Twenty-two witnesses. One rest stop. One advisory that used the phrase ‘correct portal’ without explaining what that is.

At approximately 2:14 AM on Thursday, twenty-two motorists pulled into the Mile 114 rest area on US-93 in Nevada and encountered what multiple witnesses describe as tall, pale figures moving between the vending machines and the covered picnic area. The Nevada Department of Transportation issued a statement this morning. The statement was one sentence. It told drivers who had observed the entities to continue to their destination, drink water, and refrain from filing incident reports through the standard highway infrastructure portal, which the advisory specified was not the correct portal. The advisory did not specify the correct portal. I have the advisory in front of me. It does not say.

The figures were observed for between four and eleven minutes, depending on the witness. Descriptions are consistent in ways that tend to matter and inconsistent in ways that also tend to matter. Height estimates range from six-foot-four to just under seven feet. Skin described uniformly as white — not pale, not light, white — and eyes described by seven of the twenty-two as oversized relative to the face. Three witnesses reported that the figures appeared to be consulting something. No one could agree on what. One witness, a long-haul driver out of Elko, said it looked like a map but that the map was the wrong size for a map. I’m including that because I wrote it down and I don’t throw away things I’ve written down.

Community Notice

What The Witnesses Said, And What They Were Told Afterward

I went to the bathroom. When I came out they were just standing there by the soda machine. Not using it. Just standing near it. I got back in my car. I didn’t stop again until Alamo.

— Sandra Veuhl, witness, motorist, US-93 northbound

Sandra Veuhl is one of six witnesses who contacted WTC directly after finding that the standard highway infrastructure portal — she had googled it — returned a form designed for pothole complaints and guardrail damage. She filled it out anyway, she says, because she’d driven four hours and she wanted a record somewhere. The form asked for the mile marker. She entered 114. The form returned an error indicating that mile marker 114 was not a recognized highway segment for reporting purposes. She has a screenshot. We have the screenshot. It’s in the file.

Entities matching the physical profile described at Mile 114 appear in the cataloged literature under the name Tall Whites, a designation with its own documented history that I’m not going to relitigate here because the Nevada desert is not short on prior incidents and we have a live one. What I will say is that the Mile 114 location is notable for two reasons: it is the only rest stop on that stretch of US-93 with functioning lighting at 2 AM, and it is, per sources I am not naming but have spoken to on background, within a radius that has come up before in conversations I have also not previously reported on. I’m reporting on it now because twenty-two people saw something and one government agency told them to keep driving and drink water.

We advise all motorists who may have experienced an unexpected rest stop delay to prioritize their travel schedule and remain hydrated. The correct reporting portal is available to those who require it.

— Nevada DOT official statement, full text, in its entirety

The radio on my desk has been running about eight cycles higher than its usual baseline since I pulled this file this morning. I note that without claiming it means anything. I have not been able to correlate the radio’s behavior with specific story types, specific locations, or specific times of day. I note it because I write down the things I observe and I have observed it. Twenty-two witnesses. One rest stop. One sentence from the DOT. WTC will continue coverage as the correct portal, whatever and wherever it is, becomes known. In the meantime: if you are driving US-93 and you need a rest stop, Mile 114 is still listed as operational. The DOT has not closed it. They’ve only advised drivers to continue. Those are, I want to be precise about this, two different things.