CLASSIFIED SSA AUTHORIZED READERS ONLY LYNN STANSON FILE

November 1, 1951

Yucatan

I will not survive this, I know this now. The doctors keep telling me that the antibiotics should treat the infections, but my fevers keep spiking. I also know that’s why they keep urging me to write. They want it down on paper before I die. Keep writing, Freda, the nurse tells me. I try not to get angry about it. If I were in their shoes, I might ask the same of someone like me, to help determine what’s happening.

I understand why the houses had burned down. I understand, because I know what happened to us.

Those two poor children. I don’t even know if they survived. I doubt they did. So many people died in that storm. It wasn’t only my family who got wiped out.

I wasn’t interested in finding shelter when the storm started blowing in—a storm that just came out of nowhere. The children had agreed to take us to where Lynn and their father may have been taken. I didn’t care at that point about anything but finding my daughter.

The building wasn’t far away. I was surprised; the trees ended and suddenly there was this concrete building in the middle of nowhere. And there were men in camouflage scurrying everywhere, trying to cover up the windows with large boards.

I remember feeling such relief—the military! Men in army fatigues! They have to be American. They’ll help us. But Dr. Martin had held me back as I went to leave the woods and call out for them. I could see Bud was wary too, especially seeing how the children were hesitant to go forward.

How to describe the storm at that point. It just dumped on us. I mean, the skies went from gray to black. And the rain. It fell like the ocean had overturned, and the wind nearly knocked us off our feet.

What I did was reckless. But I just knew Lynn was inside.

I ran. Even in the chaos from the storm, the soldiers saw me coming, with Dr. Martin and Bud behind. One of them rushed up to me, and I just cried out that my daughter was in there. That I was an American citizen and my daughter was in there.

The soldier took me, and called out for the other soldiers. They’d come for Bud and Dr. Martin too, and rushed us inside. I heard them lock the doors. I remember hearing the hollow sound of multiple dead bolts sliding.

Then they pulled their guns on us. Bud had stepped in front of me and held up his hands, repeating that we are Americans. That there were children outside that needed to be brought in too.

I can’t explain the strange sensation of how it feels to step inside a building to escape a storm, only to realize it was inside as well. That’s the best way for me to say it. It’s like running from a tornado into a cellar, only to find that the wind was coming from beneath the earth.

The winds hit the soldiers, and then us, so hard that we all fell down. Someone had failed to block a door, I thought at first. Somebody go shut that door.

But the winds weren’t coming from one direction, but instead from the hallways around us. And then, it started to rain. Inside.

The soldiers were terrified too, and kept yelling at each other, asking what to do.

Bud grabbed one of them, shouting: Where is my daughter? Where is my daughter?

I could see the soldier’s face. He was young. And he was scared. I’d begged him, yelling too now above the winds. Where is she?

He pointed down the hall to the only door on the right.

The winds knocked us all down again, but Bud caught me. Dr. Martin was being held back by one of the soldiers. Bud and I just ran.

We’d reached the door and rushed in, finding the winds and rain were inside there too. There were beds everywhere, with people lying on them, all hooked up to tubes. They looked like they were sleeping. They were all drenched in their slumber, their white bed sheets soaked, sticking to their unmoving bodies.

In the corner was Lynn.

I recognized her little body. I’d screamed to Bud, who pulled me through the wind. Like the others, she was sleeping. As we reached her, the stand holding a bag of clear solution that seeped through the tube into her body blew over on top of her.

Bud knocked it off and swept her up into his arms. I was sobbing at that point, kissing her face, telling her that Mommy and Daddy were here. That we’d found her.

But she didn’t respond, as if we were holding a rag doll. I know I must have screamed: what was wrong with her? The needle attached to the tube had been yanked out of her arm, and she was bleeding.

Bud just grabbed me and we headed for the door. We knew we had to just get out.

The door flew open, and Dr. Martin stumbled in. I saw for a moment his eyes open in alarm at seeing Lynn limp in our arms.

The three of us ran back out into the hall. I started to ask about what happened to the soldiers when a gust of wind hit us so strong that we fell against the wall.

It was like the soldiers were leaves tossed in the air. They came from an intersecting hallway, thrown with such intensity that even in the howling winds, I could hear their bodies crash against the floor.

We couldn’t stop, though. The only way to the door was to run across that same intersection. Bud gave me Lynn, motioning us to stay behind him. Dr. Martin was actually taller and bigger, but not as strong.

We intended to run and not stop, but we all made the mistake of looking down the other hallway as we moved past.

That’s when we saw her. The woman, at the end of the hall, dressed in the same white medical gown as Lynn. Even with the debris and rain flying around her, I could tell her eyes were closed, her hands on her ears as if they were in terrible pain, blood seeping through her fingers. The soldiers who attempted to reach her were tossed away by the winds like paper dolls.

She opened her eyes.

Somehow, the wind, the chaos, was coming from her.

I heard a massive crack, and the walls themselves started to peel away; chunks of concrete and wood barreling in all directions, including ours.

As we ran, the floor itself began to crumble. I saw Bud reach the door and pull, but the winds were so hard pushing against us that it wouldn’t budge. He cried out in anger and fear, and forced it open.

For a brief moment, I could see outside. The winds and rain were blowing, but paled in comparison to the storm raging around us.

When the slivers of wood sliced into my legs, I had one singular thought. And I knew I alone had it.

Do not misunderstand me: fathers are the pillars of all families. They are the strength, they are the foundation. But it is the mother who is always one step ahead, who sees what must be done before all else.

I screamed at Bud to go out and hold the door, thrusting Lynn at Dr. Martin, ordering him to take her outside. They’d both obliged, just as a block of concrete slammed into me. I could feel my back break.

I’ll never forget Bud’s face as he turned back for me, trying to hold the door open. I was able to scream for him to run, and then immediately slam it shut, preventing everything crashing and barreling into my body from following them out the door.

I’d wanted to save them. I know now it was a futile effort.

My hand aches, but I’ve done it. I am going to rest. If I’m fortunate, I won’t wake up.

Nov 12, 1951

Lynn,

I have not written as I vowed to do. I have changed my mind.

I do not want you haunted by what happened to us in Mexico, to your mother. I am determined for you to know her as I did, and I speak of her every day. We even set her picture beside us at breakfast, lunch and dinner. You ask if Mama would have liked the food we were eating, the pumpkins in the field? Yes, I tell you. Yes, she would.

I will keep these letters, in case I change my mind. But for now, I want you to live a lie, and that hurts to even write those words. A normal life is what I want for you. And when you are grown, I want you far from these trees, never to return.

Love,

Daddy

Dec 10, 1951

BUD STANSON
1 EVELYN ROAD
NASHVILLE, TN 37205

REX MARTIN
ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY
1 NORTH GRAND BOULEVARD
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63103

Bud,

I realize that I’ve also been a complete narcissist and have failed to inquire about Lynn. I hope that her memory condition has changed. I knew she’d been heavily drugged; it was obvious by her lethargic state as we’d made that awful flight back to the states. But she was alive, and didn’t appear to have any physical injuries, and that alone gave me hope. How the three of us escaped from the collapsed building without injuries astounds me.

I still have nightmares about it: Freda slamming the door, you running to open it, the entire structure vibrating. It was if a bomb had gone off inside and everything was about to blow.

I know you think it was cowardly of me to run. But I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want your daughter to die. I will be brutally honest with you: I couldn’t risk losing her. I’m a terrible son of a bitch, I know, that my first thought wasn’t of Freda’s sacrifice. It was that this child has to get out of there.

I didn’t even look to see if you were behind me. But even now, in your hatred for me, you know what Lynn represents: the only proof of extraterrestrial abductions. I never even stopped running when I heard the building collapse. It was remarkable what happened next: the sky almost immediately began to clear. The sun peeked through the clouds.

I could hear you screaming my name. I know it was the only reason you would leave Freda. You would have chased me to hell and back. Even in her lifeless form, she was your daughter. To both of us, she was the most valuable thing on earth.

Has she exhibited any physical abnormalities at all?

I know Rick, my doctor friend, gave her a clean bill of health, except for, obviously, the memory loss. Thank God he saw us when we’d shown up at his home when we’d landed. If we hadn’t been friends since the second grade, he probably would have reported us to child services. Two men, unshowered, unshaved, obviously exhausted, showing up at a doctor’s home on a Sunday with a limp child.

I can only imagine if my heart broke when she woke and didn’t recognize you, that yours must have shattered.

Damn this cough, keeps me from writing. Please, Bud, write back and let me know about Lynn.

Rex

Dec 15, 1951

REX MARTIN
ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY
1 NORTH GRAND BOULEVARD
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63103

Rex,

I don’t want to ever see you again. Your letter is just another reminder of why I will not provide you any updates on my daughter, as she is none of your business.

Do you even realize what you did? Running away from that building with my wife trapped inside? I couldn’t even try to look for her. I had to go after you. And you kept saying Freda’s dead, Bud. She’s dead. She couldn’t have survived that collapse.

I think you knew. I think you knew the danger in Mexico. And you used us to go down there. You said you still don’t understand how that woman was causing the storm inside that building, but I don’t believe you. We were your way in. You’d been looking for a family just like ours.

I should have stayed in Mexico, found a doctor, even though you said the medicine wasn’t good enough there to help Lynn. You said we were lucky that the private plane hadn’t left or been damaged in the hurricane, and that we needed to leave now before the pilot changed his mind. I know now you just wanted to get Lynn out so you could study her.

My wife died, alone, in the rubble of a building, because of you. You shouldn’t have taken Lynn and run out. You should have stayed inside and let her escape.

Do not contact me again.

Bud Stanson

Feb 21, 1952

BUD STANSON
1 EVELYN ROAD
NASHVILLE, TN 37205

REX MARTIN
ST. LOUIS UNIVERSITY
1 NORTH GRAND BOULEVARD
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI 63103

Bud,

It’s cancer. I feared as much, even when I was writing to you last year. I know you asked me not to ever contact you again, and I promised myself I wouldn’t. Because I thought I had time. Time enough to change your mind over the years.

But I don’t have time. The cancer is stage four. I won’t live, I don’t think, past the summer.

If you won’t further corroborate what happened, then I beg you to let some of my colleagues come and study the site in your woods where Lynn was taken.

Please consider it. Someone from my organization will be contacting you shortly. I am not well enough to make the trip myself.

I know I told you about my son. I’ve been a disappointment to him, because of how often I’ve been away and the priority I’ve given my career. He’s a young man, already soured about what he calls this nonsense work of mine. I cannot blame him. But he has opened his home to me in my final days, and I have learned, too late, that nothing is more important than being a good father.

I pray that Lynn grows up to be just like her parents.

Rex