Terry Lovelace
Terry Lovelace is a former United States Air Force military police sergeant and later a state attorney — serving as Assistant Attorney General for the American Samoa Territory and as State's Attorney for Vermont — who publicly disclosed in 2018 an alien abduction experience that he claims occurred in 1977 at Devil's Den State Park in Arkansas. He published a memoir, Incident at Devil's Den: A True Story, in 2018, and a follow-up, Devil's Den: The Reckoning, in 2020.
Biography
Military career
Lovelace served on active duty in the United States Air Force from 1973 to 1979, attaining the rank of sergeant. He was stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, where he worked in the hospital squadron as a medic and ambulance driver on the night shift. He separated from the Air Force on October 25, 1979, after which he pursued a legal career, eventually becoming a state attorney. He retired from civil service in 2012.
1977 Devil's Den encounter
In 1977, Lovelace and a fellow airman referred to as Toby traveled from Whiteman Air Force Base to Devil's Den State Park in Arkansas for a camping trip. The two men bypassed the ranger station and camped on an elevated plateau located on Bureau of Land Management federal land adjacent to the park.
That evening, while sitting at their campfire around 9:00 p.m., the forest sounds abruptly ceased and the air went still. Three unusually bright lights forming a tight triangle then appeared on the western horizon. The object rotated on its axis, descended toward the plateau, and eventually hovered approximately 3,000 feet overhead — described by Lovelace as the size of a Walmart or large medical building.
From the craft, a narrow white beam of light approximately six inches in diameter hit the center of the campfire, followed by a reddish-purple laser that swept rapidly across the campsite and struck Lovelace at least twice in the chest. Both men then felt an overwhelming compulsion to sleep and entered the tent.
Lovelace later woke inside the tent to flashing lights and found his combat boots unlaced and his socks on sideways, indicating he had been undressed and redressed. Looking out from the tent he observed an estimated twelve to fifteen grey entities — identical in appearance, proportioned with heads larger than expected for their frames, and moving with a distinctive gait — walking in the field while the craft had descended to approximately thirty feet above the meadow floor. The entities entered the craft one by one through a column of white light, appearing to dematerialize.
Both men's mechanical watches stopped — Lovelace's at 2:30 a.m. and Toby's at 2:32 a.m. — providing a reference point for the time of the encounter. After the craft departed, both men fled, leaving their tent, cooler, and equipment behind.
Upon returning to Whiteman Air Force Base, both men sought medical treatment. Lovelace presented with a fever of 103°F, severe sunburn covering his entire body, and flash burns to the eyes consistent with arc welding exposure. Both men were hospitalized for three days in private rooms. According to Lovelace, the description states they were interrogated under hypnosis and administered sodium amytal by agents from the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI). Two AFOSI agents — a major and a captain — visited Lovelace in his hospital room. The major reportedly whispered to him that he knew "you two knuckleheads stumbled onto something" and asked how many photographs Lovelace had taken of the craft. Lovelace's clothing and personal items were confiscated by the base hospital and never returned. Lovelace and Toby received orders to have no further contact with one another; Toby was subsequently reassigned to Japan within weeks. Toby died on September 4, 2007.
Fragmentary memories of the interior of the craft include a large stainless steel and gray-white space far larger than the external dimensions of the object suggested, populated by numerous grey entities and what appeared to be other human beings — men, women, and children — held in a separate area in a distressed state. In a later interview with researcher Lorien Fenton, Lovelace reportedly recalled for the first time that he had also seen uniformed human personnel aboard the craft — approximately four individuals in orange jumpsuits with insignia, displaying blank expressions while operating equipment, suggesting possible military or super soldier involvement in the abduction event.
The implant
In October 2012, following his retirement, a routine X-ray of Lovelace's right knee revealed two anomalous objects embedded deep in the joint. The objects are described as a triangular metallic alien implant, and has presented the X-ray images publicly as physical evidence corroborating his account of the 1977 abduction.
Disclosure and public activities
Coming forward
Lovelace remained silent about the 1977 events for approximately forty years, fearing professional consequences in the legal community. In 2018 he published Incident at Devil's Den: A True Story through Amazon, describing the encounter and its aftermath in full. A sequel, Devil's Den: The Reckoning, followed in 2020, and a third book, Free Fall: An American Near-Death Experience, addressed a separate subject. In 2023 he presented his account at the Ozark Mountain UFO Conference in Arkansas, his first return to the state since 1977. Since publishing his memoir, Lovelace has received over 4,200 emails from individuals reporting similar experiences, which he has tracked in a spreadsheet. He has also testified before the United States Congress on the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena and non-human intelligence contact. Steven Greer presented Lovelace as one of over 750 firsthand Disclosure Project witnesses, emphasizing that unlike secondhand sources, Lovelace was "principally involved" in the events he describes.