Case description
Two young women, identified in the published accounts by the pseudonyms Sara Shaw and Jan Whitley, were staying at a cabin in Tujunga Canyon, California, on March 22, 1953. At about 2 a.m., a bright light outside drew their attention. They described an unusual stillness and subsequently found that roughly two hours and twenty minutes were unaccounted for.
The episode became the earliest encounter discussed in Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo's The Tujunga Canyon Contacts. Their investigation connected it with later experiences reported by both women. The detailed exploration took place many years after the cabin incident, rather than immediately in 1953.
During later hypnotic sessions, the women described slender figures with elongated, masklike faces and medical-style examinations. The investigation involved Idabel Epperson and Druffel, with sessions by Martin Reiser in 1975 and William McCall in 1976; additional work followed. These later recollections supplied the onboard elements that were absent from the initial light-and-missing-time account.
The source summaries do not preserve a continuous, mutually identical account of every movement from the cabin and back. Their known beginning is the night-time light at the cabin; the immediate endpoint is the discovery of the unexplained interval, followed years later by investigation of the women’s recollections.
