52| Did a UFO Kill Snippy?

In 2009 my brother came hurtling into the house, screaming my name. When an annoyed 17-year-old me answered he insisted that I needed to come outside and see this. 

I took my time getting up and walking through the house before finally stepping out the side door to be greeted by the setting Sun on a cool summer night.

I could see my brother running towards my parents standing at the property line along with the neighbors who we don’t speak to. All of them are looking up into the sky. 

My dad and the father of the neighbors were both pointing up, and as I got closer I could hear my dad say as he arched his arm across the sky, it went shooting that way. 

They had all seen the same thing, a large disk was hovering off the ground of a farm field behind our properties. There were no lights on it, but with the dying evening light, they could see it. 

And as they stood and watched, it slowly raised up from the ground peeking at a few hundred feet off the ground, and then as if shot out of a slingshot, This circular object sprinted across the sky and out of view. 

I stepped out a moment too late and to this day, their story has not changed. their memory has not altered and they standby the six of them were witness to a UFO. 

Welcome back to tragedy with a view, I am your host Kayla and Samantha is on the podcast with me today!

Take a listen to the episode anywhere you listen to podcasts, or on one of the main platforms here:

This was supposed to be a Halloween episode but the microphone I was using just didn’t handle audio well. So the audio we completely unusable. So you get the episode as a mid-November episode, which is perfect since there was just a meeting last week with congress regarding ufo’s - or uap’s is what i think they are calling them now - and aliens.

And here we go. Talking about UFOs. 

Outside of Alamosa, in the San Luis Valley, in Colorado, lies the home of some really bazar experiences. 

This area is also home to the great sand dunes national park and preserve which hold the tallest sand dunes in North America which stand up to 750 feet or 228 meters tall. The park has the international dark sky park designation, for good reason. 

Here the endlessly clear skies feel so close that you could reach up and brush your fingers through the glowing stars.  This area has had reports of random lights in the sky for decades. 

Great sand dunes alone had had over 70 reports since the year 2000 with many more stemming from San Luis valley from the decades prior. 

Reports of what? You may ask. The answer would be an astonishing unknown from those who receive the reports, but those who are witness to the sightings know what they’re seeing. They’re seeing UFOs, also known as Unidentified Flying Objects. 

Some of these reports include a circular object zigzagging quickly through the night sky, other have seen again a circular shape in the sky for longer periods of time, like of about an hour. 

Other reports include a bright object hovering that was much larger than the starts surrounding it, some others have been able to get what they saw on camera. 

And then one lady, by the name of Judy messoline, decided to open a UFO watch tower. It started as just something of a joke and kind of using the area’s mysterious presence as a way to attract tourists, but since she opened the watch tower in 2000, there have been over a 300 reports of ufo’s in the sky solely from the watch tower. 

Also at this watch tower, is likely the most bazar contribution to the proof of aliens. The bones of a horse. The horses name is snippy, and the way she was found still can not be conclusively explained today. 

harry King, who lived with his mother Agnes on a ranch just outside of Alamosa Colorado.  Here, he helped to care for his sister, Nellie’s, horses on the ranch. It sounds like she, and her husband Burl Lewis, had several horses, but I couldn’t find a source where it states how many or even a ballpark number

I also couldn’t find conclusive information about whether Harry also had horses or if the ranch was just for his sister horses. 

This is because The horse identified by the media as snippy was actually named lady- there are different accounts that state snippy was either the mother or father of the horse we are going to talk about- but still the name snippy was given and it stuck. 

Snippy was a 3 year old Appaloosa mare, appaloosas are a breed similar to quarter horses- they’re ranch bred and have incredible speckled and dotted patterned coats of a variety of colors. 

Most ranch horses are even tempered and are strong and sturdy, and they are just a really reliable breed of horse.  

On September 7, 1967, Harry called for the horses to come to get their feed, and when all of them arrived. He noticed Snippy was missing. 

Because horses have their own personalities and preferences, Harry didn’t panic immediately, he just figured she had found something else that she was more interested in than food. 

But, harry would go looking for snippy after the second day she didn’t show up for food, he found her about a quarter mile away. She was laying on her side and clearly deceased. 

For farmers and ranchers, it’s not out of the ordinary to have an animal go missing and to find that they have passed. 

But, the weird part of this was not that he found her dead, it was that her hoof prints ended about 100 feet from where her body was lying, and in a straight line just above her shoulders, the flesh, muscle, tendons, blood and tissue were stripped from the bones of snippy’s head and neck. 

Harry, then called Nellie and her husband Burle to come check out what he found and they notice more oddities. 

The cut around the base of snippy’s throat appeared to be cauterized, there was a sweet acetone-like scent in the air around her body, and they found shrubs nearby had been smashed down and there were 6 circular shaped imprints in the ground. 

In addition to this, there were dark marks on the ground that they couldn’t figure out what they were, and the closest they could come to a conclusion was that they were exhaust marks. But there were no tire tracks anywhere to indicate that a vehicle had been in the area. 

Upon observing the bones closer, they appeared to have a sun-bleached color to them, which would indicate that the bones were exposed to the elements for a long period of time not just a couple of days. 

Then on one of the bushes, a dollop of green substance was found. When Nellie picked it up, she said that her hand was burning and itching until she could wash the residue from her hands.

Duane Martin, a United States forest service employee arrived on scene to do some testing and his findings would lead to a really interesting twist. The marks on the ground that appears to be exhaust marks and the green glob were radioactive. 

Radioactive means that these areas were giving off a form of energy similar to that of a microwave or xray machine. The particles are giving off energy that are extremely active or electromagnetic, and these particles can disrupt living beings' function of tissue and organs and make them sick and in some cases cause death. 

Now, living being already produce a slight amount of radioactive energy- but this is at a severely low level and when higher does of radiation either through waves or some form of material, come into contact with a living being, that’s when problems arise. 

Still with the information being relayed to Alamosa County Sherriff Ben Phillips, he contributed the death, the burn marks and the radioactive readings to a lighting strike. 

He completely ignored the fact that there had been no storm activity or lighting reports in the area for the days prior or following the discovery of snippy. 

Naturally, the people in this area named the culprit as aliens, but the police weren’t so sure, so they were kind of pressed to continue the investigation. The following day they noticed that the bones had a pink tint to them, almost like they were freshly cleaned. 

Around this time Dr. John Altshuler, who was a very well known and incredibly thorough pathologists, was found trespassing at the Great Sand Dunes National Park after dark - and he was there searching for UFOs. 

When the police learned of this, they were like “hey we have something we want you to check out” and the borough him out to snippy. 

Already people had observed that Snippy’s body was not decomposing the way animals usually do. Within a few days there is usually some decomposition occurring and an animals body will begin to bloat due to the gas released from decomposition building up in the body. 

The bloating can easily be explained due to there being a gaping hole in the horses neck, which would allow gasses to release. However, upon further investigation of Dr. Altshuler, he found that the the heart, lungs, thyroid, and all abdominal organs were gone. 

The cut was quote some of the cleanest cuts he had ever seen and there was no material in the spinal column.” He also noted that the cuts were black and firm at the edges, and coupled with the lack of blood anywhere around snippy, it was like the cuts had been cauterized at the same time as the cut was being made. 

We have that sort of laser technology today, but it was non existent in 1967.  

In order to try to determine how snippy died they did a necropsy which is a autopsy on an animal and so they cut the skull open in order to get the brain out. 

By the time that snippy went missing and they found her body and then collected everything and started their investigation and found that once they opened up her skull, it had been about a month. 

Still, there was no brain and no indication that fluid or flesh had been in the skull. It was like not only had the outside of her bones been picked clean, but the insides had been as well.

Further, we already know that several organs were missing and outside of the cut on her neck there were no other openings in her body. 

To add to the head scratching turn of events, the body of snippy was considered a poor candidate for an necropsy because the horse had been dead for what appeared to be several weeks and that it was noted that spinal fluid and nerve tissue is usually gone at this point. 

But, while the necropsy occurred about a month after snippy was found- from the start it had been mentioned about the lack of spinal and nerve tissue. 

after her body was examined and authorities, deemed that there was nothing more that they could gather from the body of snippy, doctor Wallace Leary acquired her and in the process of preparing her to be displayed outside of his veterinary building, he found two small caliber, bullet wounds in her right flank or like where the belly and the hip meet on the side of her. 

So it wasn’t until after the necropsy that these holes were found. 

Further, the theories about what happened ranged from the horse got scared and got caught up in barbed wire and sliced her neck open to that someone found her and she was suffering and so they cut her neck themselves. 

To explain the bones experts reasoned that scavengers or ants could’ve easily picked those bones clean and continued inward to consume organs however there’s not really an explanation as to why the skin was in such a straight line all the way around and remarkably untouched everywhere else.

Another theory that was presented was from a columnist from the Rocky Mountain news, who said that the horse could have tripped and fallen with its head in a band of cannibal ants.

And I will go on record and say that I don’t think it was cannibal ants that did this. 

While not all of the things found could be explained, conclusions could be pieced together based on the information gathered.

For example two boys came forward and admitted to shooting snippy. Whether this was by accident or on purpose, we don’t know, but an admission was made.

It was concluded then, by the local veterinarian doctor Wallace Leary, who acquired the bones and discovered the bullet holes in the first place, that because no one had known that the horse had been shot. No treatment was provided, and Horse ended up getting an infection. 

Something with horses is that infections inside of the joints get very bad very fast and horses can decline over a very short amount of time. 

If the leg is hurting back enough they may lay down and then be unable to get back up. If a horse is down for too long their internal organs can essentially suffocate them or in other circumstances, just make their heart work too hard to circulate blood, among other complications. 

Usually horses lay down at times during the day, but if a horse is down hit several hours it’s more likely to decline even if you get it standing. 

So if this is true, and she did end up with an infection that ended up in her hip socket. This Could’ve very easily caused her to die after failing to show up for food. 

A report released by the University of Colorado at Boulder researchers who commissioned the Air Force concluded that there was no evidence to support the assertion that the horses death was associated in any way with abnormal causes. This report is known as the condon report and because of its association with the United States government, it is highly criticized by UFO and alien supporters. 

Other reports would reference and counter each other. For example, Dr. Robert Adam’s reported that he found the death of snippy could not have been caused by anything unearthly - but then Nellie Lewis, the horses owner mentioned that they saw no one on the property before finding the horse, and that his report fails to point out the cause for the sweet chemical smell, nor does it explain where Snippy’s blood went or how her body ended up 100 feet away from where her hoof prints ended. 

People who didn’t believe in aliens, but didn’t believe the reports blamed a secret government project, and satanic cults.

However, after the two young men from Alamosa State College came forward and explained that they had been the ones to shoot and kill Snippy, the widely accepted (or is it?) explanation is that Snippy in fact, did succumb to an infection. But this doesn’t explain anything else. 

However, through the remainder of the 1960s and into the 1970s the United States would have several reports of strange livestock mutilations.

Across Nebraska and Kansas there were multiple reports of cattle being killed and their organs being removed. More specifically, it would be their eyes, ears, rectum and sex organs. 

And reportedly there were 10,000 reports over a decade long period, and people in Nebraska started to notice low flying helicopters that were dark and completely unmarked around the times that cattle would be killed and mutilated. They kind of determined that this must be the government testing out biological weapons and so some residents started shooting at the helicopters. It became such an issue that the national guard in Nebraska had to increase their altitude from 1,000 feet to 2,000 feet or 304 to 609 meters. 

In Minnesota cattle and sheep were found mutilated, drained of blood and cuts were made with surgical precision. And it’s not just livestock. Wild animals, such as deer, moose, elk, rabbits, bison and pigs were found mutilated as well. 

And it was just these few states. While it was mostly occurring in the Midwest and western United States, South Dakota, Colorado, and new Mexico also had large numbers of mutations. And then it expanded to Australia and South America reporting mutilations as well. 

And this would only be the beginning of the public obsession of finding proof of extraterrestrial life. 

In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report regarding what we know as UFOs. And the unredacted report, of course, insist that there is no evidence to support the claims that UFOs exist or have visited earth. 

This is in spite of the fact that there is supposedly proof that the United States government received biological evidence that is nonhuman in 2023 from a ufo crash sight. The matter is said to have been collected from the pilots of that crash and that the term non-human is used instead of alien or extraterrestrial. 

Despite this, of course the government still denies that alien life exists. 

Whether you believe or not- there are definitely situations that defy logic. And while i, personally, believe that life exists beyond our earth, i also recognize that sometimes the worst monsters we could come across, are human.