Aliens in the Forest

About the Author

Noe Torres is a Texas-based MUFON member holding a Bachelor's degree in English and a Master's in Library Science from the University of Texas at Austin. Before turning to Cisco Grove, Torres and Ruben Uriarte had already co-authored the two principal book-length treatments of the Coyame, Mexico UFO Crash Claim, Mexico's Roswell (2007) and The Coyame Incident (2013), the latter including laboratory analysis of recovered metal fragments that returned inconclusive results — giving the pair an established track record of pairing direct witness access with physical-evidence documentation before applying the same method to Cisco Grove.

This site's research treats the book's most distinctive credential as its direct co-authorship credit for the witness himself: Donald R. Shrum is listed alongside Torres and Uriarte on the book's own cover, meaning the account is not a secondhand journalistic reconstruction but carries the primary witness's own direct participation in how his story was finally told in full, decades after the original 1964 encounter. Illustrator Neil Riebe contributed period-accurate artwork depicting the encounter, and Joe Calkins and Judi Shrum (Donald Shrum's wife) are also credited contributors.

This site's own research finds Torres and Uriarte's broader body of work — spanning both a Mexican crash-retrieval claim and an American tree-siege encounter separated by decades and a national border — reflects a consistent investigative method: locating and directly interviewing primary witnesses, gathering whatever physical evidence remains, and being explicit when laboratory or forensic analysis proves inconclusive rather than overstating its significance, as their own Coyame follow-up volume demonstrates.

Historical Context & Origins

The Cisco Grove encounter itself occurred on September 4–5, 1964, but this book was not published until 2011 — a gap of nearly five decades during which the case was known primarily through contemporary APRO and NICAP investigation reports, brief mentions in general UFO-literature surveys like Richard Hall's The UFO Evidence and J. Allen Hynek's The UFO Experience, and a reference within the U.S. Air Force's own Project Blue Book files and the Condon Committee's scientific study. This site's own case file documents that the Condon Committee referenced the case but dismissed its physical claims specifically for lack of surviving samples for laboratory testing.

This site's own case file identifies Shrum's own extended silence as directly connected to his employment: as a missile tracking technician for Aerojet General, a major Cold War aerospace contractor in Sacramento, Shrum reported the case to APRO and NICAP under the pseudonym "Mr. S" in its earliest years, reflecting a genuine, well-documented fear that public association with a flying-saucer report could cost him his security clearance and his career. This site's research treats Torres and Uriarte's book as significant specifically for the moment it represents: Shrum, by 2011 an older man decades removed from the professional risk that had constrained his earlier public silence, finally speaking on the record in full.

The book's 2011 publication also places it within the broader wave of small-press, single-case UFO investigation books published in the 2000s and 2010s, a genre this site's own essential-reading library documents extensively through titles like Torres and Uriarte's own Coyame books and comparable single-case treatments of other famous American encounters.

Core Arguments & Key Concepts

The book's central argument, built on Shrum's own direct testimony, is that the physical details of his encounter — arrows striking the entities with a metallic clank and a shower of blue sparks, steel broadheads found flattened rather than penetrating, and a gas that could be filtered by a wet cloth — constitute a genuinely anomalous, internally consistent physical account rather than a simple misidentification or fabrication. This site's own case file develops this argument in significant technical detail, analyzing the metallurgical implications of blue-spark generation and the pharmacological properties the described knockout gas would require.

A second theme is Shrum's own professional credibility as an observer: both the book and this site's own case file emphasize that Shrum's work as a missile tracking technician made him professionally trained to distinguish conventional aircraft and atmospheric phenomena from genuinely anomalous flight characteristics, a credential this site's research treats as directly relevant to assessing his description of the cigar-shaped mother craft's silent hover and near-instantaneous departure.

A third theme, reflected in the book's inclusion of Shrum's own voice directly, is that the case's emotional and psychological dimension deserves documentation alongside its physical claims: a review of the book by the Donner Summit Historical Society specifically notes that Shrum's experience left him with what the reviewer describes in modern terms as post-traumatic stress, treating the human cost of the encounter as part of the record rather than a secondary detail to the physical evidence claims.

This site's own research treats the book's greatest value as giving the primary witness direct authorial participation in his own case's most complete published account, a distinction that separates it from secondhand treatments and gives readers access to Shrum's own account with the fewest layers of interpretation between the witness and the page.

Key Cases & Evidence Discussed

The Cisco Grove Encounter (Case File #021, September 4–5, 1964) at Cisco Grove, Tahoe National Forest, California, is this book's sole and exclusive subject. Donald Shrum, separated from bow-hunting companions Vincent Alvarez and Tim Trueblood at dusk, climbed a ponderosa pine and strapped himself to the trunk with his hunting belt for safety. After mistaking an approaching light for a rescue helicopter and signaling it with flares, he watched a massive, silent, cigar-shaped craft deploy a smaller scout craft, from which two five-foot silver-suited humanoids and a boxy mechanical robot with glowing reddish-orange eyes emerged. Over the following twelve hours, the robot repeatedly discharged a sweet-smelling incapacitating gas at Shrum, rendering him unconscious on his first exposure before he improvised a wet-handkerchief filter; the humanoids repeatedly attempted to climb the tree to reach him; and Shrum defended himself by firing his hunting arrows, which struck the entities with a metallic clank and a shower of blue sparks rather than penetrating, and by throwing lit matches and his burning hunting cap at his attackers. This site's own case file documents that the entities withdrew at dawn, and that Shrum's companions later corroborated seeing strange lights and recovered his bent arrows and charred cap as physical evidence at the site — the exact material this book, published nearly fifty years later with Shrum's own direct participation, was written to document in full.

Critical Reception & Controversies

On Goodreads, the book carries a 3.46-out-of-5 average from 48 ratings and 10 written reviews (checked August 2026) — a substantial sample by the standards of small-press single-case UFO books, and one that reflects a genuinely mixed reception. Positive reviewers praised it as "not your typical saucer story" and "probably the most detailed account you are going to find on this event," with one calling it a "fascinating story" that "provides great insights on extraterrestrial behaviour." Critical reviewers focused specifically on the book's editing and pacing rather than its underlying case material, with multiple readers noting that "the same information and even the same quotes are used repeatedly," one describing it as "poorly written (so much repetition throughout the book that it genuinely starts to become confusing) and bulked out unreasonably."

This site's research attempted to verify an Amazon rating for this title but Amazon's bot-detection system repeatedly blocked automated requests to the listing during this session, returning a CAPTCHA challenge across multiple attempts. Per this site's own Amazon Rating Display Protocol, this gap is disclosed honestly here rather than fabricated or silently omitted.

A review from the Donner Summit Historical Society — a local historical organization based near the actual Sierra Nevada location of the encounter — described the 186-page book as concise and well-illustrated with maps, presenting Shrum's account straightforwardly without either endorsing or dismissing its underlying claims, and specifically noting the book's second half documents Shrum's efforts to report the incident to the Air Force. This site's research treats a geographically local historical society's willingness to review the book neutrally, on its own terms, as a modest but genuine indicator of the case's continued local as well as ufological significance.

Influence & Legacy

The clearest evidence of this book's lasting authority on this site specifically is that it remains, per this site's own case file, the definitive book-length investigation of the Cisco Grove case, cited directly for its witness interviews, historical photographs, and physical-evidence analysis rather than treated as one of several competing accounts.

The case's continued cultural relevance is well documented independent of the book itself: this site's research found the encounter has been covered by the popular YouTube series "The Why Files" in its episode "Mystery in Cisco Grove: Don Shrum's Encounter with UFOs, Aliens and Robots," and by the long-running paranormal podcast "Astonishing Legends" in its episode "Battle at Cisco Grove" — both more than a decade after this book's original publication, evidence that Torres, Uriarte, and Shrum's 2011 account remains the reference point subsequent popular treatments of the case return to.

Torres and Uriarte's parallel body of work on the Coyame, Mexico UFO Crash Claim gives this book additional context within their broader career: this site's own research finds the pair have consistently prioritized direct witness access and physical-evidence documentation across genuinely different kinds of cases — an alleged 1974 aircraft crash-retrieval in Mexico and a 1964 wilderness tree-siege in California — suggesting a consistent methodological commitment rather than a single-case specialization.

The Book

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