Welcome to Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains I'm Larry Hedrick where we bring
the past into the present for our future viewers today we have another great story by Hank Sheffer
well as you'll recall the last show that we did we talked about Bigfoot and at that time I said that
Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains had a tendency to talk about history or talk about
legends and lore and sometimes we even got right out there with some of the fantastical things that
may or may not have happened in the mountain in this particular case we're going to tell another
one of those fantastical stories but as one of the fellas mentioned back on the Bigfoot piece
he wasn't real happy with talking about tom Biscarde because tom biscarde had built himself
a set of circumstances that weren't all that favorable to what he was doing and consequently
he never had anything that backed up what he said and that's why he wasn't the focus of that show
in this case we're going to be talking about another fella who told a story by
the name of Richard Bud Lane and Richard Bud Lane was an old cowboy from out here
I met bud years ago before just before he died i'd gotten back here in 81 and he died in 87.
but he was a cowboys cowboy people liked him they trusted him they knew him uh he worked
with a lot of the other ranchers who were out here there were a lot of Floyd Stone there was
of course Gus Barkley and some of the others that were out here and they were running cattle
that was really happening in the 80s so at any rate bud lane had a story that he told
that what I'm going to do is tell that story by reading it pretty much because it's what he said
Bud Lane had a reputation for telling the truth he told some tall tales but he also had a tendency
to tell the truth more often than not and when he told you something was you could bank on it
so this is the story that he told and this is why we call this story the incident at doggie
springs we were all headed with a group of riders to the Reavis Ranch from Floyd Stone's iv ranch
as we rounded inspiration point we could look down into the vast emptiness of Fish Creek Canyon
at the same time we saw a brilliant meteor tracking north to south across a clear
evening sky in fact it was so bright that the light was reflected off a castle dome
peak and it's interesting that if you all want to go and look these up you can
and you'll find them on the maps they're all marked so you see just where he was
at this point bud spoke up and he told this story he said you know you wouldn't believe
how many crazies around Apache Junction and these old mountains keep talking about flying saucers
but made it abundant he made it abundantly clear he said I am not going to tell you
that i believe in flying saucers and I'm not going to tell you that I've seen a flying saucer
not even drunk or sober or otherwise I'll tell you the story but I don't want you to ever repeat it
until after I'm dead and gone even if i had wanted to admit it i would fear people would
think that i was just crazy they'd think i was a lunatic and I'm not a lunatic
well bud continued to story something like this he said he was working some stray Mexican steers
for Floyd Stone near the upper end of Tortilla Canyon above Doggie springs and that Doggie
springs is about a mile and a half mile and three quarters a little south southwest of Tortilla
he was headed back toward the tortilla ranch house
close to dusk bud said I heard this whining roar that was so loud it was deafening it even vibrated
my lungs it made my limbs just shake while I sat there on a horse all of the sudden back
toward doggy springs i saw this object rise into the sky so fast I couldn't recognize what it was
bud went on to explain that he had ridden all around the area trying to confirm some
sort of clues as to what it is he'd seen and what he'd heard as luck would have it
he found nothing to support what he had seen bud said he continued to look around the area every
chance he got when he was riding out there chasing after cattle but he still never found anything
some 10 or 12 years later bud said he was in the area and found an interesting formation on
the ground on the side of a sandy wash he found a ring of sandy glass about 10 feet in diameter
he was convinced the sandy glass ring wasn't a geological occurrence but rather he believed the
glass ring was formed from sudden extreme heat the heat he believed was produced from a rocket launch
of something or other well now people who knew bud said he always had been exceptionally truthful
bud was known to tell tales as I told you earlier and he was often used when he'd go on these
trips that billy crater safari wilderness trips corporation would take people out on
and so they could go pretty freelance and tell people pretty much anything they wanted
to and people just ate it up like crazy of course he could stretch the yarn pretty good
everybody knew that this was another very puzzling and intriguing story that would be
impossible to prove unless he could find that glass ring that he was talking about
but indicated it was located somewhere near doggie springs many curious souls have ridden into doggy
springs over the years but they found nothing Tom Jarvis Maricopa deputy county medical examiner
and Tom Kollenburn spent an entire day riding around the area and they were looking bear in
mind we talk about Tom Kollenburn an awful lot but he's probably one of the foremost historians and
knowledgeable people about the Superstition Mountains ironically after all of that
several years later a hiker came to town looking to sell what he said was a piece of melted sand
much like sand that had been melted by a lightning strike when he told the curious listeners in town
that it came from Doggie Springs everybody's ears perked up he said it appeared at one time the
piece of melted sand or glass had been part of a large circular piece of material so this guy
that nobody knew and had never seen before was coming in and they were confirming something
that bud had said years before he further stated that he really didn't know what it was
but he was quite convinced it was part of a lightning strike that must have been what it was
he gave out directions to the site but nothing was ever found and you can rest assured there
were lots of folks that got the burrows and up the up the hill they went looking for that glass ring
the story still holds quite a level of curiosity for lots of the Mufon and UFO alien theory folks
mainly because the folks who knew bud lane knew he was not prone to tell you a fake story like that
he was around a campfire or a similar situation he might stretch the truth a little bit
but other than that he was straight as an arrow and if he said it
you could bank on it but when it came to this story he never slacked an inch
and nobody has ever found anything on that doggone ring yet either it's terrible and now to close
this so you all don't think that I'm absolutely out of my mind as for me I kept the promise made
to bud lane bud died in 1987. but I still have to wonder sometimes what it was that bud really
did see or is this just one more tale that continues to be told that nobody can explain
i don't know either thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains