The Boyup Brook Car Stop: Alexander Roy Spargo's Encounter at Kulikup, 1967

Kulikup is a locality in the Shire of Boyup Brook, in Western Australia. Alexander Roy Spargo was 37, a shearing contractor from Cannington in suburban Perth. On the night of Monday 30 October 1967 he was alone in his 1967 Valiant utility, driving the bitumen road from Kojonup toward Boyup Brook, about 10 miles from Mayanup.

It was approximately 9:20 pm, by the police account. Spargo was travelling at 60 to 65 mph, headlights on high beam. Without warning the motor stopped. The headlights went out. The car was suddenly stationary, "without any sensation of braking or deceleration."

Then came the light. "A tube of light descended close to the windscreen. The tube was about 2 feet in diameter." He saw the object. It was shaped like a football, an "iridescent blue colour (lightning colour but stationary), with a pulsating glow appearance." He judged it approximately 30 feet in diameter. Later accounts describe the whole experience as silent.

For about five minutes Spargo watched. He felt he was being observed. He was "in a state of shock." Then the object "moved off very quickly and disappeared in a 'flash.'" The car was running again on its own, at its previous speed, with no sensation of accelerating. He had no recollection of starting it again.

Constable Leonard Johnson of the Boyup Brook Police Station wrote up the report on 1 November 1967, file 64/2885. He also recorded his impression of the man in front of him. Spargo "appeared normal." His eyes had a tired look and were slightly red. He admitted two brandies at Kojonup, was not a regular drinker, and "nothing in his appearance would indicate otherwise."

No explanation and no official conclusion appear in the file. That same Wednesday, The West Australian carried the story.

On Saturday 2 December 1967, Perth psychiatrist Dr Paul Zeck interviewed Spargo, with Spargo's own doctor present. Zeck's notes are now held in the archives of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies. In that interview the object had grown to 100 feet across, one of a few differences from the police account later noted by researcher Keith Basterfield. Spargo himself kept away from the press. He feared being labelled a "crank."

No one has alleged a hoax, and no conventional explanation has been put forward. Sceptics might point to the shifting details. The shape moved from football to oval, mushroom, bell and saucer as the story was retold. The time ranges from 9:00 to 9:30 pm, and one catalogue dates it 31 October. Writer Martin Kottmeyer has traced engine stopping stories back through pulp fiction and the 1957 Levelland, Texas reports, though he does not mention Boyup Brook.

The case travelled quickly. It appeared in Flying Saucer Review in 1968, in NICAP's UFO Investigator under the title "Car stop," and as entry 892 in Jacques Vallée's catalogue in Passport to Magonia. Mark Rodeghier listed it among vehicle interference reports for CUFOS. In 2007 the 163-page WA Police UFO file was made public. In 2017 Basterfield published the uncovered police report, and Constable Johnson's original words came back into view.