Somewhere in the Skies - The Campfire Creep: Teens, UFOs & The Vanishing Man in Black

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

In 1966, six Denver high school students went camping at Daniels Park — and stumbled into one of the strangest cases of UFO and paranormal crossover ever recorded. Known as The Campfire Creep, the group reported buzzing noises, footsteps on the roof, a tall man in a black coat who vanished before their eyes, and glowing egg-shaped craft that disabled their car as they fled. In this episode of Just Another Tin Foil Hat, Zelia Edgar dives deep into this bizarre night — exploring how it blurs the lines between UFO encounters, hauntings, and classic poltergeist phenomena. Was it a visitation, a shared hallucination, or something that slips between dimensions? ⏱️ Chapters 00:00 – Intro: The Campfire Creep Case 01:20 – The Teenagers of Daniels Park 03:45 – The Lighted Object & Humming Noise 06:10 – The Tall Man in the Black Coat 08:05 – Footsteps on the Roof 10:00 – Egg-Shaped Lights & Engine Failure 12:40 – Police Reaction & Other Witnesses 15:15 – Haunted Campsite or UFO Encounter? 17:30 – Blurring the Lines: UFOs & Poltergeists 19:45 – Zelia’s Final Thoughts Subscribe to Just Another Tin Foil Hat on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JustAnotherTinFoilHat #UAP #UFOs #Paranormal #ZeliaEdgar #JustAnotherTinFoilHat #HighStrangeness #ParanormalStories #UnexplainedMysteries #HauntedEncounters #StrangePhenomena #CosmicWeirdness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Two young men returned to the park shelter with an amazing story. They claim to have seen a gigantic lighted object accompanied by a strange humming or buzzing noise. However, when they returned to their friends, they found the rest of the group absolutely terrified. They claimed that a tall man in a dark coat had passed by the window in the shelter and promptly vanished. Welcome to just another tinfoil hat with your host, Zilia Edgar. Join Zilia as she walks us through some of the most bizarre UFO cases and incidents of high strangeness. Today we're going to be discussing the fascinating case of the Daniels Park Campfire Creek.

Now, this case is really neat to me in the fact that it is almost a copy and page of another recent case that I covered, or a case that I recently covered, I should say, the Bensbased and Bizarre, which of course you can find that video in the description of this episode. Both cases involve a group of teens picnicking in a remote area, and honestly the following anomalous occurrence has some remarkable similarities. So without further ado, let's get on. Now this case occurred April 8th of 1966 and involved a group of six Denver high school students. Donald Otis, Alan Scrivener, Michael Simmington, Mary Zolar, Kay Hurley, and Patricia Rutherford, all 17.

Donald Otis actually relayed the story firsthand to the lead South Dakota Daily Call and stated that they were ready to start the three-day Good Friday weekend with a picnic at Daniels Park near Littleton, Colorado. They arrived at the park around 6.30 in the evening, parked the car about 100 yards away from a shelter, kind of up a hill a little bit. The shelter was at the bottom of the hill. Now, the Aerial Phenomenal Research Organization, of course, April Bulletin, said that the shelter was actually built into the side of a small hill. So anyway, they bring all their picnic stuff down from the car, and they start this big fire.

They claimed that things started to get weird around 7.45. The first thing that the group noticed was the sound of footsteps on the roof of the shelter. Two of the boys went out of the shelter to take look and see if someone was up there. No one was. After a short while, presumably with the noise still happening, Donald and one of the girls went out to look, and it was at this point that they also heard this loud, buzzing noise. Thinking, as Donald told the Daily Call,

that it may have been someone, quote, trying to give them trouble, he and Alan decided to go check on the car. So they trudged up the hill and saw what they described as something that looked like a huge car with bright flashing lights. Now, I'll admit, when I read this, the scully part of my personality was, though they just saw a big car, what was it like, you know, some sort of semi-truck or, you know,

just some sort of regular vehicle that just seemed a little bright, a little big. When they said that they saw a huge car, what they actually meant is that the lights appear to be three feet in diameter and about 18 feet apart. So, yeah, when they said that, hey, it looked like a giant car, they meant it looked like a giant car. So at this point, the duo left this gigantic car and went back to the shelter, at which point they found out that the rest of the group was in an uproar. Two of the girls claimed that they had seen what they described as a very tall man in a black coat, walk by one of the shelter windows. So the boys ran back up the hill to check on the weird vehicle they had seen, also checking around the shelter, and everything was completely gone. There was no tall man in a black coat. There was no giant lighted object. Everything was just gone. Now they claimed that up on the hilltop, they had a visibility for miles around. They were only gone for a short. time, but whatever the object was and whatever the, you know, entity or humanoid or person that

was seen out the window, both had vanished completely. Now, again, they returned to the shelter. By this point, they said that the fire was very low, and again, they began hearing the footsteps. Now, although Donald told the paper that he didn't believe that the footsteps were connected to the rest of the event, he claimed that this leg, no pun intended, of the experience was weird. He stated that it sounded like the footsteps were getting closer and closer to the point that they thought that someone or something was going to walk right through the door of the shelter. Now, some of the teens armed themselves with sticks and coke bottles and waited for the intruder, but when they jumped out of the door to confront whoever it was, nothing was there.

Deciding that right then and there was a perfect time to just high-tail it out of the area, the group grabbed up all of their belongings and headed for the car. Now, when they were about 20 yards away from the vehicle, they heard that same loud buzzing or humming noise and saw a light. Donald guessed that it was about 300 yards away and roughly 50 feet in diameter. They all claimed that this light was egg-shaped and pure white, and that it rose straight up out of a gully, went back down. They said everything kind of looked like sunset when it went down, and then came back up again. So to the right of this initial object, they claimed there were two more objects that were nearly identical to the. the first. However, these were blue, and to the left was yet another similar object. This one on the

left, they claimed had a dome on the top of it and emitted a red beam, as well as having a red and white light kind of moving around on its surface. As one of the lights appeared to be getting closer to the group, this was when they decided to officially take off. However, much like in the Bent's Basin case, they didn't manage to get very far. About 200 yards into their trip, the vehicle started acting up. They said that the engine kept cutting out and then coming back on, all the while the radio was emitting this strong static. Suddenly, as they're trying to get on their way, the group saw an extremely bright light come up behind the vehicle.

However, the driver, Alan, said that he couldn't see it in the mirror. As suddenly as it appeared, the light went out. The group promptly drove on to the Littleton Police Station. Now, the April Bulletin reported that police chief John McIver claimed that the whole group seemed very sincere and that a few of them appeared truly frightened. However, on the flip side, you have another local sheriff. who told the Douglas County News that there was, quote, nothing to it, that it was all a dream.

The rest of the article goes on, however, to describe multiple sightings in the same area around the same time as the previous encounter, including a sighting by a mother and her three daughters of football-shaped objects that gradually vanished from sight, as well as another woman and a friend who witnessed revolting lights, and then this same woman and her two sons who also saw these bizarre lights shooting across the sky.

I mean, it seems like there was a lot going on in the general area at this time, I do kind of have to smile, though, that you have this article starting with the sheriff saying, this is all a dream, there's nothing to it, and then the article just goes on to describe, okay, yeah, here are all of these witnesses that had other sightings of other things in the same place at around the same time. Yeah, I just absolutely love that. So this is a really funky case, and as I said, it bears a lot of the same hallmarks as the weirdness, which was experienced in the Bent's Basin Bizarre, and the setup is nearly identical.

This group of teens goes for a picnic and has a sighting of some sort of weird object than a vague humanoid and car trouble as they try to flee the scene. In this case, however, you also have this fantastic conclusion of the footsteps. Now, in my personal opinion, this is actually the most interesting part of this case, and it was the first thing that attracted my attention to it, this sound of footsteps on the roof of the shelter, because it calls to mind kind of a classic haunted house or poltergeist phenomenon. You know, especially this reveal, you know, everybody's poised to interrupt some intruder at the door of the shelter. They pounce out with sticks and coke bottles in hand, and nothing's there. Of course, this sort of circling effect of footsteps also brings to mind many cases of so-called Class B Bigfoot reports,

the sound of something bipedal circling an area, but never really being seen, getting kind of gradually closer and closer and then just sort of evaporating. Now, as many of you know, I tend to think that many Sasquatch reports fall on the you know, immaterial or perhaps quasi-material side of the spectrum. So these reports also seem to me to be more in line with classic hauntings or poltergeists, in my opinion, as with most cases of high strangeness, not that there even really needs to be some sort of distinction between the two different types of phenomenon. Now, this concept is also reflected in the odd and very vague sighting of the, quote,

tall man in the dark coat that rushed by the shelter window. I mean, this really kind of reads like a haunted campsite horror story, and then the UFOs come in. For a moment, I'd like to discuss, too, this bizarre humming or buzzing noise. You know, this is a very, very common description among anomalous encounters, especially UFOs and so-called UFO occupants. I really wonder if such noises somehow prep the experience or to witness something. If the noise, much like how so many of these occurrences, seem to begin with kind of a simpler or, you know, less elaborate sighting of strange lights is a catalyzing force for the further,

usually more intense or more imaged or more symbolic occurrence. Now, this case is another fantastic example of the infamous engine failure. Now, this is something that I've talked about a lot as it pertains to high strangeness encounters, because it seems as though this is very well accepted when you've got UFOs. We say, okay, their advanced technology, it's their advanced propulsion system, and that has something to do with its disturbance in the electromagnetic spectrum. And even with ghosts, we say, oh, well, the ghosts need, you know, electromagnetic power to, you know, do their ghost stuff to manifest.

But then, what then, in the case of, you know, the Marlinton encounter, one of my favorite encounters, where a man's car was fried as he passed by a Bigfoot-like creature, you know, are we supposed to assume that the Bigfoot also has some sort of advanced propulsion system? You know, this is just one of those aspects that really, seems to blur the lines between the different types of anomalous phenomenon. And this case is really a great example of it, because you have the trappings of a classic haunting. You know, the shadowy figure moving by the window, footsteps moving closer and closer, that then when, you know, you check on them, no one is there, combined with some very high mid-century UFO sightings.

And even the closest encounter of the lighted object was described with mechanical language as looking like a giant car. So again, it's just, you know, I love these cases of high strangeness, where it just seems as though the boundaries between the apparently different types of phenomena, they really just do not seem to apply quite as much. It seems like regardless of imagery, anomalies belong to some sort of phantom spectrum, onto which the human mind may only be able to intrude for a brief moment. And for today, I am Zelia Edgar, signing on. This has been just another tinfoil hat with Zelia and Edgar. Be sure to rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. For full video versions of

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