37.39108°N 93.84533°W: The “Dumping Ground” MO
Railroad tracks leading south towards the “Dumping Ground.”
Field Notes:
The region around Stockton Reservoir in Missouri is a hotspot of UFO/UAP sightings, with numerous reports going back several decades. Towns such as Bolivar, Stockton, Everton, and Ash Grove have multiple sightings on record with the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). Several other towns, including Arcola, Greenfield, Lockwood, Golden City, Dadeville, Nickelville, Humansville, Collins, Miller, and more, also feature in the NUFORC database.
Given the dense cluster of sightings around the reservoir, I chose this area as a crucial point of investigation for Expedition 37: Stage 2. As I drove around the area of Stockton Reservoir and visited the sites of these sightings, I came across a site that was both unusual and disconcerting. I instantly dubbed it the “Dumping Ground.”
Situated between the towns of Greenfield and South Greenfield on Highway 160, the Dumping Ground is a sight that’s hard to overlook. Its presence adds an intriguing layer to the enigma that shrouds the area.
Nestled in a depression, flanked on the west by Highway 160 and on the east by tree-lined railroad tracks, the Dumping Ground starkly contrasts with the surrounding areas of Stockton Reservoir. Most of the landscape around the lake is a mix of well-maintained farmland, forested land on rolling hillsides, and quiet small towns. The Dumping Ground, however, is exactly as its name suggests—a patch of overgrown land littered with abandoned, dilapidated trailers, decaying shacks, and decades-old boats and cars dumped at the spot. In the northern part of the site, an old bus lies on its side, rusting and decaying, surrounded by unkempt vegetation. Hundreds of items cover the area.
As I drove south on Highway 160, passing the site, I was immediately struck by the unsettling “Vibe” that I sometimes experience at the locations where I’ve investigated UFO/UAP sightings. Given that the Dumping Ground is located within four miles of the location where my entire family had our first encounter with The Phenomena, I felt compelled to investigate. As soon as I found a spot to turn around, I returned to the Dumping Ground, hoping to find a vantage point from which I could photograph this strange site.
However, I soon discovered that this would be impossible. While the Dumping Ground is visible from the elevated ground of Highway 160, the western side of the location is shielded by a fence made of old wooden slats and sheets of metal, carefully placed at spots where a visitor might pull off the road to view the site. Unable to find a way to photograph the site, I drove north in search of another access point.
As I approached Greenfield from the south, I found a small, gravel spot near the northern part of the Dumping Ground where the railroad tracks that bordered the eastern side of the site emerged from the trees lining both sides of the tracks. Nearby there was a single, small building that seemed to have been crushed from above. The sight was unsettling, prompting me to grab just one camera as I set off along the tracks.
Crushed shack near the “Dumping Ground.”
When I started walking south along the railroad tracks, an uneasy feeling began to set in. Above the Dumping Ground I spotted a pair of buzzards circling overhead. As I walked deeper into the trees overhanging the tracks, another buzzard joined the pair. They were soon joined by more birds until eight buzzards were circling overhead. I held my camera tight, ready to turn around and head back to my car at the first sign of a threat- or the dead animal the buzzards were circling.
It flashed through my mind that it may not be an animal that held the birds’ attention- it could be something much worse.
Walking along the tracks I began seeing old items scattered along the banks rising from the sides of the railroad: old shoes, scraps of old clothing covered by dirt and weeds, a rusted wheelbarrow, a decades old license plate decomposing into two pieces, a faded sunglasses case and an old, vinyl woman’s wallet from the 1960s. But there was nothing new. No CD cases. No earbuds. No new clothing or shoes. Only old items lined the tracks.
When I picked up the wallet, I knew it was time to leave. The wallet was faded, empty and the old vinal was brittle in my hands. Whoever it belonged to was long gone, and it was time for me to leave too.
My field investigation of the Dumping Ground was over, and I quickly headed back to my car.
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When I returned home, I knew that I needed to learn more about the Dumping Ground so I began calling people in Greenfield, Missouri that may be able to help me. I spoke to the town’s librarian, the Chamber of Commerce, and administrative workers in the local government. After several hours on the phone talking to the very helpful people on the other end of the line, the story of the Dumping Ground began to become clear.
Everyone I spoke to immediately knew what area I was talking about. More than once, as I began to describe the site, the person would interrupt my description of the site with their own description of the place with the same words I was about to say. They all knew the place without me having to finish my description.
I was surprised to find that the people in the area also called the location the “Dumping Ground.” They told me that a person in the local government owned the land and had purchased it just a few years ago. (They gave me the person’s name and position in the government, but I’ve chosen to withhold that information here.) After purchasing the land, the owner had started to clean up the location, but work had stopped due to the vast amount of money and labor that would be required to clean up the hundreds of items dumped and abandoned on the land.
As I spoke to the people in the area I learned about the folklore of the spot. I heard some dark stories, and tales about homeless and transient people living in the area from time to time. No one knew who owned the land before the current owner, or how long it had been in the condition it was in. But they all told me that it had been like that for as long as they had lived in Greenfield.
I told one person that I had tried to photograph the spot but hadn’t been able to locate a way to do it. She told me that there was a one way on to the property along a driveway at the north end of the plot of land. She continued in almost whispered words, as if she was sharing a secret with me, that there was an old mailbox at the entry to the driveway, and that if you followed the road it ended at a long-abandoned trailer where the previous owner of the land once lived. She described the trailer. It was old, decayed and trees were growing through it. She told me that they were full grown trees that had been there for at least thirty years.
When I was done talking with the people in Greenfield, it became clear that the previous owners of the land had abandoned it decades ago and had not returned. What happened to make them leave and never return was a mystery to all.
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Upon returning from the Dumping Ground and engaging in conversations with locals, I find myself grappling with more questions than answers.
Who were the inhabitants of the abandoned trailer at the end of the driveway, and what circumstances led them to abandon their home over thirty years ago? How did so many items end up dumped in a hollow with only a single access road? Who were the previous owners of the items strewn along the railroad tracks, and what fate had befallen them?
In Whitley Strieber’s recent book “Them,” he delineates three distinct eras of mankind’s interaction with The Phenomena since the 1940s. One such era is that of human abduction, which, according to him, largely concluded by the end of the 1980s. My family’s initial encounter with The Phenomena, which happened in the early 1980s and can best be described as an abduction experience, occurred merely miles away from this peculiar site that appears to have been deserted since the early 1990s.
Ultimately, my final and unanswered question isn’t “who” created the Dumping Ground, but rather “what” led to its creation?
The “Dumping Ground” is marked with the skull and crossed bones.