.04, -96.37 · status: account
The account
Sgt Herbert Schirmer logged 'At 2:30 a.m. December 3, 1967, I saw a UFO' at the junction of Highways 6 and 63 near Ashland, and could not account for about 20 minutes. The Condon Committee investigated as Case 42; later hypnosis sessions produced a story of being shown the craft by its occupants.
The sceptical view
The Condon Committee found no evidence a physical object had been present and its psychological assessment did not support the report's reality; the abduction memories emerged only under hypnosis.
The researched reading
A logged police sighting turned into an abduction under hypnosis. Memory research explains the abduction better than an encounter does.
| Explanation | Weight | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Perception, memory or mind | 50% | The abduction appeared only under hypnosis arranged by the Condon team and later by others; hypnosis creates detailed false memories, and the Condon psychologist judged his account unreliable. |
| Undetermined | 15% | The share the reading had given to fabrication on doubt rather than evidence: the record does not settle it either way. |
| Something known, misidentified | 14% | His logged sighting of lights over the highway could be a truck, aircraft or other lights seen by a tired officer at 2:30 a.m. |
| Genuinely anomalous | 10% | A police log written at the time and 20 minutes of unaccounted time keep a small share open. |
| A hoax or fabrication | 5% | Condon investigators doubted parts of his story, and he later embellished it in several versions. |
| A known natural phenomenon | 2% | No weather effect fits. |
| A poorly understood natural phenomenon | 2% | A luminous phenomenon might explain the light, not the abduction. |
| Secret human technology | 2% | No military activity fits rural Nebraska that night. |
Official position: The Condon Committee found no evidence that a physical object was present.