AUTHOR

Terry Lovelace Esq.

"INCIDENT AT DEVILS DEN, a true story ..." is a book I waited 40 years to publish. It's the true account of a wilderness camping trip a friend and I made in 1977. We were both 22 year-old staff sergeants in the USAF, stationed at a nuclear missile base in Western Missouri. We drove six hours to Devils Den state park to photograph eagles. Instead, we had an encounter with something unimaginable. It changed our lives in ways we could have never imagined. My enlistment ended in 1979. Using my G.I. Education benefits I finished college and attended law school at Western Michigan. Over the course of my legal career I handled civil litigation and criminal defense cases in private practice. I switched sides to take a job as an Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Territory of American Samoa. From palm trees in the South Pacific I finished my career working for the State of Vermont as an Assistant Attorney General. l retired in 2011 and moved to Dallas. Our 1977 misadventure began as a simple two-night camping trip. We drove south from the air base for six hours to Devils Den state park. We avoided the campgrounds in favor of a high bluff in a remote area of the park. We came to photograph eagles and the spot we found was perfect.There was a treeline to our backs and an open meadow in front of us. It was early evening before we set-up camp and by nightfall we were enjoying a nice campfire. We were about to retire to the tent for the evening when my friend noticed three bright stars just above the western horizon. We watched them for a quarter hour and debated what they could be. We were familiar with most kinds of aircraft and there is nothing that has lights in a perfect, tight triangle. We were abducted from our campsite and subjected to four hours of terror. When they returned us we were both badly burned and suffering from dehydration. Initially, neither of us could clearly recall what happened in a clear narrative. We had bit and pieces of memories. The memories returned as years of screaming nightmares. I never told a soul about my encounter. My wife and I kept it a secret. It was just between us for 40 years. If my story had leaked out I would have lost both my job and my good name in the legal community. I was at peace with it finally. Until 2012. Why did I write this now? If I had published this story it would have trashed my good name in the legal community and probably cost me my job. I retired in 2011 and moved to Dallas. A year later I took a bad fall on a stairwell and thought I might have broken my leg. I went to the VA Medical Center in Dallas for an x-ray of my leg. What the radiologist discovered was the catalyst to publish a book. In October of 2012 I fell and thought I may have broken my leg. We drove to the VA Hospital Emergency Room to be checked-out. What was discovered on the x-rays baffled the doctors. On the first x-ray they found a piece of metal about the size of my fingernail. In the second x-ray there's a flower petal arrangement of of white objects in my calf muscle. The mystery was two fold. How did this piece of metal that looks like a computer chip and this collection of tiny objects in manage to get an inch and-one-half deep in my thigh and my calf muscle? How did the collection of objects below And, how did it get under my skin without leaving a scar? I had never injured that leg before.

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