The Man With No Face

---

This happened to my mother and father after they were married but before I was born, probably about 1956. They had been to Dallas and were driving south to San Antonio along US 281. They were driving along, about twenty minutes south of Dallas when a car pulled alongside in the adjacent lane. My father who was driving glanced over at the other driver just as the other driver did likewise. The other driver was faceless. When I've asked my Mom and Dad what they mean by "faceless" they say simply that "There was nothing there, just a blankness". They specifically say it was not as if he had a stocking over his face or some sort of mask on. It was more like a blank whiteness. Astonished and shaken they watched as the other car passed them and sped down the road. Understandably, they made no attempt to keep up. Could the man have been covered in gauze of some sort and still been able to drive? Why would a person do such a thing if indeed he was bandaged in some way?

When I recount this story, told to me by two of the most levelheaded and conservative people I have ever known, I become spooked, for lack of a better term. Neither of them had any reason to embellish or fabricate this tale. My father was a licensed pilot with a keen eye for visual detail and I cannot imagine that the man in the car appeared in any way but as he and my mother described. So what do we make of this anomalous event? Quite frankly, I am at a loss. There are, of course, reports in the UFO literature from people who claim that they have what are referred to as “screen” memories. In other words, they may remember seeing a large owl or perhaps a child or small person and then, later on, either through hypnotic regression or spontaneously, they recall that what they actually saw was something we might refer to as an “alien”. Arguments can be made for or against the accuracy and even existence of repressed or altered memories but the impression I am left with is this: Whatever or whoever my parents glanced over at on that forgotten highway nearly 50 years ago, did not want to be seen or remembered. So, we are left with only the blankness; the image of the Man With No face. 

This event occurred shortly before World War II at my family home on Coker Loop Road in San Antonio. It was afternoon and my mother was in the house while my grandparents were sitting outside. She heard them call, "Bessie, come quick and look at this". She ran out and saw a single engine airplane circling low overhead. It seemed to be having engine trouble and was losing altitude. It passed low overhead and crashed into the dense brush and trees adjacent to their property. They ran to help the pilot but could not find the wreckage. It could not have crashed more than a few hundred feet away. At least three people saw it and heard it go down, crashing through the trees. There was no smoke or flames, no broken tree limbs, no sign of impact or aircraft. The police and fire departments could find nothing nor were there any reports of missing civilian or military aircraft from local airfields. It's as if this event happened but did not happen at the same time, like a virtual particle that springs into existence and disappears just as quickly, leaving no trace. I have read of many similar instances of people reporting seeming “slips” or “folds” in time, as scenes from the past are overlaid or transposed on top of the present. In the area where I now live, in the Texas hill-country, there have been numerous reports of civil war soldiers on horseback visible for a few moments and then passing back into the mists of time. 

The phenomenon here is not your run-of-the-mill ghost story. These apparitions do not appear to be at all ghost-like. It is as if the entire set and setting are shifted forward to the present or perhaps the viewers are shifted back in time, it’s hard to say. Apparently though, there are natural conditions that allow for the linear flow of time to become looped or disrupted in some manner, at least from a perceptual standpoint. It is worth noting, that according to all commonly accepted laws of physics, there is nothing that prohibits physical time travel, except for the energies required to create the fold or “worm-hole” supposedly required to transit to a different location in space-time. But what of something ephemeral and non-physical like human consciousness? It is conceivable that there may be natural conditions that allow for visual information to pass back and forth through folds in time without vast expenditures of energy.