Bloodmobile Vs. UFO

Red Cross Van, 1960's
Source

When 71 year old Beau Shertzer passed away on October 22, 2015, his obituary painted a picture of a fascinating and well respected gentleman. The former Pt. Pleasant resident was a Vietnam Vet who earned a Bronze Star for Heroism and was also a well-known philanthropist. He was an esteemed dancer, having performed locally on stage and on television in his younger days, and even in Walt Disney and Universal Studios later in life.

Beau was the son of Bob Shertzer, who coached football at Pt. Pleasant High School, and Beau himself was a 1964 graduate of the school, who later helped establish and raise funds for a scholarship program in his father's name. After retiring from the medical field, he moved to Florida to help care for his parents and brother, where he continued his dancing and philanthropic interests until his death. 

But, one thing his obituary leaves out is that in Fortean circles, Beau is famous for something much stranger...

On March 5, 1967 Beau was 21 years old and working for the Red Cross. He and a young nurse had been busy collecting human blood, and in the wee hours of that dark, cold, rainy morning, were transporting the specimens back to the Red Cross headquarters in Huntington, WV. As they were driving along Route 2 between Pt. Pleasant and Huntington, they entered a particularly desolate stretch of highway. However, they weren't alone. From behind a nearby hill, a large, glowing object lifted into the air and swooped directly towards and over the bloodmobile van. 

Beau rolled down his window to get a better look at the craft, which was above the van and keeping pace with it along the highway. He was horrified to see that there was some type of mechanical looking arm or extension coming out of the light, directly towards the van. The nurse, by now in hysterics, shouted that she could see another arm coming towards the van on her side. It was almost as if this UFO was involved in playing a giant version of an arcade crane game, and trying to grab the van up in its eerie clutches. 

Beau stomped the gas and tried to gun it, but he couldn't outpace the craft. The only thing that seemed to save them were the headlights of an oncoming car, which caused the arms to retract and the strange light to fly off. Understandably shaken, Beau and the nurse alerted the state police of what they experienced, and the incident was briefly mentioned that evening on a local radio broadcast. 

What was weird, though, is that despite the fact that the rash of Mothman sightings and the accompanying UFO flap that was occurring in the area was being covered heavily by the newspapers, this story was never picked up by local press. In fact, it doesn't really appear to get a whole lot of attention, even from John Keel himself who investigated the incident. He did briefly mention it in several of his books, as well as in a short column he wrote for the Burlington, NC newspaper, The Daily Times-News.  However, it seems as if the story was never really fleshed out any further. Was the story just too weird to be taken seriously, or was there some other reason that  the idea of a UFO or its occupants perhaps needing HUMAN BLOOD decidedly kept on the down low? John Keel does mention that at around this same time, there were several cases of animal mutilations being investigated, and that out of curiosity, he contacted the Red Cross to see if any of their bloodmobiles had ever gone missing. Understandably, he didn't get an answer, so the investigation into why a UFO would be trying to abduct an automobile full of human blood was largely dropped, leaving more questions than answers and another layer into the High Strangeness that overtook the Pt. Pleasant area during the mid 1960's untapped. 

Sources:

Keel, John. Strange Creatures From Time and Space. 

Keel, John. The Mothman Prophecies. 

22 June 1967
The Daily Times-News
Burlington, North Carolina