THINK ABOUTIT

UFO|UAP & ENTITY ENCOUNTER REPORT

1953: The Brush Creek Water Carrier — June 20, 1953

Miner John Q. Black had already watched this same craft twice — once falling from the sky in March, once resting on the ground and taking off in May, each time leaving him no closer to an explanation. On June 20, 1953, he went back to the same Butte County canyon a third time and finally got his answer, in the form of a small, middle-aged man in a green parka who walked to the creek’s edge, dipped up a bucket of water, and carried it back to a craft waiting only forty feet from where Black stood.

Date: June 20, 1953

Sighting Time: 18:30 (6:30 p.m.)

Day/Night: Day (early evening)

Location: Brush Creek, California — at the junction of the Jordan and Marble Creeks, Butte County (the same spot as the March 20 and May 20, 1953 sightings)

Urban or Rural: Rural

No. of Entity(‘s): 1

Entity Type: Humanoid (small/dwarf-statured)

Entity Description: A middle-aged little man, 4 to 4.5 ft tall, broad-shouldered with a barrel chest, black hair, bushy eyebrows, and a small mouth. Wore a green, seamless parka and a peaked, billed cap with a cord running around it. His shoes were dull black, apparently without heels, and looked extremely flexible.

Hynek Classification: CE-III (Close Encounter, Third Kind — entity present, no abduction)

Duration: Not precisely specified — long enough for the entity to walk to the creek, fill the bucket, and start back before noticing Black

No. of Object(s): 1

Description of the Object(s): A disc resembling “a couple of soup plates put together,” with one small window and tripod landing gear

Shape/Size/Color of Object(s): Disc-shaped, approximately 8 ft wide and 4-4.5 ft thick; one small window; tripod landing gear

Distance to Object(s): Approximately 40 ft from Black

Height & Speed: Departed at a 45-degree angle with a hissing sound; speed not specified

Number of Witnesses: 1 (John Q. Black)

Special Features/Characteristics: The bucket the entity used was described as about a foot long, flared out in the middle, with a square handle that appeared to be made of foam rubber — an unusually specific and mundane object description; this was the third sighting of the same craft by the same witness at the same location, following the March 20 descent and the May 20 landing/departure (which left rocks hot and ash in the water)

Case Status: Unresolved — the third and most detailed of three sightings by the same single witness, published contemporaneously via wire dispatch and later expanded in Fate magazine

Source: Wallace Kunkel for Fate; Ted Bloecher, citing a July 25, 1953 wire dispatch, New York World-Telegram and Sun

Summary/Description: On June 20, 1953, at 6:30 p.m., miner John Q. Black returned to the site near the junction of the Jordan and Marble Creeks, Butte County, California, where he had twice before seen an unexplained silvery disc (March 20 and May 20). This time, a middle-aged little man, 4-4.5 ft tall, wearing a green parka and peaked cap, emerged from the disc — resting about 40 ft away — and walked to the creek to fill a small bucket with water. After completing the task, the entity noticed Black, hurried back to the craft, and departed at a 45-degree angle with a hissing sound.

Related Cases: 1953: The Brush Creek, California Sightings — March & May (the two earlier sightings of the same craft by the same witness)

Detailed Report

By June 20, 1953, John Q. Black had already seen this craft twice. Once in March, when something resembling a piece of circular aluminum dropped out of the sky near the junction of the Jordan and Marble Creeks in Butte County. Once again in May, when he found what looked like the same silvery disc resting on the ground on tripod landing gear, then watched it lift off, leaving the nearby streamside rocks hot enough to burn and ash floating in the water.

On his third visit to the same spot, at 6:30 in the evening, Black finally saw who — or what — had been operating the craft. A small, middle-aged man, standing somewhere between four and four-and-a-half feet tall, broad-shouldered with a notably barrel-shaped chest, walked out from beside the disc. He had black hair and bushy eyebrows over a small mouth, and was dressed practically rather than dramatically: a green, seamless parka, a peaked and billed cap with a cord running around it, and dull black shoes that looked heelless and unusually flexible.

The figure’s business was mundane almost to the point of being anticlimactic. He walked to the edge of the creek, dipped a small bucket into the water — a bucket Black described in specific, almost domestic detail: about a foot long, flared out in the middle, its square handle apparently made of foam rubber — and started carrying it back toward the craft, which sat only about forty feet from where Black was standing.

It was on the return trip that the little man noticed he had an audience. Whatever errand the water was for, it stopped mattering the moment he spotted Black. He hurried back to the disc — described as looking like “a couple of soup plates put together,” roughly eight feet wide and four to four-and-a-half feet thick, with a single small window and tripod landing gear — and climbed aboard. It lifted off at a 45-degree angle with a hissing sound and was gone.

RESEARCHER’S NOTES

The Water Carrier — 1953 and the Value of a Three-Part Sighting

• Three visits, one witness, one craft: The same person seeing the same object at the same location on three separate occasions across three consecutive months is a structure this archive doesn’t encounter often — it doesn’t prove anything about what Black saw, but it does mean this case rests on a pattern of repeated observation rather than a single fleeting glimpse.
• Escalating specificity: The progression from “a piece of circular aluminum” (March) to a landed craft with a physical trace (May) to a detailed entity with a described bucket, cap, and shoes (June) tracks an increase in narrative detail across each retelling — worth naming plainly as a pattern, whatever one makes of it.
• An oddly specific, unglamorous object: A bucket with a foam-rubber-like handle is a strange thing for a witness to invent; it lacks the drama of more typical contactee props (weapons, instruments, communication devices) and reads as either a genuinely observed mundane detail or an unusually committed piece of scene-setting.
• A contemporary press source: Unlike many entries in this archive sourced only to later UFO-literature compilations, this case traces to a wire dispatch printed in a New York daily newspaper within weeks of the alleged event — a stronger contemporaneous documentation trail than most.
• No corroborating witness on any of the three dates: Despite the repeated sightings, Black appears to have been alone each time — the case’s strength lies in its internal consistency and press timing, not in independent corroboration.

This is the strongest-documented of the three Brush Creek sightings, both for its level of specific detail and for its comparatively fast path into print — weeks, not years, after the alleged event. It remains, however, a single uncorroborated witness across all three visits, and this archive preserves that limitation alongside the case’s genuinely unusual, specific detail.

“The bucket was about a foot long and flared out in the middle; the handle was square and looked as if it was made of foam rubber.”
— Wallace Kunkel for Fate