This little-known alien abduction case happened in LA’s backyard. Your guide to the ‘UFO hotbed’ in Big Tujunga Canyon

In March of 1953, two women asleep in a remote area of the Big Tujunga Canyon were awoken by a bright light flooding around their cabin. Inexplicable time loss, an alien abduction account and years of searching for answers were to follow.

This was the first in a string of UFO accounts that one local researcher called “The Tujunga Canyon Contacts,” making this stark landscape just about 30 minutes north of downtown L.A. what she called a hotbed of UFO encounters.

Investigators in the field point to the incident as one of the earliest modern day abduction experiences, but even in the town that gave us Close Encounters of the Third Kind, it’s not a story many Angelenos have heard.

Slender entities and beams of light

At an isolated cabin in the Big Tujunga Canyon, two women were terrified by an experience they had beginning around 2 a.m. on March 22, 1953. According to the women, bright lights and a deathly stillness were followed by an alien abduction in which one of them said they were taken on board a UFO by slender entities with elongated, mask-like faces.

One of Sara Shaw's drawings from 'The Tujunga Canyon Contacts'

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Courtesy Anomalist Books

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Both women’s accounts — and several others — are described in detail in the book The Tujunga Canyon Contacts by Ann Druffel and D. Scott Rogo. To protect them from backlash, the pseudonyms Sara Shaw and Jan Whitley were used in the book, first published in 1980.

Shaw and Whitley would undergo regressive hypnosis sessions in order to try and pull recollections of the incident from their memory. Shaw had her hypnosis session led by Dr. Martin Reiser, who founded the LAPD’s Behavioral Sciences Services in 1968.

In a second hypnosis session with a different doctor by the name of Bill McCall, Shaw recalled her abduction experience in 1953:

Shaw would go on to recall being examined aboard the spaceship by the entities with some type of scanner. She said they even imparted to her a cure for cancer.

Another Sara Shaw drawing from 'The Tujunga Canyon Contacts'

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Courtesy Anomalist Books

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These accounts and several others in the Tujunga Canyon area were investigated extensively by Druffel, who died in 2020. In fact, Shaw’s encounter predates one of the earliest and most studied modern day alien abduction stories, that of Barney and Betty Hill in the White Mountains of New Hampshire in 1961.

“It is absolutely a very early case in the pantheon of alien abductions,” said Rob Kristoffersen, the New York-based host of the Our Strange Skies podcast where he studies UFO encounters throughout history.

“It’s not a case that gets talked about a lot... But, I think it’s one of the more important cases that should be looked at more,” Kristoffersen said.

So why haven’t more people, even in L.A., heard about this abduction account in our own backyard?

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“It’s a queer story”

Paranormal researcher Dr. C.S. Matthews says it might be because it’s less “hardcore” than some of the abduction accounts out there. These aliens did not seem to be violent or malicious.

“I actually think that part of the reason also is because it’s a queer story. And the UFO community even today has had a real tendency toward being real conservative, kind of right wing,” Matthews said from her home in New York’s Hudson Valley.

All the women who came forward with their stories of otherworldly encounters in and around the Tujunga area were part of the LGBTQ community, and most, if not all, had some connection to Whitley. While Shaw and Whitley’s initial encounter took place in the 1950s, it wasn’t until the '70s that they brought their story to Druffel.

“Of course they weren’t going to talk about these things in the 1950s. They wouldn’t dare... These women were brave in coming forward. They had to be because they could lose a lot,” Matthews said.

An older paper back version of 'The Tujunga Canyon Contacts'

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In an article titled “Tujunga Canyon Contacts: Revisited, Reconsidered,” Matthews writes: “...anyone who remembers what small town lesbian communities were like before, say the 2000’s (or even now in rural areas) can easily spot the dynamics of overlapping friend and romantic interests running just below the surface of the Tujunga Canyon accounts. Druffel’s descriptions of their relationships echo the ethos of the time, allowing anonymity due to prohibitive social norms.”

A “window area”

In her book, Druffel describes the region where these and other UFO sightings happened as a “window area,” a place that repeatedly attracts unexplainable phenomena.

Phantom rotorless helicopters, white orbs dancing in the sky and people chasing spaceships that disappear into the landscape: They all allegedly took place in and around the canyon.

“You know, Big Tujunga Canyon can be kind of a creepy place,” local historian and author Mike Lawler told LAist. “Back in high school I would hear stories from friends about weird things that they saw out there.... It’s kind of a desert mountain landscape and pretty spectacular... being so close to LA, it’s phenomenal how wild it is. And in fact, people get lost there all the time."

“It’s really weird up here”

Screenwriter Richard Hatem of Pasadena hosts a podcast called Richard Hatem’s Paranormal Bookshelf. You might also have seen his work in the form of the 2002 film The Mothman Prophecies.

Big Tujunga Canyon at sunset

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Katherine Garrova

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He thinks the Tujunga Canyon contacts aren’t very well-known, even in a town that gave us the shooting location for Elliot’s home in Steven Spielberg’s E.T.

“I’ve never heard anyone bring it up,” Hatem said. “Weirdly, I don’t think that L.A. is a city that trades much in its supernatural history, even though there’s a ton of it.”

After hearing about the Tujunga contacts a few years ago from Kistoffersen, Hatem recalls eagerly driving 20 minutes west on the 210 Freeway to see the region for himself.

“It’s really weird up here. It feels like we’re a long way from Los Angeles... But I’m like, ‘I’m not staying up here too long. I don’t want them knowing that I’m thinking about them,’” Hatem said.

Perhaps it’s time to put Big Tujunga Canyon on the map with other UFO hotspots like Roswell or Area 51.