Lake Isabella, CA being encounter — May 10, 1957

Ann Druffel’s August 1978 MUFON article describes Shirley McBride’s alleged 10 May 1957 encounter near Lake Isabella, Kern County. Crucially, the episode emerged during hypnotic regression conducted by Dr W. C. McCall on 24 March 1976 while investigating a different encounter. It is therefore a hypnosis-derived account, not an independently verified contemporary memory. McBride described stopping at a deserted dead-end country road and feeling compelled to leave her car. A tiny glowing bubble appeared above nearby trees and expanded as it approached, becoming an upright oval approximately six feet wide and nine feet high. Two vague shadows appeared behind its self-contained white glow. She interpreted them as living entities and received an apparent mental reassurance. Shallow fins, themselves composed of light, projected a few inches from the surface. The object moved silently near the ground. After watching for several minutes, she felt she was intruding, returned to her car and backed away while the oval remained hovering. Druffel also describes emotionally charged discussion of supposed secrets under hypnosis, including the hypnotist urging loyalty to humanity. That context cannot validate the recalled communications or extraterrestrial interpretation. The plate shows the reported oval and two unresolved shadows, with its hypnosis origin plainly labelled.