extraterrestrial encyclopedia

EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS


An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials and Otherworldly Beings

Jerome Clark

BSanta Barbara, California

Denver, ColoradoOxford, England

Copyright © 2000 by Jerome Clark

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, inany form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion ofbrief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataClark, Jerome.Extraordinary encounters : an encyclopedia of extraterrestrials andotherworldly beings / Jerome Clark.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 1-57607-249-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 1-57607-379-3 (e-book)1. Human-alien encounters—Encyclopedias. I. Title.

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To Dakota Dave Hull and John Sherman,for the many years of friendship, laughs, and—always—good music

Introduction, xi

EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS

AND OTHERWORLDLY BEINGS

Contents

vii

A, 1Abductions by UFOs, 1Abraham, 7Abram, 7Adama, 7Adamski, George (1891–1965), 8Aenstrians, 10Aetherius, 11Affa, 12Agents, 13Agharti, 13Ahab, 15Akon, 15Alien diners, 16Alien DNA, 17Aliens and the dead, 18Allingham’s Martian, 19Alpha Zoo Loo, 19Alyn, 20Ameboids, 21Andolo, 21Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka, 21

Angel of the Dark, 22Angelucci, Orfeo (1912–1993), 22Anoah, 23Anthon, 24Antron, 24Anunnaki, 24Apol, Mr., 25Arna and Parz, 26Artemis, 26Ascended Masters, 27Ashtar, 27Asmitor, 29Athena, 30Atlantis, 31Aura Rhanes, 34Aurora Martian, 34Ausso, 35Avinash, 36Ayala, 36Azelia, 37Back, 39Bartholomew, 39

Bashar, 39Being of Light, 40Bermuda Triangle, 41Bethurum, Truman (1898–1969), 43Bird aliens, 44Birmingham’s ark, 44Blowing Cave, 45Bonnie, 47Boys from Topside, 47Brodie’s deros, 48Brown’s Martians, 50Bucky, 51Buff Ledge abduction, 52Bunians, 53Calf-rustling aliens, 55Captive extraterrestrials, 57Cetaceans, 58Chaneques, 58Channeling, 59Chief Joseph, 61Christopher, 61Chung Fu, 61Close encounters of the third kind, 62Cocoon people, 67Contactees, 68Cosmic Awareness, 72Cottingley fairies, 73The Council, 75Curry, 75Cyclopeans, 76Cymatrili, 76David of Landa, 79Dead extraterrestrials, 81Dentons’s Martians and Venusians, 87Diane, 87Divine Fire, 88Dual reference, 88Dugja, 90Earth Coincidence Control Office, 91Elder Race, 92Elvis as Jesus, 92Emmanuel, 93Eunethia, 94Extraterrestrial biological entities, 94Extraterrestrials among us, 95Fairies encountered, 99Fairy captures, 103Fossilized aliens, 104

Fourth dimension, 104Frank and Frances, 105Fry, Daniel William (1908–1922), 105Gabriel, 107Gef, 107Germane, 111Goblin Universe, 111Gordon, 111Gray Face, 112Great Mother, 113Great White Brotherhood, 114Greater Nibiruan Council, 115Grim Reaper, 115Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn, 117Hierarchal Board, 119Holloman aliens, 119Hollow earth, 121Honor, 123Hopkins, Budd (1931– ), 124Hopkins’s Martians, 125Hweig, 125Hybrid beings, 126Imaginal beings, 129Insectoids, 130Intelligences from Beyond (Intelligences du

Dehors), 130Ishkomar, 130J. W., 133Jahrmin and Jana, 133Janus, 134Jerhoam, 135Jessup’s “little people,” 135Jinns, 135Joseph, 136Kantarians, 139Kappa, 139Karen, 140Karmic Board, 140Kazik, 141Keel, John Alva (1930– ), 142Khauga, 143Kihief, 143King Leo, 144Korton, 145Kronin, 145Kuran, 145Kurmos, 146Kwan Ti Laslo, 146

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Laan-Deeka and Sharanna, 149Lady of Pluto, 150Land beyond the Pole, 151Lanello, 153Laskon, 154Lazaris, 154Lemuria, 155Lethbridge’s aeronauts, 157Li Sung, 158Linn-Erri, 158Luno, 159Lyrans, 160Mafu, 161Magonia, 161Marian apparitions, 162Mark, 165Martian bees, 166Mary, 166Meier, Eduard “Billy” (1937– ), 167Me-leelah, 169Melora, 170Men in black, 170Menger, Howard (1922– ), 172Merk, 173Mersch, 173Metatron, 173Michael, 174Michigan giant, 175Migrants, 175Mince-Pie Martians, 175Miniature pilots, 177Monka, 177Mothman, 178Mount Lassen, 179Mount Shasta, 181Mr. X, 184MU the Mantis Being, 184Muller’s Martians, 185Noma, 187Nordics, 187Nostradamus, 188Octopus aliens, 191Ogatta, 191OINTS, 192Old Hag, 192Oleson’s giants, 194Olliana Olliana Alliano, 195Orthon, 195

Oxalc, 196Oz Factor, 197Paul 2, 199Philip, 200Planetary Council, 200Portla, 201Power of Light (POL), 201Prince Neosom, 202Psychoterrestrials, 203Puddy’s abduction, 204R. D., 207Ra, 207Rainbow City, 207Ramtha, 209Ramu, 210Raphael, 211Raydia, 211Renata, 211Reptoid child, 212Reptoids, 212Root Races, 216Saint Michael, 217Sananda, 217Sasquatch, 217Satonians, 220Secret Chiefs, 220Semjase, 220Seth, 221Shaari, 222Shan, 222Shaver mystery, 223Shaw’s Martians, 226Sheep-killing alien, 227Shiva, 227Shovar, 228Sinat Schirah (Stan), 228Sister Thedra, 229Sky people, 232Smead’s Martians, 233Smith, 233Source, 234SPECTRA, 234Springheel Jack, 235Sprinkle, Ronald Leo (1930– ), 236Star People, 237Stellar Community of Enlightened

Ecosystems, 238Strieber, Whitley (1945– ), 238

Contents ix

Sunar and Treena, 239Tabar, 241Tawa, 241Tecu, 241Thee Elohim, 242Thompson’s Venusians, 242Tibus, 244Time travelers, 244Tin-can aliens, 245Tree-stump aliens, 245Tulpa, 245The Two, 246Ulkt, 249Ultraterrestrials, 249Ummo, 249Unholy Six, 252Vadig, 253Val Thor, 254Valdar, 255Van Tassel, George W. (1910–1978), 255

Vegetable Man, 256Venudo, 257Villanueva’s visitors, 257VIVenus, 258Volmo, 259Walk-ins, 261Walton’s abduction, 261Wanderers, 266White Eagle, 266White’s little people, 266Wilcox’s Martians, 267Williamson, George Hunt (1926–1986), 268Wilson, 270Xeno, 273Yada di Shi’ite, 275Yamski, 275Y’hova, 276Zagga, 277Zandark, 277Zolton, 277

x Contents

Index, 279

Extraordinary encounters have been reportedfor as long as human beings have beenaround, and they are richly documented inthe world’s folklore and mythology. A full ac-counting of traditions of otherworldly beliefwould easily fill many fat volumes. This book,however, is not about traditions but about ex-periences, or perceived experiences, of other-worldly forces as claimed by a wide range ofindividuals over the past two centuries (withthe rare look farther back if the occasion callsfor it). In other words, it is about things thatpeople, many of them living, say happened tothem, things far outside mainstream notionsabout what it is possible to experience, but, atthe same time, things that seem deeply real toat least the sincere experients (that is, thosepersons who have had the experiences). Noteveryone, of course, is telling the truth, andwhen there is reason to be suspicious of thetestimony, that consideration is noted.

Mostly, though, I let the stories tell them-selves; I have left my own observations andconclusions in this introduction. Thoughmuch of the material is outlandish by any def-inition, I have made a conscious effort to re-late it straightforwardly, and I hope readerswill take it in the same spirit. No single per-son on this earth is guiltless of believing some-thing that isn’t so. As I wrote this book, I tried

to keep in mind these wise words from scien-tist and author Henry H. Bauer: “Foolishideas do not make a fool—if they did, wecould all rightly be called fools.”

Most of us believe in at least the hypotheti-cal existence of other-than-human beings,whether we think of them as manifestations ofthe divine or as advanced extraterrestrials. Atthe same time most of us do not think ofthese beings as intelligences we are likely toencounter in quotidian reality. God and theangels are in heaven, spiritual entities whoexist as objects of faith. Extraterrestrials,though not gods, “exist” in much the sameway, as beings who science fiction writers andscientists such as the late Carl Sagan theorizemay be out there somewhere in deep space,though so far away that no direct evidencesupports the proposition. When devout indi-viduals report feeling the “presence of God,”they usually describe a subjective state that thenonbeliever does not feel compelled to takeliterally.

Of course we know there was a time whenour ancestors were certain that otherworldlybeings of all sorts walked the world. Godscommunicated openly with humans. Onecould summon up their presence or encounterthem spontaneously. Fairies and other super-natural entities haunted the landscape as

Introduction

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things that existed not just in supernatural be-lief but in actual experience. We also knowthat our poor, benighted ancestors knew nobetter. Superstitious, fearful, deeply credu-lous, they mistook shadows and dreams fordenizens of realms that had no reality beyondthe one ignorance and foolishness assigned it.

Finally, most of us are aware, even if onlydimly so, that a handful of people in our ownenlightened time make more or less publicclaims that they have personally interactedwith supernormal beings. Such persons arethoroughly marginalized, treated as eccentricand novel, as different from the rest of us; ifthey are not lying outright, we suspect, theyare suffering from a mental disturbance ofsome kind. And we may well be right, at leastin some cases. As for the rest, we could not bemore mistaken.

As it happens, reports of human interac-tion with ostensible otherworldly beings con-tinue pretty much unabated into the present.They are far more common than one wouldthink. The proof is as close as an Internetsearch, through which the inquirer willquickly learn that material on the subject ex-ists in staggering quantity. A considerable por-tion of it is about channeling (in which an in-dividual is the passive recipient of messagesfrom the otherworld, usually speaking in thevoice of an intelligence from elsewhere) froma wide assortment of entities: nebulous energysources, soul clusters, extraterrestrials, as-cended masters, interdimensional beings, dis-carnate Atlanteans and Lemurians, naturespirits, even whales and dolphins. Besidesthese purely psychic connections with theotherworld, there are many who report directphysical meetings with beings from outerspace, other dimensions, the hollow earth,and other fantastic places. Not all of theseideas are new, of course. The hollow earth andits inhabitants were a popular fringe subject innineteenth-century America, and in the latterhalf of that century, spiritualist mediumssometimes communicated with Martians oreven experienced out-of-body journeys to thered planet. In 1896 and 1897, during what

today would be called a nationwide wave ofunidentified flying object (UFO) sightings,American newspapers printed accounts oflandings of strange craft occupied by nonhu-man crews of giants, dwarfs, or monsters pre-sumed to be visiting extraterrestrials.

But in the UFO age—that is, the periodfrom 1947 to the present, when reports ofanomalous aerial phenomena became widelyknown and their implications much dis-cussed—a small army of “contactees,” re-counting physical or psychic meetings withangelic space people, has marched onto theworld stage to preach a new cosmic gospel. Ina secular context, UFO witnesses with no dis-cernible occult orientation or metaphysicalagenda have told fantastic tales of close en-counters with incommunicative or taciturnhumanoids. Some witnesses even relate, underhypnosis or through conscious “recall,” trau-matic episodes in which humanoids tookthem against their will into apparent space-craft. The early 1970s, the period when mostobservers date the beginning of the New Agemovement, saw a boom in channeling—againnothing new (spirits have spoken through hu-mans forever) but jarring and shocking to ra-tionalists and materialists. The same decadespawned such popular occult fads as theBermuda Triangle and ancient astronauts(prehistoric or early extraterrestrial visitors),based on the notion of otherworldly influ-ences—benign, malevolent, or indifferent—on human life.

As cable television became ubiquitous, tele-vision documentaries or pseudodocumen-taries (some, such as a notorious Fox Networkbroadcast purporting to show an autopsy per-formed on a dead extraterrestrial, were thinlyconcealed hoaxes) served to fill programmingneeds and proved to be among cable’s mostpopular offerings. Books alleging real-life en-counters with aliens, such as WhitleyStrieber’s Communion: A True Story (1987),fueled interest and speculation. In the 1990sPulitzer Prize–winning Harvard Universitypsychiatrist John E. Mack, who had hypno-tized a number of persons who thought they

xii Introduction

may have encountered UFO beings, champi-oned the idea—which not surprisingly gener-ated furious controversy and even a failed ef-fort to have him removed from his job—thatwell-intentioned extradimensional intelli-gences are helping an unprepared humanity toenter a new age of spiritual wisdom and eco-logical stewardship. Mack, along with otherprominent investigators of the abduction phe-nomenon such as Budd Hopkins and DavidM. Jacobs, pointed to the results of a 1992Roper poll as evidence that as many as 3.7million Americans have been abducted—aconclusion many critics, including some whoare open-minded about or even sympatheticto the abduction phenomenon, would dis-pute. Still, there seemed no doubt, based onthe experiences of investigators who havefound themselves inundated with reports, thatthousands of otherwise seemingly normal in-dividuals believe themselves to be abductees.

The abduction phenomenon is undoubt-edly the most recent manifestation of the oth-erworldly-beings tradition, but older beliefsand experiences, though eclipsed, continue.Even into the 1990s, encounters with fairies—which extraterrestrial humanoids were sup-posed to have supplanted in the imaginationsof the superstitious and impressionable, ac-cording to any number of skeptical commen-tators—were noted on occasion. At least onerecent book from a reputable publisher—JanetBord’s Fairies: Real Encounters with Little Peo-ple (1997)—argued that such things are a gen-uine aspect of a universe “so complex that wecannot begin to understand it.” The BlessedVirgin Mary appeared, as usual, all over theworld, as did other sorts of divine entities.

The world, of course, goes on with its busi-ness as if none of this were true, taking serious(as opposed to tabloid) note only when beliefin otherworldly beings goes horrendouslywrong and thirty-nine cult members commitsuicide while awaiting the arrival of a space-ship following a comet. The March 1997mass death in San Diego of the faithful ofHeaven’s Gate (a contactee-oriented groupthat, in various incarnations, had existed since

the early 1970s) sparked big headlines even insuch august media as the New York Times andthe Washington Post. In the wake of thetragedy came all the predictable lamentationsabout alienation and irrationality in a worldthat more and more seems to have lost itsbearings. But the San Diego incident, al-though hardly unprecedented (history recordsnumerous episodes of group suicides commit-ted in the name of otherworldly powers), wasanomalous in one important sense: few whohold such extraordinary beliefs, including theconviction that they personally interact withbeings from other realms, harm themselves orothers. In fact, most incorporate their experi-ences into lives so seemingly ordinary thattheir neighbors, unless told directly (whichthey usually are not), suspect nothing.

In the late 1970s, when I lived in a NorthShore suburb of Chicago, I met a likable, gen-erous-hearted family man named Keith Mac-donald. Macdonald recounted a UFO sight-ing (also witnessed by his family) after whichhe felt that something had taken place that hecould not consciously recall. Under hypnosis,he described what would later be judged arather ordinary abduction experience: gray-skinned beings took him into the UFO andsubjected him to a physical examinationagainst his wishes. The experience, if that iswhat it was, frightened him severely. For atime I lost touch with Keith. When I next sawhim, he told me he had been hearing mentalvoices and channeling messages from a planetcalled Landa, populated by wise, spirituallycommitted beings who looked like Greekgods and goddesses. Keith had learned that hewas originally from that planet but had gonethrough many earthly incarnations so that hecould lead the Earth as it entered a period ofturmoil and destruction before the ships fromLanda arrived to save the elect. Over the yearsI monitored Keith’s emerging beliefs and satin on a few—to me unimpressive—channel-ing sessions during which the all-wise David,his father on Landa, spoke on a level of verbaland intellectual sophistication that exactlymatched Keith’s.

Introduction xiii

Though I never for a moment believed inthe literal reality of “those of Landa,” as theycalled themselves in their characteristicallystilted syntax, I was struck by a number ofthings. One was the almost staggering com-plexity of the cosmos Keith had conjured upin his imagination—the only place that Icould believe such a cosmos existed, with itsmany worlds, peoples, religions, politics, en-mities, and alliances. None of it, I should add,was anything somebody could not have madeup, consciously or unconsciously. But all of itwould have done credit to a gifted writer ofscience fiction. Though he possessed a keennative intelligence, Keith was neither a writernor a reader. He did, however, have some pre-viously existing interest—not profound orparticularly well informed, in my observa-tion—in UFOs, the paranormal, and the oc-cult. As I listened to him over many hours, Ibegan to feel as if somehow in his waking lifeKeith had tapped into the creative potentialmost of us experience in our dreams. As wedoze off to sleep and dream, images begin towell up out of the unconscious; in no morethan a moment we may find ourselves inun-dated with psychic materials sufficient to fill afat Victorian novel. When our eyes open inthe morning, all of that, alas, is gone. Keithhad the capacity, it seemed to me, not only tolive inside his dreams but to keep them stableand evolving.

Only once, when asked outright, did I ac-knowledge my skepticism. The confession wasmoot because Keith had inferred as much frommy noncommittal responses to his typically ex-cited revelations about the latest from the Lan-danians. He had no doubt—well, maybe 98percent of the time he had no doubt—that hewas in the middle of something real in themost fundamental sense of the word. He alsounderstood that he had no proof that wouldsatisfy those who, like me, found the Landani-ans’ word insufficient. Therefore, he continu-ally implored the Landanians to provide himthat proof, and in turn they regaled him with aseries of prophecies, often about explosiveworld events (bloody uprisings, devastating

earthquakes), none of which came true; then,as if to add insult to injury, their rationaliza-tions for the failure of the prophecies to be ful-filled bordered on, and sometimes surpassed,the comical. The prophecies and promises con-tinued in a steady stream until Keith’s prema-ture death in 1999, and his closest friend toldme that even at the end, Keith’s faith had notfaltered.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect wasKeith’s manifest sanity, which he never lostthrough the many ups and downs of his inter-actions with the Landanians (not to mentionthe literally crippling health problems he suf-fered at the same time). He worked—as agarage mechanic in a Waukegan, Illinois, cardealership—until he was physically incapableof doing so any longer. He was a good hus-band to his wife, a good father to his twoboys, and a good friend to those who werelucky enough to claim him as a friend in turn.His children, in their teens at the initiation ofKeith’s adventures with Landa, and his wifevividly recalled the original UFO sightingthey too had experienced and Keith’s convic-tion that, after they had gone to bed and hehad continued watching the object, some-thing had happened. Still, they did not believemuch in Landa, and his older son told meonce of his certainty that his father’s commu-nications were psychological in origin. Yetthey loved him, and only those very close tohim had any idea that at any given moment agood portion of Keith’s attention was focusedon a world far, far away from the small subur-ban town where he spent much of his adultlife.

In 1985, I flew in a private plane withKeith and two others (both, incidentally, con-vinced of the literal truth of Keith’s messages)to the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFOInvestigation, held every summer on the cam-pus of the University of Wyoming in Laramie.The title is something of a misnomer; only arelative few who attend can be called “investi-gators.” The emphasis is on experience notjust with UFOs but with the space peoplewho fly them. The bulk of the attendees—the

xiv Introduction

number ranges from a few dozen to as manyas two hundred from year to year—are in reg-ular contact with benevolent extraterrestrials.The aliens communicate through channeling,automatic writing (in which information isdictated to an individual from allegedly un-earthly beings), dreams, visions, or voices inthe head, or they are perceived as if physicalentities. (I use this last phrase deliberately; onclose questioning, the individuals involvedusually turn out to have a fairly elastic defini-tion of the infinitive “to see” in all its permu-tations.) Few of the contactees assembled inLaramie matched the stereotype of the flam-boyant charlatan or nut case. A few—such asa young Japanese woman whom space friendshad guided to the United States in pursuit ofher mission for them—had traveled some dis-tance. Except for the small detail of their asso-ciations with extraterrestrials, most were de-cent, ordinary local folk. The majority werefrom the small towns, ranches, and farms ofthe Great Plains, the sort of people to whomthe phrase “salt of the earth” is often applied.

Among his own at last, Keith could nothave been happier. If he noticed that no oneelse spoke of Landa and its impossible-to-overlook plans for the Earth’s future, or thatevery other contactee had his or her specialspace friends, all with their own individualhard-to-overlook plans for the Earth’s future,he never said a word about it to me.

Of course, nothing is as simple as wewould like it to be, and as I look back on theepisode, I realize that I will never know why“those of Landa” called on Keith. Not that Ihad any difficulty understanding who theywere. However tangled some of the details,there was no mistaking their underlying ba-nality or their all-too-apparent shallow earth-iness, with their Greek togas, pretentiouslyfractured English, and (yes) Roman Catholicfaith. They themselves were not that interest-ing; what made them worthy of attention andreflection was this curious paradox: to theman who had (unwittingly) created them,they had a nearly certain independent reality;to virtually any independent observer, there

could be no question of who had broughtthem (for whatever reason) into the worldand to whom they owed what passed for anexistence.

Yet Keith was not crazy. Nor, according topsychological surveys of other space commu-nicants who attend the Laramie conferences,are his fellows. The evidence from this andother psychological inventories tells us that wecan be mentally well and yet hold beliefs—and, more dramatically, have vivid experi-ences—that are far outside the mainstream,far outside our conventional understanding ofthe possible. In a book-length survey of out-of-ordinary perceptions, three well-regardedpsychologists observe, “Notwithstanding thepresence of anomalous experiences in casestudies of disturbed individuals, surveys ofnonclinical samples have found little relation-ship between these experiences and psy-chopathology” (Cardena, Lynn, and Krippner,2000, 4). The authors stress that psychothera-pists must understand the difference if theyare to treat their clients effectively. Psychologi-cal research into extraordinary encounters ofthe sort with which this book is concerned isin its infancy.

Still, to anyone who looks carefully at thetestimony regarding otherworldly contacts, itbecomes apparent that such phenomena donot arise from a single cause. There is, for ex-ample, little in common between the averagechanneler and the average witness to a closeencounter of the third kind (a UFO sightingin which, according to a classification systemdefined by the late astronomer and ufologist J.Allen Hynek, “the presence of animated crea-tures is reported” [1972, 138]). Typically,channelers have had a long history of occultinterests before they begin communicatingwith supernatural entities holding forth on fa-miliar metaphysical doctrines. Close-encoun-ter witnesses, on the other hand, fit the profileof witnesses to less exotic UFO sightings; inother words, they are pretty much indistin-guishable from their fellow citizens.

Consequently, channelers look more likecandidates for subjective experience, and in-

Introduction xv

deed to every indication channeling is justthat. It is not veridical (that is, independentlywitnessed or otherwise shown not to be a sub-jective experience); no channeling entity canprove its existence, and the information pro-vided through the channeling process is sus-ceptible to neither verification nor falsifica-tion. The “authority” of the channeling entityrests solely on its self-identification. If you be-lieve he, she, or it is a discarnate Atlantean,space alien, or ascended master, you will be-lieve what he, she, or it has to say. If youchoose not to believe any of that, the channel-ing entity will prove helpless to get you tochange your mind. Experiences such as closeencounters, conversely, may be veridical in thesense that on occasion they involve multi-ple—or, more rarely, independent—observ-ers. In the case of multiply witnessed close en-counters, subjective explanations are appliedonly with difficulty. An investigator in searchof an explanation has limited choices, usuallythree: (1) the claimants made up the story; (2)they naively misperceived what were in factconventional stimuli; or (3) they underwentan extraordinary experience that defies currentunderstanding.

Between the extremes is a broad range ofnonexperiential material, a modern folklore inwhich the world and the cosmos are rein-vented on the basis of believed-in but undoc-umented (and often, to those who care aboutsuch things, certifiably false) allegations. Mostpersons who circulate such stuff are sincere,but some of those who feed the stuff to themare not. Hoaxers provide documents, such asthe supposed diary attesting to Adm. RichardE. Byrd’s voyage into the hollow earththrough a hole at the North Pole, that believ-ers cite to prove their cases. Most observersbelieve James Churchward’s famous (or noto-rious) books on the alleged lost continent ofMu are literary hoaxes—Churchward wasnever able to produce the ancient documentson which he asserted he had based his work—but earnest occultists and New Agers cite hisbooks as overwhelming evidence that Mu

(more often called Lemuria) was a real place.Of course, embellishments grow on top ofembellishments, and every legend of a place, aworld, or a realm that is home to otherworldlybeings evolves and has its own rich history.Atlantis, for example, began as an advancedcivilization for its time, but by our time itspeople had come to be seen as advanced evenbeyond us, the creators of fantastic technolo-gies and even the recipient of knowledge fromextraterrestrial sources. The hollow earth ofJohn Cleves Symmes (1779–1829) is not thehollow earth of Walter Siegmeister (a.k.a.Raymond W. Bernard, 1901–1965), anymore than the imagination of one century isthe imagination of the century that follows it.Flying saucers were not part of Symmes’sworld; consequently, they did not exist in hishollow earth. By the time Siegmeister wroteThe Hollow Earth (1964), no alternative-real-ity book could lack flying saucers.

It is entirely likely that nothing in the bookyou are about to read will tell you anythingabout actual extraordinary encounters andotherworldly beings. If such exist, however, itis not beyond the range of possibility thatsomewhere amid the noise of folklore, belief,superstition, credulity, out-of-control think-ing, and out-of-ordinary perception a signalmay be sounding. If so, it is a faint one, in-deed. The world has always been overrun withotherworldly experiences, some of which cer-tainly appear to resist glib accounting; yet sofar it has proved exasperatingly tricky to estab-lish that otherworldly experiences are also oth-erworldly events. The otherworld, perhaps,can happen to any of us at any time, but wemay not live in it—at least if we know what’sgood for us—in the way that we live enclosedwithin the four walls of the physical structurein which we read these words. It is not wise topass through a world of physical laws whiledistracted by all-encompassing dreams. Evenso, there is still a nobility to dreaming. There isalso an undying appeal to the sort of romanticimpatience that imagines new worlds biggerand more wondrous than our own, then

xvi Introduction

brings these worlds and their marvelous inhab-itants into our own. If extraordinary encoun-ters are occurring only with otherwise hiddensides of ourselves, they are still—or surely allthe more so—worth having.

—Jerome Clark

ReferencesCardena, Etzel, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Kripp-

ner, eds., 2000. Varieties of Anomalous Experience:Examining the Scientific Evidence. Washington,DC: American Psychological Association.

Hynek, J. Allen, 1972. The UFO Experience: A Scien-tific Inquiry, p.138. Chicago: Henry RegneryCompany.

Introduction xvii

A“A” is the pseudonym Ann Grevler (a writerwho uses the pen name “A n c h o r”) gives theVenusian whom she allegedly encountere dwhile driving through South Africa’s EasternTr a n s vaal on an unspecified day in the 1950s.Gre v l e r, a flying-saucer enthusiast sympatheticto the contactee movement (contactees are in-dividuals who claim to be in regular communi-cation with kindly, advanced extraterre s t r i a l s ) ,met A when her car inexplicably stopped on arural highway. As she was looking under thehood, she became aware of a buzzing sound inher ears and looked up to see a smiling space-man standing not far away. Then a spaceshipflew tow a rd her and landed, and she and Astepped into it. With A and another spaceman,B, Grevler flew into space. They appro a c h e dwhat Grevler describes as “a positively hugeMother Sh i p,” which tinier ships, similar to theone they we re aboard, we re entering.

Once inside the mother ship, Grevler andher friends went to “the Temple, visited by re-turning crews to thank the Creator for a safevoyage.” Subsequently, either in the mothership or in the smaller scout craft (her accountis vague on this detail), she visited Venus andsaw beautiful buildings and a kind of univer-sity. At the latter, students were taught univer-sal knowledge and trained in extrasensory per-

ception. They also learned “Cosmic Lan-guage—which is expressed simply by symbolsof various forms and colors, so that meaningsare the same in any language” (Anchor, 1958).

Grevler had other space adventures. Onewas a visit to a depopulated, destroyed planet,the dreary result of science gone amok.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingAnchor [pseud. of Ann Grevler], 1958. Transvaal

Episode: A UFO Lands in Africa. Corpus Christi,TX: Essene Press.

Abductions by UFOsSince the mid-1960s a number of individualsaround the world have reported encounters inwhich humanoid beings took them againsttheir will—usually from their homes or vehi-cles—into apparent spacecraft and subjectedthem to medical and other procedures. Asoften as not, witnesses spoke of experiencingamnesia, aware at first only of unexplained“missing time” (a much-used phrase that hasbecome almost synonymous with abduction)consisting of a few minutes to a few hours.Later, “memory” would return, sometimesspontaneously, sometimes in dreams, andoften (and most controversially) through hyp-notic regression.

A

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In the first case to come to the attention ofufologists, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire,couple, Barney and Betty Hill, experienced aclose encounter with a UFO on the night ofSeptember 19–20 while traveling through theWhite Mountains. At one point, Barney Hillstopped the car and stepped out with a pair ofbinoculars; through them he saw humanlikefigures inside the craft. One was staring di-rectly at him. Terrified, the couple fled, all thewhile hearing beeping or buzzing sounds.Once back home, the Hills eventually realizedthat at least two hours seemed missing fromtheir conscious recall. In November Betty hada series of unusually vivid dreams in which be-ings forced her and her husband into a UFO.She and Barney were separated, and Betty un-derwent a medical examination with a gray-skinned humanoid, whom she understood tobe the leader. In January they sought outBoston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon in an ef-fort to deal with the continuing anxiety theyfelt about the incident. Dr. Simon had themhypnotized, and under hypnosis they sepa-rately recounted an abduction episode. Subse-quently, the story appeared in a Boston news-paper, and soon afterward journalist John G.Fuller wrote a best-selling book, The Inter -rupted Journey, on the case.

A generally similar incident took place inAshland, Nebraska, in the early morninghours of December 3, 1967, when police offi-cer Herbert Schirmer saw a hovering UFO ashort distance from him. He originally be-lieved that the sighting had lasted no morethan ten minutes, but when he later realizedthat a half hour had passed, he got nervous,experienced sleeplessness, and heard a buzzingsound inside his head. Later under hypnosisSchirmer related an onboard experience withshort, gray-skinned humanoids with catlikeeyes.

During a wave of UFO sightings in Octo-ber 1973, two Pascagoula, Mississippi, fisher-men claimed that robotlike entities hadfloated them into a UFO. The story receivedenormous publicity, as did an even more spec-tacular incident in November 1975, when a

forestry worker from Snowflake, Arizona, dis-appeared after six colleagues saw a beam oflight from a UFO hit him and knock him tothe ground. Travis Walton returned five dayslater with fragmentary memories of seeingtwo kinds of UFO beings, little gray men andhumanlike (but not human) entities. A fewother stories, now being called “abductions” asopposed to “kidnappings,” saw print in theUFO literature but were little noticed else-where. The first book on the larger phenome-non of UFO abductions (as opposed to asingle case, such as the Hills’s), Jim and CoralLorenzen’s book Abducted! was published in1977.

From the Hill incident on, critics focusedon the use of hypnosis to elicit “re c a l l , ”pointing out that confabulation under hyp-nosis is a well-documented psyc h o l o g i c a lphenomenon, most dramatically manifestingin “m e m o r i e s” of past lives. As early as 1977t h ree California investigators attempted todemonstrate that volunteers under hypnosis,i n s t ructed to imagine UFO abductions, toldstories indistinguishable from those re l a t e dby “re a l” abductees. Other investigators ando b s e rvers disputed these conclusions, point-ing to methodological and logical pro b l e m sin the experiment, and subsequent efforts byother re s e a rchers to replicate it failed. On elater study indicated that nearly one-third ofabductees consciously re m e m b e red their ex-periences; their testimony, folklorist T h o m a sE. Bu l l a rd concluded, was indistinguishablef rom corresponding accounts emerging underhypnotic re g ression. Still, hypnosis and its va-garies would play a large and continuing ro l ein the controversy surrounding the abductionp h e n o m e n o n .

In the late 1970s Budd Hopkins, a NewYork City artist and sculptor, working withpsychologist and hypnotist Aphrodite Clamar,began to investigate the abduction reports.Through Hopkins’s work new dimensions ofthe phenomenon emerged, including not justlittle gray humanoids that would come todominate abduction reports but also experi-ences that began in childhood and recurred

2 Abductions by UFOs

throughout abductees’ lifetimes. Some borescars, the causes of which were mysteriousuntil hypnosis revealed them to have been theresult of alien medical procedures. A numberclaimed that their abductors had placed im-plants, usually through the nose or ear, insidetheir bodies. Hopkins and his colleagues tooktheir cases to mental health professionals,whose tests of abductees suggested that theywere psychologically normal.

In his much-read book Missing Time(1981) Hopkins argued for a literal interpreta-

tion of abduction stories. In other words, heheld that extraterrestrials were literally takinghuman beings and doing things to them with-out their consent. Other ufologists disagreed.Ufologist Alvin H. Lawson, who had overseenthe earlier “imaginary-abduction” experiment,offered his own exotic hypothesis that ab-ductees were suffering imaginary experiencesin which they relived the “trauma” associatedwith their births. More modestly, others pro-posed more conventional psychological expla-nations, such as hallucinations and confabula-

Abductions by UFOs 3

Betty and Barney Hill, who believed they were abducted and taken aboard a UFO, New Hampshire, September 1961(Fortean Picture Library)

tion. Few observers believed that conscioushoaxing played much of a role in abduction-reporting. Unlike contactees, abductees sel-dom had any background in occultism or eso-teric interests, and hardly any sought profit orpublicity. To every indication they believedthat they had undergone frightening, bizarreexperiences. Some psychological studiesfound that abductees often evinced all thesymptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder ofthe sort ordinarily associated with victims ofcrime, personal assault, or other threateningterrors.

In 1987 Thomas E. Bullard, author of anIndiana University Ph.D. dissertation on therelationship of UFOs to folklore, released atwo-volume study of all abduction accountsthen known, some three hundred. Through asearching examination of the narratives,Bullard concluded that a real phenomenon ofstrikingly consistent features existed, that “ab-ductions” were not simply an assortment ofrandom fantasies. He noted patterns that hadescaped even the most attentive investigators,including “doorway amnesia”—the curiousfailure of abductees to remember the momentof entry or departure from the UFO. Besidesestablishing the uniform nature of hypnoticand non-hypnotic testimony, Bullard deter-mined that the phenomenon’s features re-mained stable from investigator to investiga-tor, thus casting doubt on a favorite skepticalargument concerning investigator influenceon the story. Beyond that, Bullard wrote, itwas difficult to say more, except that “some-thing goes on, a marvelous phenomenon richenough to interest a host of scholars, human-ists, psychologists and sociologists alike as wellas perhaps physical scientists, and to hold thatinterest irrespective of the actual nature of thephenomenon” (Bullard, 1987).

Hopkins’s next book, Intruders (1987), in-troduced fresh features that would figurelargely in all subsequent discussions. From hislatest investigations he had come to suspect areason for alien abductions: the creation of arace of hybrid beings to replenish the extrater-restrials’ apparently exhausted genetic stock.

Female abductees would find themselves preg-nant, sometimes inexplicably; then, followingsubsequent abductions involving vaginal pen-etration by a suction device, they would dis-cover that those pregnancies had been sud-denly terminated. In later abductions theywould be shown babies or small children withboth human and alien features. The abductorswould explain that these were the women’schildren. Hopkins also uncovered a pattern ofcases of sexual intercourse between male ab-ductees and more-or-less human alien women(perhaps adult hybrids).

Other investigators began finding similarcases. Hybrids were a new wrinkle, signifi-cantly augmenting the already considerablepeculiarity of the abduction phenomenon. Aslong ago as 1975, in his book The MothmanProphecies, investigator John A. Keel noted, inpassing, a pattern of what he called “hystericalpregnancies” in young women who had hadclose encounters. Even so, the reports metwith skepticism among scientifically sophisti-cated ufologists, for example, Michael D.Swords, who said that such hybridization isbiologically impossible. Other critics arguedthat mass abductions for such purposes wouldnot be necessary; once the basic reproductivematerials were collected, they could easily beduplicated. Most damning of all, independentinquiries by physician-ufologists found no ev-idence of mysteriously ended pregnancies incolleagues’ experiences or in the pediatric lit-erature. Still the reports continue.

Another significant development in 1987was the publication of Communion by Whit-ley Strieber, heretofore known as a novelistspecializing in horror and futuristic themes,now a self-identified abductee with a series ofstrange adventures in his past. The gray-skinned, big-eyed alien on the best-sellingbook’s cover triggered a flood of “memories”among many who saw it. Even ufologists whohad been abduction literalists grew puzzled,then uneasy, at the apparent quantity of re-covered abduction recollections. Strieber alsowas the first to express a kind of New Ageview of the abduction phenomenon, now seen


not as an entirely negative experience (asHopkins and others held it to be) but as aninitiation, however painful, into an expanded,enlightened view of large cosmic realities.What to Hopkins were “intruders” to Strieberwere “visitors.” Communion was only the firstof a series of books Strieber would write re-counting ever more exotic experiences withaliens possessing vast paranormal powers.

By now UFO abductions were no longerthe property of abductees and ufologists. Theyhad expanded into popular culture, and thegray alien became a staple in cartoons, adver-tisements, television shows, and more.Alarmed at the spread of what they regardedas a popular delusion, skeptics and debunkerssought to discredit the phenomenon. In 1988the first book-length attack on the phenome-non, its claimants, and its advocates, Philip J.Klass’s UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game,lambasted its subject as the product of delu-sion and deceit.

Though the phenomenon itself remainedelusive, psychologists understood that at leastthose who claimed to have experienced itcould be studied. Using standard psychologi-cal tests, they documented the essential psy-chological normality of the average abductee.They also found that, contrary to one populartheory, abductees were not prone to fantasy orimaginative flights so intense that they couldbe mistaken for reality. Little if anythingseemed to distinguish abductees from theirneighbors.

The phenomenon’s most notable cham-pion, Harvard University psychiatrist John E.Mack, became a lightning rod in the contro-versy. To his colleagues, who went so far as totry to have him removed from his professionalposition, he was a good scholar gone bad. ToNew Age–oriented saucerians on the otherhand, Mack was almost something of aprophet. His controversial book Abduction(1994) argued for a benevolent interpretationof abducting aliens, paranormal and interdi-mensional intelligences who, in Mack’s view,are here to teach us—particularly those of uswho live in the industrial West—to embrace

other realities and to take better care of eachother and the world we live in. Mack weddedthe contactee message to the abduction expe-rience, to the consternation of Hopkins, Ja-cobs, and others who refused to draw largermetaphysical inferences from the abductionexperience. Jacobs, if anything, went to theopposite extreme. A history professor at Tem-ple University, Jacobs worked with abducteeswhose testimony, usually under hypnosis, ledhim to the radical hypothesis that the abduct-ing extraterrestrials are creating a populationof hybrids to replace the human race at somepoint in the not-distant future.

From their interactions with their re a d e r sand other members of the public, Hopkins andJacobs came to suspect that the abduction ex-perience, far from rare, was ubiquitous. Ho p-kins, for example, wrote as early as 1981 thatt h e re may be “tens of thousands of Americanswhose encounters have never been re ve a l e d”( Hopkins, 1981). In 1991 he and Jacobs we reg i ven funding for a survey to be conducted by

Abductions by UFOs 5

Dr. John E. Mack, Harvard University psychiatrist, 1993(Dennis Stacy/Fortean Picture Library)

the Roper Organization. Using five “indicator”questions, they sought evidence for possible ab-duction experiences among those surve ye d .Pollsters interv i ewed 5,947 adult Americans. Intheir reading of the results, Hopkins and Ja c o b sdeduced that “the incidence of abduction expe-riences appears to be on the order of at least2% of the population” (Unusual Personal Ex p e -r i e n c e s , 1992). That comes to 3.7 million ab-ductees. Critics rejected this assertion, arguingthat the study contained too many method-ological flaws to mean much. T h ree social sci-entists, all with backgrounds in ufology, exam-ined the poll and came to a wholly differe n tconclusion: “For the present we have no re l i-able and valid estimate of the pre valence of theUFO abduction phenomenon” (Hall, Ro d e g-h i e r, and Johnson, 1992).

In a study of the various theories advancedto explain UFO abductions, psychologist Stu-art Appelle observed that all testable, more orless conventional hypotheses (confabulation,fantasy proneness, false memory, sleep halluci-nation, and the like) stand on shaky empiricalground. On the other hand, literalistic inter-pretations suffer from an absence of anythinglike solid, veridical evidence. All that can besaid with certainty is that abduction experi-ences have the feeling of reality to those whoundergo them. Most do not fall into an easilyidentifiable psychological category. They ap-pear to be reasonably consistent in their corefeatures, and some cases involve multiple wit-nesses. These last cases, in Appelle’s view,“may provide the greatest challenge to prosaicexplanations” (Appelle, 1995/1996).

See Also: Alien DNA; Aliens and the dead; Cocoonpeople; Contactees; Dual reference; Gray Face;Hopkins, Budd; Hybrid beings; Insectoids; Keel,John A.; MU the Mantis Being; Nordics; Puddy’sabduction; Reptoids; Strieber, Whitley; Walton’sabduction

Further ReadingAppelle, Stuart, 1995/1996. “The Abduction Expe-

rience: A Critical Evaluation of Theory and Evi-dence.” Journal of UFO Studies 6 (new series):29–78.

Appelle, St u a rt, St e ven Jay Lynn, and Leonard New-man, 2000. “Alien Abduction Experiences.” In

Et zel Cardena, St e ven Jay Lynn, and St a n l e yK r i p p n e r, eds. Varieties of Anomalous Ex p e r i e n c e :Examining the Scientific Ev i d e n c e , 253–282. Wa s h-ington, DC: American Ps ychological Association.

Bu l l a rd, Thomas E., 1987. UFO Abductions: T h eMe a s u re of a My s t e ry. Volume 1: Compara t i ve St u d yof Abduction Re p o rts. Volume 2: Catalogue of Ca s e s .Mount Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Re s e a rc h .

———, 1989. “Hypnosis and UFO Abductions: ATroubled Relationship.” Journal of UFO Studies 1(new series): 3–40.

———, 1991. “Folkloric Dimensions of the UFOPhenomenon.” Journal of UFO Studies 3 (new se-ries): 1–57.

———, 2000. “Abductions under Fire: A Review ofRecent Abduction Literature.” Journal of UFOStudies 7 (new series): 81–106.

C l a rk, Je rome, 2000. “From Mermaids to Little Gr a yMen: The Pre h i s t o ry of the UFO Abduction Ph e-nomenon.” The An o m a l i s t 8 (Spring): 11–31.

Fuller, John G., 1966. The Interrupted Journey: TwoLost Hours “Aboard a Flying Saucer.” New York:Dial Press.

Hall, Robert L., Mark Rodeghier, and Donald A.Johnson, 1992. “The Prevalence of Abductions:A Critical Look.” Journal of UFO Studies 4 (newseries): 131–135.

Hopkins, Budd, 1981. Missing Time: A DocumentedStudy of UFO Abductions. New York: RichardMarek Publishers.

———, 1987. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations atCopley Woods. New York: Random House.

Jacobs, David M., 1992. Secret Life: Firsthand Ac -counts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon andSchuster.

———, 1998. The Threat. New York: Simon andSchuster.

Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. NewYork: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton andCompany.

Klass, Philip J., 1988. UFO-Abductions: A DangerousGame. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Lawson, Alvin H., 1980. “Hypnosis of Imaginary‘Abductees’.” In Curtis G. Fuller, ed. Proceedingsof the First International UFO Congress, 195–238.New York: Warner Books.

Lorenzen, Jim, and Coral Lorenzen, 1977. Abducted!Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space. NewYork: Berkley Medallion.

Mack, John E., 1994. Abduction: Human Encounterswith Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Strieber, Whitley, 1987. Communion: A True Story.New York: Beach Tree/William Morrow.

Sw o rds, Michael D., 1988. “Ex t r a t e r restrial Hy-bridization Un l i k e l y.” MUFON UFO Jo u rn a l 2 4 7 :6 – 1 0 .


Unusual Personal Experiences: An Analysis of the Datafrom Three National Surveys Conducted by theRoper Organization, 1992. Las Vegas, NV:Bigelow Holding Corporation.

AbrahamChanneler Esther Hicks heard from abrahamin the early 1980s. She renders the name inlowercase because abraham is not an individ-ual but a collection of highly evolved entitiesspeaking in one voice. In 1986 she and herhusband, Jerry, confided their experienceswith abraham to business associates, whosoon were peppering them with financial andpersonal questions they wanted abraham toanswer. When the Hickses saw how satisfiedtheir friends were with the results, they de-cided to take abraham to a larger public.Today the couple conduct workshops, put outa newsletter, and lecture widely out of theirSan Antonio, Texas, headquarters.

Abraham teaches that each of us is a physi-cal extension of an essence that begins in thespiritual realm. Each is here because he or shehas chosen to be so, and we are here to exer-cise freedom and experience joy. The universeis benevolent, and it gives us the potential torealize all of our dreams. There is no suchthing as death; all of us live forever.

Further ReadingMelton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American

Religions. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.“A Synopsis of Abraham-Hicks’s Teachings.” http://

www.abraham-hicks.com/bio.html.

AbramFolklorist Peter M. Rojcewicz relates the expe-riences of a young university student to whomhe gives the pseudonym Polly Bromberger. Inthe early 1980s Bromberger conjured up aspirit guide—a “personal archetype,” shesometimes called it—and gave it the nameAbram. With long, unkempt hair and wearinga white robe and sandals, Abram looked “bib-lical.” He came more clearly into focus afterBromberger had undergone a period of medi-tation and reflection.

A student of the great psychologist andphilosopher C. G. Jung, Bromberger used aprocess she learned from Jung's writings—“active imagination”—to bring Abram intoher life. In time she came to feel that he had akind of independent existence. She told Roj-cewicz that “sometimes I feel he can be a forceopening me on purpose to make me stretchmyself, and work myself, and sometimes I getfrustrated with it.” On the whole, however,she was convinced that Abram was a positiveinfluence in her life.

Further ReadingRojcewicz, Peter M., 1984. The Boundaries of Ortho -

doxy: A Folkloric Look at the UFO Phenomenon.Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania,Philadelphia.

AdamaAdama, who channels through Dianne Rob-bins, is an Ascended Master and High Priestof Telos, the great Lemurian city now locatedunder Mount Shasta in northern California.Because of his pure thoughts, Adama, like themillion other persons who live in the city, isable to live for hundreds of years. He is cur-rently more than six hundred years old. He isa descendant of the Lemurians who fled insidethe mountain when Lemuria and all else onEarth’s surface were destroyed in a nuclearholocaust. Only twenty-five thousand Lemu-rians escaped in time.

Since then the Lemurians’ consciousnesshas evo l ved signific a n t l y. Besides attending totheir spiritual betterment, the Lemuriansh a ve fought off marauding extraterre s t r i a l swho are causing harm to surface dwe l l e r s .“We are all part of Go d’s grand plan for theUn i verse,” Adama says, “and W E A R E N OWM E RG I N G O U R T H O U G H TS I N TO O N ET H O U G H T F O R T H E E N T I R E H U M A NR AC E. Soon we will all be on the same waveband of consciousness, broadcasting our loveand light to all in the cosmos and letting thecosmos know that we are ready to join withthem in one grand F E D E R AT I O N O F P LA N-E TS” (“Adama,” 1995).

Adama 7

See Also: Lemuria; Mount ShastaFurther Reading“Adama,” 1995. http://www.salemctr.com/newage/

center36.html.

Adamski, George (1891–1965)Though largely forgotten today, GeorgeAdamski was once an international occultcelebrity, perhaps the most famous of all fly-ing-saucer contactees. His claimed meetingwith a Venusian in the California desert inNovember 1952 electrified esoterically in-clined saucer buffs. In three books publishedbetween 1953 and 1961 he recounted histrips into space along with extensive encoun-ters with benevolent Venusians, Martians, andSaturnians. In 1962 he boarded a spaceshipand flew to Saturn to attend an interplanetaryconference. By 1965, when he died, many ofhis most devoted followers had broken theirconnection with him, convinced either thathe was lying or that evil space people weremisleading him.

Born in Poland, Adamski emigrated withhis parents to upstate New Yo rk when he wasone or two years old. In the early 1920s hem oved to California, where he eventually es-tablished a role for himself on the local oc-cult scene as head of the Royal Order ofTibet, a metaphysical school based on chan-neled teachings from Tibetan lamas. W h e nflying saucers became an object of populari n t e rest in the late 1940s, Adamski pro d u c e dphotographs of alleged spacecraft; some ofthe pictures we re said to have been takent h rough his six-inch telescope. Published inthe popular occult and paranormal digestFa t e in 1950 and 1951, the photos alongwith accompanying text afforded Ad a m s k ihis first wide exposure. On November 20,1952, as six others (including contactee andfringe archaeologist George Hunt Wi l l i a m-son) watched from a distance, Adamski ob-s e rved the landing of a saucer and the emer-gence of the beautiful, blond-haired Ort h o n ,a visitor from Venus, who expressed concernabout the human race’s warlike ways. (In

later years Adamski would tell confidantsthat his first contacts with extraterre s t r i a l so c c u r red in his childhood, but he never saidas much publicly.) T h ree weeks later Ort h o nreturned in his scout craft over Ad a m s k i’sPalomar Ga rdens residence and allowed theship to be photographed. The resulting pic-t u res would generate enormous controve r s yand, for many, virtually define the image of aflying saucer as a domed disc with a thre e -ball landing gear.

A fifty-four-page account of Adamski’searly contacts was added to an already existingmanuscript (on supposed space visitationsthroughout history) by Irish occultistDesmond Leslie and published in 1953 as Fly -ing Saucers Have Landed. Two years later, inInside the Space Ships, Adamski expanded hisclaims to encompass further interactions withextraterrestrials, both on Earth and aboardsaucers. According to Adamski, the “SpaceBrothers,” as he called them, had come tohelp the human race out of its backward, vio-lent ways, which were leading inexorably tonuclear war. They espoused a benign occultphilosophy much like the one Adamski hadtaught for many years.

Though revered by many, Adamski alsohad bitter critics, none more so than conser-vative ufologists who dismissed his stories asabsurd and feared that he was bringingridicule to all of UFO research. Some ufolo-gists actively investigated his claims and un-covered discrepancies and other evidence ofuntruthfulness. One found, for example, thatthe weather on a particular day on whichAdamski claimed contact was not as he haddescribed it. Most photo analysts concludedthat the pictures of “spacecraft” were in fact ofsmall models. On one occasion skeptical ufol-ogists proved that one Adamski allegation wasunambiguously false. Adamski had reportedthat as he was traveling to Iowa to give a lec-ture, the train suddenly stopped en route.When he stepped out to take a short walk,space people met him and flew him to his des-tination. From interviews with the train crew,investigators learned that the train had made

8 Adamski, George

no such stop. In these circumstances Adamskitended to blame his accusers of being agentsof a sinister “Silence Group” trying to destroythe space people’s good works. But in lateryears, following his death, several individuals

disclosed that Adamski had acknowledged tothem that his stories were not true.

By 1959 Adamski’s renown was such thathe was able to embark on a worldwide tour,first to New Zealand and Australia, then to

Adamski, George 9

UFO contactee George Adamski with his six-inch telescope on Mount Palomar, California (Fortean Picture Library)

Europe. In May of that same year, Queen Ju-liana of Holland received him, igniting fiercecommentary in the press and a riot at theUniversity of Zurich when Adamskiattempted to give a lecture in Switzerland.Adamski charged that the students—and in-deed most of his critics—were agents of a sin-ister Silence Group, which sought to frustratethe moral reforms and technological advancesadvocated by the space people and their ter-restrial allies. Though the reality of Adamski’saudience with Queen Juliana was never indoubt, other purported meetings with nota-bles, including President John F. Kennedy,Pope John XXIII, and Vice President HubertH. Humphrey, that figure in the Adamski leg-end almost certainly did not occur outsideAdamski’s imagination.

In the early 1960s, after Adamski openlyembraced psychic approaches of which hehad, till then, been outspokenly critical, someof his followers started to question his sincer-ity, especially when he began doing psychicconsultations for profit. His associate C. A.Honey circulated damning evidence thatAdamski was recycling his 1930s-era Tibetan-masters teachings and putting them in themouths of space people. When Adamskiclaimed that he had flown to Saturn, the storyonly fueled growing doubts even among de-voted followers.

His career in decline, his credibility neverlower, Adamski went on a final lecture tourthrough New York and Rhode Island inMarch 1965. For the preceding month, his fi-nancial resources exhausted, he had been liv-ing with Nelson and Madeleine Rodeffer inMaryland. He died of a heart attack at theirhome on the evening of April 23.

See Also: Contactees; Orthon; Ramu; Williamson,George Hunt; Yamski

Further ReadingAdamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New

York: Abelard-Schuman.———, 1961. Flying Saucers Farewell. New York:

Abelard-Schuman.———, 1962. Special Report: My Trip to the Twelve

Counsellors Meeting That Took Place on Saturn,March 27–30th, 1962. Vista, CA: Science of Life.

Bennett, Colin, 2000. “Breakout of the Fictions:George Adamski’s 1959 World Tour.” The Anom -alist 8 (Spring): 39–84.

Ellwood, Robert S., 1995. “Spiritualism and UFOReligion in New Zealand: The InternationalTransmission of Modern Spiritual Movements.”In James R. Lewis, ed. The Gods Have Landed:New Religions from Other Worlds, 167–186. Al-bany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounterswith Extraterrestrials. London: Century.

Heiden, Richard W., 1984. Review of Zinsstag andGood’s George Adamski—The Untold Story. TheA.P.R.O. Bulletin 32, 5 (August): 4–5.

Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski, 1953. FlyingSaucers Have Landed. New York: British BookCentre.

Moseley, James W., ed., 1957. Special Adamski Ex -posé Issue. Saucer News 27 (October).

Zinsstag, Lou, 1990. UFO . . . George Adamski:Their Man on Earth. Tucson, AZ: UFO PhotoArchives.

Zinsstag, Lou, and Timothy Good, 1983. GeorgeAdamski—The Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent,England: Ceti Publications.

AenstriansFor a time in the mid to late 1960s, Wa r m i n-s t e r, Wi l t s h i re, was the focus of a series of mys-terious sightings of UFOs and hearings of ap-p a rently related sounds. The exc i t e m e n tp roduced what was called the “Wa r m i n s t e rm y s t e ry,” which was also the title of a popularbook by Arthur Sh u t t l ewood, a re p o rter for theWa rminster Jo u rn a l . Sh u t t l ewood, who led skywatches and became the leading publicist ofthe phenomena, also re p o rted receiving phonecalls from self-identified extraterrestrials, as we l las a personal visit from one. The aliens saidthey we re from a planet named Ae n s t r i a .

The first calls came in early September1965. The calls continued for a period ofseven weeks, according to Shuttlewood. Thecallers were three Aenstrians: Caellsan (thesenior spacecraft commander), Selorik (an in-terpreter), and Traellison (the queen of Aens-tria). In each case they phoned from a publicbooth in a particular district in the city,though Shuttlewood wrote that he neverheard the sound of coins dropping before thevoices began to speak.

10 Aenstrians

The messages we re standard contactee fare .E a rth is in trouble because of atomic we a p o n sand environmental pollution. Human beings—the product of special creation, not evo l u t i o n a ryp rocesses—should return to simpler, more spiri-tual ways. The Aenstrians lived long lives ands u f f e red few illnesses. Traellison, for example,was 450 years old, a fairly young age on herhome planet. The Aenstrians we re communi-cating with Sh u t t l ewood so that he could passon their information to Eart h’s “c o u n c i l s . ”

On May 24, 1967, Sh u t t l ew o o d’s T h eWa rminster My s t e ry was published. In it he re l-egated the story of the Ae n s t r i a n s’s phone callsto an appendix, where he suggested that theywe re no more than an interesting hoax. On theafternoon of the twenty-sixth, the phone rangat the Sh u t t l ewood residence. It was an Ae n s-trian named Karne, expressing displeasure atwhat the author had said of his colleagues’t ru s t w o rthiness. Sh u t t l ewood responded thatif Karne wanted to prove he was who heclaimed to be, he should pay a personal visit.Karne took up the challenge and showed up atSh u t t l ew o o d’s door seven seconds later.

Karne, who spent a total of nine minuteswith the journalist, looked like an ord i n a ry manin most ways, except for an apparent absence ofpupils in his eyes, which we re cove red by thickglasses. He also had blue blotches on his cheek-bones and lips. He also had a manner that un-n e rved Sh u t t l ewood, who felt that the ostensi-ble extraterrestrial had powers that, if provo k e d ,could instantly destroy him. Karne said thatTraellison, Caellsan, and Selorik had re t u r n e dto their home “c a n t e l” (planet). He spoke of animminent war in the Middle East—the Si x - Da yWar erupted the following June—and of fur-ther UFO appearances, this time of cro s s -shaped craft, in the fall. He said a T h i rd Wo r l dWar was almost inevitable at some point in thenot-distant future. If it was fought with nuclearweapons, he hinted, extraterrestrials would in-t e rvene in some unspecified fashion. A newo rd e r, in which earthlings would be trained tobecome cosmic citizens, would be put in place.

“I noticed that Karne sometimes had diffi-culty with his breathing,” Shuttlewood wrote.

“From time to time, as I shot questions athim . . . he glanced at the pale gold disc on hiswrist. He replied to certain queries immedi-ately, shaking his head in the negative overothers, after looking at his ‘watch’” (Shuttle-wood, 1978). At one point Shuttlewoodasked if George Adamski’s contact claims weregenuine. Karne replied sternly that he couldnot answer that question, though he hintedthat the late California contactee was not ofearthly origin. At the conclusion of the meet-ing, Shuttlewood gripped Karne’s wrist andleft thumb in what he intended as a gesture ofgood will, but the visitor winced in pain. Ear-lier, at the commencement of their meeting,Karne had not responded to Shuttlewood’soutstretched hand.

Shuttlewood watched him walk, turningstiffly to wave farewell, then continue up thestreet. “From the waist up,” Shuttlewoodwrote, “his bearing was smart, military, almostarrogantly proud. From the waist down, how-ever, his movements were slow and deliberate.His legs seemed weighted, feet slightly drag-ging; yet to a casual onlooker he would havebeen dismissed as an old gardener type or old-fashioned and hard-worked farm laborer”(Shuttlewood, 1978).

The next day Shuttlewood’s sixteen-year-old son, Graham, saw a man who looked likeKarne at a Warminster park. He was lookingupward as military jets flew by, shaking hishead in disapproval. His left hand was band-aged as if it had been recently injured. Thatwas the last either saw of Karne.

See Also: Adamski, George; ContacteesFurther ReadingDewey, Stephen, 1997. “Arthur Shuttlewood and the

Warminster Mystery.” Strange Magazine 18(Summer): 16–21, 56–58.

Shuttlewood, Arthur, 1967. The Warminster Mystery.London: Neville Spearman.

———, 1978. UFO Prophecy. New York: GlobalCommunications.

AetheriusAetherius is one of the Cosmic Masters whopreside at the Interplanetary Parliament on

Aetherius 11

Saturn. In 1954 Aetherius made his presenceknown psychically to George King, a Londonman with longstanding occult interests. SoonKing was channeling other space people, in-cluding Jesus. By January he had gone publicwith the cosmic gospel—essentially earth-bound occult doctrines ascribed to philosoph-ical extraterrestrials—and soon was issuing amimeographed bulletin titled Aetherius Speaksto Earth (later Cosmic Voice). In August 1956King established the Aetherius Society, amongthe most successful and enduring contacteegroups. King died on July 12, 1997, in LosAngeles, where he had been living for manyyears.

In the theology of the Aetherius Society,good and evil extraterrestrials are engaged inconstant warfare. From time to time, duringcrisis situations, the Cosmic Brotherhood willplace its spaceships above Earth and directpositive energy downward. Society membersreceive the energy and make sure that itreaches its targets. Over a three and a half yearperiod, beginning in 1958, King climbed nofewer than eighteen mountains at the behestof the space people.

The society maintains headquarters inLondon and Los Angeles, as well as chaptersall over the world.

See Also: Channeling; ContacteesFurther ReadingAetherius Society, 1995. The Aetherius Society: A Cos -

mic Concept. Hollywood, CA: Aetherius Society.Curran, Douglas, 1985. In Advance of the Landing:

Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: AbbevillePress.

Saliba, John A., 1995. “Religious Dimensions ofUFO Phenomena.” In James R. Lewis, ed. TheGods Have Landed: New Religions from OtherWorlds, 15–64. Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press.

Wallis, Roy, 1974. “The Aetherius Society: A CaseStudy of a Mystagogic Congregation.” Sociologi -cal Review 22: 27–44.

AffaAffa first appeared in 1952 among the extra-terrestrials who communicated to a smallPrescott, Arizona, occult group headed by

George Hunt Williamson. Affa, identified asbeing from the planet Uranus, first spokethrough automatic writing, then later al-legedly by radio, warning of threats to Earthby evil humans and menacing aliens from the“Orion Solar Systems.”

Affa later surfaced in automatic-writingcommunications to Frances Swan of Eliot,Maine, beginning in 1954. Mrs. Swan’s Affa,like Williamson’s, did his communicatingfrom a giant Uranian spaceship. Affa urgedSwan to alert the United States Navy so that itcould receive his radio messages. Swan toldher neighbor, retired navy Adm. Herbert B.Knowles, about Affa’s request. Knowles, aUFO enthusiast, sat in on a writing sessionand addressed questions to Affa. Impressed bythe answers, he wrote the Office of Naval In-telligence (ONI), which on June 8 sent twoofficers to Swan’s house. They also asked ques-tions of Affa, who promised a radio transmis-sion at 2 P.M. on June 10. When none came,ONI lost interest and turned the letters overto the navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics. JohnHutson, a security officer, was curious enoughto fly up to Eliot for two days in late July. Onhis return he spoke with an FBI agent, but theagency chose not to pursue the matter.

In the summer of 1959 navy CommanderJulius Larsen, an ONI liaison officer to theCIA’s Photographic Intelligence Center inWashington, DC, stumbled upon a file on theincident. Larsen, a navy pilot who harbored aprivate fascination with spiritualism, called onSwan and Knowles. At one point Larsen triedautomatic writing and believed he had com-municated with Affa, though Swan insisted hehad not contacted her Affa.

Back in Washington Larsen talked withCenter Director Arthur Lundahl and Lun-dahl’s assistant, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Neasham, anavy officer. In their presence Larsen entered atrance state and supposedly contacted Affawhile Lundahl and Neasham peppered himwith questions. At one point, challenged toprove his existence, Affa replied, “Go to thewindow.” Lundahl saw nothing but clouds,though Neasham seemed convinced that a

12 Affa

spaceship was hiding in them. Neashamwould also claim that radar operators atWashington National Airport told him thatthat particular portion of the sky was mysteri-ously “blocked out.” No independent evi-dence supported that allegation.

Neasham notified Major Robert Friend,head of the air force’s UFO-investigativeagency, Project Blue Book. For Friend’s bene-fit Larsen even related telepathic messagesfrom Affa and other space people, but thealiens refused his request for a flyover. Friendwrote a memo on the episode and sent it tohis superiors. Nothing further was done. Theincident remained buried in Pentagon, FBI,and CIA files until the early 1970s, whenFriend shared his notes with UFO historianDavid M. Jacobs. Subsequently, some exag-gerated accounts of the episode were pub-lished in the UFO literature, a few evenclaiming that the CIA itself had communi-cated with extraterrestrials.

See Also: Williamson, George HuntFurther ReadingEmenegger, Robert, 1974. UFOs Past, Present and

Future. New York: Ballantine Books.Fitzgerald, Randall, 1979. “Messages: The Case His-

tory of a Contactee.” Second Look 1, 12 (Octo-ber): 12–18, 28–29.

Jacobs, David M., 1975. The UFO Controversy inAmerica. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Williamson, George Hunt, and Alfred C. Bailey,1954. The Saucers Speak! A Documentary Report ofInterstellar Communications by Radiotelegraphy.Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.

Agents“A g e n t s” are human beings whom extraterre s-trials have contacted and who have agreed tohelp the space people in their benevolent mis-sion to Earth. George Hunt Williamson wro t ethat agents, who come from all social and eco-nomic backgrounds, sometimes have a“strange, far-away, glassy look in their eye s . ”Their necks may throb or jump spasmodically,indicating that they are receiving telepathic in-s t ructions. The Agents conduct a variety oftasks. They introduce persons who are of po-tential use to them to each other, re c o m m e n d

books, ask provo c a t i ve questions, and in otherways, subtle or obvious, get people thinkingabout space visitors and spiritual reform. T h e yalso minister to the needy and have a part i c u-lar interest in orphaned childre n .

Ex t r a t e r restrials get in touch with Agents ina s s o rted ways. Sometimes it is through a car orham radio, sometimes via thought waves, onoccasion by direct, physical encounter.

See Also: Williamson, George HuntFurther ReadingWilliamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongue—

Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

AghartiAgharti is a subterranean kingdom, which al-legedly exists in Tibet or Mongolia. It is, de-pending on whom one believes, a paradisiacalrealm or a sinister lair of sorcerers and otherevildoers—mostly, however, the former. Thelegend of Agharti seems loosely based on theBuddhist realm of Shambhala, a city of adeptsand mystics said to be located in a hidden val-ley (called “Shangri-La” in James Hilton’spopular novel Lost Horizon [1933] and in themovie of the same name). Shambhala first ap-peared in a 1922 Polish book, soon afterwardtranslated into English as the best-seller Beasts,Men and Gods.

The author, Ferdinand Ossendowski(1876–1945), fled Russia in the wake of theBolshevik revolution. An anti-Communist,Ossendowski participated in the White Rus-sian government, that nation’s short-lived ex-periment in democracy between the over-throw of the tsar and the triumph of theCommunists. He wandered through Mongo-lia, itself torn by political unrest and bloodyconflict. There he learned, he said, of a myste-rious “King of the World.” A lama in thetown of Narabanchi took him into a templein which there was a throne. Ossendowski wastold that in 1890 horsemen had ridden intotown and instructed all the local lamas tocome to the temple. One of the horsemen saton the throne, at which point all present “fellto their knees as they recognized the man who

Agharti 13

had been long ago described in the sacredbulls of the Dalai Lama, Tashi Lama, andBodgo Khan. He was the man to whom thewhole world belongs and who has penetratedinto all the mysteries of Nature. He pro-nounced a short Tibetan prayer, blessed all hishearers and afterwards made predictions forthe coming half century. This was thirty yearsago and in the interim all his prophecies arebeing fulfilled” (Ossendowski, 1922). TheKing of the World lived in an undergroundrealm called Agharti.

Whether this King of the World, or eventhe author’s supposed informant, ever existed,he and his kingdom soon entered occult lore.In Darkness over Tibet (1935) Theodore Illionrecounted his allegedly true adventures in anunderground city in a distant valley. At firsthe thought he had entered a utopia, but soonhe realized that the inhabitants, for all their

advanced spiritual knowledge and supernatu-ral powers, were cannibals. Illion wrote thathis reported experiences proved the existenceof Agharti. In 1946 Vincent H. Gaddis, a reg-ular contributor to Amazing Stories who laterachieved a degree of fame as the inventor ofthe concept of the Bermuda Triangle, pickedup on the theme, depicting Agharti as a city ofevil that was linked to tunnels all over theworld. He incorporated Agharti into theShaver mystery, the subject of a series of talesAmazing Stories was running about an allegedunderground realm populated by deros, de-monic entities in possession of a fantastic At-lantean technology, which they used to tor-ment surface humans.

In a variant of the legend, Robert ErnstDickhoff ’s Agharta: The Subterranean World(1951) contended that two and a half millionyears ago Martians landed at Antarctica, then

14 Agharti

The hidden world of “Shangri-La” as depicted in the film Lost Horizon, directed by Frank Capra, 1937 (Photofest)

a tropical region, and created the first hu-mans. Then reptoid (that is, biped reptilian)Venusians attacked, forcing the Martians andtheir human associates to create two huge un-derground cities, connected by tunnels of vastlength, in order to protect themselves. One ofthese cities was Shambhala, under Tibet, andthe other Agharta, under China’s TzangpoValley. Eventually, the Venusians conqueredAgharta, sending their evil minions into theworld until 1948, when the Martian/humanalliance reclaimed the city and slew its ruler,the King of the World, and many of histroops.

T h e re is no real-life Central Asian traditionof Agharti, though Chinese and Ti b e t a ne q u i valents to Western fairy lore spoke of mag-ical caves, on the other side of which the trav-eler would find a beautiful land and lovely butultimately tre a c h e rous supernatural beings.

See Also: ReptoidsFurther ReadingDickhoff, Robert Ernst, 1965. Agharta. New York:

Fieldcrest.Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:

100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, LostRaces and UFOs from inside the Earth. PortTownsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.

Ossendowski, Ferdinand, 1922. Beasts, Men andGods. New York: Dutton.

AhabOn a camping trip through eastern Oregon inthe summer of 1975, a young married coupleidentified as Darryl and Toni M. stoppedalong the banks of the Owyhee River to cooltheir truck. They spotted an odd objectparked on a nearby hillside. The next thingthey knew, it was two hours later, and theirtruck started as if it had long since cooled off.Later, under hypnosis, they recounted the ex-perience of wandering into the UFO in atrance state. Hairless humanoids with slits foreyes, mouth, and nose, with gray, wrinkledskin assured them via telepathy that theymeant no harm. As Toni watched, the aliens,who communicated with each other with a“buzzing bee” sound, subjected Darryl to an

apparent physical examination by light beam.Sometime later Toni awoke to find a figurewith a skull-like face and a small mouthstanding at the foot of her bed. He spoke toher, but all she could remember was that hehad told her his name was Ahab.

Further ReadingHartman, Terry A., 1979. “Another Abduction by

Extraterrestrials.” MUFON UFO Journal 141(November): 3–4.

AkonAkon appeared to Elizabeth Klarer on April 6,1956, when his spaceship landed in the Drak-ensberg Mountains of Natal, South Africa.She was flown to a waiting mother ship,where she met other friendly space people andlearned that they came from the beautifulplanet Meton in the orbit of Alpha Centaurifour light years away. The Metonites, shelearned, are vegetarians who live in a utopiansociety without conflict or disease. They arealso a passionate people, and in due course, asthe contacts continued, Klarer and Akon be-came lovers. She bore him a son, Ayling, dur-ing a four-month stay on Meton.

K l a rer became well known in saucer and oc-cult circles in South Africa and Eu rope whereshe lectured from time to time. She distributedphotographs of Akon’s spacecraft and showe di n q u i rers a ring she said he had given her.Though many dismissed her stories and evi-dence as bogus, her friend Cynthia Hind, awe l l - k n own ufologist from Zi m b a bwe, be-l i e ved her to be sincere and has helped keep hername and story alive. On the occasion of herdeath in Fe b ru a ry 1994, Hind wrote, “El i z a-beth Klarer died in comparative pove rt y. . . .Her incredible story brought her some fame (orm o re accurately, notoriety!) but certainly nor i c h e s” (Hind, 1994).

Further ReadingHind, Cynthia, 1982. UFOs—African Encounters.

Salisbury, Zimbabwe: Gemini.———, 1994. “MUFON Forum: Contactee

Klarer.” MUFON UFO Journal 315 (July): 18.———, 1999. “Ufology Profile: Elizabeth Klarer.”

MUFON UFO Journal 379 (November): 10–11.

Akon 15

Klarer, Elizabeth, 1980. Beyond the Light Barrier.Cape Town, South Africa: Howard Timmins.

Alien dinersAn alien family ate at a restaurant and stayedovernight in a motel in suburban St. Louis inMay 1970, according to ufologist John E.Schroeder, who interviewed employees andheard a strange and comic tale. DorothySimpson, a front desk clerk at the motel and afellow member of the UFO Study Group ofGreater St. Louis, tipped Schroeder off to theincident soon after its occurrence.

Simpson was examining billing documentsat her desk at 10:30 A.M. on May 15 when a“whistling sigh” sounded. She looked up, andon the other side of the desk stood four tinypeople, apparently members of a family: acouple and their two children. All lookedstrikingly alike. All were youthful in appear-ance, and the children were nearly the heightof the ostensible parents. They were so shortthat they barely reached the level of the desk.They were all expensively dressed, the malesin tailored suits, the females in pastel peachdresses. Their hair did not look real. Odd as itseemed, Simpson suspected that they werewearing wigs.

In a falsetto voice the man said, “Do youhave a room to stay? Do you have a room tostay?” She told him what the charges wouldbe, but he seemed not to understand what shehad said. He turned to his female companionas if expecting her to clarify matters, but sheremained silent. An uncomfortable period ofsilence followed, broken finally when the manreached into his pocket and pulled out a thickwad of bills, many of large denomination.The bills were so crisp and new that Simpsonwondered if they were counterfeit, but somequick informal testing suggested they werenot. She took two twenty-dollar bills from thestack and gave the rest back.

Because the man was too small to reach upto fill out the reservation form, Simpson saidshe would do it for him. He said his name was“A. Bell.” As he stepped forward she got a bet-

ter look at him and was able to compare hisface with his companions’. According toSchroeder, whose composite descriptioncomes from his interviews with Simpson andother motel employees who saw them, theywere “wide at eye level, their faces thinnedabruptly to their chins. Their eyes were large,dark and slightly slanted. . . . Their noses hadpractically no bridges and two slits for nos-trils, and their mouths were tiny and lipless—no wider than their nostrils. All look uni-formly pale. (Color descriptions varied frompearl to pale pink to light grey.)”

“And where are you from?” Simpson asked.At that the man’s arm shot upward as if point-ing to the sky, and he said, “We come from upthere. Up there.” The woman pushed his armdown and spoke for the first time. She saidthey were from Hammond, Indiana, and shegave a street address. The man signed the reg-ister but did it so awkwardly that Simpsonthought he seemed not to know how to use apen. The woman wanted to know where theycould eat. Simpson indicated the direction ofthe motel restaurant.

Meanwhile, the bellhop came over to storetheir bags while they ate. At the manager’s in-sistence Simpson checked the Indiana addressand learned that both the name and the ad-dress were bogus. The bellhop checked theparking lot for a car with an Indiana licenseplate but found none.

The hostess who led the strange family to atable in the restaurant noticed that the chinsof even the adults barely reached the top ofthe table. The man read aloud from the menuand kept asking odd questions about wheremilk, vegetables, and other common foodscome from. The woman ordered peas andmilk for herself and the children, and for theman peas, a small steak, and water. Their eat-ing was similarly peculiar. Each picked up asingle pea with a knife, brought it to his or hertiny mouth, and inhaled it with a suckingsound. The father was unable to get even asmall piece of steak through his slit of amouth. They stopped eating all at the sametime. The man produced a twenty-dollar bill

16 Alien diners

and gave it to the waitress, who went to getchange; when she returned, they were gone.

When the bellhop saw them, he retrievedtheir baggage and stepped into the elevator tolead them to their room. When the elevatordoor opened, though, the family recoiled infright and confusion. The bellhop had to as-sure them that there was no danger. After let-ting them into the room, he turned on thelights. Suddenly the man began shouting athim that the light would hurt the children’seyes. Suddenly frightened himself, the bellhopfled without waiting—one suspects futilely, inany case—for a tip.

The bellhop, the manager, and Simpsonvowed to watch for the little people’s depar-ture in the morning, but they were never seenagain, though the front door was the onlydoor they could pass through without settingoff a security alarm. The alarms were checked,and nothing was amiss. Schroeder interviewedall five employees who had interacted with thefamily. All seemed sincerely bewildered by thecurious series of events.

See Also: Extraterrestrials among usFurther ReadingSchroeder, John E., 1987. “The Strangers among

Us.” The UFO Enigma 7, 7 (June): 36.

Alien DNAPhysical evidence of abduction experiences ishard to come by, and physical evidence of ac-tual aliens is all but nonexistent. A case fromAustralia may be an exception. Biochemistswere able to analyze, with curious results, astrand of what was reported to be the hair ofan alien woman.

The events that led to the analysis beganon the night of July 12, 1988, when PeterKhoury, a Sydney resident of Lebanese back-ground, was awakened suddenly when hesensed that something had grabbed his ankles.A numbness crept up his body from the feet,and soon his entire body except for his eyeswas paralyzed. To his right he spotted three orfour small hooded figures with wrinkled,shiny black faces. Through telepathy they as-

sured him he would not be harmed. Khourythen saw two other figures on his left. “Thesetwo,” he later told investigator Bill Chalker,“were thin, tall with big black eyes and a nar-row chin.” They were “gold-yellow in color.”One of these beings shoved a needle into theleft side of his forehead, and he passed out.

The next day he showed the puncturewound to his fiancée. Later he showed it tohis doctor, who thought he had walked into anail. When Khoury told him what had hap-pened, the physician laughed at him. Hefound that this was a typical response andg rew despondent and anxious, worried aboutthe strange nature of the experience, aboutthe future, about his inability to communi-cate with anyone who would listen to him.Eve n t u a l l y, his fiancée found a copy of W h i t-ley St r i e b e r’s C o m m u n i o n (1987), detailingthe author’s personal abduction experiences.In time he heard about and joined a localUFO group but left it still unsatisfied. InApril 1993 he founded the UFO Ex p e r i e n c eSu p p o rt Association.

On July 23, 1992, Khoury had a second,e ven stranger encounter. He was suffering fro mthe effects of an assault by three men at his job,and as a consequence he was on strong medica-tion and mostly bed-ridden. On the morning inquestion, he managed with considerable diffi-culty to drive his wife—he was now married—to the train station so that she could get tow o rk. Once home he crawled back into bed andpassed out, only to awaken a few minutes later.He was sitting straight up and staring at twonude women sitting on the bed.

They we re strange-looking, with a we i rd ,g l a s s y - e yed expression. One looked generallyAsian, something like an East Indian; theother was blond, with eyes two or three timeslarger than normal. Their cheekbones seemedabnormally high. The dark woman was watch-ing her companion closely, as if the blond we redemonstrating something to her. The blondpulled Khoury tow a rd her breasts, appare n t l yinitiating a sex act. He tried to resist, but shewas too strong for him. As he struggled, he bither nipple so hard that he bit it off. He could

Alien DNA 17

feel it in his throat. The woman only looked athim in puzzlement. She did not act as if shewe re in pain, and there was no blood. At thatpoint the two va n i s h e d .

The nipple was caught in his throat, caus-ing him to cough persistently for hours. Even-tually, he was able to swallow it. In the mean-time, feeling pain in his genital region, heexamined his penis. There he found two hairswrapped tightly around it. He had no ideahow they had gotten there, unless they hadbeen placed on his penis as he was sleeping.As he untangled them, he felt enormous pain.He preserved the strands—one about twelvecentimeters long, the other about six—in aplastic bag.

Though many abductees have reported sex-ual experiences with aliens (or, as some re-searchers think, alien/human hybrids), nonehave come out of the experience with a sup-posed part of an alien body.

In 1999 Chalker, a chemist by professionand a well-regarded UFO investigator by avo-cation, brought the strands to a group of bio-chemists for analysis. The analysis reads inpart:

The blonde hair provides for a strange and un-usual DNA sequence, showing five consistentsubstitutions from a human consensus . . .which could not easily have come from anyoneelse in the Sydney area except by the rarest ofchances; is not apparently due to any sort oflaboratory contamination; and is found only ina few other people throughout the wholeworld. . . .

While it may not be impossible for him toh a ve had sexual contact with some fair-skinned, nearly albino female from the Syd-ney area, such an explanation is ruled out bythe DNA evidence, which fits only a ChineseMongoloid as a donor of the hair. Fu rt h e r-m o re, while it might be possible to find a fewChinese in Sydney with the same DNA asseen in just 4% of Taiwanese women, itwould not be plausible to find a Chinesewoman here with thin, almost clear hair, hav-ing the same rare DNA. Fi n a l l y, that thinblonde hair could not plausibly re p resent a

chemically-bleached Chinese (including theroot) because then its DNA could not easilyh a ve been extracted.

The most probable donor of the hair musttherefore be as the young man claims: a tallblonde female who does not need much colorin her hair or skin as a form of protectionagainst the sun, perhaps because she does notrequire it. Could this young man really haveprovided, by chance, a hair sample which con-tains DNA from one of the rarest human line-ages known . . . that lies further from themainstream than any other except for AfricanPygmies and aboriginals? (Chalker, 1999).

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Hybrid beings;Strieber, Whitley

Further ReadingChalker, Bill, 1999. “Strange Evidence.” Interna -

tional UFO Reporter 24, 1 (Spring): 3–16, 31.Strieber, Whitley, 1987. Communion: A True Story.

New York: Beach Tree/William Morrow.

Aliens and the deadIn the view of UFO-abduction investigatorDavid M. Jacobs, aliens sometimes take onthe form of deceased relatives in the interest ofkeeping their activities secret.

He recounts the experience of a woman towhom he gives the pseudonym Lily Ma rt i n-son. Vacationing with her mother in the Vi r-gin Islands in 1987, Ma rtinson woke up inher hotel room to observe the apparition ofher dead brother watching her from the footof the bed. The experience comforted her.L a t e r, howe ve r, when Jacobs put her underhypnosis, Ma rtinson saw the individual shehad thought was her brother as, in Ja c o b s’sw o rds, “a person without clothes, small, thin,no hair, and large eyes.” He calls such indi-viduals as Ma rtinson “u n a w a re abductees.”Un a w a re abductees “explain their strange ex-periences in ways acceptable to society, inter-p reting the entities they see as ghosts, angels,demons, or even animals.”

See Also: Abductions by UFOsFurther ReadingJacobs, David M., 1998. The Threat. New York:

Simon and Schuster.

18 Aliens and the dead

Allingham’s MartianAccording to Flying Saucer from Mars (1954),Englishman and author Cedric Allinghamwitnessed the landing of an extraterrestrialspacecraft while vacationing in Scotland inFebruary 1954. A tall man, human in all waysexcept for an unusually broad forehead,stepped out of the vehicle. The occupant, whoindicated that he was from Mars, spoke in afriendly fashion, saying that he had earlier vis-ited Venus and the moon. He asked if earth-lings would soon visit the latter world, andwhen Allingham replied yes, the Martianacted concerned. He wanted to know if a warwould soon erupt on Earth. After this conver-sation, which occurred mostly by gestures, theMartian reentered his craft and flew away,though not before Allingham had pho-tographed him (from the back) and his ship.The book asserted that a man named JamesDuncan had witnessed the entire encounter.

A year earlier George Adamski had pub-lished his account of a meeting with theVenusian Orthon in the southern Californiadesert. Allingham’s tale thrilled British sauce-rians, who now felt they had their own con-tact. Waveney Girvan, who had published theBritish edition of Adamski and DesmondLeslie’s book, wrote, “If Allingham is tellingthe truth, his account following so soon uponAdamski’s amounts to final proof of the exis-tence of flying saucers” (Girvan, 1956).

Allingham proved strangely elusive, how-e ve r, making only one public appearance. Hes h owed up in the company of a virulently anti-UFO science writer and media personalityPatrick Mo o re. That, plus the failure of inquir-ers to find the alleged witness to Allingham’scontact, should have warned British sauceriansthat all was not well with the story told by theirn a t i ve Adamski. In 1956 Allingham’s pub-lisher—also the publisher of Mo o re’s books—released a statement asserting that the contacteehad died of tuberculosis in a Swiss sanitarium.

In a book on British UFOs published thir-teen years later, journalist Robert Chapmanreported that he had found no evidence that aCedric Allingham had ever existed. In his

judgment, Flying Saucer from Mars amountedto “probably the biggest UFO leg-pull everperpetrated in Britain” (Chapman, 1969). Itwas an open secret among Moore’s friendsthat he and a friend, Peter Davies (the “Mart-ian” in the photograph), had written the bookas a spoof on those gullible enough to believeAdamski’s contact tales. Moore, well known asa practical joker, once had regaled a contacteemagazine with letters, written under an as-sortment of absurd pseudonyms (including“L. Puller”), claiming scientific confirmationof the contactee cosmos.

Eventually word of Moore and Davies’s in-volvement trickled down to British ufologists.Two of them, Christopher Allan and SteuartCampbell, interviewed Davies who admittedthe hoax and added that he had rewritten theoriginal manuscript to disguise Moore’s dis-tinctive literary style. After the hoax was ex-posed for the first time in print in the Londonufology journal Magonia, Moore professed tobe outraged, threatened legal retaliation, andthen retreated into telling silence.

See Also: Adamski, George; Brown’s Martians; Den-tons’s Martians and Venusians; Hopkins’s Mar-tians; Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Mar-tians; Monka; Muller’s Martians; Orthon; Shaw’sMartians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingAllan, Christopher, and Steuart Campbell, 1986.

“Flying Saucer from Moore’s?” Magonia 23(July): 15–18.

Allingham, Cedric [pseud. of Patrick Moore andPeter Davies], 1954. London: Frederick Muller.

Chapman, Robert, 1969. Unidentified Flying Objects.London: Arthur Barker.

Girvan, Waveney, 1956. Flying Saucers and CommonSense. New York: Citadel Press.


“News Briefs,” 1956/1957. Saucer News 4,1 (De-cember/January): 12.

Tory, Peter, 1986. “I See No Hoax, Says Patrick.”The [London] Star (July 28).

Alpha Zoo LooTrucker Harry Joe Turner allegedly met analien named Alpha Zoo Loo during a fright-

Alpha Zoo Loo 19

ening encounter on a Virginia highway. Thefirst incident reportedly took place on thenight of August 28, 1979, when a UFO hov-ered over his truck. Even though the truckwas moving at seventy miles per hour, an alienfigure opened the door, and a terrified Turnerfired several pistol shots at it, without appar-ent effect. Turner blacked out, returning toconsciousness in the Fredericksburg ware-house that had been his destination.

Turner noted other anomalies. His odome-ter indicated that he had traveled seve n t e e nmiles though he knew that Wi n c h e s t e r, hiss t a rting point, and Fredericksburg we reeighty miles apart. An odd, filmy substancec ove red the truck, and parts of his CB andAM/FM antennae we re missing, as if theyhad been melted or cut off. He also com-plained of a burning sensation in his eye s .While trying to enter his truck to resume hisj o u r n e y, Turner passed out and was taken to ahospital. After a short stay he was re l e a s e dand, on returning home, suddenly “re m e m-b e re d” that the UFO had lifted both him andthe truck inside it.

Turner also recalled that the craft carried acrew of white-clad, humanlike beings whowore caps. When they took the caps off,Turner could see a series of numbers stamped,or otherwise impressed, on their heads. Theyspoke in a squeaky, high-pitched tone. Onlywhen one of them, Alpha Zoo Loo, slowed hisspeech could Turner understand it.

As they traveled through space, Alpha ZooLoo asked Turner questions about his truck.Eventually they arrived at a planet two and ahalf light years beyond Alpha Centauri, wheredome-covered cities dotted an otherwise dev-astated landscape. Turner had the impressionthat the civilization had experienced a nuclearwar in its not-distant past.

Back on Earth, Turner later claimed othercontacts with Alpha Zoo Loo and assortedaliens. His erratic behavior, however, undercuthis credibility, leading friends, family mem-bers, and onlookers to wonder about his psy-chological stability. Investigators also learnedof Turner’s reputation for yarn-spinning.

Further ReadingHendry, Allan, 1980. “Abducted! Four Startling Sto-

ries of 1979.” Frontiers of Science 2, 4 (July/Au-gust): 25–31, 36.

Whiting, Fred, 1980. “The Abduction of Harry JoeTurner.” MUFON UFO Journal 145 (March):3–7.

Alyn“Alyn” is the name Constance Weber, whowrote under the name Marla Baxter, givesHoward Menger in her book My SaturnianLover (1958). Weber/Baxter relates that afterbeing widowed, she devoted herself to an in-terest in flying saucers. In the summer of1956, she joined a group headed by Alyn R.,who “was said to have had contacts with peo-ple from other worlds.” Alyn eventually re-veals his secret to her: “I am not of this world!I am a volunteer to Earth from the planet Sat-urn.” On Saturn, he tells her, he was the spiri-tual teacher Sol da Naro. In the meantime, onEarth, the two become lovers. She writes, “My

20 Alyn

Howard and Connie Menger (August C. Roberts/ForteanPicutre Library)

Saturnian lover did wonderful things forme. . . . My body seemed to grow more softlycontoured through this pygmalion transfor-mation as the Saturnian sculptor, by hisunique artistry, molded me by his every elec-tric touch and caress.” At the end of the book,she learns that in a previous incarnation shehad been Marla, a Venusian beauty in lovewith Sol da Naro.

During the time period cove red by thebook, How a rd Me n g e r, a sort of East Coastc o u n t e r p a rt to California’s George Ad a m s k i ,left his wife, Rose, for Connie We b e r. Atone point during their affair, but beforeMenger had ended his marriage, four disil-lusioned followers accused Weber of imper-sonating a spacewoman who was supposedto be granting them an audience in an un-lighted room. The couple surv i ved the scan-dal, howe ve r, and we re married in duecourse. Eve n t u a l l y, they moved to Fl o r i d a ,w h e re they live now.

See Also: Adamski, GeorgeFurther ReadingBaxter, Marla [pseud. of Constance Weber Menger],

1958. My Saturnian Lover. New York: VantagePress.

“‘Very Sincere Fellow’ Howard Menger Returns toLong John Program,” 1957. CSI News Letter 21(November 1): 14–16.

AmeboidsA professional woman writing under thepseudonym Lisa Oakman claims that fromchildhood into her early twenties she experi-enced many encounters with nonhuman be-ings. Most were generally humanlike in ap-pearance, but the most exotic she calls“ameboids.”

The ameboids were “horrible” and “night-marish” entities, shaped like amoebas, withthe colors of bruises. They attached their wetsnouts to the fleshy areas of her body, sucked,and left round, red marks in their wake. Someseemed to be taking energy, others blood.They would come into her bedroom at night,and she was too terrified to resist them. Shelay paralyzed while they did their work, and

she did not resume activity—in this case,screaming—until they were gone.

Further ReadingOakman, Lisa [pseud.], 1999. “UFO Beings, Folk-

lore, and Mythology: Personal Experiences.” In -ternational UFO Reporter 24, 4 (Winter): 7–12.

AndoloAndolo was a being channeled by contacteeTrevor James Constable. Andolo, a member ofthe Council of Seven Lights, a kind of cosmicgoverning board consisting of wise space peo-ple, communicated from a vast extraterrestrialsatellite, Shan-Chea, in orbit around Earth.

In the mid-1950s, concerned about myste-rious disappearances of airplanes and theircrews, Constable asked Andolo if he and hisassociates ever abducted or killed human be-ings in this way. Andolo assured him that the“Universal plan” kept them from causing “aphysical death wittingly under any circum-stance.” He warned, however, that “dark ones”did not recognize these laws. They would stealearthly aircraft in order to learn about earthlytechnology, and “they may desire the entities[persons] in the airplane for purposes of theirown, regarding which I shall presently tell younothing” (James, 1958).

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingJames, Trevor [pseud. of Trevor James Constable],

1958. They Live in the Sky. Los Angeles: New AgePublishing Company.

Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leekaChief Frank Buck Standing Horse, an OttawaIndian from Oklahoma, met Andra-o-leekaand Mondra-o-leeka onboard a spaceship thattook him to several planets in July 1959. Theship, called Vea-o-mus, landed around 10 P.M.on the evening of the twelfth. Piloted byAndra-o-leeka, the ship took off again, thistime going to Mars, then to Venus. After ashort stay there, a female pilot, Mondra-o-leeka, a Venusian, relieved Andra-o-leeka, andthe ship went on to Clarion, a planet hiddenon the other side of the sun. (Clarion first ap-

Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka 21

pears in contactee stories after Truman Bethu-rum reported meeting a “scow” [a small space-craft] and its pilot, the beautiful Aura Rhanes,who hailed from that planet.) After a shortstop on Clarion, Vea-o-mus took a two-hourjourney to a planet called Oreon (as opposedto “Orion,” a constellation). Standing Horsestayed there for two days.

Oreon, he reported, was a beautiful planet,so lovely that as a man of the gospel he won-dered if he were in heaven. “Heaven is a longway from here,” he was told (Dean, 1964).While there, he ate well, mostly fish as well asfresh fruit from giant plants.

Several years later on December 22, 1962,Standing Horse entered a spacecraft near Bak-ersfield, California, and was taken to Jupiterwhere he saw a magnificent building made ofmarble. He witnessed the dancing of “fivetribes of Indians.” In a Jupiter city, at theChurch of the Open Door, he heard a concertin which Handel’s The Messiah was sung. Atone point he saw a screen that recorded scenesfrom Earth. According to Standing Horse, thepeople of Jupiter are better-looking versionsof earthlings, with the races living together inharmony.

The chief was returned to Earth three dayslater, on the evening of Christmas Day. Hishosts drove him back to a Hollywood bus sta-tion in a car without wheels and powered byelectromagnetic energy. “Two cops were ar-resting two men on the corner,” StandingHorse wrote to John W. Dean, “and were theydumbfounded when they saw the car comedown and let me out!”

Standing Horse claimed to have met Mon-dra-o-leeka one more time on the streets ofCedko, California, on October 11, 1962.

See Also: Aura Rhanes; Bucky; ContacteesFurther ReadingDean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip -

tures. New York: Vantage Press.

Angel of the DarkOn several occasions, New Age writer AliceBryant has encountered the Angel of the

Dark, who sometimes calls herself “an Angelof the Divine Plan.” The angel stands nearlythree stories tall. “Large, matte-dark featherswith iridescent tips” cover her. She wraps herwings around herself like a cloak and wears awooden bird mask from which a long, sharpbeak extends.

She is here to take away all those feelingsand fears that impede spiritual progress. Herbird mask symbolizes her connection with thevulture, which removes carrion, and the eagle,which soars toward the light. “I cleanse theshadow side into perfection,” she says.

Further ReadingBryant, Alice, and Linda Seebach, 1997. Opening to

the Infinite: Human Multidimensional Potential.Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower Press.

Angelucci, Orfeo (1912–1993)Orfeo Angelucci was among the most inter-esting of the early contactees. Unlike many ofhis contemporaries, he was generally deemed

22 Angel of the Dark

UFO contactee Orfeo Angelucci (Fortean Picture Library)

sincere, even by skeptics who tended to seehim as something of a religious visionary in aflying-saucer context rather than as a cynicalexploiter of the credulous. Angelucci's initialcontact allegedly occurred on May 24, 1952,in Burbank, California. Driving home fromwork at an aircraft factory, he saw a saucer,which emitted two small globes. The globesapproached him, and a masculine voice as-sured him that he had nothing to fear. An-gelucci saw a crystal cup materialize, and hedrank a delicious, healing liquid from it. Ascreen appeared before him, showing a strik-ing-looking man and woman who seemed toread his mind. Another visionary experience,initiated like the first time by a “dulling ofconsciousness” (Angelucci, 1955), occurredtwo months later. On August 2, he had aphysical encounter with space people for thefirst time.

Angelucci soon went public with his expe-riences, warning that a world war was immi-nent. From the ruins of the world, a “NewAge of Eart h” would arise. He also re l a t e dthat after six months of unusual psyc h o l o g i-cal symptoms, as well as “vivid dreams of ahauntingly beautiful, half-familiar world,” hewas transported to a beautiful otherw o r l d .He learned that he had lived there in anotherlife, when he was known as “Neptune.” An-gelucci wrote two books on his experiencesand became a prominent fig u re on the con-tactee circuit. With the passing of the initialw a ve of enthusiasm about contactees, An-gelucci became little more than a distantm e m o ry of saucerd o m’s heady early days. Hi sdeath in Los Angeles on July 24, 1993, waslittle noted.

In his time, however, his claims attractedthe attention of the celebrated psychologistand philosopher C. G. Jung, who wrote aboutthem in one of his last books. Jung observed,“The individuation process, the central prob-lem of modern psychology, is plainly depicted. . . in an unconscious, symbolic form . . . al-though the author with his somewhat primi-tive mentality has taken it quite literally as aconcrete happening” (Jung, 1959).

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingAngelucci, Orfeo, 1955. The Secret of the Saucers.

Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.———, 1959. Son of the Sun. Los Angeles: DeVorss

and Company.Jung, C. G., 1959. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of

Things Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt,Brace and Company.

AnoahAnoah, associated with the MelchizedekOrder of the White Brotherhood, consistingof wise extraterrestrial and spiritual entities,channeled through Austin, Texas, psychicmedium Jann Weiss in the 1980s. The Plane-tary Light Association, which at its peak hadsome 3,200 members around the world, dis-tributed books and tapes of these channelingsessions. It also held workshops at which en-thusiasts listened to Anoah discuss the transi-

Anoah 23

The cover of The Secret of the Saucers by OrfeoAngelucci (Fortean Picture Library)

tion from an old age to a new age of expandedconsciousness and cosmic awareness.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingAched, Fretter, 1963. Melchizedek: Truth Principles.

Phoenix, AZ: Lockhart Research Foundation.Weiss, Jann, 1986. Reflections by Anoah. Austin, TX:

Planetary Light Association.

AnthonAt the contactee-oriented Rocky MountainConference on UFO Investigation held inLaramie, Wyoming, in May 1982, KenMcLean read a statement from “a Mr. Watan-abe,” who claimed to be an extraterrestrial liv-ing in a human body. His true name was An-thon, and he was in his third earthlyincarnation. The first was during the Revolu-tionary War, he said. He was one of 150,000“incarnate beings” living on our planet andobserving our activities. These beings tele-pathically communicated their findings tospace people both on the surface of our planetand in our upper atmosphere.

According to Anthon, we are now enteringthe end of an age that began with Jesus’ ap-pearance, though Anthon believes Jesus wasnot the Son of God but “the only humanbeing to have incarnated through enough life-times and enough karmic experiences to tran-scend death. . . . He is in charge of the transi-tion into a ‘New Age’ which will occursometime in the near future.”

Anthon claimed that many incarnate be-ings do not know their true identity; thus theyhave to be awakened to it.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingSprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky

Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.Laramie: School of Extended Studies, Universityof Wyoming.

AntronDriving along a section of highway betweenJacksonville and Callahan, Florida, one Au-gust night in 1974, businesswoman Lydia

Stalnaker saw a bright, flashing light justabove some nearby treetops. A suffocatingsensation enfolded her, and she lost con-sciousness. When she awoke, she was still be-hind the wheel, but on a different road. Soonshe learned that three hours, for which shecould not account, had passed. Under hypno-sis in May 1975, she “recalled” being takeninto a spacecraft, where aliens told her thatanother woman would be placed inside herbody. She saw the woman sitting on the otherside of a table from her. Stalnaker’s head wasplaced inside some kind of mechanical device,and she passed out. When she revived, aspaceman told her she was now one of them.He escorted her out of the ship, and she re-turned to her car.

Subsequently, Stalnaker claimed, she foundthat she had extraordinary psychic gifts thatallowed her to read other people’s minds andto practice paranormal healing. Before longStalnaker was channeling the alien woman,who called herself Antron. Antron reportedthat she was from a “star galaxy.” She hadcome to prepare earthlings for a great cata-clysm. “We want to take the good people withus to recolonize elsewhere,” she said (Beckley,1989).

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO

Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ:Inner Light Publications.

Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFOAbductees. New York: Walker and Company.

AnunnakiAncient-astronaut theorist Zecharia Sitchin,author of a series of books under the rubricThe Earth Chronicles, argues that a race of hu-manlike beings, the Anunnaki, live on theplanet Nibiru (also known as Maldek), the al-leged twelfth planet of our solar system.Though unknown to astronomers, Nibiru, onan elliptical orbit, circles our sun every 3,600years. According to Sitchin, Nibiru will be inour immediate planetary space in the near fu-

24 Anthon

ture and will be detected between Mars andJupiter. When that happens, the Anunnakiwill make their presence known by appearingon Earth.

Si t c h i n’s ideas are based on his reading ofancient Sumerian documents. In his viewthey confirm that the Anunnaki—a Su m e r-ian term—created humans in their image,via genetic engineering with the DNA of na-t i ve anthropoids, after their arrival somef o u r - h u n d red thousand five - h u n d red ye a r sa g o. These original earthlings we re created sothat they could work as slaves in the Anun-n a k i’s terrestrial gold mines; the extraterre s-trials needed the gold to pre s e rve the atmos-p h e re of their home world. Many thousandsof years later, they returned to give theSumerians and Egyptians their re s p e c t i vecivilizations and actually lived among thesepeople for a thousand years. One visitorf rom Ni b i ru, Enki, re p o rtedly saved thehuman race. When a hostile alien, En l i l ,tried to keep the Anunnaki from warninghumans that the passing near Earth ofNi b i ru would cause an immense tidal wave ,which would sweep over Earth and destroyits inhabitants, Enki resisted. He told No a h ,of biblical fame, about the coming deluge,and Noah set to work on his ark, thus ensur-ing the surv i val of earthly life.

The Anunnaki supposedly live a very longtime because one year to them is the numberof earthly years it takes their planet to goaround the sun. Their technology is so ad-vanced that they developed space flight half amillion years ago. They are also able to revivethe dead.

One critic has written, “Clearly, Sitchin is asmart man. He weaves a complicated talefrom the bits and pieces of evidence that sur-vive from ancient Sumeria to the present day.Just as clearly, Sitchin is capable of academictransgressions (fracturing quotes, ignoringdissenting facts) . . . and flights of intellectualfancy. . . . Worst of all, he is almost utterly in-nocent of astronomy and other assorted fieldsof modern science” (Hafernik, 1996).

See Also: Greater Nibiruan Council

Further ReadingHafernik, Rob, 1996. “Sitchin’s Twelfth Planet.”

h t t p : / / w w w. g e o c i t i e s . c o m / A re a 5 1 / C o r r i d o r /8148/hafernik.html

Schultz, Dave. “The Earth Chronicles: Time Chart.”h t t p : / / w w w. g e o c i t i e s . c o m / A re a 5 1 / C o r r i-dor/8148/zchron.html

Sitchin, Zecharia, 1976. The Twelfth Planet. NewYork: Stein and Day.

———, 1980. The Stairway to Heaven. New York:St. Martin’s Press.

———, 1985. The Wars of Gods and Men. NewYork: Avon Books.

Apol, Mr.In the mid to late 1960s, while re s e a rc h i n gmaterial for a series of books, occult jour-nalist John A. Keel allegedly re c e i ved a se-ries of phone calls from “Mr. Apol,” a badlyconfused, interdimensional entity. Apol didnot know where he was in time, often con-fusing past and future, and trave l i n gt h rough both invo l u n t a r i l y. Ac c o rding toKeel, “he and all his fellow entities . . .[ p l a yed] out their little games because theywe re programmed to do so” (Keel, 1975).In the fashion of psychic va m p i res, theyl i ved off the energies of contactees andother experients of the paranormal. Keel be-l i e ved Apol to be an ultraterrestrial as op-posed to an extraterrestrial, because inKe e l’s view such entities come from otherrealities rather than other planets.

Though Keel did not meet Apol himself, aLong Island woman saw him pull up to herhouse in a black Cadillac, a vehicle favored bythe enigmatic men in black, earthly agents forunearthly intelligences. Keel reported that thewoman thought Apol looked “Hawaiian.”When he introduced himself, he shook herhand. His own hand was “as cold as ice.”

Keel dedicated his book Our Haunted Pl a n e t(1971) to “Mr. Apol, where ver you are . ”

See Also: Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Time travel-ers; Ultraterrestrials

Further ReadingKeel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New

York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton andCompany.

Apol, Mr. 25

Arna and ParzBetween 1976 and 1980 a family at Oaken-holt in northern Wales underwent a complexseries of extraordinary experiences. Perhapsthe first event involved six-year-old GaynorSunderland, who, while playing in a field onesummer afternoon, spotted a cigar-shapedcraft resting on the ground. She saw a man ina spacesuit walking in front of the object,using a gunlike device to burn holes into theground. Apparently caught by surprise, thebeing stared at her, and Gaynor had the im-pression that he was probing her mind. Anangry-looking woman appeared alongsidehim, and Gaynor felt the same sensation ofmind-intrusion. Hearing noises from withinthe craft, the woman returned to the space-craft, and the young girl took the opportunityto flee. Many other bizarre UFO incidents in-volving all five Sunderland children as well astheir parents took place subsequently.

In February 1979 Gaynor glimpsed twosmiling beings who had appeared in somenearby bushes and then vanished when sheturned away. On June 24 she encountered thesame alien couple in a sort of out-of-body ex-perience. Lying in bed at 11 P.M., she saw theceiling open into a tunnel, sucking her in to-ward a distant light. Once she reached the endof the journey, the couple—now accompaniedby a small boy—greeted her. The woman wasnamed Arna, the man Parz. They gave her atour of their world, showing her a stream aswell as some vegetation unlike anything onEarth. Their manner was courteous but notparticularly warm. When Arna touchedGaynor’s hand, the visitor witnessed a greatcity under a red sun and unclouded blue sky.All of the people in the city looked young.After the vision faded, Arna said good-bye viatelepathy and promised another meeting.Gaynor returned to the tunnel and ended upin her bed.

A few weeks later, in August, Arna reap-peared to display images of a destroyed Earth.She asked Gaynor for her assistance in direct-ing an energy being back to its proper resi-dence. Gaynor, her brother Darren, and her

parents walked to a field and meditated untilthey sensed that the intruder was gone.

On the night of September 14, Arna andParz appeared and took Gaynor into theirspacecraft. Besides the couple she knew, therewere three others. One looked so close tobeing purely human that Gaynor wondered ifthe young woman, who looked to be aboutnineteen years of age, was some kind of hy-brid. Gaynor noticed a picture on the wall ofa male being like Parz, only older. He wasstanding by a globe of a planet that clearly wasnot Earth. The ship flew into space. Half anhour later Arna and Parz told her that it hadreached its destination, which turned out tobe a kind of zoo full of bizarre creatures, all ofthem in twos. The animals were not in cagesand had a great deal of space in which to wan-der. Finally, the sights were too unsettling forGaynor, and her hosts permitted her to returnto the ship. Before they parted, however,Gaynor learned that Arna and Parz were“about 3500 of your years old” (Randles andWhetnall, 1981).

Gaynor sensed somehow that she had notreally been in space. What she had experi-enced were vivid mental images that the alienshad beamed into her brain. At the same time,she was certain that she had not dreamed anyof this; it was much too real and had none ofthe distinguishing characteristics of dreams.

See Also: Hybrid beingsFurther ReadingRandles, Jenny, and Paul Whetnall, 1981. Alien Con -

tact: Window on Another World. London: NevilleSpearman.

ArtemisArtemis hails from the planet Miranda, lo-cated in an uncharted region of the MilkyWay galaxy. He and the thirteen thousand be-ings on his team orbit Earth in a giant spaceplatform, focusing their attention on most ofthe North American continent. Other space-ships from other places attend to the rest ofEarth. Artemis, who channeled through An-thony and Lynn Volpe in 1981, said that he

26 Arna and Parz

seeks to raise humanity’s collective vibration.Coming cataclysms will radically alter thepopulation and surface of the planet. Certainchosen earthlings who are advanced spirituallywill be taken up just before the disasters. Oth-ers will be left on the surface for a time as theyhelp suffering Earth people. Eventually, spiri-tually unenlightened but otherwise harmlesspersons will be taken up and resettled on un-inhabited planets, while the truly evil will beleft on Earth. Most, though not all, will per-ish. All of this, Artemis said in 1981, will hap-pen “sooner than most people think” (Beck-ley, 1989).

Further ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO


Ascended MastersAscended Masters are human beings whoachieved pure spiritual enlightenment beforetheir deaths. Along with that enlightenment,they attained mystical powers that set themapart from their fellows. When their physicalbodies died (“ascended”), they continued tooversee the affairs of humanity. They channelwisdom to those who will listen to them.

One source observes, “It is important forstudents and people to come to realize that allAscended Beings are Real, Tangible Beings.Their Bodies are not physical but They canmake them as tangible as our physical bodiesare” (“Ascended Masters”). The Great WhiteBrotherhood, a spiritual council that exists inthe supernatural realm, consists of AscendedMasters.

Further Reading“Ascended Masters.” http://www.ascension-research.

org/masters.html.

AshtarAshtar is among the most popular and mostpowerfully positioned of all channeling enti-ties. As (according to most contactees whohave dealings with him) head of the AshtarCommand he is, in the words of his sponsor

Lord Michael, “Supreme Director in charge ofall of the Spiritual program” for Earth. Fromhis giant starship in Earth’s general vicinity hegives orders to millions of extraterrestrial andinter-dimensional beings who are trying to re-form and enlighten earthlings. His home is inthe etheric realm, which means that to visitour physical universe he must descend the vi-bratory scale, or we would not be able to hearor perceive him at all. He explains his missionthus:

“We have come to fulfill the destiny of thisp l a n e t , which is to experience a short period of‘c l e a n s i n g’ and then to usher in a N E WG O L D E N AG E O F L I G H T. We are here to liftoff the s u rf a c e , . . . during this period of cleans-ing, those souls who are walking in the Light onthe Ea rt h . . . . The souls of Li g h t a re you peopleof Earth who have lived according to unive r s a lt ruths and have put the concerns of others be-f o re your ow n . . . . The short period of cleans-ing the planet is I M M I N E N T—E V E N T H EM I D N I G H T H O U R! ” (Tuella, 1989).

Officially, Ashtar came into the world onJuly 18, 1952, when George W. Van Tassel, anearly and influential contactee from southernCalifornia, took a telepathic message from“Portla, 712th projection, 16th wave, realmsof Schare” (pronounced Share-ee). Portla pro-nounced, “Approaching your solar system is aventla [spaceship] with our chief aboard, com-mander of the station Schare in charge of thefirst four sectors. . . . We are waiting here at72,000 miles above you to welcome our chief,who will be entering this solar system for thefirst time.” Soon the chief spoke, introducinghimself with—“Ashtar, commandant quadrasector, patrol section Schare, all projections,all waves.” He addressed an emerging concernamong occultists of the period: that the hy-drogen bomb, then in development, wouldset off a chain reaction that would destroy theplanet. Ashtar warned that if scientists did notstop their work on the device immediately,“we shall eliminate all projects connected withsuch” (Van Tassel, 1952).

Though Van Tassel would claim contactswith many other curiously named other-

Ashtar 27

worldly entities, only Ashtar would make awider mark in the contactee subculture. Be f o relong other channelers we re receiving materialf rom Ashtar as well as his associates, such asSananda (Jesus), Ko rton, Soltec, At h e n a ,Monka, and others. So many Ashtar channel-ings occurred that soon Ashtar was warningsome communicants that evil astral entitieswe re impersonating him. He was also forced todeny allegations that he was “some form ofgiant mechanical brain” (Constable, 1958). Inthe 1970s and beyond, as fundamental Chris-tians began writing books on UFOs, Ashtarwas re p resented as a servant of Sa t a n .

Though to nearly all who experienced him,Ashtar existed only as a disembodied voice, avery few claimed to have seen him. Onewoman, Adele Darrah, even alleged that shesaw him before she had ever heard of anAshtar. One night in the early 1960s, after shehad gone to bed, Darrah found herself sud-denly awake and in her downstairs livingroom, where a striking-looking stranger stoodin front of the fireplace. He was tall, slim, anderect and was wearing a uniform with a highcollar. “His eyebrows were slim and delicate,the nose was thin, the mouth was ratherstraight, the lips thin,” she reported. “His eyeswere brilliant and penetrating, almond-shaped with a slight oriental appearance.”When she introduced herself, he smiled andindicated that he already knew her name.Then he squared his shoulders and an-nounced, “I am Ashtar.” Everything that fol-lowed faded from her memory, and only a fewyears later, Darrah claimed, would she learnthat others knew such an entity.

Typically, however, contactees and chan-nelers report seeing Ashtar in psychic percep-tion or in out-of-body journeys to his star-ship. Perhaps not surprisingly, descriptionsvary, some calling him dark, others fair, someestimating his height at less than six feet, oth-ers at more than seven.

In the 1980s and 1990s, more and more ofthe messages from Ashtar and his associatesfocused on the “Ascension,” the removal of“Lightworkers”—those doing the Command’s

work on Earth, many if not all of them extra-terrestrials in earlier incarnations—fromEarth just prior to the Cleansing (the naturaland other catastrophes that will afflict Earth,killing millions, before the space people land).The failure of either the Ascension or theCleansing to take place discouraged many fol-lowers. In a channeling in the 1990s, Ashtarexplained that, in fact, the Lightworkers hadeffected huge changes, which, though now in-visible, will become apparent in due course.In the meantime, according to Ashtar associ-ate Soltec, the human race will continue to beeducated subtly through dreams, popular cul-ture, and growing numbers of spacecraftsightings. Unfortunately, “there will be manyones who will confuse us with negative ETencounters. Indeed, the greys will take advan-tage of the opportunity to confuse the popu-lace and attempt to tarnish our image. Onesmust be made aware of the distinction be-tween the ships of Light and the ships of ab-duction” (Soltec, n.d.).

In 2000, Brianna Wettlaufer of Van Tassel’sorganization, the Ministry of Universal Wis-dom (Van Tassel himself died in 1978), putout a statement that sought to separate Ashtarfrom the Ashtar Command. Van Tassel, it wassaid, communicated only with Ashtar; theAshtar Command, on the other hand, was aconcept promulgated by another early con-tactee, Robert Short. He and Van Tassel hadbeen friends but parted company when Shortdecided to make Ashtar’s communications“commercial and mainstream, in order forpersonal notoriety, not for a truth to the pub-lic.” Wettlaufer insisted that “Ashtar is not ametaphysical philosopher or rambler” andmoreover, he cannot be reached via channel-ing (though Van Tassel’s own method of com-munication seemed indistinguishable fromchanneling to most observers). The statementgoes on, “The Ashtar of Ashtar Command is areal personality . . . a clone of the originalAshtar, and is dangerous . . . a disobedientangel” (Wettlaufer, 2000).

The name “Ashtar” may owe its inspirationto a nineteenth-century work, Oahspe, the

28 Ashtar

product of alleged angelic dictation to NewYork occultist John Ballou Newbrough. Inthis complex alternative history of Earth andthe universe, “ashars” are guardian angels whosail the cosmos in etheric ships. Oahspe had awide readership among devotees of the earlycontactee movement.

See Also: Athena; Contactees; Korton; Monka;Portla; Sananda; Van Tassel, George W.

Further ReadingAlnor, William M., 1992. UFOs in the New Age: Ex -

traterrestrial Messages and the Truth of Scripture.Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House.

James, Trevor [pseud. of Trevor James Constable],1958. They Live in the Sky. Los Angeles: New AgePublishing Company.

King, Beti, 1976. Diary from Outer Space. Mojave,CA: self-published.

———, 1976. A Psychic’s True Story. Mojave, CA:self-published.

Soltec, n.d. “Ashtar Command and Popular Cu l t u re . ”h t t p : / / w w w. e a g l e s w i n g s . c o m / a u / s o l t e c 1 . h t m l

Tuella [pseud. of Thelma B. Turrell], ed., 1989.Ashtar: A Tribute. Third edition. Salt Lake City,UT: Guardian Action Publications.

Van Tassel, George W., 1952. I Rode a Flying Saucer!The Mystery of Flying Saucers Revealed. Los Ange-les: New Age Publishing Company.

We t t l a u f e r, Brianna, 2000. “A Brief Ba c k g round be-t ween Ashtar and Ashtar Command.” http://www.g e o r g e va n t a s s e l . c o m / Pa g e s / 0 0 5 . 1 a s h t a r. h t m l

AsmitorIn Revelation: The Divine Fire (1973) BradSteiger reports a story related to him byRobert Shell of Roanoke, Virginia, concern-ing a malevolent entity that attached itself to ayoung man experimenting with psychedelicdrugs. The being called itself “Asmitor” evenas it explained that this was not precisely itsname, but the closest approximation that thehuman voice could manage to pronounce.

Shell said that he met Mark while bothwere living in an apartment building in Rich-mond, Virginia, in 1969. Shell and a friendwere pursuing an interest in ritual magic.Mark, then eighteen years old, expressed nointerest in such things; his interests were inelectronics and occasional use of hallucino-gens. Thus, Shell was surprised and skeptical

when Mark began speaking of contact he wasbeginning to experience with what he calledan “entity” that gave him certain things in ex-change for periodic occupation of his physicalbody. Around this time Shell and his wife ob-served poltergeistlike manifestations in theirapartment.

These experiences led Shell to be moreopen-minded about Mark’s claims. Mark con-fided that the entity was a multidimensionalenergy being. It extended across the entireuniverse, though by force of will it couldfocus on a particular place for purposes ofcommunication. It never explained why itsought such contacts, but Mark came to sensethat it had a deep interest—again for reasonsit would not clearly divulge—in this level ofreality. As time went by, Mark came to see theentity, now calling itself Asmitor, as evil anddeceitful. It also would not let him alone andmore or less possessed him.

Before that happened, however, Shell ac-cepted Mark’s endorsement of Asmitor’s es-sentially benign intentions and asked for apersonal contact. One night he underwent afrightening experience in which he awokewith a crushing sensation on his chest, whichhe interpreted as a visitation from Asmitor,though the sensations he describes are classiccharacteristics of sleep paralysis. The next dayMark, passing on Asmitor’s words, told Shellthat Asmitor had found him—Shell—unfitfor contact.

Asmitor claimed to be in conflict with an-other entity, with the climactic battle immi-nent. The other entity was just as malevolentas Asmitor, but the two were deadly enemies,their conflict having been set up, for in-scrutable reasons, by a “higher ruling force.”Mark was to create a “landmark”—a “specific,easily accessible point for it to hold onto”—consisting of a pentagram with symbolsdrawn around it.

Though Asmitor had promised Mark com-plete physical protection, the young manlearned otherwise when he was arrested forpossession of LSD and marijuana and sen-tenced to jail. After serving three months, he

Asmitor 29

was released. By this time Shell had moved toanother city and out of direct contact withMark, though the two exchanged some lettersand talked on the phone on occasion. Markexpressed growing desperation about hisplight. He was certain now that he could es-cape Asmitor’s grip only by destroying him-self. Thus, Shell said, “It came as a shock, butnot really a surprise, to hear from a mutualfriend . . . that on April 1, 1970, Mark hadcommitted suicide.”

Shell noted that not long afterward, whileperusing a book of medieval magic, he cameupon the name Asmitor, though he could nottell Steiger exactly where. “I am convincedthat Mark had never read this book,” he re-marked, “and I am also convinced that Markdid not simply make up this name.” Steiger,on the other hand, suspected that the tragicepisode came out of “paranoid schizophrenia,or some other illness.”

Further ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

AthenaIn Project Al e rt , a self-published monograph,an Indiana contactee known as Tuieta prov i d e sa transcript of a three-day conference held at“the Tectonic base that is on planet Eart h . ”The gathering brought together “s p e c i fic com-m a n d e r s . . . under the immediate superv i s i o n ,guidance, and counsel of Commander Ash-t a r.” Among the speakers, who included suchfamiliar fig u res in the Ashtar Command asKo rton, Monka, and Soltec, was the here t o-f o re obscure Commander Athena. At h e n aspoke of the role of Earth women in the com-ing “period of great tribulation.” During thiscrisis many people would not surv i ve. T h ewoman most likely to get through the cata-s t rophic Earth changes, according to At h e n a ,was one who re c o g n i zed “the importance ofp roviding for loved ones and providing forthose that need nurturing and counsel.”

Athena is described as a small, re d d i s h - g o l d -h a i red, beautiful woman with deep blue eye s .

She exudes “g reat love and great compassionand tremendous strength.” Her name, coinci-dentally or otherwise, is the same as that of theGreek goddess of wisdom, the arts, and war-f a re. Athena was also the name of a space com-mander in the television series Battlestar Ga l a c -t i c a , which aired on ABC in 1978 and 1979.

According to the late Thelma B. Turrell(who was also known as Tuella, a name givenher by the Ashtar Command), “Athena is thetwin flame of Ashtar. He has said to me thathe could turn over the whole command to herand no one would even miss him” (Beckley,1989).

See Also: Ashtar; Contactees; Korton; MonkaFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO


Tuieta, 1986. Project Alert. Fort Wayne, IN: Portalsof Light.

30 Athena

Maren Jensen as space commander Athena in the 1978–1979 ABC TV series Battlestar Galactica (Photofest)

AtlantisAtlantis, the fabled lost continent, almost cer-tainly never existed in the real world, but it haslong captured the imaginations of human be-ings. A vast literature—scholars estimate con-s e rva t i vely that more than two thousand booksa d d ress the subject—has tackled Atlantis fro ma wide range of perspectives. Some writersh a ve sought to establish, with what mostscholars hold to be inconclusive results, thatthe legend arose from the mythologizing of areal event, though almost eve ry theorist hasp roposed a different one. Most writing, how-e ve r, has taken an alternative - h i s t o ry appro a c h ,paying little heed to mainstream arc h a e o l o g y,h i s t o ry, and science, while taking Atlantis intothe realm of unfettered speculation.

The legend of Atlantis begins in two works,Timaeus and Critias (written circa 355 B.C.),by the great Greek philosopher Plato. As inhis earlier work The Republic, Plato wrotethese works as dialogues among four wisemen, including Plato’s teacher Socrates. In thecourse of a long discourse on philosophical is-sues of various kinds, Critias, a historian and

Plato’s great-grandfather, tells of a story thathe ascribes to his grandfather, who heard itfrom his father. Around 600 B.C., while trav-eling in Europe, Solon (a historical figure re-membered for his legal and poetic genius)learned of a great civilization that existed ninethousand years earlier. It was located in theAtlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules(the present-day Straits of Gibraltar) on an is-land larger than North Africa and Asia com-bined. According to Solon’s informant, anEgyptian priest, Atlantis had grown arrogantand warlike. It ruled many other islands andparts of what is now Europe. But when it at-tacked Athens and other Greek city-states,those communities joined forces to repel theinvaders and drive them back to Atlantis, free-ing other islands from Atlantis’s tyranny in theprocess. But when the battle was brought toAtlantis’s own shores, cataclysmic earthquakesand floods destroyed the island continent overa single night and day. The Greek soldiersdied along with the Atlanteans, and Atlantissank to the bottom of the ocean, to rise nomore.

Atlantis 31

Illustration of the location of the empire of Atlantis from Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly, 1882(Library of Congress)

That is not all the dialogues have to say,however. Most of the discussion, much of itintricately detailed, describes a civilizationthat was nearly perfect before pride corruptedit. Atlantis is supposed to be the place ofmodel governance. In its prime it operated bythe principles set forth in The Republic.

No other ancient document contains an in-dependent treatment of Atlantis. All refer-ences to the lost continent cite Plato as thesource. Some accept Plato’s account as histori-cal, while others see it as an allegory nevermeant to be taken literally. Plato’s own stu-dent Aristotle took the latter view.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, as European explorers found their wayto the Americas, several writers, most promi-nently Sir Francis Bacon (1551–1626), re-vived the myth of Atlantis and theorized thatits remains could be found in the New World.That would be only the beginning of a newround of speculation. “At one time or an-other,” a modern chronicler of the legend ob-serves, “Atlantis has been located in the Arctic,Nigeria, the Caucasus, the Crimea, NorthAfrica, the Sahara, Malta, Spain, centralFrance, Belgium, the Netherlands, the NorthSea, the Bahamas, and various other locationsin North and South America” (Ellis, 1998).

Among the most influential books everwritten on the subject, Atlantis: The Antedilu -vian World (1882) was the creation of a for-mer Minnesota congressman named IgnatiusDonnelly (1831–1901). Donnelly surveyedwhat he presented as evidence from such dis-ciplines as archaeology, geology, biology, lin-guistics, history, and folklore to argue vigor-ously for the proposition that Atlantis notonly existed but was the place where humanbeings became civilized. Atlantis sent its peo-ple all over the world and seeded the earth.The great gods and goddesses of the ancientworld were based on the leaders and heroes ofAtlantis; worldwide legends of a mighty del-uge owe their origins to dim memories of thecatastrophe that overwhelmed Atlantis. Thehistorical civilization influenced most directlyby Atlantis was ancient Egypt.

These re velations sparked internationali n t e rest, and Do n n e l l y’s book went thro u g hmany printings. For a time even some re p-utable scientists we re willing to consider thepossibility that the legend was true, after all.Indeed, Donnelly was elected to the Ameri-can Association for the Ad vancement of Sci-ence. Be f o re long, howe ve r, as critics exposedthe book’s errors, exaggerations, and assort e dscholarly shortcomings, belief in At l a n t i sm oved to the occult fringes, to be champi-oned by the likes of Theosophy founder He-lena Pe t rovna Bl a vatsky and other philoso-phers of the esoteric. Be f o re the end of thenineteenth century, a growing body of occultl i t e r a t u re attested that Atlantis was ad-vanced, not just by the standards of theirtime, but by modern times as well; it pos-sessed a super science that, among otherm a rvelous accomplishments, had inve n t e dairplanes and television.

The Scottish folklorist and occultist LewisSpence, who took a relatively more conserva-tive approach, wrote five books on Atlantisbetween 1924 and 1943, citing Donnelly andhis methodology as his principal inspiration.Bowing to the consensus view of historiansand archaeologists, who held that human be-ings were living in caves nine thousand yearsbefore Plato’s time, Spence held that Atlantishad existed nine hundred years before Plato.Meanwhile, allegations, rumors, and outrighthoaxes of archaeological “discoveries” of At-lantean artifacts filled the popular press andkept the “mystery” alive.

The much-circulated channelings of Ed g a rC a yce (1877–1945), called the “s l e e p i n gp ro p h e t” because of the state of consciousnessin which he vo c a l i zed his psychic re a d i n g s ,often concerned Atlantis. Many who came tohim for psychic guidance learned that they hadbeen Atlanteans in previous lives. In Cayc e’sc o m p re h e n s i ve re-envisioning of the lost con-tinent, Atlantis was essentially where Plato hadplaced it: between the Gulf of Mexico and theMediterranean. Unlike Pl a t o’s, Cayc e’s At l a n t i swas as advanced as mid-twe n t i e t h - c e n t u ryAmerica, and in a number of ways more ad-

32 Atlantis

vanced. The Atlanteans, according to Cayce, atfirst we re spiritual beings. They eve n t u a l l ye vo l ved into flesh-and-blood ones. Their soci-ety came undone when civil war erupted. Acombination of natural disasters and the mis-use of Atlantean technology caused the conti-nent to break apart and sink under the oceanwaters. But by the late 1960s, Cayce pre d i c t e d ,the western part of Atlantis would reemerge inthe vicinity of Bimini, in the Bahamas. W h e nthe time came, more than two decades afterC a yc e’s death, several expeditions searched forAtlantean ruins in the area, at one point tru m-peting what proved to be natural undersearock formations as roadways and arc h i t e c t u r a la rt i f a c t s .

Atlantis has been thoroughly absorbedinto fringe belief, theory, and practice. In theage of flying saucers, some writers tied UFOsto an extraterrestrial technology that the At-lanteans knew because of their frequent inter-actions with friendly space people. Ho l l ow -e a rth enthusiasts believed that At l a n t e a nm a c h i n e ry and even Atlanteans themselve scould be found inside certain cavern en-trances around the world. New Age channel-ers communicated with hundreds, perhapsthousands, of disembodied Atlanteans. Ac e n t u ry of occult lore holds that At l a n t e a n sand Lemurians (from Lemuria, the Pa c i fice q u i valent of Atlantis) maintain colonies in-side Mount Shasta on the California-Ore g o nb o rd e r.

With the rise of the Internet, web sites de-voted to Atlantis and related materials haveproliferated. One such site, run by theHawaii-based Department of InterplanetaryAffairs, provides a densely detailed overviewof the Atlantis myth as it had evolved by theend of the twentieth century. In this version,Atlantis was literally a golden civilization inwhich gold was so plentiful that it was ascommon as steel is today in construction andinfrastructure. The Atlanteans traveledaround the globe in fantastic flying ships.These same ships took them to other planets,including Mars, where they left evidence oftheir presence in a gigantic structure (the

“Mars face”) and a number of pyramids onthe Martian surface. The moon was also acolony of Atlantis. Modern-day astronautsfound ruins of walls and roads there but weresilenced by a government determined to keepthe truth about Atlantis from the public.

The Department of Interplanetary Affairsdescribes Atlanteans as living lives of leisureand prosperity, while a “national work force ofrobots, androids, and humanoids from ge-netic engineering” did the empire’s heavy lift-ing. “Atlantean science then fostered somebizarre genetic creations—they discoveredways to cross-breed species to create mermaidsand mermen, Cyclops, unicorns and othercreatures.” That same genetic engineeringgave Atlanteans huge size and great strength.

It all came crashing down, in both a literaland fig u r a t i ve sense, when the populations u r re n d e red itself to the pursuit of hedonisticp l e a s u res; in the meantime, evil At l a n t e a nscientists cracked the secret of mind contro land tried to dominate the world and even thesolar system. In due course the abuse of bothp s ychic and material technology led to thegeophysical cataclysms that destroyed thec o n t i n e n t .

But that was not all. According to the De-partment of Interplanetary Affairs, Atlantis’sproblems generated a world war that spreadinto space. Atomic blasts decimated the mooncolony. Antimatter rays vaporized nearly all ofAtlantis’s buildings and cities. “It is said,” thedepartment reports, “that one of these anti-matter rays is still operating in the BermudaTriangle and has been causing planes andships to disappear. Today that ray is out ofcontrol” (Omar, 1996).

For all the allure of the Atlantis legend,nothing of substance has come to light in thenearly twenty-five centuries that separate usfrom Plato’s account to lead reasonable peopleto conclude that such a lost continent evergraced the Atlantic Ocean. In Imagining At -lantis (1998) Richard Ellis writes, “Plato’s de-scription of Atlantis was of a rich and power-ful society that was swallowed up by the sea ina great cataclysm, and every remnant of it de-

Atlantis 33

stroyed. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, it hasmanaged to survive for more than two millen-nia. But unlike Homer’s epic poems, Plato’stale—rarely considered an important part ofhis voluminous output—has not only sur-vived as a demonstration of the storyteller’sart, but also has become a part of our ownmythology.”

See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Channelings; Hollowearth; Lemuria; Mount Shasta; Shaver mystery

Further ReadingCayce, Edgar, 1968. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New

York: Paperback Library.De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The At -

lantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature.New York: Dover Publications.

Donnelly, Ignatius, 1882. Atlantis: The AntediluvianWorld. New York: Harper.

Ellis, Richard, 1998. Imagining Atlantis. New York:Alfred A. Knopf.

Omar, Steve, 1996. “History of the Golden Ages,Volume I.” http://www.nii.net/~obie/history-gold.htm

Spence, Lewis, 1924. The Problem of Atlantis. Lon-don: Rider.

Steiner, Rudolf, 1968. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory ofEarth and Man. West Nyack, NY: Paperback Li -brary.

Aura RhanesHeavy-equipment operator Truman Bethu-rum encountered the beautiful Aura Rhanes,captain of a “scow” (spaceship) from the idyl-lic planet Clarion, on the other side of themoon, in the early morning hours of July 28,1952, in the Nevada desert. When male crewmembers ushered him inside the craft, parkedin an area known locally as Mormon Mesa,Bethurum saw Aura Rhanes for the first time.She was small, had an olive complexion, andwore a black and red beret. The two engagedin an extended conversation, during whichthey asked each other about their respectiveworlds. The spacewoman spoke, Bethurumwould write, “in a swinging, rhythmic tone ofvoice” (Bethurum, 1954). When daylightcame, Bethurum was asked to leave, but theywere to meet again. There were eleven meet-ings between July and November alone. Onlyon the occasion of the third meeting, on Au-

gust 18, did she reveal her name. Once hespotted her walking down a street in LasVegas, but she refused to speak with him, ap-parently not wanting to be recognized.

Bethurum participated actively in the1950s contact movement. Most outside ob-servers believed him to be a hoaxer. His wife,Mary, apparently felt otherwise. She divorcedhim in 1956 on the grounds that he was hav-ing sexual relations with Aura Rhanes. As withmany other contactees from that period, it isimpossible to judge just what Bethurum be-lieved or did not believe about his reported in-teractions with extraterrestrials. A privatelykept scrapbook published after his death car-ried a poem titled “Third Visit to MormonMesa Aug 18 1952” commemorating themeeting in which Aura Rhanes let him touchher to convince him of her physical reality.Other items in the scrapbook consist of clip-pings about himself and of materials lendingsupport to his story. Though a skeptic of con-tact claims, British writer Hilary Evans re-marks that “we still have no yardstick wherebywe can separate contactees into ‘genuine’ and‘fake’, and until we can establish some suchcriteria, we must provisionally extend the ben-efit of the doubt even to poor old TrumanBethurum and cute little Aura Rhanes fromthe far side of the Sun” (Evans, 1987).

See Also: Bethurum, Truman; ContacteesFurther ReadingBethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer.

Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.———, 1982. Personal Scrapbook. Scotia, NY: Arc-

turus Book Service.Evans, Hilary, 1987. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians.

Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:Aquarian Press.

Aurora MartianAn article in the April 19, 1897, edition of theDallas Morning News told an extraordinarystory in a very few words. Datelined Aurora,forty-five miles northwest of Dallas, it relatedthat a mysterious “airship” had crashed into alocal windmill at 6 A.M. two days earlier. Oncolliding, “it went to pieces with a terrific ex-

34 Aura Rhanes

plosion, scattering debris over several acres ofground, wrecking the windmill and tower anddestroying [windmill owner Judge J. S. Proc-tor’s] flower garden,” correspondent S. E.Haydon wrote. Haydon went on to reportthat citizens who rushed to the scene foundthe body of a “badly disfigured” being whomone observer identified as a Martian. Thestory concluded with the news that the fu-neral would occur the next day.

The story appeared in the midst of a waveof what today would be called UFO sightings,which had begun in northern California inNovember 1896 and moved eastward by thefollowing spring, when newspapers all overAmerica were full of strange and often fancifulstories. The Morning News carried no follow-up, suggesting it did not take the tale seriouslyenough to dispatch one of its own reporters tothe site. In any event, it wasn’t the only wildairship yarn the paper was carrying. The daybefore it printed the Aurora story, it recounteda Kaufman County sighting of a “Chinese fly-ing dragon. . . . The legs were the propellers.”At Farmersville, the paper stated, the occu-pants of an airship sang “Nearer My God toThee” and distributed temperance tracts.

The episode of the Aurora Martian was for-gotten until the 1960s, when public fascina-tion with UFOs led to research into the phe-nomenon’s early history. In 1966 a HoustonPost writer revived the Aurora story, which heapparently took at face value. Investigatorswent to the tiny town and spoke with elderlyresidents. Most, if they remembered theepisode at all, dismissed it as a joke. One saidthat Haydon had concocted the tale to drawattention to the town, which in the 1890s wassuffering a serious decline in its fortunes.

Still, rumors persisted that a grave in theAurora cemetery housed an unknown occu-pant, perhaps the Martian. As late as 1973,ufologist Hayden Hewes was trying to per-suade local people to let him exhume thegrave, a notion that Aurora’s residents vehe-mently rejected. Confusing matters further,two elderly residents were now claiming thatthey had known persons who saw the wreck-

age. Analysis of metal samples allegedly of theairship, however, proved it was an aluminumalloy of fairly recent vintage.

There is no reason to believe that a Martiandied in Aurora, Texas, late in the nineteenthcentury. Still, the legend inspired the 1985film Aurora Encounter, a low-budget ET set inthe Old West, and it remains one of Texas’smore exotic folktales.

See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Brown’s Martians;Dead extraterrestrials; Dentons’s Martians andVenusians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga; Martianbees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Mar-tians; Shaw’s Martians; Smead’s Martians;Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingChariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas Airship

Mystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing.Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The Great Airship Mystery: A

UFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead andCompany.

Masquelette, Frank, 1966. “Claims Made of UFOEvidence.” Houston Post (June 13).

Randle, Kevin D., 1995. A History of UFO Crashes.New York: Avon Books.

Simmons, H. Michael, 1985. “Once upon a Time inthe West.” Magonia 43 (July): 3–11.

AussoAusso is an extraterrestrial allegedly encoun-tered by Wyoming elk hunter E. Carl Hig-don, Jr., on October 25, 1974. Five hoursafter he called for help, authorities found Hig-don inside his pickup in an area inaccessibleto all but four-wheel-drive vehicles. Taken to anearby hospital, the shaken and disorientedHigdon claimed to have encountered astrange being named Ausso who flew him in aspaceship to another world where he wastaken to a mushroom-shaped tower. While in-side the tower, Higdon saw what looked likenormal human beings, who paid no attentionto him. Ausso explained that he was ahunter/explorer, and he and his people werevisiting Earth to collect animals for breedingpurposes and for food. Soon Higdon wasflown back to Earth and put back in his truck.

Polygraph tests given Higdon in 1975 and1976 produced ambiguous results, but psy-chological inventories suggested that he did

Ausso 35

not suffer from mental illness. Higdon didnot seek to exploit his alleged experience andsoon returned to private life. University ofWyoming psychologist and ufologist R. LeoSprinkle, who investigated the incident,judged Higdon sincere, even if it had provedimpossible to establish the “validity of theUFO experience” (Sprinkle, 1979).

Further ReadingGansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.

Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFOAbductees. New York: Walker and Company.

Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1979. “Investigation of the AllegedUFO Experience of Carl Higdon.” In Richard F.Haines, ed. UFO Phenomena and the BehavioralScientist, 225–357. Metuchen, NJ: ScarecrowPress.

AvinashOn March 3, 1986, an extraterrestrial spiritentered the body of a man identified only asJohn. Till then, John, a channeler from Belle-vue, Washington, had been communicatingwith another entity, Elihu. However, on thisdate the space being Avinash took control ofJohn’s consciousness. Soon thereafter, Avinashmoved to Hawaii with another walk-in (a per-son under the control of a spirit or other-in-telligence that has claimed his or her body), awoman named Alezsha. In due course, a thirdwalk-in, Ashtridia, joined them. Avinash,however, did the channeling, teaching a doc-trine that said essentially that conscious couldaffect reality; thus, both personal and societalreality can be altered if one rearranges one’sperceptions.

Overseen by an immense extradimensionalspaceship, the three moved to the popularNew Age community, Sedona, Arizona, whereAvinash met Arthea, and the two became acouple. They were brought together, they be-lieved, by divine guidance. The walk-in groupexpanded to a dozen members in 1987, but asmost members eventually moved away, onlythree remained by the end of the year. Thosethree, Avinash, Arthea, and Alana, began tohost new occupying entities that would mani-fest for a time, then depart. While the entities

occupied them, the humans would take ontheir names. Other members who later cameinto the group, now calling itself Extraterres-trial Earth Mission, experienced the same (tooutsiders) bewildering change of names andidentities.

Extraterrestrial Earth Mission became aninternational movement. Outside the UnitedStates, it was particularly successful in Aus-tralia. The organization’s headquarters arenow in Hawaii.

See Also: Walk-insFurther ReadingMelton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American

Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Re-search.

AyalaAyala is a deva, a divine energy, who claimsto re p resent the animal kingdom and, be-yond that, “All That Is.” She appeared firston Fe b ru a ry 2, 1994, to two Sedona, Ari-zona, New Age women, both of them chan-nelers. Su b s e q u e n t l y, she directed otherd e vas, including Sh i va and Gaia, who com-municated psychically on the subject ofhuman-animal re l a t i o n s .

Ayala made her presence known when twopsychics, Toraya (Carly) Ayres and a womanidentified only as Sarafina, happened to be en-gaged in a discussion of nature spirits. Sud-denly, Sarafina started shivering and breathingoddly. Then she lapsed into a trance, duringwhich she voiced animal-like sounds. SoonAyala was speaking through her, proposingthat she and the two women work together ona project. The project required Ayres to be ather computer at three o’clock each afternoonto write down the messages as they cameforth. When Ayres protested that this was nota good time for her in terms of her job re-sponsibilities, Ayala insisted that that was theonly time the communication could be ef-fected, owing to the vagaries of planetary vi-brations. She said, “We will meet you in yourdreamtime, and you will be more aware ofwhat your role is in the inter-planetary con-

36 Avinash

nection with All That Is. . . . There is an en-ergy that needs to form. We have to contactall the devas, and it is not always up to us justwhich time we can do this.”

For the next two days Ayala communicatedwith Ayres before relinquishing her spot toanother entity, Shiva, “the blood, the muscle,fur, bone, and spirit of animals.” Ayala toldAyres that animals are evolving spirits just ashuman beings are. Once love and trust hadexisted between people and animals. Then theice ages came, and animals became wild, andhumans began using them for food. Then hu-mans started mistreating animals in all kindsof other ways, and they also abused naturegenerally. Even so, after enduring thousandsof years of cruelty, animals continue to lovehumans, “whether in this dimension or anyother.” Humans and animals will be recon-ciled during this time of transition, when peo-ple are beginning the process that will takethem out of the third—physical—dimensioninto higher dimensions.

In the meantime, Ayala urged human be-ings to communicate through meditationwith animal devas. For example, someonehaving trouble with ants should visualize theant deva and express a polite request, firststressing reverence for ants and all they do forthe world, then asking the ants to leave thebuilding. If human beings interact with ani-mals in this fashion, there will be no need forenvironment-damaging poisons or needlessslaughter of wild creatures.

See Also: ShivaFurther ReadingAyres, Toraya, 1997. “Messages from the Animal

Kingdom.” http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/ani-mal-kingdom-ayres.html

AzeliaAzelia is allegedly the half-extraterrestrial off-spring of a Brazilian man and an alien beingwith whom he was forced to undergo sexualintercourse.

Just after returning home from workaround 3 A.M. on June 18, 1979, night

watchman Antonio Carlos Ferreira of Mira-sol, Sao Paulo, was startled to see a UFO landoutside his house. Three humanoids enteredand paralyzed him with red lights that em-anated from boxes they carried on theirchests. They and he floated into the craft,which eventually took off. Ferreira passed out.Later he vaguely recalled a mother ship.Under hypnosis his “memories” grew sharper,and he saw himself inside a mother ship, look-ing at the distant Earth through a porthole.Approximately twelve different aliens, of twodifferent but seemingly related types, occu-pied the same room. One group consisted ofgreen-skinned humanoids with smooth darkhair, thin lips and noses, big eyes, and pointedears. The others looked somewhat similar ex-cept they had brown skin, thick lips, and red,crinkly hair. All stood four feet tall and wereclad in white uniforms and gloves. A greenbeing seemed to be in charge.

Ferreira was taken into another room,which was dimly lit, and made to lie on acouch. A naked female walked in and ap-proached him as the other beings tried to re-move his clothing over the abductee’s resist-ance. The woman, about a foot taller than theothers, was essentially human, with a largerthan usual head, thin lips, chocolate skin, andnarrow nose. Her breath was foul. Ferreira in-ferred that the beings wanted him to engagein sex with the woman, a notion he found re-pellent. Only after the humanoids subduedhim with a sharp-smelling chemical were theyable to disrobe him. Even then, he continuedto fight, until one of his arms was placed in adevice and the other numbed with an injec-tion. The beings spread an oily liquid all overhim, and intercourse followed. At the conclu-sion of the act, oil was spread over him again,and they removed him from the apparatusand redressed him.

The beings, who addressed him via telepa-thy but spoke an “incomprehensible” lan-guage to each other, explained that they hadconducted an experiment. He would father amale child. At some point, after three unspec-ified signals had been given, they would re-

Azelia 37

turn to show him his offspring. After givinghim an unpleasant-tasting liquid to quell hisappetite, they took him to the disc that hadbrought him to the mother ship and flew himhome. Ferreira suffered from a variety of smallpunctures and wounds, and for the nexttwenty days he had a burning sensation in hiseyes.

There were other incidents. In one he wasshown the child. In another, on board a UFO,

he saw the child with its mother. On March30, 1983, one being came to his workplace toinform him—notwithstanding what they hadtold him earlier—that the child was a girl.Her name was Azelia.

Further ReadingGranchi, Irene, 1984. “Abduction at Mirasol.” Flying

Saucer Review 30, 1 (October): 14–22.Marsland. Robert, 1983. “Two Claimed Abductions

in Brazil.” The APRO Bulletin (November): 1–2.

38 Azelia

BackIn the 1970s, a middle-aged Italian woman,Germana Grosso, told a Turin newspaperabout her two decades of contact with analien race that calls itself Back. She becameaware of its existence twenty years earlier,when a Tibetan lama’s telepathic messages ex-plained to her how she could communicatewith extraterrestrials. Soon the Back wereshowing her scenes of themselves and theirlovely home planet, Lioaki. Grosso “saw”them as images on a sort of mental televisionscreen. They also informed her that they havebases on Earth: under the Atlantic Ocean, inthe Gobi Desert, and in a valley in northernItaly. Earth is nearing disaster, and the Backare here not to interfere but to warn thosewho will listen.

Further ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO


BartholomewThe channeling entity Ba rt h o l o m ew first spoket h rough Ma ry - Ma r g a ret Mo o re in the mid-1970s. She was visiting friends in So c o r ro ,New Mexico, and undergoing hypnosis in ane f f o rt to re l i e ve back pain. Su d d e n l y, somebody

was speaking through her. For the first year oftheir association, Mo o re feared that Ba rt h o l o-m ew was a dramatic delusion. But over timeshe became convinced of his wisdom andp rophetic talents. She came to think of him as“the energy vo rt e x” or “the higher and wiserl e vel of energy” (Mo o re, 1984).

During the New Age boom of the 1980s,Ba rt h o l o m ew — k n own for his gentle, kindmanner—was something of a channeling su-perstar; his messages of comfort and self-lovewe re taken to heart. He addressed a wide rangeof subjects, from sex and AIDS to prayer andego surre n d e r. Be f o re his popularity waned, hewas the subject of two books by Mo o re .

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingMoore, Mary-Margaret, 1984. I Come as a Brother: A

Remembrance of Illusions. Taos, NM: High MesaPress.

———, 1987. From the Heart of a Gentle Brother.Taos, NM: High Mesa Press.

BasharAfter two close encounters with large, trian-gle-shaped UFOs over the course of one weekin 1973, Californian Darryl Anka—thebrother of singer and composer Paul Anka—began reading UFO literature in search of an-swers. Through his reading about UFOs, he

B

39

was led to paranormal subjects such as psychicphenomena, channeling, and spirit communi-cation. In 1983, Anka sat in with a channelerand spent several months absorbing informa-tion from discarnate sources. The entity of-fered to teach whoever might be interested inlearning how to channel, and Anka decided totake a course from the channeler. Midwaythrough the course, Anka first heard from“Bashar,” who said he was the pilot of thespaceship Anka had seen a decade earlier.

Bashar claimed to have come from a planetw h e re all communication is done thro u g ht e l e p a t h y. The people there do not have namesas such. He called himself Bashar—Arabic for“c o m m a n d e r”—for Anka’s conve n i e n c e .

After a period of telepathic communicationwith Bashar, Anka started to channel—inother words, to speak with his (or Bashar’s)voice so that others could hear. In due course,Anka has become an internationally knownchanneler who has taken Bashar (as well as an-other entity, Anima) to a variety of nations onseveral continents. Bashar has told Anka thathe and his people live on the planet Essassani,five hundred light years from Earth but in adifferent dimension. Bashar was speaking notjust for himself but collectively expressing hissociety’s sentiments.

“I have no way of proving ‘Ba s h a r’s’ exis-tence to anyone,” Anka concedes. “The mosti m p o rtant thing is that the information, wher-e ver it’s coming from, had made a difference inmany people’s lives, including my ow n” (Anka,n.d.). Anka’s organization, In t e r p l a n e t a ryConnections, coordinates the channeling ef-f o rts and circulates tapes of their re c o rd i n g s .

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingAnka, Darryl, 1990. Bashar: Blue Print for Change, A

Message for Our Future. Simi Valley, CA: New So-lutions Publishing.

“A Message from Darryl Anka,” n.d. http://www.bashartapes.com/about/message2.html

Being of LightIn his best-selling Life after Life (1976) Ray-mond A. Moody writes of near-death experi-

ences in which persons undergo visionary en-counters of what seems to be a kind of heav-enly realm. In out-of-body states, according totestimony Moody collected, percipients ob-serve a brilliant light at the end of a tunnel-like passage. A telepathic message from thelight asks the observer something like, “Areyou prepared to die?” or “What have youdone with your life?” Immediately afterward,the dying person experiences a “life review” inwhich significant events are rapidly played outeither in order of their occurrence or all atonce in, as Moody puts it, “a display of visualimagery . . . incredibly vivid and real.”

The percipient feels great love and warmthemanating from this being, who is usually in-terpreted as a divine figure from the individ-ual’s own religious tradition. Some see it asGod or Christ, others as an angel. All, how-ever, feel that the being is “an emissary, or aguide.”

Moody characterized the meeting with thebeing of light as “perhaps the most incrediblecommon element in the accounts.” Other re-searchers who followed in Moody’s wake,however, only ambiguously replicated thisparticular finding. Kenneth Ring, MargotGrey, and others found fewer such encountersin their own samples of people who had un-dergone near-death experiences. Many near-death accounts described the observation ofan overwhelmingly loving, beautiful light sur-rounding them and suffusing the landscape,but only a small minority of reports had thatlight as a “being.” A typical expression of thelight was more like one offered by an English-woman who encountered it while her heartstopped as she was anesthetized during dentalsurgery: “The light is brighter than anythingpossible to imagine. There are no words to de-scribe it, it’s a heavenly light” (Grey, 1985).Frequently, percipients encounter recogniza-ble figures, usually either Christ or deceasedfriends and relatives.

Further ReadingGrey, Margot, 1985. Return from Death: An Explo -

ration of the Near-Death Experience. Boston, MA:Arkana.

40 Being of Light

Moody, Raymond A., Jr., 1976. Life after Life: TheInvestigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of BodilyDeath. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books.

Ring, Kenneth, 1980. Life at Death: A Scientific In -vestigation of the Near-Death Experience. NewYork: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan.

Rogo, D. Scott, 1989. The Return from Silence: AStudy of Near-Death Experiences. Wellingbor-ough, Northamptonshire, England: AquarianPress.

Bermuda TriangleThe three points of the “Bermuda Tr i a n g l e” areFlorida, Bermuda, and Pu e rto Rico. In modernlegend, the Triangle is more than an arbitrarygeometric shape; its three points comprise theboundaries of a passage into a mysterious oth-e rworld. In the Bermuda Triangle, the laws ofn a t u re are suspended, and ships, planes, andpeople disappear without a trace.

A key event in the genesis of the legend wasa real-life tragedy off the coast of Florida on

December 5, 1945. That afternoon, fiveAvenger torpedo bombers flew out of theNaval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale. Flight19, consisting of fourteen men (thirteen ofthem students in the last stage of training),headed on an eastern course toward the Ba-hamas, intending to participate in a practicebombing at Hens and Chickens Shoals, fifty-six miles away. After completing that part ofthe mission, the aircraft were to proceed tothe east for another sixty-seven miles, turnnorth for seventy-three miles, then head west-southwest for the remaining one hundredtwenty miles back to their home base. Head-ing the mission—the only nonstudent—wasthe relatively inexperienced Lt. Charles Tay-lor, who did not know the area well.

By late afternoon, the planes were lost. Tay-lor thought they were flying over the Keys offFlorida’s south coast, and he made a fatal mis-judgment: he flew north. If he and his menhad been over the Keys, of course, they would

Bermuda Triangle 41

A reward poster at a marina for the yacht Saba Bank, which went missing in the Bermuda Triangle March 10, 1974(Bettmann/Corbis)

have arrived over land and to safety. Becausethey were over the Bahamas, however, flyingnorthward only put them over the ocean.With weather conditions deteriorating rap-idly, their radio contact with land, alreadysporadic, grew ever more difficult. Mean-while, amid growing alarm about the planes’situation, a Dumbo flying boat—a large res-cue aircraft built for flight over large bodies ofwater—was dispatched from a seaplane basein Miami and sent on a blind search. Soonother planes joined it and flew through theever more turbulent weather. One of them, aMartin Mariner, also disappeared.

None of the missing craft were ever found.The navy’s investigation determined that Tay-lor’s confusion about his location, coupledwith dangerous air and sea conditions, causedthe planes under his command to run out ofgas, crash, and get chewed up by the immensewaves the storm had summoned. At 7:50 thatevening, a ship’s crew saw a plane explode. Asearch for survivors and bodies was unsuccess-ful, though the vessel passed through a largeoil slick from the craft. The navy believed thatthe Mariner, a notoriously dangerous aircraftthat was sometimes called a “flying gasbomb,” had blown up.

If the facts seemed relatively straightfor-ward, the legend that would grow in the wakeof Flight 19’s disappearance would be farmore convoluted and fantastic. Flight 19’stransformation from aviation tragedy to para-normal mystery would begin in September1950, when Associated Press writer E.V.W.Jones wrote a story about what he called the“limbo of the lost,” an area bordered byFlorida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, wherestrange things happened. None, he wrote, wasstranger than the unexplained fate of fiveAvengers and one Mariner on the evening ofDecember 5, 1945.

Soon books and magazines dealing withUFOs and other anomalous phenomena—and even mainstream publications such as TheAmerican Legion Magazine—were picking upthe stories, which grew in the telling. Theterm “Bermuda Triangle” was the invention of

longtime Fortean and paranormal writer Vin-cent H. Gaddis; his article on the subject inthe February 1964 issue of Argosy was titled“The Deadly Bermuda Triangle.” The nextyear he incorporated it into a popular book,Invisible Horizons, on “true mysteries” of theseas. In Invisible Residents (1970) Ivan T.Sanderson pointed to the Bermuda Triangleand comparable places on Earth as evidencethat “OINTS”—Other Intelligences—liveunder the oceans, sometimes snatchingplanes, ships, and their unlucky crews.

By the 1970s, the groundwork had beenlaid for a popular craze. The 1970 release of alow-budget documentary, The Devil’s Triangle,stirred interest outside the core audience ofparanormal enthusiasts. Four years later,Charles Berlitz’s The Bermuda Triangle, acompilation of lore that had already quietlycirculated for years, became a major best-seller. That same year two paperbacks, TheDevil’s Triangle by Richard Winer and Limboof the Lost by John Wallace Spencer, fueledpublic fascination and speculation. But thenext year, in 1975, Larry Kusche’s in-depthinquiry into the incidents that underlay thelegend, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—Solved, undercut the myth-making by docu-menting the prosaic explanations that wouldhave been apparent if the pro-Triangle writershad done original research and not simplyrewritten each other’s books. The silence ofthe writers whom Kusche criticized effectivelyended the discussion.

See Also: OINTS

Further ReadingBegg, Paul, 1979. Into Thin Air: People Who Disap -

pear. North Pomfret, VT: David and Charles.Berlitz, Charles, with J. Manson Valentine, 1974.

The Bermuda Triangle. Garden City, NY: Dou-bleday and Company.

Eckert, Allan W., 1962. “The Mystery of the LostPatrol.” The American Legion Magazine (April):12–23, 39–41.

Gaddis, Vincent H., 1965. Invisible Horizons: TrueMysteries of the Sea. Philadelphia, PA: ChiltonBooks.

Kusche, Larry, 1975. The Bermuda Triangle Mys -tery—Solved. New York: Harper and Row, Pub-lishers.

42 Bermuda Triangle

———, 1980. The Disappearance of Flight 19. NewYork: Harper and Row, Publishers.

Sand, George X., 1952. “Sea Mystery at Our BackDoor.” Fate 5, 7 (October): 11–17.

Sanderson, Ivan T., 1970. Invisible Residents: A Dis -quisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and thePossibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters ofThis Earth. New York: World Publishing Com-pany.

Bethurum, Truman (1898–1969)Truman Bethurum was one of the stars of the1950s contactee movement. In a 1953 issue ofSaucers magazine, Bethurum reported that inthe early morning hours of July 28, 1952, hemet eight little men of “Latin” appearance andwas led to a nearby flying saucer. There hemet the captain, a beautiful woman namedAura Rhanes from Clarion, a planet never vis-ible to humans because it is always on theother side of the moon. Clarion, Bethurumwas informed, is a peaceful, utopian world;fear of nuclear war on Earth had led the Clar-ionites to visit and observe earthlings at first hand. Bethurum claimed further contacts. In

the mid-1950s, Bethurum established a com-munelike “Sanctuary of Thought” in Prescott,Arizona. He was a regular at the Giant RockInterplanetary Spacecraft Convention andother contactee venues. He remained activeon the circuit until his death in Landers, Cali-fornia, on May 21, 1969.

Two early chroniclers of the contactee sub-culture found themselves “favorably and verydeeply impressed with Mr. Bethurum’sunimaginative sincerity” (Reeve and Reeve,1957). Another apparent believer was MaryBethurum, his first wife, who divorced himon the grounds that he was engaged in a sex-ual relationship with Aura Rhanes. More cyn-ical observers, such as Saucer News editorJames W. Moseley, judged Bethurum to be aliar, motivated by a desire to enrich himself atbelievers’ expense. Bethurum refused to un-dergo polygraph examination to verify hisstory, and when asked to submit, for scientificanalysis, a letter said to have been composedby Aura Rhanes, he declined, explaining that“paper on Clarion is made out of just the

Bethurum, Truman 43

UFO contactee Truman Bethurum (Fortean PictureLibrary)

Cover of Aboard a Flying Saucer by Truman Bethurum(Fortean Picture Library)

same kind of trees we have on earth” (Davis,1957).

See Also: Aura Rhanes; ContacteesFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1970. The People of the

Planet Clarion. Clarksburg, WV: SaucerianBooks.

Bethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer.Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.

———, 1953. “I Was Inside a Flying Saucer.”Saucers 1, 2: 4–5.

Davis, Isabel L., 1957. “Meet the Extraterrestrial.”Fantastic Universe 8, 5 (November): 31–59.

Moseley, James W., 1961. “Recent News Stories:1961 Giant Rock Convention Is Disappointing.”Saucer News 8, 4 (December): 12–13.

Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying SaucerPilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

Bird aliensA French businessman who insisted onanonymity confided a strange tale to ufologistLyonel Trigano about a decidedly unsettlingencounter on a rural road in Var one dark,rainy night in November 1962. As herounded a curve, he saw, some fifty to sixtyfeet ahead of him, a group of figures standingclose to one another in the middle of thehighway. He slowed down, and as he did so,the group “jerkily” broke into two parts.

“My window was down,” he related, “and Ileaned my head out slightly to see what wasthe matter; it was then that I saw beasts, somekind of bizarre animals, with the heads ofbirds, and covered in some sort of plumage,which were hurling themselves from two sidestoward my car.”

Shocked and frightened, he quickly rolledup the window and accelerated. After movinga few hundred feet to what he thought was asafe distance, he looked back to see these“nightmarish beings” flapping what looked tobe wings and heading toward a glowing, dark-blue object hovering over a field on the otherside of the road. The UFO looked like twoupside-down plates placed over each other.

When the creatures or beings reached theUFO, they “were literally sucked into the un-derpart of the machine as if by a whirlwind.”

A dull thudding sound followed, and theUFO streaked away.

The witness told Trigano that he had saidlittle to others about the experience for fear ofbeing thought mad.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kind; Moth-man

Further ReadingTrigano, Lyonel, 1968. “Strange Encounter in Var.”

Flying Saucer Review 14, 6 (November/Decem-ber): 18.

Birmingham’s arkA bizarre experience is recorded in a fifteen-page document left by a nineteenth-centuryAustralian, Frederick William Birmingham,who lived in Parramatta, New South Wales.Birmingham was an engineer, surveyor, andalderman for the city, today a suburb of Syd-ney. His tale is reminiscent in some ways ofthe flying-saucer contactee tales that wouldcirculate decades later.

The document came into the hands of awell-known Australian ufologist, Bill Chalker,in 1975. Investigating its background, hetraced it to a teacher named Haywood, wholived at the location where Birmingham(whose existence and occupation Chalker wasable to verify) was dwelling when his en-counter occurred. Haywood, apparently, latergave it to another family, which had had themanuscript in its possession since at least theearly 1940s and showed it to Chalker. Chalkercould find no evidence that it was a recent lit-erary or historical hoax.

Birmingham wrote that on the evening ofJuly 25, 1868, “I had a wonderful dream, a vi-sion,” while standing under the verandah ofthe cottage he rented. Looking up into the sky,he saw “the Lord Bishop of Syd n e y’s head inthe air looking intently upon me in a frow n i n ghalf laughing mood.” As it passed in an east-erly direction, it faded out, then re a p p e a re db r i e fly twice more. “I retraced the course thehead had taken and just in the spot where Ifirst saw the head I saw an ‘A rk,’” he wrote. Ashe stood and studied it, he said aloud to him-s e l f, “Well, that is a beautiful ve s s e l . ”

44 Bird aliens

At that moment he heard a voice to hisright and just a little behind him. It said,“T h a t’s a machine to go through the air.” T h espeaker was someone Birmingham thought ofas a “spirit,” looking like a “neutral shade andthe shape of a man.” The ark was brown incolor “with faint, flitting shades of steelb l u e . . . like . . . magnified scales on a largefish.” After a while Birmingham replied tothe spirit. He re m a rked that the ark lookedm o re like a ship meant for sailing on water;in any event, he had never seen anything sob e a u t i f u l .

He accepted an invitation to board the ve-hicle. He found himself floating through theair in the spirit’s company. When they reachedthe upper part of the ark, they entered the“pilot house” by walking down three steepsteps. Inside the barely furnished room was atable situated two feet from the wall. Some-thing like an oilskin covered the table. Birm-ingham stood at the rear end, and, not faraway, the spirit held papers in its hand. Onepaper was covered with “figures and formu-lae.” After Birmingham asked if the paperswere for him, the spirit replied slowly and em-phatically, “It is absolutely necessary that youshould know these things, but you can studythem as you go on.”

Birmingham, apparently not knowingwhat to say, looked down at his hands. Whenhe raised his head, the spirit was gone. Hestood alone inside the strange ship. In hismanuscript he recorded this ambiguous con-clusion to the encounter: “So I fell, I suppose,into my usual sleeping state, and waking nextmorning deeply impressed with that vision ofthe night.”

The following January, at work on an engi-neering problem, Birmingham was surprisedto see a formula that he had first seen on thepaper the spirit had shown him. It had to dowith centrifugal pumps.

One day in 1873, at sunset, Birminghamsaw three small “clouds” suddenly appear. Two“screws” extended from one. Between them, ashape “like two flat necks on a turtle-shapedbody” came into view, then disappeared, only

to reappear soon afterward. Finally, “the twobig . . . screws folded up like the arms of abear and lost their shape in the middle cloud”(Chalker, 1996).

The manuscript indicates that Birminghamhad become obsessed with the ark and its se-crets. He died in 1893, however, without everbeing able to unlock them.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingChalker, Bill, 1996. The Oz Files: The Australian

UFO Story. Potts Point, New South Wales, Aus-tralia: Duffy and Snellgrove.

———, 1992. “UFOs in Australia and New Ze a l a n dt h rough 1959.” In Je rome Clark. The Em e r g e n c eof a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Be g i n n i n gT h rough 1959—The UFO En c yclopedia, Vo l u m eTw o, 333–356. De t roit, MI: Om n i g r a p h i c s .

Blowing CaveOne of the odder stories related to hollowearth lore is set in Blowing Cave, near Cush-man, Arkansas, where a man named GeorgeD. Wight is said to have found a subterraneancivilization and proven the Shaver Mystery.Though Wight disappeared, his story survivesin a diary he allegedly wrote.

In the 1950s, Wight was a UFO buff fromMichigan. Wight knew of Richard Shaver’sclaims, published in the 1940s in the Ziff-Davis science-fiction magazines Amazing Sto -ries and Fantastic Adventures, that the rem-nants of two advanced races, tero and dero(good and evil respectively), lived in vast cav-erns under Earth’s surface. Though Wight wasskeptical of these claims, he had an interest incave-exploring that he indulged with DavidL., for whose mimeographed saucer newslet-ter Wight contributed a regular column. Theydid their spelunking with three other men. Allof them were acquainted with Charles A.Marcoux, another columnist for the maga-zine. Unlike the others, Marcoux was an ob-sessed believer in Shaverian concepts, to theextent that he gave occasional public lectureson the subject. The spelunkers sometimes at-tended those lectures but considered his be-liefs absurd.

Blowing Cave 45

In 1966, the group, now consisting oftwelve persons, went down to Arkansas to ex-plore Blowing Cave on a week-long expedi-tion. On their return, members wrote lettersto Ray Palmer, once editor of Amazing Storiesand Shaver’s principal promoter, claiming thatthey had encountered intelligent beings—Shaver’s teros—deep inside the cavern. Palmerdid not reply. Apparently a few months later,Wight went back and chose to stay with theunderearth people. He returned in 1967 togive a written account to David L., who bythis time had left the UFO field and no longerwanted to be publicly associated with it.Wight asked L. to pass on the diary to CharlesMarcoux. Wight felt that in ridiculing his be-liefs he had wronged him and wanted to pro-vide him with the proof that Shaver was right.He then returned to his tero friends and hasnot been seen since.

David L., however, had long since losttrack of Marcoux, and it was not until thir-teen years later that he came upon his name.He tracked him down and handed him themanuscript. Its effect on Marcoux was electri-fying, and it set in motion the events thatwould eventually lead to his premature death.

The manuscript related that while explor-ing Blowing Cave, the group spotted a light atthe end of a tunnel. As the spelunkers ap-proached it, Wight noticed a narrow crevice,just big enough for him to squeeze inside it.There he found clearly artificial steps. Hecalled to his friends, and they climbedthrough the opening. On the other side of it,the opening expanded, and they were able towalk upright. “Suddenly,” Wight wrote, “wecame into a large tunnel/corridor, abouttwenty feet wide and just as high. All the wallsand the floor were smooth, and the ceilinghad a curved dome shape. We know that thiswas not a freak of nature, but manmade. Wehad accidentally stumbled into the secret cav-ern world” (Toronto, n.d.).

Soon they encountered blue-skinned buto t h e rwise humanlike individuals. The strangerssaid that they had permitted the crew to fin dthe tunnel and enter it because they had instru-

ments that measured people’s emotions; the ex-p l o rers we re determined to have good inten-tions. They learned that the tunnels went onfor hundreds of miles and led to undere a rt hcities populated by entities that included ser-pentlike cre a t u res and Sasquatchlike hairybipeds. Soon after their initial conve r s a t i o n ,Wight and his companions we re taken to akind of elevator that led them to the under-e a rt h e r s’ place of residence, a city made of glass.It turned out that their guides we re No a h’s di-rect descendants, who had found their way un-d e r g round in the wake of the flood. T h e re theyfound supertechnology and the remains of ana d vanced civilization, along with teros. Ap p a r-ently at some point, Wi g h t’s group met thet e ros who had been there all along.

This was not the only trip the group tookto Blowing Cave. Unable to get anybody onthe surface to believe their story, Wight andhis friends vowed to return with conclusiveproof. During one expedition, they captured agiant cave moth, preserved it in a bag, andbrought it up with them. When they openedthe bag, however, the sunlight disintegratedthe insect into a fine dust.

Not long afterward, Wight decided to staywith the underearth people. According to onesource, “all evidence of [his] ever existingbegan to mysteriously disappear from the sur-face. Birth certificates, school records, com-puter records, bank records, etc., all seemed tovanish, apparently the work of someone in avery influential position” (Untitled, n.d.).Other members of the group made anothertrip into the cave, where they saw their friendfor the last time. Wight returned once to thesurface to meet David L.

In 1980, Marcoux saw the manuscript andread Wight’s words addressed to him: “Yes,Charles, all that you told us is true. . . . I oweyou a debt of gratitude, because the Teroshealed my crippled leg, instantly. I am gratefulfor more than just that, and I have left thesenotes and somewhere a map so that you, too,can . . . visit with these people. . . . Maybe wewill meet here some day” (Toronto, n.d.).Marcoux set about organizing an expedition,

46 Blowing Cave

soliciting members in such small-circulationhollow-earth publications as Shavertron andThe Hollow Hassle.

Marcoux and his wife moved to Cushmanin 1983. There, in November, as he was visit-ing the land around the cave, a swarm of beesdescended on him. The resulting shock andtrauma precipitated a heart attack, and hedied on the spot.

Some hollow-earth enthusiasts speculatedthat sinister forces that wanted to keep thecaves a secret had caused the attack. Otherssaw it as just a tragic accident. In any case,Marcoux’s death ended efforts to exploreBlowing Cave in search of underearthers.

See Also: Hollow earth; Shaver mysteryFurther ReadingTo ronto, Richard, n.d. “The Sh a ver My s t e ry.” http://

w w w. p a r a s c o p e . c o m / n b / a rt i c l e s / s h a ve r / My s t e ry.htm.

Untitled, n.d. http://www.rcbbs.com/docs/empire7.txt.

BonnieIn 1977, William Hamilton, a California maninterested in UFOs, met “a young, very prettyblond girl with almond-shaped eyes and per-fect small teeth.” Bonnie, whom Hamiltonjudged sincere and sane, told him she wasborn in 1951 in the Lemurian city of Telos,located inside an artificial domelike cavern amile beneath Mount Shasta on California’snorthern border.

Bonnie told him that she, her parents, hertwo sisters, and her two cousins move freelyback and forth between our society and theirnative city. They also travel to other subter-ranean Lemurian and Atlantean cities, via atube transit train system that travels as fast as2,500 miles per hour. The Lemurians are alsoable to fly into outer space in saucerlike vehi-cles, and they interact with visiting extrater-restrials. Telos has a population of one and ahalf million who live a communal existencewithout money. She warned Hamilton that bythe end of the century, Earth’s axis will shift.The result will be massive devastation andhuge loss of life. On the other side of this ter-

rible event, human beings would cometogether as one and fashion a utopian society“on a higher plane of vibrations” (Beckley,1993).

In Bonnie’s account the Lemurians came toEarth two hundred thousand years ago fromthe planet Aurora. Atlantis (in the Atlantic)and Lemuria (in the Pacific) fought a waragainst each other twenty-five thousand yearsago, but it was a natural catastrophe thatbrought Lemuria to the ocean bottom tenthousand years later. Atlantis was destroyed afew centuries later when Atlantean scientistsconducted irresponsible experiments withcosmic, energy-generating “fire crystals.”

See Also: Atlantis; Lemuria; Mount ShastaFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1993. The Smoky God

and Other Inner Earth Mysteries. New Brunswick,NJ: Inner Light Publications.

Boys from TopsideWilbert B. Smith (1910–1962), an engineerwho worked for Canada’s Department ofTransport (DOT), believed himself to be incontact with philosophically and scientificallyinclined extraterrestrials. He called them the“Boys from Topside.”

It is unclear when these psychic messagesbegan, but it could have been as early as 1950.Smith was at first circumspect about them,though he was willing to acknowledge an in-terest in UFO investigation. In late 1950, hesecured access to use DOT laboratory andfield facilities during off-hours in an effort togather technical data about UFO sightings.(According to one source, Smith was actingunder the guidance of space people all thewhile, though he said nothing about them tohis superiors.) Smith hoped for a break-through sufficient to overthrow conventionaltechnology and put in its place a wholly newone. He called his work “Project Magnet,” re-flecting his conviction that flying saucers flewalong magnetic fields. In 1952 Smith partici-pated in a small UFO study group puttogether by the Canadian government’s De-

Boys from Topside 47

fense Research Board. The following year,Smith released Project Magnet’s findings,which were—perhaps not surprisingly—thatUFOs performed in ways that are “difficult toreconcile . . . with the capabilities of our tech-nology”; thus, “we are forced to the conclu-sion that the vehicles are probably extra-ter-restrial” (Smith, 1953).

He urged his superiors to set up a monitor-ing station that would check for UFO activityover a twenty-four-hour period. They agreedto the proposal and provided a DOT-ownedhut on Shirley’s Bay, some ten miles west ofOttawa. The installation contained an ionos-pheric reactor, an electronic sound-measure-ment device, a gamma-ray detector, agravimeter, a magnetometer, and a radio. If apassing UFO set off any of these, an alarmwould sound. Two government scientists andtwo civilian astronomers worked with Smith.This work was done on their own time, butthe “flying saucer observatory” garnered muchembarrassing publicity for the Canadian gov-ernment. It was closed at the end of August1954. Even so, Smith was privately assuredthat he could continue UFO research so longas it was not at the taxpayer’s expense; he wasalso welcome to use government equipment.

Because of his credentials and his employer,conservative ufologists who otherwise avoidedpersons associated with contact claims wel-comed Smith into their ranks, ignoring, asmuch as possible, his private assertions aboutthe Boys from Topside. Through his own andothers’ psychic contacts, he conversed with ex-traterrestrials and attempted to learn fromthem. In a letter to the prominent (and out-spokenly anticontactee) ufologist Donald E.Keyhoe on December 11, 1955, Smith wrote,“I have learned a great deal, but I am a smallchild attempting to assimilate a collegecourse. Believe me, I have been shownglimpses of a philosophy and technology al-most beyond comprehension.”

By now, Smith had largely abandonedmore conventional techniques of UFO inves-tigating, and he was entirely focused on con-tactees, whom he quizzed intensely and whose

stories he compared before deciding on theirvalidity. At least some of them, he thought,were telling the truth. He was gratified thatthe space people were patient enough to putup with his methods. In an article in En-gland’s Flying Saucer Review, after he wentpublic with his extraterrestrial connections, hedeclared, “I began for the first time in my lifeto realize the basic ‘Oneness’ of the Universeand all that is in it” (Smith, 1958).

In 1956, Smith formed the contactee-ori-ented Ottawa Flying Saucer Club. When notgrilling contactees or taking direct messageshimself, he occupied himself with sky watchesin parks and rural areas with like-mindedfriends. He lectured and wrote about his be-liefs in saucer magazines, and he even spokeopenly with reporters. He died of intestinalcancer on December 27, 1962.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, and Ottawa New Sciences

Club, eds., n.d. The Boys from Topside. New York:UFO Review.

Cooper, Philip, 1959. “Men from Mars among Us—He’s Talked to Them!” Ottawa Citizen (April 14).

“Flying Saucers Project Denied,” 1953. New YorkTimes (November 14).

Gross, Loren E., 1982. UFOs: A History—1950: Au -gust–December. Fremont, CA: self-published.

Nixon, Stuart, 1973. “W. B. Smith—The Man be-hind Project Magnet.” UFO Quarterly Review 1,1 (January/March): 2–11.

Smith, Wilbert B., 1953. Project Magnet Report. Ot-tawa, Ontario: Department of Transport.

———, 1954. Project Magnet, the Canadian FlyingSaucer Study. Ottawa, Ontario: self-published.

———, 1958. “The Philosophy of the Saucers.” Fly -ing Saucer Review 4, 3 (May/June): 10–11.

Brodie’s derosIn the mythology of the Shaver mystery, thecreation of Richard Sharpe Shaver, deros arecannibalistic, sadistic idiots who live in cavesunderneath the earth. As the degenerated de-scendants of an advanced race of extraterres-trials that thousands of years ago colonizedour planet, they have access to the elders’ ad-vanced technology. They use it, however, fordestructive and even perverted purposes on

48 Brodie’s deros

each other and, most of all, on surface hu-mans, whom they sometimes kidnap for tor-ture and other unpleasant purposes. The bulkof the Shaver mystery material was published,mostly as true, in two science-fiction maga-zines, Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adven -tures, in the mid- to late 1940s.

Few other people claim to have encoun-tered deros. The late John J. Robinson, a NewJersey man with a longstanding interest inUFOs and the paranormal, often told thestory of Steve Brodie, who had his own horri-fying, and possibly ultimately fatal, dealingswith the deros.

Ac c o rding to Robinson, in 1944 he wasliving on the third floor of a Jersey Cityhouse. Di rectly beneath him on the secondfloor was a re c l u s i ve individual, St e ve Bro d i e ,who claimed to be an artist. Over time,Robinson won his trust, and the two oftenspoke. Among Bro d i e’s quirks was his ave r-sion to meat; and more unusual, as Ro b i n s o nrecalled, “he seemed to be afraid that some-one might be attempting to sneak up behindhim.” When he walked on the street, hewalked in the middle of the street, appar-ently out of fear that someone might jumpout of an alley or a doorw a y. On several oc-casions, Robinson watched Brodie paint.Sometimes the artist would enter a trancelikestate and create we i rd, otherworldly land-scapes that looked nothing like the paintingshe did in ord i n a ry consciousness. Askedw h e re these images came from, Bro d i ereplied, “I don’t know. I feel as if I paintthese pictures from memory. It’s like I canclose my eyes and let it.”

Once Brodie seemed startled when he sawRobinson with an issue of Amazing Stories inhis coat pocket. Robinson, who was closelyfollowing the Shaver mystery tales the maga-zine was running, launched into an explana-tion of Shaver’s claims. When he heard theword “dero,” Brodie blanched. “He writes ofthe dero!” he exclaimed. Robinson persuadedBrodie to explain his remark. Reluctantly,after securing assurances that Robinson wouldnot ridicule him, he related something that

had happened to him and a friend seven yearsbefore.

The two had gone to a western state insearch of semiprecious stones. Local peoplewarned them to stay away from a certaindesert mesa because several individuals whohad gone there were never seen again. Disre-garding these words of caution, the youngmen repaired to the site and spent the nextfew days energetically stone-hunting. Finally,one day, hearing his companion shout, Brodielooked up to see a figure in a black cowlstanding at the base of the mesa. Another fig-ure joined the first. The first of them pointeda rodlike device at Brodie, who abruptly felthimself paralyzed. His friend began to run,and the other figure pointed a rod at him. Tohis horror the smell of burning human fleshrose up in Brodie’s nostrils. He never saw hisfriend again.

A third figure, holding what looked likeearphones, approached Brodie and thenwalked past him. He felt something beingplaced just beneath his ears just before he lostconsciousness. “At this point in his narrative,”Robinson said, “Steve showed me why hewore his hair long at the back of his head. Be-hind each ear at the base of the parietal bonesof his skull were bare, seared, scarred patchesof skin upon which no hair could grow. Bothof these areas behind the ears were a littlesmaller than the size of a silver dollar and wereperfectly circular. Steve said they were themarks of a dero slave!”

In the ordeal that followed, Brodie wasonly intermittently conscious. On three orfour occasions, he awoke to find himself in acage with other human beings. They told himthat he was “in the caves,” and they wereunder the control of the “deros,” who couldsnatch any human being off the face of theearth if they so chose. Each time it became ev-ident that he was conscious, a black-cowledfigure would zap him back into oblivion.

Then one day he found himself walkingdown a street in New York City with no ideahow he had gotten there. He was dressed inhis prospecting clothes. His personal items

Brodie’s deros 49

were still in his pockets, including a hundreddollars in bills. Though to his awareness onlya day had passed, he soon learned that it wastwo years later.

Brodie said that ever since he could not eatmeat. The very scent of it nearly made him ill.

Robinson had observed that Brodie wasnot a reader, and he was certain that he hadnot concocted a tale from reading the Shaverseries.

Not long afterward, business concernsforced Robinson to move from his Jersey Cityapartment. He fell out of contact with Brodiefor six months. When he came back for avisit, Brodie was gone. Robinson talked with amutual acquaintance who had his own strangestory. He said he had seen Brodie on a train inArizona. When he had spoken to Brodie, hehad not responded or even acknowledged hispresence. He seemed to be in a “stupor,” theman thought, though Robinson knew Brodiewas not a drinker. The train stopped at a smalltown, and when the train resumed its journey,Brodie was no longer on it. Robinson saw thisas evidence that the deros had reclaimed theirvictim.

After relating this anecdote on Long JohnNebel’s popular radio talk show on NewYork’s WOR one night in March 1957,Robinson went to work the next day and wassurprised when a business associate confidedhis own experience. He said that maybeBrodie’s experience explained something thathad happened to him in 1942, when he wasseventeen years old. He had been visiting hisfriend Fred when they decided to go to a“haunted mine” nearby. Supposedly, it had along history of accidents, disasters, and unex-plained disappearances of miners. Undeterred,the two climbed over a pile of debris to get toone side of the entrance. There they wereshocked to observe a grotesque entity, fourand a half feet tall, with a bulky body. It letout a soul-chilling scream and chased the boysback to town. They took refuge in a movietheater. Even so, they swore they could seedark forms moving up and down the aisles asif looking for them. That night they thought

they saw the figure sitting in a tree near thehouse.

Later, Fred vanished without a trace.Searchers came upon his bicycle near thehaunted mine, and nothing further waslearned of his fate. “To this day,” the man toldRobinson, “I am afraid that whoever or what-ever it was that got Fred will find me.”

See Also: Shaver mysteryFurther ReadingSteiger, Brad, and Joan Whritenour, 1968. New

UFO Breakthrough. New York: Award Books.

Brown’s MartiansC l a i rvoyant Courtney Brown re p o rts that hisp s ychic probing of Mars has uncove red thes t a rtling truth that Mars was, and is, inhab-ited. Brown came to this conclusion whileusing psychic talents to explore the Cyd o n i aregion of the planet’s surface, where some havefelt that enigmatic artifacts, including the so-called Ma rtian Face—an alleged stru c t u re saidto depict human feature s — a re situated.

The Ma rtians now live underground. Mi l-lions of years ago, they lived on the surf a c ebut we re nearly driven to extinction when animmense asteroid passed through the atmos-p h e re and seve rely damaged it. The atmos-p h e re continued to deteriorate until what lit-tle was left of it was sucked into space. Ma n yMa rtians died, but their race was pre s e rve dwhen Grays—the gray-skinned humanoidre p o rted in UFO abduction cases—inter-vened. They collected the Ma rtian DNA ands t o red it and genetically altered the surv i v i n ginhabitants of the Red Planet. They putthem into underground cities, where theyl i ve now.

The Martians’ problems are far from over,however. The genetic alterations have not en-tirely worked, and their own technology hasnot been able to overcome the existing short-comings. More and more Martians are look-ing to Earth as their potential home. Accord-ing to Brown, the Martians are much likehuman beings in appearance but differentenough so that humans and Martians would

50 Brown’s Martians

never be confused. They have light skin, eyesbigger than humans’ and no hair.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Allingham’s Mart-ian; Aurora Martian; Dentons’s Martians andVenusians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga; Martianbees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Shaw’s Mar-tians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingBrown, Courtney, 1996. Cosmic Voyage: Scientific Re -

mote Viewing, Extraterrestrials, and a Message forMankind. New York: Dutton Books.

BuckyBuck Nelson, a sixty-five-year-old bachelorwho lived on a remote farm in the OzarkMountains of Missouri, met Bucky of Venuson March 5, 1955. But his first sighting ofspaceships took place when three of themhovered over his farm on July 3, 1954, andone shot a beam of light at him, healing hislumbago and restoring his eyesight to the de-gree that he no longer needed glasses. The fol-lowing year on February 1, a saucer returned.This time a voice, speaking in clear English,came through a loudspeaker to ask if Nelsonwere friendly. The voice went on to explainthat the saucer’s crew was from Venus. Nelsonglimpsed three human-looking, muscularmen inside the craft. Around midnight onMarch 5, the three men, with their dog, 385-pound Big Bo, entered Nelson’s house andconversed with him. All three men were nude,carrying their clothes on their shoulders; be-fore putting their uniforms back on, they ex-plained that they wanted to assure Nelsonthat except for their place of origin they werenormal men. One of them said his name wasBucky.

Bucky—sometimes referred to in subse-quent accounts as “Little Bucky” to distin-guish him from the much older Buck—saidhe had been born nineteen years earlier on aColorado farm. In 1940, a Venusian spaceshiplanded on the family property, and membersof the crew offered to fly the whole family totheir home planet for a visit. Only Bucky,then four years old, wanted to go. The Venu-sians agreed to return one day when he was

old enough to make a mature decision on thematter. They came back in 1953, and Buckyaccompanied them to Venus, where he hadresided for two years before Buck Nelson methim. Besides Bucky, Nelson’s visitors includedBob Solomon, a two-hundred-year-old Venu-sian, and an old man who, his age notwith-standing, was a trainee learning how to fly aspacecraft. After an hour the visitors left, butnot before telling Nelson that they would flyhim to other planets, Nelson wrote later, “if Iwould tell about it to the world” (Nelson,1956).

Around midnight on April 24, Bucky andhis friends arrived to take Nelson into space.He and his dog, Teddy, went to Mars. ThereNelson ate a delicious meal and talked withthe friendly human inhabitants, and then theship went on to the Moon for another mealand a good rest. He, Teddy, and Big Bo wentfor a short walk before embarking for Venus.During one brief stop they saw the “ruler” ofthe region engaged in painting. He was clad,like Nelson himself, in bib overalls. Venus,like Mars and the Moon, turned out to be apleasant place without war or conflict, wherepeople lived in harmony under the TwelveLaws of God (essentially the Ten Command-ments and a couple of verses from the NewTestament). On Venus, the races were strictlysegregated. Nelson also was told that his ownparents were Venusians.

Bucky became a regular visitor at Nelson’shouse. They spent Christmas 1956 together.On another occasion, he brought a fullycooked Venusian turkey with him. On yet an-other Christmas, Bucky took Nelson to hishome on Venus.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nelsonwas a minor celebrity on the contactee scene.At one point, he sold packets of hair reportedto be from Big Bo, who, he said, had been leftin his custody for a time. New York City radiopersonality Long John Nebel, who met Nel-son at the Fourth Interplanetary SpacecraftConvention at Giant Rock, California, in1957, said: “It is my impression that BuckNelson has made very little money out of his

Bucky 51

wild, if somewhat crude, stories, but there arethose who believe in him, many for just thatreason. Frankly, I suspect that he wouldchange this aspect of his activities if he could”(Nebel, 1961).

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingDean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip -

tures. New York: Vantage Press.Nebel, Long John, 1961. The Way Out World. Engle-

wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Nelson, Buck, 1956. My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and

Venus. Mountain View, MO: self-published.———, 1955. “A Strange Tale from Missouri.” Fly -

ing Saucer Review 1, 2 (May/June): 4–5.

Buff Ledge abductionThe UFO abduction that re p o rtedly oc-c u r red at Buff Ledge, north of Bu r l i n g t o n ,Vermont, is unusual in that it invo l ved twopersons who, though separated by years anddistance, provided strikingly similar accountsto an inve s t i g a t o r.

The incident took place at Buff LedgeCamp, a since-closed girls’ camp. The twowitnesses have never been publicly identified,but astronomer and ufologist Walter N.Webb, who spent years probing the episode,gives them the pseudonyms Michael Lappand Janet Cornell. On the evening of August7, 1968, Lapp and Cornell, who worked ascounselors, were relaxing on an L-shapeddock that jutted one hundred feet out intoLake Champlain and which was largely con-cealed by the bluff from the view of others.The camp was nearly deserted; most campersand counselors were off on a trip elsewhere.

Lapp and Cornell witnessed the approachof a bright light that soon resolved into awhite, glowing, cigar-shaped object. Soonthree smaller white lights emerged from thebottom right side. As the last light came intoview, the cigar-shaped object sailed away. Thesmall UFOs executed various maneuversthrough the sky, moving close enough so thatthe observers could see that they were domedand disc-shaped. After five minutes, two of

them departed in opposite directions, to thenorth and south, emitting sounds like “thou-sands of tuning forks,” as Lapp would put it.The remaining UFO flew toward them, andnow it looked the size of a small house.Abruptly it streaked upward, vanished, thenreappeared to plummet into the water about amile away.

Soon the UFO came back to the surfaceand flew, at an altitude of fifteen feet abovethe water, toward the witnesses again. Itstopped some sixty feet from them, and nowit was so near that Lapp could see right intoits transparent dome, where he was shockedto observe two large-headed figures, short instature with big eyes and small mouths, whowere clad in gray or silver uniforms.

Turning to his companion, Lapp saw awoman in an apparent trance. She did not actas if she had heard him when he spoke to her.At that point Lapp decided to try an experi-ment, and he addressed the entities. Whowere they, he asked, and why were they here?To his surprise a voice with a “feminine qual-ity” spoke inside his head to assure him theymeant no harm. Over the next few minutes,as Lapp spoke his questions aloud, and thealien woman replied telepathically, he wastold that the aliens had “returned after thefirst atomic bomb exploded” and that theywere seeking some form of energy aboutwhich the voice provided no details. Theywere also engaged in war with others of theirrace, characterizing these enemies as “evil.”When Lapp asked where they came from, heheard a name he could not pronounce or sub-sequently remember.

Finally, with the two beings disappearingbelow the deck, the UFO positioned itself tenfeet above the witnesses’ heads. A beam shonedown on them, a kind of “liquid light” thatfelt weirdly as if it were shining inside Lapp’shead. He and Cornell fell down on the deckas voices and machine sounds echoed.

The next thing they knew, it was dark.They were lying on the deck as two girls atopthe bluff were shouting about a UFO. The

52 Buff Ledge abduction

object was ascending and shooting beams oflight toward the girls.

The following evening Lapp drove home totell his parents, who responded with skepti-cism, about his sighting. He also informed hisgirlfriend, who was similarly unreceptive. Hedid not discuss the incident with Cornell andsoon lost contact with her. In the years ahead,he had dreams about being onboard the UFOand developed an interest in mysticism andreligion. In 1978 he discussed his experiencewith Webb, then an astronomer employed byBoston’s Hayden Planetarium.

Subsequently, Webb traced Cornell to At-lanta. She confirmed the sighting though allshe could recall of it was that a “big light” hadapproached them, they had fallen down, andsome sort of mental block had ensued. Webbhad refrained from sharing the details Lappprovided him; still, Cornell’s account matchedLapp’s to the extent that her memory allowed.

Separately placed under hypnosis, the tworecounted an abduction experience. Lapp“re m e m b e re d” standing on the deck withone of the humanoids looking into space ando b s e rving Earth, Moon, stars, and the cigar-shaped craft. Cornell was stretched on a tablein the lower level as two aliens conductedwhat seemed to be a physical examination onh e r. Lapp was put on a table next to hers andlost consciousness. On re c overing, he foundthat the ship had entered a hangar that wasinside yet a larger one. He and an alien com-panion sailed on a beam of light through awall. An elevator took them to an enormousdomed room occupied by many humanoids,who we re watching something out of Lapp’sline of vision. Taken into another room, hehad a vision of an unknown landscape occu-pied by distraught, weeping human beings.He passed out. When he awoke, he seemedto be falling through space, while a globe fullof television screens with his picture on eacha p p e a red in front of him. He steppedt h rough one of the screens, and on the otherside of it, he and Cornell we re back on thed o c k .

Cornell’s story was less detailed thanLapp’s. She remembered being suddenlyaboard the UFO and described the entitiesnearly exactly as her companion had. Her “re-call” of the vehicle’s interior matched Lapp’s.

Webb devoted five years to the investiga-tion in an effort to substantiate anything thatcould be substantiated. To his disappoint-ment, he found no one, who had been at thecamp in August 1968, who could corroboratethe UFO sighting. Background checks andpsychological tests attested to Lapp’s and Cor-nell’s sincerity and honesty.

See Also: Abductions by UFOsFurther ReadingWebb, Walter N., 1994. Encounter at Buff Ledge: A

UFO Case History. Chicago: J. Allen Hynek Cen-ter for UFO Studies.

BuniansAhmad Jamaludin, a ufologist and veterinarysurgeon who lives in Malaysia, says that noth-ing precisely like the abduction phenomenonknown to his Western colleagues seems to beoccurring in his country, but there are tradi-tions of kidnappings by what are called the“Bunian people.” The Bunians are theMalaysian version of fairies. Like fairies else-where, the Bunians exist not only in oral tra-dition, but also in what are alleged to be ac-tual experiences.

One such incident is said to have takenplace in June 1982. A twelve-year-old girl,Maswati Pilus, had gone one morning to theriver behind her house, intending to washclothes there. She encountered a small femalebeing whose sudden appearance had a strangeeffect on the girl’s consciousness. She felt as ifonly she and the being existed. There were noother sounds or sights. The being offered totake her to another land, and Maswati, whofelt no fear, found herself looking at a bright,beautiful landscape. She sensed that time waspassing, but the events that occurred duringher experience were blurred and vague in hermemory.

Bunians 53

Meanwhile, her relatives were looking fran-tically for her. Two days later, they came uponher in a location near her house where theyhad already searched more than once. She wasunconscious but soon recovered.

54 Bunians

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Fairies encounteredFurther ReadingRandles, Jenny, 1988. Abduction: Over 200 Docu -

mented UFO Kidnappings Investigated. London:Robert Hale.

Calf-rustling aliensOn April 23, 1897, a Kansas newspaper, theYates Center Farmers Advocate, printed an affi-davit attesting to an instance of interplanetarycalf-rustling. There were three witnesses, themost prominent of whom was Alex Hamil-ton, a rancher from LeRoy, who soberly re-lated the following:

We we re awakened by a noise among thec a t t l e . . . . Upon going to the door I saw to myutter amazement that an airship was slowly de-scending upon my cow lot about forty rods [sixh u n d red feet] from the house. Calling my ten-ant, Gid He s l i p, and my son Wall, we seize dsome axes and ran to the corral. Meanwhile theship had been gently descending until it wasnot more than thirty feet above the ground andwe came within fifty yards of it. It consisted of ag reat cigar-shaped portion, possibly three hun-d red feet long, with a carriage underneath. T h ecarriage was made of glass or some other trans-p a rent material. It was brightly lighted withinand eve rything was plainly visible—it was occu-pied by some of the strangest beings I ever saw.T h e re we re two men, a woman, and three chil-d ren. They we re jabbering together but wecould not understand a syllable they said.

The occupants suddenly turned a search-light on the trio, and the ship got closer to

them. The witnesses then noticed a calfcaught in the fence, with “a cable . . . fastenedin a slip knot around her neck one end pass-ing up to the vessel and tangled in wire.” Theytried to cut the cable, but when they failed,they watched as it and the ship sailed away.The following day a neighbor found the calf ’sbutchered remains in a field where there was,Hamilton said, no “track of any kind on thesoft ground.”

Appended to the published account was astatement by some of the county’s leading cit-izens who attested to Hamilton’s truthfulnessand good character. The story was publishedduring a nationwide wave of sightings of mys-terious “airships” (UFOs). Some newspapershad speculated, seriously or otherwise, thatextraterrestrial visitors were flying the ships.When Hamilton’s story was rediscovereddecades later, after UFOs had entered popularconsciousness, it was widely published in theUFO literature, which cited it as an exampleof an early close encounter of the third kind.

In 1976, however, writer Jerome Clark col-lected testimony from an elderly woman whohad known the Hamilton family. She recalledhearing the elder Hamilton tell his wife thathe and his friends from a local liars’ club, oneof them the newspaper editor, had made upthe story. Several years later UFO historian

C

55

Thomas E. Bullard came upon a letter Hamil-ton had written to a Missouri paper, theAtchison County Mail (May 7, 1897), cheer-fully confessing that there was no truth to thestory.

Many years later, psychologist Susan MariePowers studied the claims of a woman whoclaimed to have been abducted by extraterres-trials on a number of occasions. Once, whileaboard a UFO, the occupants would lasso acow, take it inside the craft, and extract bloodfrom it. “I watched [as] the blood went into atube and then into a big tank,” the woman re-ported. “The cow’s eyes would glaze over.Then I knew she was dead. We would fly backand drop her in the pasture with the othercows. The little people do not eat meat. Theytake the blood home with them” (Powers,1994).

Another abductee, a Texas woman namedJudy Doraty, related under hypnosis her al-leged observation of a levitation of a calf intoa UFO one night in 1973. The gray-skinnedhumanoid crew cut up the animal while still

alive, apparently as part of its study of the ef-fects of pollution on earthly creatures. MyrnaHansen told a similar story under hypnosis, ofan abduction in New Mexico in 1980, duringwhich a calf was brought into a UFO and mu-tilated while still alive.

According to ufologist Linda MoultonHowe, a rancher near Waco, Texas, cameupon two greenish humanoids with almondeyes and big, egg-shaped heads as they werecarting away one of his calves. Terrified, hefled the scene. When he had recovered hisnerve a couple of days later, he, his wife, andhis son went to the scene. There they found,in Howe’s words, “the calf ’s hide pulled backover the skull and folded inside out on theground. . . . About a foot from the emptyhide was a complete calf backbone withoutribs” (Howe, 1989).

In July 1983, Ron and Paula Watson, aMissouri farm couple, spotted a landed UFOin a pasture. A bipedal “lizard-type crea-ture”—known to ufologists as a reptoid—stood nearby. Through binoculars the Wat-

56 Calf-rustling aliens

An example of cattle mutilation at Morrill Farm, Piermont, New Hampshire, September 27, 1978 (LorenColeman/Fortean Picture Library)

sons watched as two other beings, white-skinned humanoids in silver suits, ran theirfingers over a black cow, which, though alive,was immobile as if paralyzed. Suddenly thecow floated up the ramp into the UFO, whichthen, weirdly, seemed to fade into the hill,along with the three aliens.

See Also: Aurora Martian; Close encounters of thethird kind; Hopkins’s Martians; Michigan giant;Reptoids; Shaw’s Martians

Further ReadingBullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A

Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airshipsand Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers andPeriodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Priorto Kenneth Arnold’s Sighting. Bloomington, IN:self-published.

Clark, Jerome, 1977. “The Great Airship Hoax.”Fate 30, 2 (February): 94–97.

Howe, Linda Moulton, 1989. An Alien Harvest: Fur -ther Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations andHuman Abductions to Alien Life Forms. Littleton,CO: Linda Moulton Howe Publications.

Powers, Susan Marie, 1994. “Thematic ContentAnalyses of the Reports of UFO Abductees andClose Encounter Witnesses: Indications of Re-pressed Sexual Abuse.” Journal of UFO Studies 5(n.s.): 35–54.

Captive extraterrestrialsAlong with rumors of dead extraterrestrialssupposedly found in or near crashed space-craft, there is a persistent lore of aliens whoare held in captivity.

Ufologist William L. Moore claims to haveheard one such account from anonymous mil-itary and official sources said to be privy tohighly classified UFO secrets. In 1949, thesources asserted, a male humanoid was discov-ered alive in the southwestern desert, the sur-vivor of the crash of an extraterrestrial space-craft. Authorities housed the being, calledEBE (ee-buh, after extraterrestrial biologicalentity), at the atomic installation at LosAlamos, New Mexico. An air force captainwas assigned the job of watching over thebeing. Communication with the alien provedimpossible until a speech device was inventedand implanted into his throat, enabling himto speak a kind of broken but understandable

English. EBE said he had been the equivalentof a mechanic on the crashed craft. EBE diedof unknown causes in 1952.

Moore’s sources alleged that EBE later wascalled EBE-1, because two other aliens—EBE-2 and EBE-3—later fell into U.S. gov-ernment hands. The three captives revealedthat nine alien races were visiting Earth. Onein particular, the little gray-skinned beings,had been especially active. This group hadbeen monitoring human activities for twenty-five thousand years and had manipulated ourreligious beliefs.

In his book UFO Crash at Aztec (1986),William S. Steinman reports another alleged1948 incident, this one involving a physicianfrom Bishop, California, named Claude E.Steen, Sr. (Elsewhere in his book Steinmangives the year as 1949 and spells the last name“Steene.”) A “member of a special militaryunit” contacted Steen and led him and hisnurse to a location where an alien was beingkept alive. It was in a chamber with a con-trolled environment. The being appeared tobe some kind of reptile. Its appearance soupset the nurse that she said it looked likesomething “from the pits of hell.”

On July 23, 1952, a Colorado newspaper,the Pueblo Chieftain, related a peculiar story.Speaking to the local Chamber of Commerce,Joseph Rohrer, president of Pikes Peak Broad-casting, said he knew of three saucer crashesin Montana. One of the occupants that hadsurvived, a three-foot-tall humanoid, was stillbeing kept alive in an incubator in California,where efforts were being made to communi-cate with him. In April 2000, ufologist KennyYoung conducted inquiries into these curiousclaims, eventually learning that Rohrer was aprankster with a sense of humor. Even thoughthe paper had treated his story seriously, itsaudience understood that he was speakingtongue in cheek.

See Also: Dead extraterrestrials; Extraterrestrial Bio-logical Entities

Further ReadingMoore, William L., 1987. Personal communication

to Jerome Clark.

Captive extraterrestrials 57

Steinman, William S., with Wendelle C. Stevens,1986. UFO Crash at Aztec: A Well Kept Secret.Tucson, AZ: UFO Photo Archives.

Young, Kenny, 2000. “‘Talk Startles Crowd’: Investi-gation of Strange 1952 Newspaper Article.”http://home.fuse.net/ufo/rohrer.html

CetaceansThe Cetaceans are a “One Group Mi n d” con-sisting of the world’s whales and dolphins.They channel through Ro c h e s t e r, New Yo rk ,p s ychic Dianne Robbins, who also re c e i ve smessages from Adama, a resident of theLemurian city Telos under California’sMount Shasta. The Cetaceans monitor eve n t son Earth—in the ocean, on the land, and inthe skies—and keep human beings fro mharmful extraterrestrials. They also seek top rotect the earth from pollution and otherd e s t ru c t i ve forces because human beings haveneglected their responsibilities as “t h eGu a rdians of Love that Earth needs as shefloats along her path through space” (“WeA re,” n.d.). The human race, like theCetaceans themselves, came to Earth longago from other star systems with the specifictask of taking care of this planet. Un f o rt u-n a t e l y, memories of that distant event havefaded among humans, and the Cetaceans arew o rking with space intelligences to re a w a k e nh u m a n i t y’s sleeping consciousness.

If intruders enter Earth’s atmosphere andviolate cosmic ethical standards, the Ce-taceans telepathically notify the GalacticCommand, with which they are in constantcontact. Often the Cetaceans will project theirconsciousness into the command’s spacecraft.

Earth will soon enter the Photon Belt,which will have the effect of bringing humansout of the darkness and into the light, restor-ing them to their cosmic destiny. “We camehere especially for this time when the Earthwould be transiting into a higher dimen-sions,” the Cetaceans say.

Channeling through a California-basedmetaphysical group, the Council of Ninefrom the planet Sirius B, this area’s branch ofthe Galactic Federation, put it this way:

“Guardianship by the Cetaceans can best bedescribed by observing the use of their ener-gies. Through the use of their rituals, theirsonar songs and their ocean travels, they vivifythe biosphere. Whale song has been foundthroughout all the oceans of the world. It isalso found in, and resonates throughout, theskies of the Earth. It exists even in the deepestparts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Eu-rope. Because the energies of the Cetaceanscan be found both in the sky and in the water,those great energies they bring forth in theirsong create the resonance that sustains life”(Nidle and Essene, 1994).

See Also: Adama; ChannelingFurther ReadingNidle, Sheldon, and Virginia Essene, 1994. You Are Be -

coming a Galactic Hu m a n . Santa Clara, CA: Sp i r i-tual Education En d e a vors Publishing Company.

“We Are the Cetaceans,” n.d. http://onelight.com/ceta/cetabook/cetmonitor.htm

ChanequesTraditional belief holds that little peopleknown as Chaneques live in the forests andjungles of Mexico and Central America,guarding the spirits of wild animals and some-times causing harm to unlucky human beings.The Chaneques are one variant of the beingsknown under many names, including fairiesand elves. As with these traditions, Chanequelore consists not just of distant legends andrumors but of claims of firsthand experiences.

Two English teachers from Mexico City in-vestigated some of these claims in the early1970s. In the state of Veracruz, they inter-viewed sixteen persons who had alleged en-counters, either direct or through familymembers (usually children), with these be-ings. One woman, for example, told themthat one day in March 1973, her son Ramiro,three and a half years old, wandered from hishome in the village of La Tinaja. Searcheswent on for six days without success. Finally,the Chaneques informed a six-year-old neigh-bor that Ramiro was safe in a cave ten milesaway. When rescued at the designated place,the boy was in excellent health, neither hun-

58 Cetaceans

gry nor thirsty. Though the entrance to thecave was accessible only with difficulty, andthe searchers were scratched and bruised bythe time they got to him, the barefoot Ramirohad no marks on him. He explained thatwhile playing by the river, he got lost. Five lit-tle men found him and fed him “sweet food”and milk. He then fell asleep and woke up inthe cave, with one of the men still with him.He and his companions, who came to thecave on occasion, played together until therescue was accomplished.

Ricardo Gutierrez related that while walk-ing through a forest one day in June 1970, hissix-year-old nephew, Arturo, who had beenaccompanying him, abruptly vanished. Whenthe boy failed to reappear, the local authoritiesarrested Gutierrez for murder. Thirty-threedays later, as the man awaited trial, a healthy-looking, unconcerned Arturo entered hishouse. Asked where he had been, he said hehad been living with the little men. They fedhim food and honey-flavored milk and playedgames with him. The investigators inter-viewed local police, who confirmed the mys-terious disappearance and the equally enig-matic reappearance.

Driving a six-ton truck between La Tinajaand Tierra Blanca at 8 A.M. on May 22, 1973,Manuel Angel Gonzalez suddenly saw fivesmall figures standing in the road in front ofhim, holding their arms up in the air. Heslammed on the brakes barely in time to keepfrom running into what he assumed weresmall children. As he sat in his cab trying torecover his wits, he had a chance to look moreclosely at the figures. Now they looked likeadults, only two feet tall, perfectly propor-tioned, with light brown complexions andblack hair. He also realized that they had notstepped out onto the road, but had material-ized there.

After a time he stepped out of the truckand approached the figures. His action appar-ently frightened them because they scatteredinto the dense undergrowth and fled in the di-rection of a nearby mountain. When Gonza-lez turned around to return to his vehicle, he

was dismayed to see blue flames consuming it.Within half an hour it and its cargo—asbestossheeting, sacked cement, and reinforcingsteel—had been reduced to fused metal andash.

The story made the Mexican newspapers.Soon afterward, the two investigators inter-viewed Gonzalez and his boss, who confirmedthe truck’s destruction, which neither couldexplain; neither could the police officer whowas on the scene within an hour. Gonzalezthought that the little men were notChaneques but “space travelers from someother planet,” since Chaneques were notknown to cause pointless destruction.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kind; Fairiesencountered

Further ReadingPantoja Lopez, Ramon A., and Robert Freeman

Bound, 1974. “Chaneques: Mexican Gnomes orInterplanetary Visitors?” Fate 27, 11 (Novem-ber): 51–57.

ChannelingChanneling is new in name only. It refers tothe process whereby disembodied entitiescommunicate ideas and information throughhuman beings who are either in full wakingconsciousness or in an altered state. The com-municating entities may be deceased persons,gods, angels, extraterrestrials, extradimen-sional intelligences, “ascended masters” (mys-tical adepts who have transcended physical ex-istence), nature spirits, and more. In earliertimes, channeling was called “revelation,” or“mediumship.” Whatever the name, it is oftenaccompanied by visions of otherworldly enti-ties or unearthly realms. Some channelers be-lieve that through their consciousness alone,they can travel through the universe and intoother dimensions.

In ancient times oracles and priests com-municated with the gods. The resulting divinemessages formed the basis of religious andmystical faiths. Such communications ofteninvolved prophecies as well. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Bible documents vi-sions and messages recognizably related to the

Channeling 59

phenomenon of channeling. Channelingseems ubiquitous in human experience. His-torically prominent practitioners include Nos-tradamus, Emanuel Swedenborg, HelenaPetrovna Blavatsky (founder of the theosophi-cal movement), and Anna Lee (founder of theQuaker sect known as the Shakers). In the lat-ter half of the nineteenth century, spiritualismbecame the rage, and hundreds of mediumsclaimed to be in contact with dead peoplewho, through the mediums, spoke with theliving. The communicators were not alwaysthe deceased, however; in some cases spacepeople and other nonhuman intelligencescame through. Some mediums spoke of oth-erworldly journeys in their astral bodies.

After World War II, when flying saucersentered the popular imagination, benevolentextraterrestrial entities such as Ashtar andMonka—starship commanders who camehere to oversee the transformation of thehuman race into cosmic citizenship—chan-neled through individuals who became

known as contactees. As the channelingmovement grew, reaching its peak in the1970s and 1980s during the height of theNew Age movement, channelers created a vastalternative-reality literature, fusing traditionaloccultism with modern science and pseudo-science. Some channeling entities made pre-dictions, often of some cataclysmic or other-wise seminal events, which inevitably wentunfulfilled. More typically, however, channel-ing consists of spiritual platitudes, self-helpsuggestions, and unverifiable pronouncementsabout the nature of spirit and cosmos.

To its critics, it is nothing more than a formof automatism, “automatic behavior ove rwhich an individual denies any personal con-t ro l” (Alcock, 1996). Its sources are within, notoutside, the channeler’s psyche. Pa r a p s yc h o l o-gist Rodger I. Anderson writes, “It has been in-c reasingly evident to re s e a rchers that automa-tism of whatever kind is neither a psyc h i cability nor a pathway to higher knowledge. Ap-pearances notwithstanding, it is only too clear

60 Channeling

Gerry Bowman channeling the spirit of John the Baptist, August 15, 1987, Shasta National Forest, California (RogerRessmeyer/Corbis)

in most cases that all the various elements thatgo to make up the act of automatism are owe dsolely to the automatist and his or her experi-ence in . . . life” (Anderson, 1988). On theother hand, a skeptical but sympathetic ob-s e rve r, Brown Un i versity anthro p o l o g i s tMichael F. Brown, defends channeling as, at itsbest, “a lively arena for the free play of the re l i-gious imagination. . . . It is likely to remain asite of emotional and spiritual re n ewal in a cul-t u re that, perhaps more than any in human his-t o ry, promotes the continuous re i n vention ofthe self” (Brown, 1997).

See Also: Ascended Masters; Ashtar; Contactees;Monka

Further ReadingAlcock, James E., 1996. “Channeling.” In Gordon

Stein, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal,153–160. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Anderson, Rodger I., 1988. “Channeling.” Parapsy -chology Review 19, 5 (1988): 6–9.

Brown, Michael F., 1997. The Channeling Zone:American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re -ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. LosAngeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

Riordan, Suzanne, 1990. “Channeling.” In J. Gor-don Melton, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly,eds. New Age Encyclopedia, 97–104. Detroit, MI:Gale Research.

Chief JosephIn life, Chief Joseph (1840–1894) led a gro u pof Nez Pe rce Indians and was admired in histime by his people and whites, alike, for his wis-dom and courage. Ac c o rding to a Reston, Vi r-ginia, channeler named John Cali, Joseph hasbeen communicating from beyond the gravesince 1992. Joseph delivers the familiar messagethat Earth is going through physical and spiri-tual changes. Each individual must find theGod in him- or herself. T h rough Cali, Jo s e p hg i ves personal psychic readings to those seekingguidance in their personal lives or metaphysicalodysseys. Jo s e p h’s current messages are re c o rd e din an occasional e-new s l e t t e r, Sentinels of the Sk y.

Further Reading“Who Are Chief Joseph and John Cali?” http://www.

claimyourpower.com/sentinels/thechief.htm

ChristopherJackie Altisi, also known as Jackie White Star,channels messages from a variety of other-worldly entities, including the spirit of mar-tyred contactee Gloria Lee, who died in 1962while fasting under the direction of space peo-ple. A principal communicator is Christopher,an aide to the King of the Moon andspokesman for the lunarian station of UnitedCosmic Planets. According to Christopher,the moon is a “complete authority in itself,but working with an interplanetary confeder-ation.” These messages are circulated throughthe Star Light Fellowship, established in 1962.

See Also: J.W.Further ReadingMelton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American


Chung FuSometime in the 1960s, Marshall Leve r, then astudent at a Pre s byterian seminary, began ex-

Chung Fu 61

Photograph of Chief Joseph by Edward Curtis (Corbis)

perimenting with trance mediumship. In thisstate he heard from Chung Fu, a spirit guidewho in his last physical incarnation was a stu-dent of Lao-Tzu in China. In 1970, Lever andhis wife, Quinta, established the Circle ofInner Truth to facilitate Chung Fu’s teachings,which focused on spiritual development as theway to break out of the reincarnation cyc l e .These efforts included such quotidian mattersas diet, health care, and psychological we l l -being, on which Chung Fu would offer guid-ance in sittings with individuals.

The Levers traveled widely, abandoningany permanent residence, to work for ChungFu. Inner Circles took roots in several Ameri-can cities, and one operated out of London.Finally, Chung Fu was heard from no more,and by the latter 1980s, the movement nolonger existed.



Close encounters of the third kindIn The UFO Experience (1972), J. AllenHynek, a Northwestern University as-tronomer and former scientific consultant tothe U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, pro-posed a classification system for UFO sight-ings, including three varieties of close encoun-ters. He defined “close encounters of the thirdkind” as those “in which the presence of ani-mated creatures is reported.” Prior to thecoining of the phrase (shortened to “CE3”),ufologists had called these “occupant reports.”

The modern UFO phenomenon is twocenturies old. In the early nineteenth centurythe first reports of arguably UFO-like phe-nomena were recorded in scientific journals,newspaper accounts, and other sources,though such stories were relatively rare untillate in the century, when alleged sightings ofmysterious “airships” filled American newspa-pers between November 1896 and May 1897.Many were hoaxes, some concocted by thepress itself. Among them were claims that the

airships had landed. Reflecting a widely heldbelief that an ingenious American inventorhad built the ships and that the occupantswere human, some reports even gave the in-ventor a name, Wilson. Other accounts, how-ever, described grotesque aliens, sometimesthought to be from Mars. “Hoax” probably istoo strong a word to characterize these talltales, which were apparently meant as jokes toamuse a readership that was not fooled.

After 1947—the year “flying saucers” and“unidentified flying objects” entered popularconsciousness—a number of seemingly sin-c e re individuals came forw a rd to speak of en-counters they had experienced in earlieryears, some reaching as far back as 1893,when a man in the Australian state of NewSouth Wales told a newspaper that he hadseen a saucer-shaped stru c t u re land on hisfarm. When he went to investigate, an oddlyd ressed man stepped out of the craft holdinga device that resembled a “t o rc h” (flashlight).He aimed the device at the witness, who sawa light shoot out from it and hit his hand.He was knocked unconscious. When heawoke, the object and occupant we re gone.For the rest of his life, he claimed, his handwas paralyze d .

New Zealand newspapers of 1909 recordeda local airship-sighting wave, including an in-cident in which a witness saw three figures ina craft passing overhead. One shouted at himin an unfamiliar language. In the UnitedStates, early on the morning of February 29,1916, according to a report in the SuperiorTelegram that same day, workers along theLake Superior dock in Wisconsin saw a “bigmachine . . . 50 feet wide and 100 feet long”fly by at a high rate of speed about six hun-dred feet in the air. Workers said they hadseen three “men” inside the craft. This is thefirst known, seemingly credible, CE3 to bepublished at the time of its occurrence.

A newspaper referred to these mysteriouscraft by the name “flying saucers” for the firsttime on June 26, 1947, two days after privatepilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine discs maneu-vering over the Cascade Mountains. This re-

62 Close encounters of the third kind

ported account ushered in the UFO age. Thesame afternoon as Arnold’s sighting, Oregonfarmer Bill Schuening claimed to have seen aspherical object hovering five or six feet abovea field. Just beneath it were “two little guys ingreen suits with white helmets” (McCune,1987). They were no more than three feet tall.A few seconds later they vanished. Schueningdid not see them enter the craft, which thenflew off toward the Cascades.

In the early UFO era, however, such re-ports, relatively rare but hardly nonexistent,received little attention. In 1950, when thefirst book with “flying saucers” in its title,Donald E. Keyhoe’s paperback The FlyingSaucers Are Real, saw print, the occupants ofthe vehicles—Keyhoe believed them to bepeaceable extraterrestrials who deliberately re-frained from contact—could only be specu-lated about. Another book published thatsame year, Frank Scully’s Behind the FlyingSaucers, asserted that the U.S. governmenthad recovered crashed spacecraft, containingthe bodies of little men “dressed in the style ofthe 1890s” and believed to be from Venus.(Subsequent investigations determined thattwo veteran confidence artists had concoctedthese tales in order to peddle bogus oil-detec-tion devices tied to advanced extraterrestrialtechnology.) Scully’s notorious book had theeffect of leading some early ufologists—as op-posed to the saucerians who embraced thecontactee movement—to shy away from anyreports of humanoids, whatever the source.

A significant proportion of the reports de-scribed the occupants as humanoids. The spe-cific descriptions may have varied, but wit-nesses mostly testified that UFO occupantshad two arms, two legs, and generally human-like head and facial features. Usually the be-ings were small. Sometimes they weregrotesque-looking. Sometimes they lookedlike small humans. A minority were of normalhuman height, and a few were said to be morethan that, seven or eight feet tall. Such reportscame from all over the world, including re-mote Third World locations where UFOswere little known and the occupants were

sometimes taken to be American or Russianpilots. A wave of humanoid and other en-counters in France in the fall of 1954 receivedinternational attention and caused even themost cautious UFO researchers to reconsidertheir bias against CE3 reports. In the summerof 1955, the air force’s Project Blue Book in-vestigated a bizarre episode in which membersof a rural Kentucky family claimed to havespent a night besieged by floating, big-earedhumanoid entities from a UFO.

CE3s were different from the contactclaims of George Adamski, Howard Menger,George Van Tassel, and other 1950s con-tactees in some important ways. For one, thebeings seldom looked much like the golden-haired, angelic spacemen and spacewomenwho figured in the contactees’ tales. For an-other, they had little if anything to say. Com-munication, if any (and there seldom was),was brief, sometimes enigmatic, and alwaysdevoid of inspirational content. Unlike con-tactees, CE3 witnesses fit the profile of wit-nesses to less exotic UFO phenomena; inother words, they were ordinary citizens with-out a background in occultism and other eso-teric pursuits, as contactees tended to be.They also did not embark on lecture tours orwrite books, as the more flamboyant con-tactees did.

A spectacular CE3 took place over Boianai,Papua New Guinea, in late June 1959. Thebest-known witness, the Rev. William BoothGill, was an Anglican missionary from Aus-tralia. On the evening of June 26, thirty-eightpersons observed a large, disc-shaped craftwith four legs hovering in the northwesternsky. Gill estimated its apparent size to be thatof five full moons lined up end to end. At thetop of the UFO, behind a glass-covered cock-pit, four humanlike figures, surrounded by il-lumination, moved back and forth, appar-ently working at an unknown task. The objectand its crew ascended into gathering cloudsafter forty-five minutes. Other UFOs, thoughnot their occupants, were intermittently visi-ble over the next three and a half hours.Twenty five of the witnesses signed a state-

Close encounters of the third kind 63

ment attesting to what they had seen thatnight. At 6 P.M. the next day, the originalUFO and its crew returned. At one point dur-ing the observation, Gill and others waved tothe occupants, who waved back. The objectsshowed up for the last time the next night,though no beings were visible.

Interviewed in 1973 by J. Allen Hynek, na-tive witnesses stuck by the story. Gill, who leftthe country in September 1959, stands by thereport even today. It remains among the mostimpressive and puzzling of CE3s.

Far stranger and much harder to believewas the testimony of a young Brazilian, Anto-nio Villas-Boas. Villas-Boas came to the atten-tion of ufologists in November 1957, when hewrote a letter to a journalist who had writtenabout UFOs. Soon afterward, the journalist,Joao Martins, brought Villas-Boas to Rio deJaneiro, where he and physician/ufologistOlavo T. Fontes, of the National School ofMedicine of Brazil, interviewed and examinedhim. The young man claimed that in the earlymorning hours of October 16, occupants of aUFO took him into the ship and left himalone in a room. A naked, essentially human-looking young woman soon joined him there,eventually engaging with him in two sex acts.Before leaving, she made a gesture that ledVillas-Boas to believe she would bear his childon another world.

Martins and Fontes judged Villas-Boas tobe sane and sincere. His intelligence and re-fusal to speculate on the incident made a posi-tive impression. “In spite of this,” Fonteswrote, “the very substance of his story be-comes the heaviest argument against it”(Lorenzen and Lorenzen, 1967). In 1962 tworepresentatives of a Brazilian UFO groupwent to Villas-Boas’s village to speak withhim. Though desiring no publicity, he spoke,if reluctantly, about the experience. The inves-tigators published an account of the interviewin an English-language version of their bul-letin, but it attracted little notice. Fontes’s1958 report circulated privately among a fewEnglish-speaking ufologists, but because of itssexual nature no one would publish it. For

most ufologists, the Villas-Boas episode wasonly a vague rumor, if that, until England’swidely read Flying Saucer Review carried a se-ries of articles on it, beginning in its Janu-ary/February 1965 issue.

The Villas-Boas case anticipated an escala-tion of the strangeness quotient of the CE3phenomenon. On April 18, 1961, Joe Simon-ton of rural Eagle River, Wisconsin, was eat-ing lunch when, so he would assert, a flyingsaucer landed on his driveway. He went out-side just as a hatchway opened. A short, dark-featured man, dressed in a black, two-piecesuit and wearing a tight-fitting cap on hishead, held a jug. From his gestures Simontoninferred that he wanted the jug to be filledwith water. He complied. As he handed thefilled jug back to the man, he glanced insidethe ship and saw two other men. One was sit-ting in front of a flameless grill, cookingsomething. When Simonton asked if theywere eating, the man with the jug handed himfour fresh “pancakes,” and then the flyingsaucer departed. Simonton took a bite of one


Antonio Villas-Boas being medically examined followinghis abduction by a UFO in Brazil, October 15, 1957(Fortean Picture Library)

of the pancakes. It tasted like cardboard, hethought.

The story of the Eagle River pancakes at-tracted national attention and a torrent ofridicule. Even UFO groups disagreed on itss i g n i ficance, some championing Simonton as an a ï ve, sincere witness to an extraord i n a rye vent, while the conserva t i ve National In ve s t i-gations Committee on Aerial Ph e n o m e n a(NICAP) sneeringly dismissed the story as ana b s u rd contact claim. Even Project Blue Bookgot drawn into the case, sending Dr. Hynek tothe site to interv i ew Simonton and local peo-ple. Few of Si m o n t o n’s friends and acquain-tances deemed him a hoaxer or even a manwith sufficient imagination to make up suchan outlandish tale. Still, laboratory analysisfound nothing out of the ord i n a ry in the pan-cake sample it examined. In common with justabout eve rybody else who looked closely at theclaim, the air force ended up confused, statingat one point that Simonton was a “balancedperson of good mental health,” and, at an-o t h e r, that he had suffered “an hallucinationf o l l owed with delusion” (Mallan, 1967). Se p a-r a t e l y, a lone witness and a nearby farm familyre p o rted seeing a UFO over Si m o n t o n’s re s i-dence, in the first case, at the time of the sup-posed landing; in the second, the next eve n i n g .

Cases such as Villas-Boas’s and Simonton’ssuggested a degree of communication be-tween witnesses and UFO beings. To someufologists, many never very enthusiastic aboutCE3s to start with, that suggested the de-spised contactees, even if neither man actedmuch like one. These ufologists were morecomfortable with a CE3 report from Socorro,New Mexico, on April 24, 1964, from LonnieZamora, a police officer of undisputed relia-bility. Around 6 P.M. Zamora spotted a small,egg-shaped UFO resting in an isolated area onthe city’s outskirts. Close to the object weretwo small figures dressed in white coveralls,apparently examining the craft. On seeingZamora, they ran behind the craft and disap-peared. The flame-spewing UFO departedwith a roar. Police, Project Blue Book, andcivilian investigators found burn marks and

impressions at the site. Despite its hostility toUFOs and its tendency to reach for some-times far-fetched “conventional” explanationsfor reports, Project Blue Book declared thecase an “unknown.” It has since become aclassic UFO incident, often cited by thosewho argue for the anomalous nature of thephenomenon.

If Zamora’s experience seemed relativelystraightforward, Gary Wilcox’s claimed en-counter of the same day and a few hours ear-lier appeared as bizarre as Villas-Boas’s and Si-monton’s, though not much like either in anyother context. Wilcox, a young Newark Val-ley, New York, dairy farmer, asserted that hehad spoken with two short, spacesuit-cladUFO occupants for two hours. They said thatthey were part of a Martian expedition,Wilcox said, engaged in Earth exploration.Wilcox’s story did not come to light until a

Close encounters of the third kind 65

Police Officer Lonnie Zamora, who saw a UFO land nearSocorro, New Mexico, April 24, 1964 (Fortean PictureLibrary)

few days later, since he had sought no public-ity and discussed it only with friends and fam-ily members, who eventually leaked it to thelocal press. Like Simonton, Wilcox had anunimpeachable reputation among locals, andpsychological testing revealed no abnormali-ties. Wilcox made no subsequent attempt toexploit his story. Though his testimony madeno sense—even in 1964 scientists had aban-doned the hope of an inhabited Mars—Wilcox seemed neither crazy nor dishonest.

As comparable claims came to the fore,some ufologists speculated that UFO occu-pants were lying to hide their true identityand purpose. At the extreme this led theoristssuch as John A. Keel and Jacques Vallee tomove beyond ufology’s venerable extraterres-trial hypothesis (ETH) and into quasi-de-monological speculation about earthbound el-ementals and other occult entities.

As if to compound the confusion, by themid-1960s ufologists were confronting a newlevel of confrontation and contact betweenhumans and UFO beings. In 1965, underhypnosis conducted by a Boston psychiatrist,a New Hampshire couple, Barney and BettyHill, turned a consciously recalled CE3 (anobservation of figures aboard a hovering UFOone night in September 1961) into an on-board experience, including medical examina-tion by gray-skinned aliens and conversationwith the ship’s captain. All of this took placeduring a two-hour period of which the Hillshad no conscious memory and for which theyhad never been able to account; to them ithad always been a puzzling period of seem-ingly inexplicable amnesia. “Missing time,”hypnotic regressions, gray aliens, and medicalexaminations would play large roles in theemerging abduction phenomenon.


A drawing by a pupil at Ariel Primary School in Ruwa, Zimbabwe, where a group of children saw a UFO and aliens landon September 16, 1994 (Fortean Picture Library)

In time, such abduction reports—the sub-ject of a separate entry—would overwhelmCE3s as historically understood. Nonabduc-tion CE3s would diminish in number and, intime, slow to a trickle, though they would notentirely disappear.

One particularly well-documented inci-dent re p o rtedly occurred in the early morn-ing hours of Ja n u a ry 12, 1975, when sev-e n t y - t w o - year-old George O’Barski wasdriving home past New Yo rk City’s No rt hHudson Pa rk. He observed a glowing pan-cake-shaped object hovering above the parkg round. A door opened, a ladder emerged,and about ten small figures, dressed in one-piece suits and helmets, climbed down tocollect soil and grass samples, which theyscooped up with “little shove l s” (Ho p k i n s ,1981). An extensive investigation by thre eNew Yo rk–based ufologists uncove red a bodyof apparent confirming testimony from ana s s o rtment of witnesses.

In the most remarkable CE3 of the 1990s,a large group of children at Ariel School,Ruwa, Zimbabwe, while on recess on themorning of September 16, 1994, reportedlyobserved the landing of a UFO just beyondthe playground. They also saw one or two oc-cupants, small figures (slightly more thanthree feet tall) with large, slanted eyes andlong black hair. They were wearing tight blacksuits. Though teachers were alerted while theincident was in progress, none believed thechildren and refused to go outside. Later, theychanged their minds as the children producedremarkably uniform accounts and drawings.A British Broadcasting Corporation journal-ist, accompanied by Zimbabwe ufologist Cyn-thia Hind, interviewed the witnesses within afew days of the incident.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Menger, Howard;Van Tassel, George W.; Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingBasterfield, Keith, 1997. UFOs: A Report on Aus -

tralian Encounters. Kew, Victoria, Australia: ReedBooks.

Bowen, Charles, ed., 1974. The Humanoids. Lon-don: Futura Publications.

Clark, Jerome, 1998. “Close Encounters of the ThirdKind.” In Jerome Clark. The UFO Encyclopedia:The Phenomenon from the Beginning, 207–239.Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.

———, 2000. “The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis inthe Early UFO Age.” In David M. Jacobs, ed.,UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders ofKnowledge, 122–140. Lawrence: University Pressof Kansas.

Fuller, John G., 1966. The Interrupted Journey: TwoLost Hours “Aboard a Flying Saucer.” New York:Dial Press.

Hind, Cynthia, 1996. UFOs over Africa. Madison,WI: Horus House Press.


Hynek, J. Allen, 1972. The UFO Experience: A Scien -tific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

Hynek, J. Allen, and Jacques Vallee, 1975. The Edgeof Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified FlyingObjects. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

Keyhoe, Donald E., 1950. The Flying Saucers AreReal. New York: Fawcett Publishers.

Lorenzen, Coral, and Jim Lorenzen, 1967. FlyingSaucer Occupants. New York: Signet.

McCune, Hal, 1987. “Man Sticks to His Report.”Pendleton East Oregonian (June 24).

Mallan, Lloyd, 1967. “UFO Hoaxes and Hallucina-tions.” Science and Mechanics 38, 3 (March):48–52, 82–85.

Scully, Frank, 1950. Behind the Flying Saucers. NewYork: Henry Holt and Company.

Cocoon peopleIn her book Taken (1994), the late psycholo-gist and abductee Karla Turner recounts theexperiences of a woman identified only as Pat,at the time a fifty-year-old divorcee living inFlorida. Her abduction experiences began in1954 on the family farm near Floyd’s Knob,Indiana. Over the years other experiences oc-curred. All of these were repressed in con-scious memory until 1986, when they cameflooding into her thoughts. One memory—Pat could not put a specific time frame onit—concerned “cocoon people.”

She found herself inside a large room withsoft white lighting. A gray-skinned humanoidstood near her. “I vaguely recall seeing ahuman male there,” she would tell Turner,“but not what he was doing.” The room con-

Cocoon people 67

tained a number of boxes that looked like sar-cophagi (stone coffins). Inside them she couldsee what looked like human forms, alive butnot moving, covered with “white misty stuff,”which somehow she knew kept them alive. Ina telepathic communication, the being askedif she wanted to see “yours.” When she saidyes, the being showed her a container with ahuman female inside.

“ Do n’t ask how I knew it was female,” shesaid. “I just felt it. I saw a little bit of humanface through the mist, like a nose, mouth, eye s ,d e finitely human. I knew this was connectedwith the 1954 visit, because I re m e m b e re dthey told me they we re making a ‘n ew me.’ ”When she and the others we re re s u r rected orreanimated, she thought, “we will all be able tosee and talk with them here in the body. . . . IfI we re to die now, I believe that my ‘o t h e rb o d y’ will house my soul when Jesus says it istime, and I, too, will come back.”

See Also: Abductions by UFOsFurther ReadingTurner, Karla, 1994. Taken: Inside the Alien-Human

Abduction Agenda. Roland, AR: Kelt Works.

ContacteesContactees are people who claim a regular,ongoing relationship with benevolent extra-terrestrials, sometimes called Space Brothers.These aliens—essentially angels in space-suits—are nearly always human in appear-ance, except better looking than humans are.They espouse an occult philosophy with rec-ognizably terrestrial origins, notably in Theos-ophy. Contact occurs in a variety of fashions.Much, perhaps most, of it is through channel-ing. Other psychic communications are ef-fected through automatic writing, dreams, vi-sions, or astral (out-of-body) travel. A thirdgroup, the most controversial, alleges physicalcontacts, including trips in flying saucers toother worlds. Physical contactees frequentlyoffer “evidence” of their experiences in theform of artifacts or photographs. Persons whofollow contactees and embrace their messageare sometimes called “saucerians.”

The contactee movement overlaps to a de-gree with the UFO movement—ufology—but the two differ in fundamental ways. Tosaucerians, there are no unidentified flying ob-jects. Flying saucers’ nature, origin, and pur-pose are known; they are here to educate hu-mans to their larger cosmic destiny, to preparethem for the coming Earth changes generatedby nuclear war, geological upheavals, polarshifts, or combinations thereof. To ufologists,UFOs are unknowns, probably of extraordi-nary origin, but fundamentally a phenome-non that will eventually yield its secrets to sci-ence via conventional investigative andanalytic procedures. Another way to expressthe difference is to see saucerianism as a kindof popular religious movement, ufology as apopular (if often naïve) attempt at scientificinquiry. Traditionally, ufologists have func-tioned as the contactee movement’s fiercestcritics.

The contactee movement envisions adensely populated cosmos with hosts of ad-vanced, wise space people linked in a kind ofcelestial United Nations, usually called theGalactic Federation or something like it. Aminority of evil extraterrestrials opposes theFederation’s benevolent mission. Both sideshave representatives on Earth, individualswho pass as normal earthlings but who are infact aliens. Many were placed here generationsago and have lived on this planet throughmany incarnations, patiently waiting to be ac-tivated when the time of transition—whichwill include mass landings of spaceships—comes.

T h e re we re contactees before there we reflying saucers. Perhaps the first of them wasthe Swedish scientist and mystic Em a n u e lSwedenborg (1688–1772). In Ea rths in theSolar Wo rl d (1758), Swedenborg wrote of hisastral travels to the moon and other planets.Each of these worlds, Swedenborg assert e d ,is inhabited, and he described, at length, thepeople and civilizations there. In the nine-teenth century, with the rise of the spiritual-ist movement, psychic communications withe x t r a t e r restrials, most often Ma rtians, we re

68 Contactees

re c o rded on occasion. The most famous suchcase became the subject of a pioneering bookin the emerging discipline of abnormal psy-c h o l o g y, T h e o d o re Fl o u r n oy’s From India tothe Planet Ma r s (1899). In various states ofa l t e red consciousness, a woman given thepseudonym Helene Smith (Catherine El i s eMuller) interacted with persons from theRed Planet, which she also visited astrally.She produced a Ma rtian language thatFl o u r n oy identified as an “infantile trave s t yof Fre n c h” (Fl o u r n oy, 1963).

Reflecting a belief popularized by Ameri-can astronomer Percival Lowell, Smith/Muller“saw” canals on the Martian surface. Herstory, like those of Swedenborg and the con-tactees of the saucer era, mirrored astronomi-cal and other scientific theories of the period.Within a few years, the notion of a Martiancanal system would be thoroughly debunked.In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, it wasstill vaguely possible, some astronomersthought, that some neighboring planets (mostlikely Mars and Venus) could harbor intelli-gent life. Perhaps not surprisingly, the aliensin contact lore often hailed from our immedi-ate vicinity. After space probes in the 1960sestablished, beyond further rational discus-sion, that beyond Earth there are no planetshospitable to life in this system, the extrater-restrials in contact claims were placed fartherout in the cosmos. Either that, or the Venus,Mars, Saturn, and other solar planets said toharbor advanced civilizations became ethericcounterparts, existing on a higher vibratoryrate and distinct from the lifeless worlds weknow.

Another influential early book was Oahspe(1882), the product of automatic writing atthe guidance of angels, or so New York oc-cultist John Ballou Newbrough asserted.Written between January and December1881, the book is a mystical account of thecosmos, its history, and its inhabitants. Thebook stayed in print for decades and waswidely read in contactee circles, whereashars—guardian angels who fly spirit ships—became extraterrestrials in spacecraft. Indeed,

the ubiquitous starship commander and chan-neling entity Ashtar may owe his name andoccupation to Newbrough’s creation.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891),who founded Theosophy, wrote of a hierarchyof “ascended masters,” including the Venus-based “Lords of the Flame.” In the 1930s theflamboyant, fascist-oriented Guy Warren Bal-lard marketed a simplified, popular version ofBlavatsky’s doctrine. He spoke of his ownmeeting with twelve Venusian “masters” in theTeton mountains in Wyoming. Religiousstudies scholar J. Gordon Melton identifiesBallard (who died in 1939) and his I AMmovement as crucial to the development ofthe later contactee movement. “Not only didBallard become the first to actually build a re-ligion on contact with extraterrestrials,” hewrites, “but his emphasis was placed upon fre-quent contact with the masters from whom hereceived regular messages to the followers ofthe world contactee movement. The move-ment took over the I AM [spiritual] hierarchyand changed it into a space command hierar-chy” (Melton, 1995).

In The Book of the Damned (1919), the firstvolume ever written on the subject that wouldeventually be called ufology, Charles Fort(1874–1932) speculated that strange lightsand constructions observed in the sky andspace during the previous century could beevidence of visitation from other worlds. Healso advanced the possibly tongue-in-cheekspeculation that, perhaps, some human beingswere secretly in contact with the occupants ofsuch vehicles.

The first explicit contact in the context of aUFO sighting occurred on the evening of Oc-tober 9, 1946, over San Diego. Many resi-dents had gone outside in anticipation of apredicted meteor shower. Among them wasmedium Mark Probert, who channeled cos-mic philosophy from a group of discarnates,including a 500,000-year-old Tibetan namedthe Yada Di’ Shi’ite. He worked with occulttheorist N. Meade Layne, who the year beforehad founded Borderland Sciences ResearchAssociates. Probert and many others wit-

Contactees 69

nessed something that, whatever else it may ormay not have been, was not a meteor. Ob-servers would describe it as resembling a hugebullet-shaped object with batlike wings and asearchlight that it occasionally swept over theground. Dark, except for two red lights alongits side, it stayed in view for an hour and ahalf, moving at both slow and fast speeds.

During the sighting, Probert phonedLayne, who urged him to see if the craft’s oc-cupants were interested in a telepathic ex-change. According to Probert, the experimentsucceeded. The crew members revealed them-selves as peaceful people with lightweight, il-luminated bodies. They had been trying tocontact earthlings for many years. Thoughthey were afraid to land openly, they wouldmeet with scientists in some isolated area oron a mountaintop. They had mastered anti-gravity, and their ship was called the Kareeta.The San Diego Union carried a humorouspiece on the sighting, including Probert’s as-sertions, in its October 18 issue.

The UFO age began the next year withp r i vate pilot Kenneth Arnold’s June 24 sight-ing of nine shiny objects that the press wouldsoon call “flying saucers.” In the wake ofA r n o l d’s re p o rt, many other people came for-w a rd to recount their own encounters withu n k n own aerial phenomena. Among themost outlandish claims to see print was onetold by Ole J. Sneide. In a letter to the Sa nFrancisco Chro n i c l e appearing in the July 3issue, Sneide stated that the flying discs, alsok n own as flying saucers, we re spaceships fro mother planets. (This is one of the ve ry earliestpublic attempts to link the new public sensa-tion with extraterrestrial visitors. Nearly allother speculation held the saucers to be natu-ral phenomena or advanced terrestrial air-craft. The association of flying saucers asspaceships did not take widespread hold untilthe early to mid-1950s.) Sneide also said thesaucers had a base on the dark side of themoon. He knew as much because he re g u l a r l yt e l e p o rted himself around the galaxy. A fol-l ow-up article in the C h ro n i c l e d e t e r m i n e dthat Sneide, a student of occultism, was seri-

ous. Though nothing more is known aboutSneide, he may have been something of acontactee before the word and concept hadcome into curre n c y.

The contact movement, however, did notemerge into cultural visibility until January1952, when aircraft mechanic George W. VanTassel began holding open weekly meetings inthe high-desert country of southern Califor-nia. At these gatherings Van Tassel wouldchannel messages from starship (“ventla”)commanders, introducing, among others, thedestined-to-be ubiquitous Ashtar. That sameyear, Van Tassel published I Rode a FlyingSaucer!, the first modern contactee book (al-beit with a misleading title; it would not beuntil the next year that Van Tassel wouldclaim his first physical contact and spaceship-boarding). The year 1952 saw a flurry of con-tact activity. In Prescott, Arizona, GeorgeHunt Williamson, his wife, Betty, and com-panions were communicating with Martians,Uranians, and other extraterrestrials from thesolar system via ouija board, radio, and men-tal telepathy. In July, in the Nevada desert,Truman Bethurum met the crew of a “scow”from the planet Clarion, invisible to earthlyeyes because it is always on the opposite sideof the sun from Earth.

Though arguably Van Tassel was the mosti n fluential of the first generation of contactees,the most famous was George Ad a m s k i .Adamski had a long history in California—going back to the 1930s—as a kind of minorg u ru. When flying saucers rose to pro m i n e n c ein the late 1940s, Adamski produced photo-graphs of spaceships in the atmosphere andnear the moon. On November 20, 1952, ac-companied by six associates, including Ge o r g eHunt Williamson, he went out into the desertto meet a landed saucer and its pilot, a blond-h a i red, angelic fig u re whom Adamski wouldcall Orthon. Adamski went on to write books,l e c t u re all over the world, and become thesingle most controversial saucer personality ofthe 1950s. Though despised by conserva t i veufologists, who charged that his accounts ofmeetings with Venusians, Ma rtians, and Sa t u r-

70 Contactees

nians amounted to bad science fiction, he wasalso widely re ve re d .

In August 1953, more than ten thousandpersons attended the Interplanetary SpacecraftConvention at Van Tassel’s residence in GiantRock, California. The speakers were mostlythe new contactee stars. The movement wasgrowing rapidly, becoming a worldwide phe-nomenon. It also produced a small library ofbooks and newsletters. Over the course of thenext few years, other contactees rose to occultcelebrity. Many were physical contactees, but,in time, channelers and automatic writers—most of whom did not seek publicity orprofit—dominated the ranks.

Not everyone was willing to take the spacepeople at their word. Channeling contacteeTrevor James Constable warned that some ofthem were demons in disguise. Some yearslater, occult-oriented ufologist John A. Keelwrote, “The demons, devils, and false angelswere recognized as liars and plunderers by

early man. These same impostors now appearas long-haired Venusians” (Keel, 1970).Christian fundamentalist authors of UFObooks expressed similar suspicions.

Adamski’s death in April 1965 marked thepassing of the era of the physical contactees.Even so, the most successful contactee of lateryears was himself a physical contactee, Eduard“Billy” Meier, a rural Swiss man with a back-ground in the esoteric. Like Adamski and hisfirst-generation counterparts, Meier put forthphotographs, artifacts, and allegedly confir-matory testimony to back up his stories of in-the-flesh meetings with space people and ofrides in their spacecraft. Meier’s extraterrestri-als are from the Pleiades star system. But likeAdamski’s Venusians, they are handsome andbeautiful, with blond hair and a generallyn o rthern Eu ropean appearance. Unlike Ad a m-ski’s and just about everybody else’s space peo-ple, Meier’s have a specifically antireligiousmessage; the Pleiadeans, according to Meier,

Contactees 71

UFO contactee George Adamski (left) being interviewed on television by Long John Nebel (Fortean Picture Library)

believe only in the laws of nature. It is alsosafe to say that unlike other contactees,Meier—a keen businessman—has reaped asignificant, and continuing, financial rewardfrom his supposed experiences. He has alsobeen at the receiving end of criticism and de-bunking efforts. After divorcing him, his ex-wife told investigators that his claims arewithout factual basis.

In the United States, a major force in themovement has been the annual Rocky Moun-tain Conference on UFO Investigation, whichhas taken up where the Giant Rock conven-tions (the last held in 1977) left off. Started in1980 by R. Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist andcounselor at the University of Wyoming, itmeets once a year, usually in the summer, andattracts contactees from all over, though mostare from ranches, farms, and small towns ofthe Great Plains, underscoring the folk orground-level nature of the movement.

Contactees are different from abductees—whose experiences became known only in the1960s and did not become a major part of theUFO controversy until the 1980s—in severalways. A principal difference is that abducteestend to fit the profile of ordinary citizens, inother words, people without a background inoccultism; in that way, they are also like mostwitnesses to UFOs. Abductees also reportbeing taken against their will, and many con-sider the experience traumatic. Most do notclaim to have attained superior wisdom fromthe experience, and most assert that theircommunications with their captors were de-void of messages of cosmic uplift. Yet in timecontactee-oriented writers and investigatorsbegan to see abductions as contacts by othermeans. Some abductees come to accept theirexperiences as painful but necessary learningexperiences. Harvard University psychiatristJohn E. Mack, whose study of abduction re-ports has convinced him that the aliens havebenevolent intentions, has stated, “If, in fact,the alien beings are closer to the divine sourceor anima mundi than human beings generallyseem to be . . . their presence among us, how-ever cruel and traumatic in some instances,

may be part of a larger process that is bringingus back to God” (Mack, 1994).

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;Ascended Masters; Ashtar; Bethurum, Truman;Channeling; Keel, John Alva; Meier, Eduard“Billy”; Orthon; Sprinkle, Ronald Leo; Van Tas-sel, George W.; Williamson, George Hunt


York: Abelard-Schuman.Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,

1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries ofMystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord, 1991. Life beyondPlanet Earth? Man’s Contacts with Space People.London: GraftonBooks.

Curran, Douglas, 1985. In Advance of the Landing:Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: AbbevillePress.

Flournoy, Theodore, 1963. From India to the PlanetMars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism. Trans-lated reprint of 1899 edition. New Hyde Park,NY: University Books.

Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Mack, John E., 1994. Abduction: Human Encounterswith Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.

Melton, J. Gordon, 1995. “The Contactees: A Sur-vey.” In James R. Lewis, ed. The Gods HaveLanded: New Religions from Other Worlds, 1–13.Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.


Stupple, David W., 1994. “Historical Links Betweenthe Occult and Flying Saucers.” Journal of UFOStudies 5 (new series): 93–108.

Cosmic Awareness“Cosmic Awareness” first spoke in 1962through a retired army officer, WilliamDurby, who harbored metaphysical interests.When asked who or what it was, CosmicAwareness said it was a “total mind that is notany unity other than that of universality”(Melton, 1996). The following year an organ-ization was formed around the communica-tions in response to specific instructions fromAwareness to that effect.

After Duby died in 1967, the organizationsplit into seven factions, all at odds over whichheretofore-secret teachings should be madepublic and which should be kept only among

72 Cosmic Awareness

members. Out of the strife Cosmic AwarenessCommunications, which had the strongestlinks to the earliest group, emerged thestrongest. Based in Olympia, Washington, itsurvives today and maintains a sometimescontroversial presence on the New Age scene.

Its head, Paul Shockley, continues to chan-nel teachings from Awareness. His organiza-tion characterizes Awareness as “the Force thatexpressed Itself through Jesus of Nazareth, theBuddha, Krishna, Mohammed and othergreat avatars who served as ‘Channels’ forwhat is commonly known as ‘God,’ andwhich expresses Itself once again as the worldbegins to enter the New Age of spiritual con-sciousness and awareness” (“Cosmic Aware-ness Communications,” 1994).

Awareness teaches that the United States ofAmerica came into being through interven-tion with the Founding Fathers. The motivewas to allow personal freedom, which wouldaccelerate the process of change throughwhich human beings must go to be reunitedwith Awareness. The result will be a “UnitedStates of Awareness, where entities no longerfeel trapped by the physical plane, but may re-alize their true identity as being cosmic beingsof life, light and energy” (“Cosmic AwarenessIntroduces Itself,” n.d.).

Further Reading“Cosmic Aw a reness Communications,” 1994. http://

n e t . i n f o. n l / c o s m i c . h t m l“Cosmic Awareness Introduces Itself to the World,”

n.d. http://www.transactual.com/cac/intro.htmlMelton, J. Go rdon, 1996. En c yclopedia of Am e r i -

can Re l i g i o n s . Fifth edition. De t roit, MI: Ga l eRe s e a rc h .

Cottingley fairiesThe Cottingley fairies came into being in1917 as images on photographs produced bytwo Yorkshire girls, Frances Griffiths, ten, andher cousin Elsie Wright, thirteen. The inci-dent began as a childish trick to settle a scorewith adult authority figures but ended as oneof the more bizarre episodes in the history ofboth photography and occultism. It wouldtake six decades for the truth to emerge.

Frances and her mother and Elsie and herparents shared a house in Cottingley, nearBradford, Yorkshire, while Frances’s fatherserved in World War I. When Frances fell intoa brook, one day, and came home soakingwet, she explained that the mishap had oc-curred while she was playing with the fairieswho lived there. She was punished anyway.Offended at her friend’s treatment, Elsie sug-gested that they borrow her father’s camera,take pictures of fairies, persuade their parentsof the fairies’ authenticity, then later an-nounce that they were fake. They would thenclinch their case by reminding their parentsthat the adults had lied to them about FatherChristmas.

Knowing nothing of the scheme, of course,Arthur Wright loaned his daughter his cameraand provided her with a single plate. An hourlater the girls returned from the brook andtold Wright that they had photographed afairy. He did not believe them, but when hedeveloped the picture, he saw four tiny,winged women in front of Frances. The fig-ures looked like paper cutouts, but the skepti-cal elders could not extract an admission fromthe children. A month later, a reluctantWright gave Elsie access to the camera oncemore. The result was a second picture, thisone of a gnome whom Elsie appeared to beinviting to jump into her lap. Annoyed atwhat he took to be a continuing joke, Wrightkept the camera out of his daughter’s handsthereafter.

That would have been that; however, in1920, Polly Wright, Elsie’s mother, attended alecture on fairy lore. Afterward, she broughtup the photographs to the speaker, who im-mediately asked if he could see prints. Theseprints soon found their way into the hands ofTheosophist Edward Gardner, a believer infairies. The Wrights provided him with copiesof the originals, which Gardner showed to anacquaintance knowledgeable in photography.The expert stated, guardedly, that he could seeno evidence of fraud. Excited, Gardner dis-cussed the pictures in a lecture that May, andsoon Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the revered au-

Cottingley fairies 73

thor of the Sherlock Holmes stories and thenan avid spiritualist, heard about the matter.Doyle had Gardner take the pictures to theKodak laboratory in London, where two ex-perts neither endorsed nor repudiated them.In the summer, when Gardner met theWrights for the first time, he provided Elsiewith a modern camera. In short order, she andFrances had three new fairy photographs.

Doyle wrote two articles for the popularmagazine The Strand (December 1920 andMarch 1921 issues), declaring the pictures asproof of the existence of fairies. Doyle en-dured a great deal of ridicule for his advocacyof what many saw as a transparent hoax, butthat did not stop him from elaborating on thematter in a revealingly titled book, The Com -ing of the Fairies (1922). The year before, in1921, a self-described clairvoyant namedGeoffrey Hodson, also a Theosophist, had ac-companied the girls to the beck where thefairies lived. He claimed to have observed

many of them, though the girls saw nothingand attempts to photograph the entities cameto naught.

Two and a half decades later, Ga rd n e rw rote a memoir of the episode. He was stillconvinced of the authenticity of the Cotting-ley fairies. Occultists who championed thep i c t u res noted that the two girls, now grow nwomen, had never admitted to hoaxing, eve nwhen prompted to do so. Still, their answe r stended to be more equivocal than their advo-cates seemed to understand; when they said,for example, that these we re photographs of“figments of our imaginations,” the occultistsassumed they we re talking about “t h o u g h tf o r m s”—paranormal projections from themind to photographic film. But in a 1975 in-t e rv i ew for Wo m a n magazine, the two oldwomen appeared to respond more positive l yto the inevitable questions. The follow i n gye a r, when asked by Yo rk s h i re Television ifthe photos we re fakes, Fr a n c e s’s response was

74 Cottingley fairies

Frances Griffiths with “fairies,” photographed at Cottingley, West Yorkshire, July 1917 (Fortean Picture Library)

s i m p l e — “ Of course not”—spoken as if thequestion we re a foolish and impertinent one.

That, however, was the last time thewomen would maintain the pretense. In1982, The Unexplained, a British magazine,revealed that the two had confessed. In early1983, they provided a signed statement toBritish Journal of Photography editor GeoffreyCrawley, who then wrote a long, definitive ac-count of the curious episode. The women didnot tell Crawley quite everything; they saidthey wanted to keep some of the details tothemselves for a book they intended to write.Neither lived long enough, however, to pro-duce the proposed volume. In a final, curiousfootnote, Frances insisted to her death thatthough the pictures did not show real fairies,she had seen real fairies in the beck when sheand Elsie were friends and playmates.

A well-reviewed 1997 film, Fairy Tale: ATrue Story, dramatized the story, with PeterO’Toole playing Doyle.

See Also: Fairies encountered

Further ReadingClapham, Walter, 1975. “There Were Fairies at the

Bottom of the Garden.” Woman (October):42–43, 45.

Cooper, Joe, 1982. “Cottingley: At Last the Truth.”The Unexplained 117: 2238–2340.

Crawley, Geoffrey, 1982, 1983. “That AstonishingAffair of the Cottingley Fairies.” British Journal ofPhotography Pt. I (December 14): 1375–1380;Pt. II (December 31): 1406–1411, 1413–1414;Pt. III (January 7): 9–15; Pt. IV (January 21):66–71; Pt. V (January 28): 91–96; Pt. VI (Febru-ary 4): 117–121; Pt. VII (February 11):142–145, 153, 159; Pt. VIII (February 18):170–171; Pt. IX (April 1): 332–338; Pt. X (April8): 362–366.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 1922. The Coming of theFairies. New York: George H. Doran Company.

Gardner, Edward L., 1945. Fairies: The CottingleyPhotographs and Their Sequel. London: Theo-sophical Publishing House.

Hitchens, Christopher, 1997. “Fairy Tales CanCome True. . . .” Vanity Fair 446 (October): 204,206, 208, 210.

Hodson, Geoffrey, 1925. Fairies at Work and at Play.London: Theosophical Publishing House.

Sanderson, S. F., 1973. “The Cottingley Fairy Pho-tographs: A Re-Appraisal of the Evidence.” Folk -lore 84 (Summer): 89–103.

Smith, Paul, 1991. “The Cottingley Fairies: The Endof a Legend.” In Peter Narvaez, ed. The Good Peo -ple: New Fairylore Essays, 371–405. Lexington:University Press of Kentucky.

The CouncilWilliam LePar of North Canton, Ohio, chan-nels the Council, a single voice speaking fortwelve souls communicating from the Celes-tial Level of the God-Made Heavenly Realms.This, the Council says, is the only time in allof history that human beings have been con-tacted in this way. Since the original, involun-tary contact in the early 1970s, the Councilhas generated hundreds of thousands of wordsof discourse.

L e Par heads the SOL Association for Re-s e a rch, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organiza-tion. It publishes a new s l e t t e r, tapes, videos,and books and sponsors lectures and a lend-ing library.

Further Reading“Biographical Sketch of William Allen LePar,” n.d.

h t t p : / / w w w. s o l a r p re s s . c o m / a b o u t / B I O - B I L L .HTM

CurryIn a published letter to author and UFO ab-ductee Whitley Strieber, an anonymous manrecounts an otherworldly encounter he experi-enced at the age of eight, while living on anIndian reservation in South Dakota. The cor-respondent said he found himself inexplicablyoutside the house in the middle of the night,where he saw a smiling man who was some-how “different,” with larger than normal eyesand a small amount of hair on his head. In-stinctively, the boy knew the stranger’s namewas Curry, though later in life he learned thatcurry is “actually a sort of spice from India.”

The stranger led the boy to an odd-lookingblack car. Inside it was a man who looked tobe twenty years old or so. The man resembledCurry, and somehow the boy understood thathe was to comfort him because the man wasfrightened. The “car” ascended and flew rap-idly to a remote location where there was a

Curry 75

crossroads. A “ship or shuttle” then took theboy and his charge apparently into space, butStrieber’s correspondent had no memory ofanything except being dropped off and seeingCurry again. Now Curry was wearing a hoodthat covered everything but his eyes.

This was only the first of a number of para-normal encounters the correspondent wouldhave over the years, though this one, appar-ently, was his last with Curry. He refers tothem as “dreams, or experiences, dependingon how you want to look at it.”

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Strieber, WhitleyFurther ReadingStrieber, Whitley, and Anne Strieber, eds., 1997. The

Communion Letters. New York: HarperPrism.

CyclopeansArgentine ufologist Fabio Picasso coined theterm “Cyclopeans” to characterize one-eyedaliens whose alleged presence is the subject ofa handful of South American press accounts.Picasso acknowledges that some accounts arecertain or likely hoaxes, and others have notbeen well investigated. Nonetheless, as of1992, he had found eleven such reports.

One such case is said to have occurred onAugust 28, 1963, at Sagrada Familia, Br a z i l .T h ree boys witnessed the sudden appearanceof a beam of light in their backyard. In s i d ethe light, a transparent, ball-shaped objecth ove red. Inside it, four one-eyed entities,t h ree males and one female, clad in tight cov-eralls, we re visible. One stepped out of theUFO and floated in the air, communicatingfirst by gestures, then by telepathy, to thec h i l d ren (the content of the message is nots p e c i fied). The being returned to the craft,which then depart e d .

At Torrent, Argentina, in February 1965,farm laborers, returning home late at nightfrom hunting, noticed five small figures.When one of the hunters acted in a threaten-ing matter, the shapes suddenly grew largeruntil they were around eight feet tall. The be-ings chased the hunters to a house. Later, oneman escaped from the house with the one-

eyed entities in hot pursuit. One managed tograb him with its hairy hands, but the manbroke loose and got away. Subsequently, theothers effected an escape by van.

“ Cyclopean beings can be classified into twosubtypes,” Picasso writes. “T h e re are short Cy-c l o p e a n s . . . and tall ones. . . . The latter beingsoften behave aggre s s i ve l y” (Picasso, 1992).

Further ReadingPicasso, Fabio, 1992. “Infrequent Types of South

American Humanoids.” Strange Magazine 9(Spring/Summer): 34–35, 55.

CymatriliEnid Brady was a spiritualist medium who leda small church in Holly Hill, Florida. In theearly 1950s, she began to experience tele-pathic communications from the “masterteachers of Venus.” One of them was Cyma-trili. He and his companions were based in agiant ship in orbit above the southeasternUnited States. Venusians look much like hu-mans but are finer featured. Their civilizationis advanced, peaceful, and free of disease,poverty, and conflict. Venusians live to be sev-eral hundred years old.

Brady was little noted outside contacteec i rcles until the summer of 1957, when a re-t i red army major, Wayne S. Aho, took tapere c o rdings to Washington, DC, of Br a d y’scommunications from Cymatrili, Hu m aMatra, Mandall, and John (the latter two“ve n t l a”—saucer—pilots). Aho visited thePentagon. He persuaded Defense De p a rt-ment personnel to listen to an hour and ah a l f ’s worth of the tapes. A spokesman pro-nounced the messages “u n i m p re s s i ve and un-c o n v i n c i n g” (“Pentagon,” 1957). Aho laterp l a yed the tape for a United Press In t e r n a-tional re p o rt e r, who wrote a tongue-in-cheekpiece on the experience.

In other channelings, Brady’s Venusians re-lated that in 1955, Martians had landed atEdwards Air Force Base in southern Califor-nia and were taken into custody. Engineersfrom the air force learned a great deal aboutextraterrestrial technology from studying the

76 Cyclopeans

saucer the Martians had arrived in, and thattechnology was incorporated into later, flying-wing, experimental aircraft.

Br a d y’s space informants also told her thatlandings would begin in November 1957, andthat in 1962, Earth would enter a New Ageunder the guidance of friendly extraterre s t r i a l s .

See Also: Channeling; ContacteesFurther ReadingBryant, Larry W., 1983. “Enid Brady’s E-T Contact

Legacy.” MUFON UFO Journal 179 (January):12–13.

“Pentagon Hears ‘Voices from Venus’ but Fails to BeExcited about Them,” 1957. The Saucers Report2, 3 (October/November): 8–9.

Cymatrili 77

David of LandaDavid of the planet Landa, a distant worldnot recognized by conventional astronomy,channeled through Keith Macdonald (d.1999), a Grayslake, Illinois, car mechanic wholived a quiet life outside the public spotlight.Macdonald is typical of the sorts of personsufologist/occultist John A. Keel has called“silent contactees.” Unlike the flamboyant fig-ures who seek attention and audiences, Mac-donald confided his experiences only withfamily and trusted friends.

Macdonald became aware of David whileundergoing hypnotic re g ression directed byhis close friend Ron Owen. In 1974, Ma c-donald, his wife, and two sons saw what theyb e l i e ved to be a UFO hovering over a fielda c ross the street from their townhouse. Fo u ryears later, reliving the experience thro u g hhypnosis, he “re c a l l e d” being taken into theobject and undergoing a terrifying abductionat the hands of gray-skinned humanoids.Macdonald pursued recalling the experiencet h rough further hypnosis sessions until onesession suddenly ended with his declaringthat they could go no further because“t h e y’re here—right in the room with us!”( C l a rk, 1986). Then an entity who identifiedhimself as “Da v i d” began speaking thro u g hMa c d o n a l d .

From then on David appeared in regularchannelings. During these channelings, Mac-donald would lapse into a trance state andspeak in David’s voice. Afterward he couldnot recall any of the content and would de-pend on Owen to explain what words hadpassed through his mouth. When Davidwished to communicate only with Macdon-ald, however, no trance was necessary. A“voice” inside his head would speak, andsometimes Macdonald would psychically per-ceive David and other people of Landa. Mac-donald described the men as strikingly hand-some, the women beautiful. All wore robesand reminded Macdonald of Greek gods andgoddesses. Sometimes David came throughspontaneously when Macdonald was speakingwith Owen over the phone. At first, the chan-nelings—a word Macdonald and Owen hadnot heard until they attended a Wyomingcontactee conference sponsored by psycholo-gist/contactee R. Leo Sprinkle—were rela-tively infrequent. With the passing of time,they occurred more often, on occasion, asmany as three or four times a week.

Other extraterrestrials soon were speakingthrough Macdonald. There was Corinthian,David’s wife. Others were Pauline, Lenoir,Chieftain, and Isaiah. Some would not givetheir names, insisting names were unimpor-

D

79

tant. David, however, did most of the com-municating. Whenever a particular questionwas asked, he would excuse himself and say hehad to clear the answer with higher authority.After a pause, from a few seconds to a fewminutes, he would return either to answer thequestion or to announce he was not permittedto answer it. Other times, though rarely, theentity with whom David had conferred, theMaster, would speak, always briefly. The Mas-ter’s voice had an odd, eerie quality and a toneof absolute authority.

Over many dozens of hours of channeling,this story emerged:

Just before Moses was given the Ten Com-mandments, seven citizens of Landa wereelected by the Masters for a mission on Earth.The leader of the Seven Select, also called theHabanas or the Warriors of God, was Daniel(pronounced Dan-yell), the son of David andCorinthian. Once on Earth, the Habanas’ssouls occupied human bodies. With the pass-ing of centuries, during which the Habanasreincarnated repeatedly, other Habanas ar-rived, filling Earth with extraterrestrial agentswho with each life gained new knowledge thatwould be useful when the day of reckoning—the cleansing of the human race and the finalshowdown with the evil forces of the uni-verse—came. This climax would occur withinthe lifetimes of most living people. In this life,Daniel was Keith Macdonald.

David said, “Keith has now graduated andbecome a prophet. He is a prophet of Christ.He is a prophet of God.” The people ofLanda, devout Christians, practice a form ofRoman Catholicism. Raised a Protestant,Macdonald knew little of Catholicism untilthe Landanians contacted him.

According to a channeling from the Masterin 1985, “soon there will be forty craft ofLanda truly visible to the eyes of all humans.Three more craft shall come down to receiveKeith. This will be done to gain the attentionof the many, for Keith has a job. His first jobwill be to be received by us of Landa, to betaken there for forty days and nights. Duringthat time forty craft of Landa will travel to

every nation to show Keith has been received.When the meeting is over, Keith will return tomeet with the leaders of the churches and thenations. He will demand the release of theScrolls for all human beings to see and under-stand.” The Master explained that earthlingscannot now tell the difference between goodand evil because the Scrolls—suppressed an-cient religious documents—have not beenavailable to them.

The Scrolls contain the hidden history ofhumanity, revealing all the truths that God,Jesus, and Mary wanted humans to know butwere concealed because they did not suit thepurposes of earthly political leaders andchurch authorities. Keith himself, the Masterasserted, had this knowledge within himself,though it had not yet been released into hisconscious mind.

At the time of the Lifting—which is whatthe Landanians called the occasion that Mac-donald would be taken aboard a spacecraft(one of three that would appear in the sameempty field where evil aliens had kidnappedhim in 1974) and flown home to Landa—there would be thousands of witnesses. OnSeptember 22, 1985, Macdonald encounteredthe apparitional forms of David andCorinthian, who informed him that an earth-quake would devastate San Francisco soon.Upset, he pleaded for the innocent lives thatwould be lost, but his space friends/parentssoberly replied, “It is inevitable. You mustpray for the souls of those who will be lost andfor those who will miss them.”

Convinced that the earthquake wouldoccur any day, Macdonald waited gloomilyand anxiously. Nothing happened. But thenon the morning of October 7, as Macdonaldwas letting the dog out, a blinding light shotout of the sky and struck him in the face. Hetook this to mean that the first of the threeLandanian craft that would carry him awaywas in place.

The following day, while talking withOwen on the phone, David took over. He saidthat a physical, in-the-flesh meeting betweenKeith and David would occur in two days in

80 David of Landa

Keith’s house. David and Corinthian did notkeep their appointment.

In the days and weeks that followed, Mac-donald experienced a series of unusually vividdreams. One night he dreamed that he hadbeen accepted back into the military. To himthis symbolized his role as a Warrior of Godabout to “fight.” Another night he dreamedthat he was on a college campus, knowingwhere every building, every door, every roomwas. He heard professors lecturing and knewevery word they were saying. He understoodthat he had “graduated” to a level more ad-vanced than college. In yet another dream, hewas gazing over a crowd of hundreds of peo-ple, seeing deep inside each and recognizingeach one as a fellow Warrior of God, brotherand sister Habanas who would be comingtogether in the great events yet to occur asEarth met its cosmic destiny. A voice insidethe dream told him that this was a “reunion.”A blinding light cut through the dream, andwhen Macdonald sat bolt upright in bed, itcontinued to shine. It was so bright that hehad to put his arm over his face.

Strange, ominous events seemed to pointto the imminent Lifting. Twice on the eveningof October 23, as Macdonald and Owen weretalking, the phone suddenly disconnected,each time with a peculiar squealing sound. Ithappened just as they were discussing keypoints about Landanian objectives. Macdon-ald saw odd lights both inside the house andin the sky. Landanians appeared with increas-ing frequency, but only Macdonald could seethem. They were invisible to his wife. Mac-donald tried to capture them on film, but allthat the resulting photographs showed wasthe interior of the house, nothing more.

Early in December, the date of the SanFrancisco earthquake that was to prefigure theLifting appeared before his eyes in brilliantlight: DECEMBER 22. He could not only seethe date but also experience the sensations ofbeing in the quake. As the days passed, the vi-sion of the date recurred along with scenes ofdevastation. When December 22 came andwent with no earthquake, David told Keith

that the real date was January 3; the twenty-second was the date on which the craft wouldbegin to show themselves. David said thatMacdonald should always remember, “Thereis more than one meaning to a sentence.”

The failure of assorted prophecies neverentirely diminished Keith Macdonald’s be-lief—a palpably sincere one—that peoplefrom Landa were communicating with him.He learned, however, to be cautious abouttheir predictions, including promises of in-the-flesh meetings prior to the Lifting. In theyears that followed, growing health problemsforced Macdonald into retirement. In his lastyears, he spent considerable time in the hospi-tal. During that period contacts occurredmore often in unusually lucid dreams thanthey did via channeling.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Channeling; Con-tactees; Keel, John Alva; Sprinkle, Ronald Leo

Further ReadingClark, Jerome, 1986. “Waiting for the Space Broth-

ers.” Fate Pt. I. 39, 3 (March): 47–54; Pt. II. 39,4 (April): 81–87; Pt. III. 39, 5 (May): 68–76.

Owen, Ron, 2000. Private communication toJerome Clark (January 6).

Dead extraterrestrialsClaims that the bodies of extraterrestrials havebeen found in the wreckage of spacecraft areolder than the post–World War II UFO age.As long ago as 1864, a French newspaper (LaPays, June 17) reported the discovery, by twoAmerican geologists, of a hollow, egg-shapedrock. Inside it were various odd artifacts. Theyalso found the mummified remains of a tinyhumanoid—about three feet tall—with a baldhead and an elephantlike trunk growing outof its forehead. On October 13, 1877, aprovincial paper in Argentina set the identicaltall tale in that country, adding the detail thatthe discoverers had taken the body and arti-facts to a local saloon to put on display.

In 1897, during a wave of UFO (or, in theterminology of the time, “airship”) sightings,ships crashed and Martians died in Illinoisand Texas. In the latter instance, the pilot wasreportedly buried in a cemetery in a small

Dead extraterrestrials 81

north Texas town. When the latter tale was re-vived in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hope-ful investigators rushed to the scene, only tolearn eventually that no such corpse or gravehad ever existed outside the imagination of aturn-of-the-century prankster.

Though it did not come to wider attentionuntil many years later, a killing of a tiny hu-manoid reportedly took place in 1913 nearFarmersville, Texas. Three young brotherswere chopping cotton on their farm whenthey heard the family dogs barking and thenhowling. On investigating, the boys saw thedogs attacking a strange little man “no morethan eighteen inches high and kind of a darkgreen color,” one witness, an old man, recalledin a 1978 interview. “His arms were hangingdown just beside him, like they was groweddown the side of him. He had on a kind ofhat that reminded me of a Mexican hat. . . .Everything looked like a rubber suit includingthe hat.” The dogs tore him to pieces, leavinghuman-looking organs and blood on theground. The peculiar tale was known withinthe family for decades. Though he had a hardtime believing the story, the investigatorthought there was no question of the oldman’s sincerity.

Rumors of dead aliens, however, did notenter popular culture in any significant wayuntil 1947, after Kenneth Arnold’s June 24observation of nine discs over Mount Rainier,Washington, brought “flying saucers” intocommon currency. After initial theories thattied the sightings to secret aviation experi-ments proved groundless, those who contin-ued to take the reports seriously slowly beganto wonder if visitors from other planets wereresponsible for the phenomenon. By 1949,rumors of recovered extraterrestrial bodiesbegan to see print, notably in the entertain-ment industry newspaper Variety. ColumnistFrank Scully wrote that on three occasions theprevious year, beginning with an incident inAztec, New Mexico, in March, U.S. Air Forcepersonnel had recovered, at various desertsites, the remains of crashed spacecraft andbodies. He expanded these allegations into a

book destined for lasting notoriety, Behind theFlying Saucers (1950). In it, he identified hissource as the pseudonymous “Dr. Gee,” saidto be a leading scientific expert on magnetism(brought into the investigation of the recoverybecause it was believed that the ships “proba-bly flew on magnetic lines of force”). Thedead crews, human in every respect except fortheir perfect teeth and unfashionable 1890s-style clothes, were surmised to be of Venusianorigin. A subsequent exposé in True magazinerevealed that “Dr. Gee” was veteran confi-dence artist Leo GeBauer. With his longtimepartner-in-crime, Silas Newton, GeBauer hadconcocted the tale to sell bogus oil-detectiondevices allegedly tied to advanced interplane-tary technology.

As a result of the episode, even persons oth-erwise sympathetically disposed to the idea ofspace visitation were deeply skeptical ofcrash/retrieval claims. Still, the claims circu-lated in a significant body of saucer folklore,only a little of which surfaced in the UFO lit-erature. In 1952, Jim and Coral Lorenzen ofthe newly formed Aerial Phenomena ResearchOrganization (APRO)—which would proveamong the most influential and durable of allUFO groups—spoke with an airman whoswore that four years earlier he and othersfrom a military-scientific team had been dis-patched to a New Mexico crash site. There hehad seen a disc and learned that dead, littlemen had been taken from its cabin. Not longafterward, a “young meteorologist” told theLorenzens that in 1948, while visiting WrightAir Development Center (soon to be renamedWright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton,Ohio, he had spoken with an old friend, anair force man. The friend, in Coral Lorenzen’swords, showed him “space suits ranging fromthree to about five and a half feet in heightand diagrams of a circular ship that bore astrong resemblance to a ‘flying saucer.’ He saidthat people who laughed about flying saucerswere going to get a big jolt some day—thesesuits had been taken off the bodies of menwho had apparently perished in the crash oftheir saucer-shaped ships” (Lorenzen, 1962).

82 Dead extraterrestrials

On May 7, 1955, a Caracas, Venezuela,newspaper, El Universal, carried a sensationalstory of an incident supposed to have takenplace almost exactly five years earlier. A manclaimed that while driving down a rural high-way in Argentina, he spotted a flying saucerthat had landed on the side of the road. Curi-ous, he stopped his car, approached the craft,and eventually boarded it. Inside, he foundthe bodies of three little men lying near an in-strument panel. After touching one, he pan-icked and fled, to return the next day to seeUFOs hovering over the site. Where the origi-nal craft had been there was only a pile ofwarm, gray ashes. Years later, a retrospectiveinvestigation by Argentine ufologists deter-mined that the “witness” had made up thestory.

More intriguing was an account given inconfidence to Isabel L. Davis, one of the mostintelligent, hard-headed, first-generation ufol-ogists and a fierce critic of the more out-landish saucer tales. Davis never published theaccount in her lifetime, but she found it in-triguing, given that the informant, a medicalscientist, seemed serious and credible. Evenso, the scientist’s claim was a fantastic one. Inthe late 1950s, she told Davis, she was di-rected to a secure, government-run facilityand ordered to examine body parts that shequickly recognized as humanlike but nothuman. Her superiors provided no explana-tions or further details, and when her workwas completed, they instructed her to tell no-body. As she remarked to Davis, she wouldnot have done so anyway, since no one wouldhave believed her.

Another tale—this one circulated by saucerpersonality and publisher Gray Barker—con-cerned Nicholas von Poppen, an Estonianrefugee who had fled his native country whenSoviet troops overran it and slaughtered hisfamily. That much of the story seems true (thereal Von Poppen died in Los Angeles in1976). Beyond that, however, Barker andtruth parted company. He took an unpub-lished science-fiction manuscript written by asubscriber to his magazine The Saucerian and

transformed it into a “true” story. In the origi-nal, the writer/subscriber had taken a colorful,real acquaintance, Von Poppen, and placedhim inside a fantasy in which Von Poppentook photographs in New Mexico of a crashedUFO and its occupants. Barker took this storyand embellished it further, then marketed it asan account of an authentic incident—not theonly hoax Barker would perpetrate on his im-pressionable readers.

In the 1970s, ufologist Leonard H. String-field, in the face of criticism and skepticismfrom some colleagues, began collectingcrash/retrieval claims and rumors and pub-lishing them in a series of monographs. Noneamounted to much as evidence, though somewere undeniably interesting, such as the testi-mony of a Presbyterian pastor. This man—Stringfield protected the names of his inform-ants—alleged that when he was a boy, he andhis father (also a clergyman) visited the Mu-seum of Science and Industry in Chicago.During one visit, they got lost. In their searchfor an exit, they accidentally entered a roomwhere a number of humanoid beings lay pre-served under a glass-covered case. Before theycould fully grasp what they were seeing, theywere discovered. The father was pressured tosign papers swearing him to silence.

In another alleged instance, said to havetaken place at a New Jersey air force base inJanuary 1978, a sergeant—who insisted onanonymity—told Stringfield that in the earlymorning hours a military policeman had shotand killed a humanoid being that he had en-countered while chasing a UFO in his car.The body was then shipped off to Wright-Pat-terson Air Force Base. The sergeant eventuallyprovided an official-looking “incident report,”with the names of witnesses and investigatorsinked out. Stringfield’s informant talked andacted in a manner that he and fellow ufologistRichard Hall, who interviewed the man inperson on two occasions, deemed sincere, but,despite a serious effort, they uncovered noth-ing that conclusively verified the claim.

Perhaps the most interesting of Stringfield’sinformants were several “medical people” who


had performed autopsies on alien corpses.One, a physician who “served on the staff of amajor hospital” (Stringfield, 1980), provideda detailed account of an autopsy, in the early1950s, of a humanoid reminiscent of thegray-skinned, big-eyed entities that would fig-ure in abduction lore in later years. String-field, who died in December 1994, never re-vealed the names of these individuals, soindependent investigation of their stories andstatus proved impossible. Nor would his fam-ily provide investigators with Stringfield’s files.None disputed Stringfield’s integrity, thoughsome questioned his judgment in taking suchextraordinary testimony at face value.

Lecturing in London on April 14, 1979,American occultist and channeler James Hu r-tak declared that a flying saucer had crashedas early as 1946. His source, he said, was acolleague who had participated in the re-

t r i e val. The crash occurred near Great Fa l l s ,Montana. “The bodies we re shipped to theEd w a rds Air Fo rce Base facility in Califor-nia,” Hu rtak claimed. “It was determinedthat the green hue on the bodies was due tothe nature of the chemistry of the fuel sys-tem. After extensive studies the bodies we reput on ice and sealed in aluminum canisters”( Hu rtak, 1979).

In the late 1970s, a Minnesota school-teacher, William L. Moore, and a nuclear sci-entist and UFO lecturer, Stanton T. Fried-man, got interested in an incident that tomost was an obscure footnote: a brief flurry ofexcitement in early July 1947 over the sup-posed recovery of a “flying disc” near Roswell,New Mexico. The story had hit the pressesonly to be contradicted in a matter of a fewhours, when the U.S. Army Air Force an-nounced that it had all risen out of an absurd


Display showing a dead alien autopsy (with models) at the UFO Museum in Roswell, New Mexico (PeregrineMendoza/Fortean Picture Library)

misunderstanding about a downed weatherballoon. During his travels, Friedman met aretired air force officer who, at the time, hadbeen stationed at Roswell Army Air Field; theofficer, Major Jesse A. Marcel, had been thefirst uniformed officer on the site, and his ob-servation and experience over the next fewdays put into question the long-accepted bal-loon explanation. Friedman also interviewed awoman who had worked at an Albuquerqueradio station. She vividly remembered howthe U.S. Air Force had squelched coverage ofthe story. Both she and Marcel believed thatsome kind of extraordinary event that hadbadly rattled the military had happened.

Mo o re’s The Ro s well In c i d e n t ( 1 9 8 0 ) ,written with Bermuda Triangle popularize rCharles Berlitz, would be only the first ofmany books to address the subject. As inve s-tigators spoke with a growing number of in-formants, military and civilian, they estab-lished that a cove r - u p, maintained in part bythe threatening of witnesses, had been putinto place and that the official story was notthe real story. Some witnesses even assert e dthat the military had re c ove red bodies of lit-tle men at either the original crash site ora n o t h e r, related one some miles away. Intime, the Ro s well incident, as eve ryo n ecalled it, was no longer an arcane fascinationof ufologists but a much-discussed item ofpop culture, influencing any number of tele-vision shows, documentaries, movies, jokes,and more .

After years of denying that the air force hadcovered up the Roswell incident, the GeneralAccounting Office, at the behest of New Mex-ico Congressman Steven Schiff, searched offi-cial archives for relevant documents, uncover-ing little of interest. Around the same time, in1994, the U.S. Air Force declared that therehad indeed been a cover-up; it had been ofProject Mogul, a highly classified project inwhich balloons were sent aloft to monitorpossible Soviet atomic tests over the horizon.A Mogul balloon had come down nearRoswell, and the military’s effort to keep it asecret sparked the legend of a UFO crash. In

the face of press and popular skepticism(much of it focused on the explanation’s fail-ure to account for reports of bodies) the U.S.Air Force renewed its inquiries. On June 24,1997, it contended that the supposedly alienbodies were in fact “anthropomorphic testdummies that were carried aloft by U.S. AirForce high altitude balloons for scientific re-search” (The Roswell Report, 1997). The prob-lem with this theory was that tests involvingsuch dummies did not occur until 1953, leav-ing the air force with the rationalization—un-persuasive to many—that the informants sim-ply had their time mixed up.

Still, many ufologists, as much out of fru s-tration as firm intellectual conviction, ac-cepted the Mogul explanation, whatever itsi m p e rfections. The Ro s well incident hadspawned an industry and generated a hugebody of often confusing, contradictory (andsometimes demonstrably false) testimony. Ite ven generated documents (most notably thenotorious and deeply suspect “MJ-12” pa-pers, purportedly from the supersecret pro j-ect overseeing the UFO cover-up). On thewhole, it did not accomplish a great deal ex-cept to line the pockets of opportunists whod i d n’t much care about the truth—which, inany event, seemed irre c overable so manyyears past the original event. Ro s well also in-s p i red one of the most brazen hoaxes in UFOh i s t o ry, the so-called alien autopsy film thata i red on the Fox Ne t w o rk in the mid-1990s,p u r p o rting to show the dismemberment ofan extraterrestrial body by government scien-tists in 1947.

The failure of the Roswell story to come tofirm resolution after two decades of furiouscontroversy sobered many once-enthusiasticor hopeful ufologists. But as long as questionsremain, the mystery will stay open to thosewho are sufficiently determined to keepthinking—or, perhaps, thinking wishfully—about it. And Roswell or no, rumors, tall tales,and—on rare occasion—genuinely intriguingreports of dead extraterrestrials in our midstare likely to entertain live humans for sometime to come.


See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Aurora Martian;Fossilized aliens; Oleson’s giants

Further ReadingBarker, Gray, 1960. “Chasing the Flying Saucers.”

Flying Saucers (November): 22–28.Berlitz, Charles, and William L. Mo o re, 1980.

The Ro s well In c i d e n t . New Yo rk: Grosset andDu n l a p.

Cahn, J. P., 1952. “The Flying Saucers and the Mys-terious Little Men.” True (September): 17–19,102–112.

Carey, Thomas J., and Donald R. Schmitt, 1999.“Mack Brazel Reconsidered.” International UFOReporter 24, 4 (Winter): 12–19.

Evans, Alex, 1978. “Encounters with Little Men.”Fate 31, 11 (November): 83–86.


A photo from the U.S. Air Force’s Roswell Report about the 1947 UFO incident at Roswell, New Mexico, released June24, 1997, and intended to eliminate long-standing rumors. Air force personnel supposedly used stretchers and gurneys topick up these 200-pound dummies in the field and move them to the laboratory. (Associated Press/Air Force)

General Accounting Office, 1995. Report to the Hon -orable Steven H. Schiff, House of Representatives:Results of a Search for Records Concerning the 1947Crash Near Roswell, New Mexico. Washington,DC: General Accounting Office.

Hurtak, James J., 1979. “The Occupants of Crashed‘Saucers’.” The UFO Register 10, 1 (December):2–3.

Lorenzen, Coral E., 1962. The Great Flying SaucerHoax: The UFO Facts and Their Interpretation.New York: William-Frederick Press.

Pflock, Karl T., 1994. Roswell in Perspective. MountRainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.

———, 2000. “What’s Really Behind the FlyingSaucers? A New Twist on Aztec.” The Anomalist 8(Spring): 137–161.

Randle, Kevin D., 1995. A History of UFO Crashes.New York: Avon Books.

Randle, Kevin D., and Donald R. Schmitt, 1991.UFO Crash at Roswell. New York: Avon Books.

———, 1994. The Truth about the UFO Crash atRoswell. New York: Avon Books.

The Ro s well Re p o rt: Case Closed, 1997. Wa s h i n g t o n ,DC: Defense De p a rtment, Air Fo rce, He a d-q u a rt e r s .

The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the NewMexico Desert, 1995. Washington, DC: Head-quarters, United States Air Force.

Scully, Frank, 1950. Behind the Flying Saucers. NewYork: Henry Holt and Company.

Stringfield, Leonard H., 1980. The UFO Crash/Re -trieval Syndrome. Status Report II: New Sources,New Data. Seguin, TX: Mutual UFO Network.

———, 1987. “The Chase for Proof in a Squirrel’sCage.” In Hilary Evans with John Spencer, eds.UFOs 1947–1987: The 40-Year Search for an Ex -planation, 145–155. London: Fortean Tomes.

Swords, Michael D., 1997. “Roswell: Clashing Vi-sions of the Possible.” International UFO Reporter22, 3 (Fall): 11–13, 33–35.

Dentons’s Martians and VenusiansIn America during the nineteenth century,spiritualists and other psychics proliferated.Among the most prominent were WilliamDenton and his son Sherman. They calledthemselves “psychometers,” which meant thatthey could discern any truth, however distantin time and space, by touching a physical ob-ject or, if it were out of reach, at least focusingon it. In this way they learned that Mars andVenus were inhabited.

As the elder Denton put it, “A telescopeonly enables us to see; but the spiritual facul-

ties enable their possessors to hear, smell,taste, and feel, and become for the timebeing, almost inhabitants of the planet theya re examining.”

In 1866, as the two men were standing outin a field watching Venus rise in the eveningsky, the father asked the son to study theplanet and tell him what he saw. After a fewminutes, Sherman described trees, water thatwas heavy but not wet, and animals that hadthe features of both fish and muskrats.

Other experiments soon followed. Sher-man left his body and traveled to Mars, wherehe saw a thriving civilization consisting of arace that looked much like humans. “Theysoar above traffic on their individual fly-cycles,” he reported. “They seem particularlyfond of air travel. As many as thirty people oc-cupy some of the large flying conveyances.”The Martians also had a particular fondnessfor aluminum, which they employed in build-ing houses and machines.

See Also: A l l i n g h a m’s Ma rtian; Au rora Ma rt i a n ;Brow n’s Ma rtians; Ho p k i n s’s Ma rtians; Khauga;Ma rtian bees; Mi n c e - Pie Ma rtians; Mo n k a ;Mu l l e r’s Ma rtians; Sh a w’s Ma rtians; Sm e a d’s Ma r-tians; T h o m p s o n’s Venusians; Wi l c ox’s Ma rt i a n s

Further ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1966. Strangers from the Skies. New

York: Award Books.

DianeAccording to contactee Dana Howard, Dianewas a Venusian who began appearing to hu-mans in 1939. She returned in 1955 and wasseen many times after that. “Diane came inthe same miraculous manner as the Lady ofThe Lourdes and Our Lady of Fatima,”Howard wrote. “To all appearances She is aphysical being like ourselves, yet She is obvi-ously created of substances not of this earth”(Howard, 1958).

Howard, who claimed to have visitedVenus, reported that on October 3, 1957, asshe was lecturing at the Women’s Clubhousein Fontana, California, she felt a strangewarmth come over her. After the meeting, sev-eral audience members rushed up to her to saythat they had seen an apparition of a young

Diane 87

woman transposed over Howard’s body. Oneaudience member, Eleanor Warner, described“the figure of a beautiful woman, very young,with long golden hair, a very slim body, andsmall waistline. She seemed to glow in thegolden light.” Another witness, Trudy Allen,was “overcome by the transcendent beautythat was shining forth.”

In Howard’s account, Diane appeared toher, in full view of twenty-seven witnesses, forthe first time on April 29, 1955, and identi-fied herself as a Venusian. That same weekUFOs appeared on four occasions over PalmSprings, California, Howard’s hometown.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingHoward, Dana, 1958. “The Drama behind the

Space Ships.” Flying Saucer Review 4, 3(May/June): 21–23.

Divine FireIn a book that would prove influential in1970s New Age circles, Brad Steiger wrote ofwhat he called the “Divine Fi re.” He believe dthat a dramatic rise was occurring in visionaryexperience, channeling, and other contact withostensible higher intelligences. “Clergymen,c l e rks, professors, public relations exe c u t i ve s ,h o u s ew i ves, students, servicemen, and factoryw o rkers have been demonstrating that Pe n t e-cost was not just a one-shot special designed toe xcite the Apostles and their kibitzers in Je ru-salem of A.D. 30,” he said (St e i g e r, 1973).

According to Steiger, these extraordinaryexperiences and communications were takinga variety of forms, but the message was thesame in its essence as those given to prophetsfive thousand years ago. He suggested that“the very repetition of a basic message may beevidence of the vital relevancy and universalityof a cosmic truth.” The messages came fromostensible angels, extraterrestrials, divinities,and the like, but all spoke of a “Higher Being”from whom each individual could draw inspi-ration and wisdom. These messages statedthat all humans have the power within them-selves to contact this Higher Being. All things

were one; everything and everybody was atonce individual and universal. And finally, hu-mans were entering, in Steiger’s summary, “aNew Age, another progression in our evolu-tion as spiritual beings. . . . We are moving to-ward a state of mystical consciousness whereinevery man shall be priest.”

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. En-


Dual reference“Dual reference” is a term coined by Massa-chusetts ufologist Joseph Nyman. His hyp-notic investigations of abductees have led himto the discovery that many believe themselvesto be of alien origin. They have no consciousmemories of such a personal extraterrestriallink, but under hypnosis they gradually cometo understand that the aliens who are abduct-ing them are actually their own associates andcolleagues. They eventually grasp that beforetheir human selves were born, their alienselves made the decision to send their con-sciousnesses into human fetal bodies. In thevery first years of their human lives, memoriesof their homes on other worlds are lost, butover the years, as they undergo abduction ex-periences, they learn—through hypnotic “re-call” of these experiences—of their true pastand their mission in this life and on thisplanet. Sometimes, while the session is goingon, the hypnotist is able to speak directly withthe alien intelligence in the subject’s body.

Similar notions are not uncommon amongcontactees, many of whom are convinced thatthey were extraterrestrials in an earlier livesand are now here to help prepare humans forthe great geophysical and spiritual changesthat will be coming soon. Dual reference alsois somewhat comparable to the notion ofWalk-ins, popularized by occult writer RuthMontgomery, except that Walk-ins are not al-ways (though they are sometimes) extraterres-trials. Moreover, they are so intellectually andspiritually advanced that they only take up oc-

88 Divine Fire

cupancy of the bodies of grown adults, so asnot to waste valuable time.

Nyman writes, “We strongly suspect thatthe feeling of dual reference . . . is uncon-sciously present in all [abduction] experi-encers” (Nyman, 1989). Most investigators ofthe abduction phenomenon disagree, and in-deed when Nyman presented his ideas at a1992 conference held at the Massachusetts In-stitute of Technology, some questioners ac-cused him of leading his subjects into confab-ulation. They were particularly critical of hispractice of asking the subjects to recall “mem-ories” of their lives in the womb. AmongNyman’s defenders was Harvard Universitypsychologist John E. Mack, who was also en-gaged in extensive hypnotic probing of osten-sible abductees.

In a book published two years later, Ma c ktold the story of a young man he identifiesonly as Paul, “one of an increasing group ofa b d u c t e e s . . . who have discove red that theyh a ve a dual identity of an alien (they do notuse that word) and a human being.” Pa u lwas convinced that he was on Earth to showpeople how to love and accept love — t h i se ven before he found his alien identityunder hypnosis.

Paul had gone to another psychologist toexamine some of his life’s problems, includinga conviction that he had seen a weird hu-manoid creature. Hypnotized, he spoke ofother encounters with other strange beings,including one when he was two or three yearsold. The psychologist did not know what tomake of these stories, and he and Paul partedcompany; Paul eventually found his way toMack.

With Mack, Paul explored an apparentmemory of a further encounter, this one whenhe was six and a half. He spoke of seeing abeing inside his house and of sensing that thetwo of them were “linked in a way.” Theywent outside together, where they met twogroups—four or five each—of humanoids.Though they did not look human, Paul feltcomfortable, even joyful, to be in their com-pany. They apparently felt the same; they

hugged him and gave every indication of feel-ing great affection for him. The whole experi-ence felt “like home.” Subsequently he wastaken aboard a ship, an experience he sensedhe had undergone in other lives. One of thebeings told him that he was from their planet.The alien spoke of human beings’ inability to“truly open up to another” and of their hostil-ity to the visiting extraterrestrials.

During the session Paul alternated betweenhis human and alien selves. In the latter, hespoke of the nature of higher consciousnessand of humans’ destructive ways. He also ex-pressed homesickness for the ship and theplanet from which he had come. He “remem-bered” earlier visits to Earth, including inter-actions—apparently tens of millions of yearsago—with intelligent, gentle dinosaurs. In an-other instance, the ship on which he was trav-eling—in earthling guise—with extraterres-trial companions rescued the survivingoccupants of a crashed craft that went downin the desert after being shot down by “men inuniforms.” Two of the crew died and had tobe abandoned in the face of advancing sol-diers. Paul felt, in this instance, ashamed to behuman; yet, in a broader context, he felt cer-tain that “peace and love” were slowly spread-ing over the Earth and that he had a role toplay in opening up human beings to larger,benevolent cosmic truths.

According to Mack, Paul has learned pow-erful psychic healing powers from his ongoinginteractions with his extraterrestrial friends.He has been given a great deal of informationon their “unbelievable” technology but hasbeen forbidden to share it (Mack, 1994a).

Mack rejects the theory that such attach-ments of abductee to abductor are analogousto the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, inwhich a hostage comes to identify with his orher captor. There is, he says, “little sense thatthe alien identity is primarily a product of‘identification with the aggressor.’ . . . Rather,the dual identity appears to be a fundamentaldimension of the consciousness expansion oropening that is an intrinsic aspect of the ab-duction phenomenon itself ” (Mack, 1994b).

Dual reference 89

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees; Wa l k - i n sFurther ReadingMack, John E., 1994a. Abduction: Human Encoun -

ters with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner’sSons.

———, 1994b. “Post Conference Note.” In AndreaPritchard, David E. Pritchard, John E. Mack,Pam Kasey, and Claudia Yapp, eds. Alien Discus -sions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Confer -ence, 146. Cambridge, MA: North CambridgePress.

Nyman, Joseph, 1988. “The Latent Encounter Expe-rience—A Composite Model.” MUFON UFOJournal 242 (June): 10–12.

———, 1989. “The Familiar Entity and Dual Ref-erence in the Latent Encounter.” MUFON UFOJournal 251 (March): 10–12.

———, 1994. “Dual Reference in the UFO En-counter.” In Andrea Pritchard, David E.Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey, and Clau-dia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of theAbduction Study Conference, 142–148. Cam-bridge, MA: North Cambridge Press.

DugjaAccording to members of a small group calledElan Vital (Vital Essence), the last queen ofthe lost continent of Lemuria, Dugja (pro-nounced doo-ja), reigns as “Spirit of theMountain.” The mountain is Shasta, in farnorthern California, the focus of many occult

beliefs and legends. Dugja materializes when-ever her mood or the situation, calls for it.

One member claimed that in 1963, whilemeditating on Mount Sh a s t a’s Grey Butte, hesensed an “astral man,” with thin hair, whiteb e a rd, and pink skin, warning him telepathi-cally to turn back. When he ignored the thre a t sand entreaties, other astral entities joined withthe first one. Nonetheless, undaunted, the manended his meditation and continued his tre kup the mountain. Soon he encountered Du g j a ,who greeted him warmly and invited him tostay for a time. He returned to Shasta thre eyears later. Since then, he told re p o rter Em i l i eA. Frank in the 1970s, he had visited the queenon many occasions in both physical and out-of-body states. “I am also responsible for clean-ing negative light forces around Mount Sh a s t aand elsew h e re in the world,” he said. “T h e s elight forces affect the population, and in ord e rto make the world a better place . . . I polarizetheir negative influences. Eventually they willall be pure. In the meantime, I make many as-tral trips to Mount Shasta in order to purify thel i g h t s” (Frank, 1998).

See Also: Lemuria; Mount ShastaFurther ReadingFrank, Emilie A., 1998. Mt. Shasta: California’s Mys -

tic Mountain. Hilt, CA: Photografix Publishing.

90 Dugja

Earth Coincidence Control OfficeScientist John Lilly, best known for his pio-neering researches into dolphins and into al-tered states of consciousness, was on an air-liner approaching Los Angeles when he hadhis first communication from an intelligencehe would come to call Earth CoincidenceControl Office. He received a psychic messagethat said, “We will now make a demonstra-tion of our power over the solid-state controlsystems upon the planet Earth. In thirty sec-onds, we will shut off all electronic equipmentin the Los Angeles airport. Your airplane willbe unable to land there and will have to beshunted to another airport” (Lilly, 1978). Sureenough, the power blackout occurred, forcingLilly’s plane to land at Burbank; another planecrashed.

In a visionary experience not long after-ward, Lilly witnessed the future of the humanrace. A solid-state intelligence, consisting ofall computers and electronic systems, will as-sume control of everything and become toopowerful for human beings to do anythingabout. By the 2500s this intelligence will be incommunication with its counterparts else-where in the Milky Way.

Lilly believed himself to be in contact withthe water-based—as opposed to solid-state—entities in the universe. The two intelligences,

the latter always the creation of the former, arein conflict all through the universe. Wa t e r -based beings from elsew h e re are paying closeattention to developments on Earth and send-ing humans constant telepathic messages thatusually re g i s t e r, at least where humans are con-cerned, only on a subliminal level. These be-ings (the Earth Coincidence Control Office, inL i l l y’s phrasing) seek to influence human evo-lution in such a way that humans do not be-come enslaved to their technology. The otherintelligences that share our planet—dolphinsand whales—are more psychically attuned tothese messages and re c e i ve them clearly. Lillyholds that “whales and dolphins quite naturallygo in the direction we call spiritual, in that theyget into meditative states quite simply and eas-i l y. . . . Dolphins have a highly developed con-sciousness, and a powe rful connection tohigher re a l i t i e s” (Lilly, 1972).

Beginning in the 1950s, Lilly had experi-mented with sensory deprivation. He wouldplace himself in a tank of water in a totallydark, silent room. In due course he would un-dergo vivid hallucinations. To him these hal-lucinations became more real than reality. Hecame to believe that through them he enteredother dimensions of existence and grew awarethat this dimension and others harbor innu-merable varieties of intelligent entities.

E

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Further ReadingLilly, John C., 1972. The Center of the Cyclone: An

Autobiography of Inner Space. New York: JulianPress.

———, 1978. The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography.New York: J. B. Lippincott.

Elder RaceThe Elder Race, also known as Els, was thefirst extraterrestrial group ever to arrive onEarth. They showed up one billion years agoafter already having colonized a considerableportion of the galaxy. But on Earth, these be-ings—originally twelve feet tall, male and fe-male (though “not as we think of sex differen-tiation today” [Williamson, 1959]), and manyone-eyed—radically changed. Earth would bethe last planet in which they existed in physi-cal bodies. During their stay on Earth, theyconquered matter, energy, space, and time,becoming “the legendary ‘gods’” able to proj-ect via mental powers “any amount of matter

in any degree of density or intensity to anyplace on Earth at any time.” In their under-ground city near Lake Titicaca, along what isnow the Peru-Bolivia border, they built a vastcontrol room, a kind of “Earth Center.”

In this and other underground realms, theyleft vast libraries on which the history of theuniverse is recorded on crystal devices encasedin magnetic fields. On occasion, a psychicallysensitive individual is able to tap into theserecords.

Further ReadingWilliamson, George Hunt, 1959. Road in the Sky.

London: Neville Spearman.

Elvis as JesusIn a book published in 2000, Cinda Godfreyconcludes that Elvis Presley was the Mes-siah—the returned Jesus Christ. She writesthat she began her research in 1992, deter-mined to disprove any connection betweenthe two, only to find “mind-boggling evidence

92 Elder Race

Stephanie G. Pierce, Celebrity Spokesminister for the 24 Hour Church of Elvis, stands inside the church’s inner sanctum.(Macduff Everton/CORBIS)

that the prophecies throughout the [Bible] fitboth Elvis and Jesus like a glove.”

Among the similarities: Both Jesus andElvis are called The King. Jesus was theRock; Elvis (at least according to Go d f re y )i n vented rock. Jesus was the Son, and El v i sbegan his re c o rding career on the Sun label.“The name numbers for Jesus and Elvis bothequal nine,” she says. “In fact, their name-numbers match exactly, letter for letter andnumber for number: Jesus = 15363, Elvis =53613.” Their followers worshipped anda d o red them. Both could heal and re a dminds, and both had powe rful enemies whosought to stop them. Go d f rey claims thatlike Jesus, Elvis was Jew i s h .

She also notes that the Bible frequentlyrefers to the Voice of God on many occasions.“Is there any voice more spectacular than ElvisPresley’s?” she asks. The Psalms even predictthat Presley one day would disappear: “I amshut up and I cannot come forth” (Psalms88:8) and “How long, Lord? Wilt thou hidethyself forever?” (Psalms 89:46). Isaiah 4:2states that when the Messiah comes, “In thatday shall the branch [Messiah] of the Lord bebeautiful and glorious.” Godfrey remarks,“Now, picture Elvis at his Aloha from Hawaiiconcert, resplendent in his jeweled AmericanEagle jumpsuit. Curiously enough, the eagleis also a symbol for Christ” (Godfrey, 2000).

According to Godfrey (as well as moremainstream Presley biographers such as PeterGuralnick), Presley had a religious vision inthe Arizona desert in March 1965. Just out-side Flagstaff, as Presley was driving his buswith his spiritual advisor Larry Geller sittingnext to him, he saw a cloud in a clear sky andswore that he could see the face of the late So-viet dictator Josef Stalin in it. The image fadedas the cloud’s shape changed, so Presley imag-ined, into the face of Jesus. He pulled the busover to the side of the road and ran into thedesert, feeling a sense of deep spiritual trans-formation. Geller would claim that Presleylater wondered if maybe he was indeed Christ.

Godfrey contends that Elvis Aron Presley’sown name proves his godhood. “El” means

God, “vis” from power—thus “God Power.”“Presley” derives from “priestly.” She goes on,“In fact, all three of Elvis’ major residencescontain the prophetic ‘EL’: Graceland, Tupeloand Bel Air. Furthermore, according to theBible, since Jesus’ crucifixion, we are living inthe Dispensation of ‘Grace’—that 2,000 yearperiod of time when sins are pardoned by thesacrificial death of Christ. The name of ElvisPresley’s mansion: ‘GRACE-LAND’!” And,she adds, did not Jesus say, “I am Alpha andOmega, the beginning and the ending,” justas Elvis said, “I am and I was”?

Godfrey goes outside Scripture to delveinto esoteric literature for further evidence,citing among other sources the prophecies ofNostradamus and Edgar Cayce. Noting oneoccultist interpretation of the Great Pyramid(not shared by Egyptologists), she writes thatthe Great Pyramid was a monument toChrist, allegedly known to the Egyptians as“Orion.” The pyramid’s structure, read prop-erly, foretells the return of Christ sometimearound 2000. “Elvis Presley has been men-tioned in connection with the name Orion onmany occasions,” she observes, “includingGail Giorgio’s 1978 bestseller, Orion, about agodlike singer who faked his death and disap-peared” (Godfrey, 2000).

Further ReadingGodfrey, Cinda, 2000. The Elvis-Jesus Mystery—The

Shocking Scriptural and Scientific Evidence ThatElvis Presley Could Be the Messiah Anticipatedthroughout History. New Philadelphia, OH: Reve-lation Press.

Guralnick, Peter, 1999. Careless Love: The Unmakingof Elvis Presley. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books.

EmmanuelFirst seen clairvoyantly as a “being of goldenlight” (Rodegast and Stanton, 1985), Em-manuel was a popular channeling entity dur-ing the New Age boom of the 1980s. Em-manuel, who spoke through Pat Rodegast, didnot ever explain exactly who or what he was,insisting only that he was physically real buthinting that he had a body that human beingsmight not be comfortable seeing. He made a

Emmanuel 93

particular impression on psychologist andguru Baba Ram Dass (the former RichardAlpert, who worked with Timothy Leary onearly LSD research and advocacy).

Emmanuel taught that “the separation” ofhuman beings from God was only temporary,and it served a larger purpose. Through it,human beings have gained the knowledgethey need to reunite with the divine and be-come cocreators with God.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingRodegast, Pat, and Judith Stanton, eds., 1985.

Em m a n u e l’s Book: A Manual for Living Com -f o rtably in the Cosmos. New Yo rk: Some Fr i e n d sof Em m a n u e l .

EunethiaEunethia, who channels through YvonneCole, commands the starship Venusia, servingthe Ashtar Command. She and her crew orig-inally came from Venus but now live in a largeship that orbits Earth. Their purpose is to ob-serve and to teach humans. They are also hereto prepare humans for the great upheavalsthat will soon occur in response to their longabuse of the Earth.

According to Eunethia, more than fourteenplanetary species are involved in the Earthproject. “When the call went out for volun-teers to assist planet Earth,” she says, “the re-sponse came from all areas of the Universe.Most interaction is in the form of telepathiccontact” (Bryant and Seebach, 1991), thoughrelatively few humans are sufficiently devel-oped in their psychic powers to communicate.

See Also: AshtarFurther ReadingBryant, Alice, and Linda Seebach, 1991. Healing

Shattered Reality: Understanding ContacteeTrauma. Tigard, OR: Wildflower Press.

Extraterrestrial biological entitiesAccording to a body of modern folklore, theUnited States government has established se-cret contact with space people, whom it calls“extraterrestrial biological entities,” or EBEs

(ee-buhs). It also has retrieved the bodies ofdead EBEs from crashed UFOs such as theone that came down near Roswell, New Mex-ico, in early July 1947.

Such rumors have been in circulation sincethe earliest days of the UFO controversy,which began with a sighting by private pilotKenneth Arnold of nine “flying saucers” overMount Rainier, Washington, on June 24,1947. One of the first rumors alleged that agiant spacecraft landed not far from Juneau,Alaska, in mid-1948, and in the first inter-planetary conference, President Harry Tru-man, along with his top aides and high-rank-ing military officers, met with its occupants,who were friendly and humble. In the 1950s,George Hunt Williamson, a contactee andpopular author of saucerian books, wrote that“a highly secret operation known as ProjectNQ-707,” headquartered at Edwards AirForce Base in the California desert, had estab-lished radio contact with flying saucers andwas trying to get them to “land at a ren-dezvous point near Salton Sea in SouthernCalifornia” (Williamson, 1953). Williamson’sfriend George Adamski insisted that the U.S.government and space people regularly spokewith one another. He would even claim thatin 1962 he boarded an alien spaceship at anair force base on his way to a conference onSaturn.

In 1956, England’s Flying Saucer Reviewpublished startling revelations by a contribu-tor identified only as a “special correspon-dent.” The correspondent asserted that ahighly placed American official had confidedto him that UFOs were known to containfriendly space visitors who were trying to finda way to breathe Earth’s atmosphere beforelanding and declaring themselves. The maga-zine revealed nine years later that its unnamedinformant was one “Rolf Alexander, M.D.,”and that the official was the late general anddiplomat George C. Marshall. It did not men-tion that “Alexander” was in fact an ex-convictwhose real name was Allan Alexander Stirling.“Alexander” claimed vast psychokinetic pow-ers that allowed him to break up clouds.

94 Eunethia

A related rumor held that the governmentdid not dare to release its knowledge of extra-terrestrial visitation for fear of panic. There-fore, it had embarked on an indoctrinationprogram through which, by judicious leaksand UFO-themed movies and televisionshows, the public would get used to the no-tion and therefore be able to handle the newswhen it was time to deliver it.

In the early 1980s, a darker version of thelegend came to the fore. This time it was tiedto nightmarish conspiracy theories, in which am a l e volent “s e c ret gove r n m e n t” worked withhostile aliens to enslave the world’s population.Via abductions the aliens re c e i ved certain bio-logical materials they needed to surv i ve, andthe secret government, in turn, got access toa d vanced extraterrestrial technology. T h e s especulations we re tied to traditional conspiracytheories, sometimes with barely concealeda n t i - Semitic ove rtones. One of the move-m e n t’s critics, Je rome Clark, coined the phrase“ Da rk Si d e” to characterize it. One principalDa rk Si d e r, Milton William Cooper, claimedto have read highly classified documents thatre p o rted that alien technology made timet r a vel possible. Both the space people and thes e c ret government had learned that World Wa rIII would erupt in 1995 and escalate into nu-clear conflict in 1999, preparing Earth for theSecond Coming of Christ in 2011.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, Ge o r g e ;Contactees; Holloman aliens; Williamson, Ge o r g eHu n t

Further ReadingAndrews, George C., 1986. Extra-Terrestrials Among

Us. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.C l a rk, Je rome, 1998. “Da rk Side.” In The UFO En c y -

clopedia, Second Edition: The Phenomenon from theBe g i n n i n g , 301–319. De t roit, MI: Om n i g r a p h i c s .

Cooper, Milton William, 1991. Behold a Pale Horse.Sedona, AZ: Light Technology Publishing.

Ellis, Bill, 1991. “Cattle Mutilation: ContemporaryLegends and Contemporary Mythologies.” Con -temporary Legend 1: 39–80.

“Let’s Talk Space: ‘Flying Saucers Are Real,’” 1956.Flying Saucer Review 2, 1 (January): 2–5.

“Report Tells of ‘ Top Brass’ Attending Saucer Land-ing,” 1955. Flying Saucer News-Service ResearchBulletin 1, 9 (August 20): 3.

“Rolf Alexander, M.D.,” and “Thoughts on UFOsby Dr. Rolf Alexander,” 1965. Flying Saucer Re -view (March/April): 9.

Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues—Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

Extraterrestrials among usAccording to flying-saucer contactees, hu-manlike beings from other planets walk thestreets of the Earth, undetected and unsus-pected by oblivious earthlings.

George Hunt Williamson, for example, de-clared that the program to infiltrate Earthbegan in the late nineteenth century. “Spacevisitors were actually deposited and left on ourworld to mix, mate, and marry with us,” hewrote. “The new ideas and theories first cameout in book form [in various scientific and oc-cult texts], and this was the prelude to the ap-pearance of spacecraft in the skies of Earth”(Williamson, 1953). In our time, the extrater-restrial agents, whom Williamson called theWanderers, have helped turn our attention toscience fiction and space travel, among otherthings. In a subsequent book, Williamsonwould argue that the Hopi and Navajo tribeslong ago came to Earth from Mars and Lu-cifer-Maldek (a destroyed planet whose re-mains comprise what we now call the asteroidbelt).

In February 1953 Williamson’s friendGeorge Adamski met a Martian on the streetsof Los Angeles. The Martian told him, “Atour work and in our leisure time, we minglewith people here on Earth, never betrayingthe secret that we are inhabitants of otherworlds” (Adamski, 1955). Those who knewAdamski took his claims of Earthbound extra-terrestrials seriously because they believed thaton occasion they had seen these beings. LouZinsstag was Adamski’s most energetic Euro-pean supporter, and she accompanied himduring much of a lecture tour he conductedon the continent in 1959. Adamski confidedto her that Venusian men—he called them“boys”—regularly had been meeting with himin his hotel rooms on mornings. One after-noon, Zinsstag recalled, she was sitting in a

Extraterrestrials among us 95

sidewalk café outside Adamski’s hotel whenshe happened to notice a handsome youngman wearing sun glasses. She was unable toplace his nationality. Shortly thereafter,Adamski, who had been resting in his room,came outside, smiling broadly, “his eyessparkling with pleasure.” He was also smilingat the young man, who smiled back. Adamskiwas unable to keep his eyes off the man, whoeventually departed, “greeting George and mewith a most friendly and prolonged smile”(Zinsstag, 1990). When Zinsstag askedAdamski if this were one of the Venusian“boys,” he said yes.

Another account comes from Adamski as-sociate C. A. Ho n e y, who recalled, “I waswith Adamski in 1958 during a meetingwith three little people who he claimed hadcome to Earth from Venus. I saw them andtalked with one of them but I don’t know ifthey we re anything other than what I saw—little people” (Ho n e y, 1979). In an earlierversion of the story, Honey told of seeing asmall, blond woman in a roadside café whilehe and Adamski we re on a trip to Ore g o n .Noticing that Adamski appeared “s h o c k e d , ”Honey studied her care f u l l y. From a dis-tance, he said, she looked to be no morethan twe l ve years old, but up close she ap-p e a red middle-aged. She “let me know shewas reading my thoughts” (Ho n e y, 1959).The next day, when Honey told Adamski hethought she was a spacewoman, Ad a m s k ia g reed and later asserted that space peoplehad informed him that she was the sister ofKalna, a Venusian spacewoman friend ofAd a m s k i’s .

Another prominent 1950s contactee, Tru-man Bethurum, claimed to have encounteredhis spacewoman friend Aura Rhanes on asidewalk in Las Vegas. When he greeted her,she “turned around but did not seem to wantto be recognized, for she shook her head andjust walked across the street and joined acrowd waiting for a bus,” according to Bethu-rum (Bethurum, 1954).

Much contactee doctrine concerning earth-bound extraterrestrials focuses more on the

souls of these beings than on the particularbodies they happen to inhabit. Within thecontactee underground, many people believethey themselves were space people in previousincarnations; a lifetime or lifetimes ago theymade the decision to be born as earthlings soto work toward the changes that will preparehumankind for membership in the GalacticFederation. In the 1970s and 1980s, the con-cept of “Star People,” championed by writerBrad Steiger, gained popularity in New Agecircles. Steiger wrote that Star People were os-tensible humans but in fact reincarnated ex-traterrestrials; Star People shared certain phys-ical and psychological features with eachother, and they also had experienced other-worldly realities all their lives, even if con-sciously they did not recognize their signifi-cance. Less benignly, some writers havesuggested that the menacing men in blackwho threaten investigators and witnesses areevil aliens.

In the era of UFO abductions some re-searchers reported that their female subjectshad undergone mysteriously terminated preg-nancies, only to be abducted at a later date tobe shown an alien-human hybrid child who,they were led to believe, was their own. Thesehybrids had both human and alien features invarying proportions. On occasion, abducteeswould encounter the more human-lookinghybrids in real-life situations. David M. Ja-cobs, in The Threat (1998), proposed thealarming theory that hybrids are being bred toreplace the human race at some point in thenot-distant future.

The abduction era also produced a storytold by a man whose credentials seem impec-cable, a New York book editor and formerWashington correspondent for Newsweek.There was also a confirmatory witness, theman’s wife. In January 1987, the publishinghouse William Morrow had just released thedestined-to-be bestseller Communion, Whit-ley Strieber’s account of his personal abduc-tion experiences. The editor, Bruce Lee,claimed that just as the book was starting toshow up on the stalls, he and his wife ven-

96 Extraterrestrials among us

tured into Womrath’s bookstore on Manhat-tan’s Lexington Avenue. As he related to NewYork writer Tracy Cochran, the two noticed avery short couple, bundled up in winterclothes, looking over a copy of Communionand complaining about how Strieber had got-ten things wrong. They spoke “rapidly inwhat sounded like educated Upper East SideJewish accents.” When Lee introduced him-self as a William Morrow employee and askedpolitely what it was they did not like aboutthe book, the man ignored him, but thewoman communicated such “completeloathing, hatred” that the Lees retreated inshock (Conroy, 1989). They noticed that thestrange couple were wearing large tintedglasses that did not entirely hide large “dark,almond-shaped eyes.” Lee later took—andpassed—a polygraph test.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;Alien diners; Aura Rhanes; Bethurum, Truman;Contactees; Hybrid beings; Men in black; StarPeople; Strieber, Whitley; Wanderers; William-son, George Hunt


York: Abelard-Schuman.Bethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer.

Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.Cochran, Tracy, 1987. “Invasion of the Strieber

Snatchers.” New York (March 30): 26.Conroy, Ed, 1989. Report on “Communion”: An Inde -

pendent Investigation of and Commentary on Whit -ley Strieber’s “Communion.” New York: WilliamMorrow.

Honey, C. A., 1959. “Mail Bag: Belief Confirmed.”Flying Saucer Review 5, 2 (March/April): 32–33.

———, 1979. “Report from the Readers.” Fate 32,5 (May): 113–115.

Jacobs, David M., 1998. The Threat. New York:Simon and Schuster.


Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and theTransformation of Man. New York: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich.

Williamson, George Hunt, 1959. Road in the Sky.London: Neville Spearman.

Zinsstag, Lou, 1990. UFO . . . George Adamski:Their Man on Earth. Tucson, AZ: UFO PhotoArchives.

Extraterrestrials among us 97

Fairies encounteredTraditions of fairy folk can be found anywherein the world, but they are usually spoken of inthe past tense. What is less well known is thatsuch beliefs derive not just from distant folk-lore but from perceived experiences of a sortthat are still reported from time to time eventoday. British anomalist Janet Bord writes,“Today the knowledge of and belief in fairieshas all but died out among countrypeople. . . . However[,] the changes that haveoccurred this century have not resulted in thecomplete extinction of the fairies: they havesurvived, because people still see them” (Bord,1997). Though Victorian popular culture per-petrated the notion that fairies are gauzy-winged creatures, the fairies of tradition haveno wings. Beyond that, they vary in appear-ance from region to region, though most aresmall and humanlike, sometimes with brownor green skin. They are of uncertain tempera-ment and, thus, best avoided.

Collectors of folklore—a notion and disci-pline that came into existence around 1800—came upon many firsthand accounts. Thesecan be found in any number of scholarly textson fairy lore. Though sometimes puzzled bythe apparent sincerity of their informants, fewfolklorists were willing to take the leap of faithrequired to embrace actual belief in fairies.

One who did, however, was the well-regardedW. Y. Evans-Wentz, an anthropologist of reli-gion who had a Ph.D. from Oxford Univer-sity. In the first decade of the twentieth cen-tury, Evans-Wentz traveled through the Celticregions of the British Isles as well as Brittany(on France’s northwest coast). The result was afolklore classic, The Fairy Faith in CelticCountries (originally published in 1911).Aside from its worth as a record of survivingfairy beliefs and associated superstitions, it isunique in its championing of an underlyingreality behind the tradition. Like the pioneer-ing Rev. Robert Kirk, a Scottish clergymanwhose The Secret Common-Wealth (1691) pre-served fairy lore in the Highlands, Evans-Wentz deduced that fairies live in an other-world that overlaps with the human world.He went so far as to claim that “we can postu-late scientifically, on the showing of the dataof psychical research, the existence of such in-visible intelligences as gods, genii, daemons,all kinds of true fairies, and disembodiedmen.”

Not all purported witnesses were the uned-ucated rural folk stereotypically associatedwith fairy beliefs and encounters. A seven-teenth-century Swedish clergyman, PeterRahm, gave this sworn statement to legal au-thorities:

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In the year 1660, when I and my wife hadgone to my farm, which is three quarters of amile from Ragunda parsonage, and we weresitting there and talking awhile, late in theevening, there came a little man in at the door,who begged of my wife to go and aid his wife,who was just in the pains of labor. The fellowwas of small size, of a dark complexion, anddressed in old gray clothes. My wife and I satawhile, and wondered at the man; for we wereaware that he was a Troll, and we had heard tellthat such like, called by the peasantry Vettar[spirits], always used to keep in the farm-houses, when people left them in harvest-time.But when he had urged his request four or fivetimes, and we thought on what evil the coun-try folk say that they have at times sufferedfrom the Vettar, when they have chance toswear at them, or with uncivil words bid themto go to hell, I took the resolution to read someprayers over my wife, and to bless her, and bidher in God’s name go with him. She took inhaste some old linen with her, and went alongin the wind, and so she came to a room, onone side of which was a little dark chamber, inwhich his wife lay in bed in great agony. My

wife went up to her, and, after a little while,aided her till she brought forth the child afterthe same manner as other human beings. Theman then offered her food, and when she re-fused it, he thanked her, and accompanied herout, and then she was carried along, in thesame way in the wind, and after a while cameagain to the gate, just at 10 o’clock. Mean-while, a quantity of old pieces and clippings ofsilver were laid on a shelf, in the sitting-room,and my wife found them next day, when shewas putting the room in order. It is supposedthat they were laid there by the Vettar. That itin truth so happened, I witness, by inscribingmy name. Ragunda, the 12th of April, 1671(Keightley, 1878).

Another cleric, Edward Williams, a Britishman from the next century, recalled a strangeexperience from his youth. In 1757, he andhis fellow schoolchildren, playing in a field inWales, happened to notice seven or eight tinycouples. Each was dressed in red, and eachheld a white kerchief. They were about a hun-dred yards away. One of the figures suddenly

100 Fairies encountered

A man is pulled back before he enters a fairy circle. (Fortean Picture Library)

took after a child and nearly caught him. Upclose, the children got, in Williams’s words, a“full and clear view of his ancient, swarthy,grim complexion.” During the chase anotherof the male figures shouted at the pursuer inan unknown language (Jones, 1979). Wil-liams, who went on to become a prominentman of the cloth, never forgot the incidentbut was never able to explain it. “I am forcedto classify it among my unknowables,” hewrote (Jones, 1979).

The inherent implausibility of fairiesnotwithstanding, “sightings” have been re-corded even in recent years. On August 10,1977, while patrolling in the early morninghours, a Hull, England, police constable cameupon a fog bank in a nearby field. When thefog lifted, he saw three small figures dancing:a man dressed in a “sleeveless jerkin, withtight-fitting trousers” and two women clad in“bonnets, shawls and white dresses”—hardlylate twentieth-century clothing. Assumingthey were drunks, the officer got out of his carand walked toward them, only to see themvanish in front of his eyes. Many fairy ac-counts describe the beings’ love of dancing.During World War II, for example, W. E.Thorner, making his way with great difficultythrough a furious storm along a clifftop onHoy in the Orkney Islands, was startled tocome upon small creatures “with long, dark,bedraggled hair.” They were dancing wildly,“seeming to throw themselves over the cliffedge” (Marwick, 1975).

An incident in County Carlow, Ireland, inNovember 1959 claimed four witnesses. InDunroe, a man named John Byrne was usinga bulldozer to move a large bush when a manno more than three feet tall abruptly dashedout from underneath it. He fled across a fieldand was lost to view after he jumped over afence. Three other men observed the peculiaroccurrence. As late as the early 1990s, fifteen-year-old Brian Collins, vacationing with hisparents in the Aran Islands off west Donegal,was taking an early morning walk when hespotted two men fishing in the sea from anoverlooking bank. Three and a half feet tall,

dressed in green, and wearing brown boots,they were engaged in a laugh-punctuated con-versation in Gaelic. Apparently aware of hispresence, they jumped off the bank and weregone. As he looked for them, the youth founda pipe that he thought was one of theirs. Heput it in a locked drawer, from which it subse-quently disappeared. He saw the beings again,and this time he tried to photograph andtape-record them, but nothing of them devel-oped on either film or tape.

A series of “sightings” in 1938, in WestLimerick, began when schoolboy John Keelymet a two-foot-tall man, dressed in red, on aroad. When Keely asked him where he wasfrom, the strange man snapped, “I’m from themountains, and it’s all equal to you what mybusiness is.” The next day Keely and friendsreturned to the scene. The friends hid in thebushes while Keely approached a group offairies. One took his hand, and they walkedtogether for a short distance. The fairies ranaway, however, when they saw the boys in thebushes. Other men and boys reported theirown encounters in the same area at the sametime, and the Dublin-based Irish Press carriedstories. The men had chased the fairies, but asone witness put it, “they jumped the ditchesas fast as a greyhound. . . . Though theypassed through hedges, ditches, and marshes,they appeared neat and clean all the time.”Witnesses said the beings had “hard, hairyfaces like men, and no ears” (Barry, 1938).

On a casual walk along the shore of apeninsula in Scotland’s Western Highlandsone day in 1972, Artie Traum, an Americanfolk singer, heard unusual sounds. As he lis-tened more carefully, he realized they werevoices, though he could see no one around.They were singing “run, man, run” in a weirdharmony while fiddles and pipes played be-hind them. As the sounds grew ever louder,Traum panicked and fled into a nearbywoods. Though he still saw nothing, he heardcrackling sounds and “great motion” as if hewere being pursued. As all this was happen-ing, “my head was swarming with thousandsof voices, thousands of words making no

Fairies encountered 101

sense.” He found his way back to open air,and the voices and the music ceased (Traum,1972). Traum’s experience is like many re-counted in the tradition. Fairies are reputed todrive trespassers off their home turf and, also,to love music. Both folk fiddlers and at leastone classical composer (Thomas Wood) claimto have heard fairy music; a nineteenth-cen-tury Manx fiddler, William Cain, was notalone in learning such a melody and incorpo-rating it into his repertoire.

The American Indian tribes had their ownversions of fairy traditions, but the Europeanswho settled the North American continent—except for places where Celtic customs tookfirm root, such as Newfoundland—fairlyquickly discarded their own. Nonetheless, oc-casional incidents in which fairylike figuresappeared, even if not identified by the witnessas such, have allegedly occurred. All of his life,Harry Anderson remembered something thathad happened to him one summer night in1919, when he was walking alone down arural road near Barron, Wisconsin. To hisconsiderable surprise, his solitary stroll was in-terrupted by the approach of twenty littlemen trooping in single file under the brightmoonlight. They were heading in his direc-tion. Everything about them was odd: theywere shirtless, bald, pale-faced, and dressed inleather knee pants. “Mumbling” sounds cameout of their mouths; yet they did not seem tobe talking with each other. As they passed theyoung man, they seemed oblivious of or indif-ferent to his presence. By now Anderson wasso unnerved that he continued on his waywithout ever looking back.

In Canby, Oregon, one day in April 1950,Ellen Jonerson was working on her lawn whenshe happened to glance over at her neighbor’syard and saw a bizarre sight: a twelve-inch lit-tle man of stocky build with a tanned face; hewas clad in overalls and plaid shirt. He hadwhat looked like a skullcap on his head. Jon-erson ran inside to make a quick call about itto a friend. When she returned, the figure waswalking away with a “waddling” motion. Hepassed under a parked car and was seen no

more. At no time did the idea that she wasseeing what some would call a “fairy” enterJonerson’s mind, and her report is generallythought of as a UFO-related close encounterof the third kind, though no UFO was seen.

Inevitably, some have called UFO encoun-ters a modern form of fairy belief. Among thefirst to do so was Jacques Vallee, author ofPassport to Magonia (1969).Vallee offered anoccult-oriented interpretation that speculatedthat an incomprehensible otherworld has in-teracted with humankind for thousands ofyears, producing manifestations that are fil-tered through human consciousness and ex-pectation, thus changing to reflect differenttimes and cultures. (Kirk had concluded asmuch in the late seventeenth century. Fairies,of a “middle nature between man and angel,”dress and speak “like the people and countryunder which they live” [Sanderson, 1976].)Vallee went so far as to declare flatly—if, ascritics charged, hyperbolically—that “themodern, global belief in flying saucers andtheir occupants is identical to an earlier beliefin the fairy-faith. The entities described as thepilots of the craft are indistinguishable fromthe elves, sylphs, and lutins.” Debunkers suchas Robert Sheaffer have employed a differentsort of argument to the effect that flyingsaucers and their occupants are as much adelusion as fairies and fairyland. Neither ap-proach, however, seems a wholly adequateway of explaining the mysteries inherent insuch encounters, which paradoxically offer up“real”-seeming encounters with things that al-most certainly do not exist in the conven-tional understanding of the verb.

Fairies have found new life among NewAge visionaries and channelers and other ex-plorers of the far edges of consciousness. Onewriter remarks, “There are two major differ-ences between the old oral traditional or an-cestral faery contacts and those of contem-porary humanity removed from oraltradition. . . . The first is that while our ances-tors often sought to break away from the faeryrealm, many modern contacts are intentional.They are induced or encouraged by various

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means, ranging from naïve New Age nuttinessto expansions and willed changes of awarenessinvolving techniques handed down within theold traditions, but developed and applied in amodern way” (Stewart, 1995). New Agefairies are a gentler lot than their harsh coun-terparts in tradition. Fairies are now incorpo-rated into such concerns as healing, garden-ing, Earth awareness, ritual magic, andpersonal transformation—matters far re-moved from the often ill-tempered, impa-tient, anthrophobic concerns of traditionalfairies.

See Also: Chaneques; Close encounters of the thirdkind; Cottingley fairies; Fairy captures; Magonia;White’s little people

Further ReadingBarry, John, 1938. “Fairies in Eire.” The Living Age

355 (November): 265–266.Bord, Janet, 1997. Fairies: Real Encounters with Little

People. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers.Briggs, Katharine, 1976. An Encyclopedia of Fairies:

Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernat -ural Creatures. New York: Pantheon Books.

Davis, Isabel L., 1970. Review of Vallee’s Passport toMagonia. UFO Investigator (June): 3.

Evans, Alex, 1978. “Encounters with Little Men.”Fate 31, 11 (November): 83–86.

Evans-Wentz, W. Y., 1966. The Fairy-Faith in CelticCountries. New York: University Books.

Galde, Phyllis, 1993. “I See by the Papers: MoreFairies Seen.” Fate 46, 4 (April): 14–15.

Jones, T. Gwynn, 1979. Welsh Folklore and Folk-Cus -tom. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

Keightley, Thomas, 1878. The Fairy Mythology. Lon-don: G. Bell.

MacManus, D. A., 1959. The Middle Kingdom: TheFaerie World of Ireland. London: Max Parrish.

Marwick, Ernest W., 1975. The Folklore of Orkneyand Shetland. London: B. T. Batsford.

Narvaez, Peter, ed., 1997. The Good People: NewFairylore Essays. Lexington: University Press ofKentucky.

Rojcewicz, Peter M., 1984. The Boundaries of Ortho -doxy: A Folkloric Look at the UFO Phenomenon.Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.

Sanderson, St ew a rt, ed., 1976. The Se c ret Common-Wealth and A Sh o rt Treatise of Charms and Spels byRo b e rt Kirk . To t owa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefie l d .

Sheaffer, Robert, 1981. The UFO Verdict: Examiningthe Evidence. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

St ew a rt, R. J., 1995. The Living Wo rld of Fa e ry.Gl a s t o n b u ry, Somerset, England: Gothic Im a g ePu b l i c a t i o n s .

Traum, Artie, 1972. “Rollin’ and Tumblin’: TheCambridge Festival.” Crawdaddy (November):20–22.

Vallee, Jacques, 1969. Pa s s p o rt to Magonia: From Fo l k -l o re to Flying Sa u c e r s . Chicago: He n ry Re g n e ry.

Wilkins, Harold T., 1952. “Pixie-Haunted Moor.”Fate 5, 5 (July/August): 110–116.

Fairy capturesIn 1907, Lady Archibald Campbell, a collec-tor of traditional lore, interviewed a blindman and his wife who lived in conditions ofgreat poverty in an Irish glen. The man toldher, in all apparent seriousness, that once hehad captured a small being he called a lep-rechaun. It was two feet tall, with dark butclear skin and red hair. He was dressed in ared cap, green clothes, and boots.

“I gripped him close in my arms and tookhim home,” the old man related. “I called tothe woman [his wife] to look at what I hadgot. ‘What doll is it that you have there?’ shecried. ‘A living one,’ I said, and put it on thedresser. We feared to lose it; we kept the doorlocked. It talked and muttered to itself queerwords. . . . It might have been near on a fort-night since we had the fairy, when I said tothe woman, ‘Sure, if we show it in the greatcity we will be made up [rich]. So we put it ina cage. At night we would leave the cage dooropen, and we would hear it stirring throughthe house. . . . We fed it on bread and rice andmilk out of a cup at the end of a spoon.”

At last the little being escaped, and afterthat the family’s fortunes, never much tobegin with, declined even further. The manlost his sight, and the couple sank ever deeperinto poverty and despair.

A happier story recounts not so much thecapture of a fairy as the domestication of one.Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats heard it froman old couple, the Kellehers, who lived in theWickland Mountains of Ireland. The Kelle-hers said the events had taken place years be-fore, when they were newly married.

One winter day, Mr. Kelleher encountereda fairy and, in some unspecified fashion, gothim to stay in the house for the next week or

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two. Dressed in a red cap and red clothes, thefairy was about fifteen inches tall and seemedfriendly, though he kept silent. At night heslept on the dresser. The Kellers told others oftheir unusual guest, and sometimes “when theboys at the public-house were full of porter,they used to come to the house to look athim, and they would laugh to see him, but Inever let them hurt him.” Kelleher fed himbread and milk with a spoon. As the dayspassed, the couple noticed, he seemed to age,taking on “a sort of wrinkled look.”

The fairy left them one evening after an-other of its kind had appeared near the prop-erty. Mr. Kelleher thought it was a fairywoman, dressed in gray. “And that evening,”he related, “when I was sitting beside the firewith the Missus I told her about it, and thelittle lad that was sitting on the dresser calledout, ‘That’s Geoffrey-a-wee that’s coming forme,’ and he jumped down and went out ofthe door and I never saw him. I thought it wasa girl I saw, but Geoffrey wouldn’t be thename of a girl, would it? He had never spokenbefore that time.”

See Also: Fairies encounteredFurther ReadingGregory, Lady, 1920. Visions and Beliefs in the West of

Ireland. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Fossilized aliensWriting in Flying Saucers magazine in 1970,Buffard Ratliff, the head of a Kentucky UFOgroup, reported the discovery of an extrater-restrial artifact: a fossilized spacecraft and itstiny crew.

Ac c o rding to Ratliff, two years earlierMelvin Gray of Louisville had been mow i n ghis lawn when he came upon an unusualstone. He kept it and studied it for months,e ventually concluding that it was living pro o fof a prehistoric space visit. Gray handed it ove rto ufologist Ratliff, who also examined it atlength. From this examination he was able todetermine what the stone contained and whate vents had precipitated its creation. It was, ashe would write, a fossilized craft containing

seven very small creatures. . . . Three . . . areape-like in appearance. The other four are hu-manoid. . . . All creatures are approximatelythree inches in height, are vertebrates, and havea physical build that indicates they were verystrong for their size. . . .

The [ape] cre a t u res died in motion as ifthey we re fro zen in their last physical actionas they met instant death. On e . . . had obv i-ously been critically injured and two of hiscompanions are trying to rescue him. . . . Tw oof [the humanoids] are in a position for acrash landing. . . . The third humanoid is sit-ting in what looks like a bucket seat with oneof his arms extended slightly forw a rd and up-w a rd as though he was operating a contro ll e ver or device to try to bring the spaceshipunder contro l .

Ratliff contended that the crash had takenplace some four hundred million years ago.The fossil survived and is a “permanent recordto all mankind . . . that we had tiny alienspace visitors from out there long, long ago.”

Further ReadingRatliff, Buffard, 1970. “A Fossilized Alien Spaceship

and Its Occupants.” Flying Saucers (March): 6–7.

Fourth dimensionIn occult speculation the “fourth dimension”is a parallel universe that occupies the samespace as ours but at a different “vibrational”level. Though its existence has never beendemonstrated scientifically, it has been used toexplain a variety of ostensibly mysterious phe-nomena, including disappearances in theBermuda Triangle, teleportation, clairvoy-ance, ghosts, monsters, UFOs, and more.

The concept came into the vocabulary ofoccultism through Leipzig astronomer JohannF. C. Zollner, a student of Theosophy. In the1870s, Zollner worked with Americanmedium Henry Slade, who claimed the abilityto materialize or teleport objects duringseances. As Zollner saw it, such talents indi-cated that mediums can move things out ofour dimension into the fourth and back again.Unfortunately for Zellner’s theory, Slade later

104 Fossilized aliens

confessed that he produced the effects fraudu-lently. Later psychical researchers, however,used variants of the fourth-dimensional ideato explain the fate of the soul after death.

See Also: Bermuda TriangleFurther ReadingDe Camp, L. Sprague, 1980. The Ragged Edge of Sci -

ence. Philadelphia, PA: Owlswick Press.Layne, N. Meade, 1950. The Ether Ship and Its Solu -

tion. Vista, CA: Borderland Sciences ResearchAssociates.

Frank and FrancesStrolling through his rural property near Que-bec City, Quebec, one night in 1941, inventorArthur Henry Matthews encountered twomen, each six feet tall, blue-eyed, and golden-haired. After introducing themselves as Venu-sians, they expressed interest in Matthews’swork with electrical genius Nikola Tesla.Matthews was taken to a waiting spacecraft, agiant saucer-shaped structure called “MotherShip X-12,” which housed twenty-foursmaller craft as well as living quarters for crewmembers. At one point, the visitors showedMatthews the control room. Contrary to hisexpectations, it was bare except for a circulartable in the middle and four “pilots,” two menand two women, each facing one of the fourdirections. The Venusians explained that thecraft flew on mental power alone. In subse-quent contacts, Matthews learned that one ofhis hosts was the captain, who called himselfFrank. He also met Frank’s “life companion,”introduced as Frances. Frank said the namesstood for “Truth.”

Further ReadingBord, Janet, and Colin Bord, 1991. Life beyond

Planet Earth? Man’s Contacts with Space People.London: GraftonBooks.

Fry, Daniel William (1908–1922)Daniel Fry was among the leaders of the earlycontactee movement. He claimed to have hadhis first contact with a flying saucer—a “re-mote controlled cargo carrier”—in the NewMexico desert on July 4, 1950, and to have

boarded it for half an hour. In that time hewas whisked to and from New York, all thewhile conversing with the voice of Alan, aspaceman communicating from a mother shipnine hundred miles from Earth. When Frymet Alan in the flesh eleven years later, the ex-traterrestrial turned out to have a purelyhuman appearance. Intelligent and articulate,Fry was often described by his followers as a“scientist,” though in fact he had been nomore than a missile mechanic and technicianat the White Sands Proving Ground prior tohis contactee career. He founded Understand-ing, Inc., a forum for the space people’s meta-physical and scientific teachings. After the1950s, when the initial excitement generatedby the first contactees had waned, Fry becameless visible, though he remained quietly activeuntil his death in Alamogordo, New Mexico,in 1992.

Fry recounted his early saucer adventuresin the widely read The White Sands Incidentand Alan’s Message: To Men of Earth, both pub-lished in 1954. That same year, he spoke at

Fry, Daniel William 105

Daniel William Fry (Fortean Picture Library)

the First Annual Flying Saucer Convention inLos Angeles. At a press conference, a reporterasked him if he would take a lie-detector testto verify his claims. When Fry agreed, a localtelevision station arranged a polygraph exami-nation. The examiner concluded that Fry wasbeing deceptive in his answers. Forever after,Fry’s critics cited the allegedly failed test, aswell as a dubious Ph.D. from a London-baseddiploma mill, to argue that he was no morethan a hoaxer. Still, Fry seemed to many to besincere about his metaphysical beliefs, perhapsusing fanciful saucer yarns as a way of attract-ing an audience.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingFry, Daniel W., 1954. Al a n’s Message: To Men of Ea rt h .

Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.———. 1954. The White Sands Incident. Los Ange-

les: New Age Publishing Company.———. 1954. “My Experience with the Lie Detec-

tor.” Saucers 2, 3 (September): 6–8.National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phe-

nomena, 1967. Information Sheet on Daniel Fry.Washington, DC, August.


106 Fry, Daniel William

A UFO supposedly photographed by Daniel Fry at Merlin,Oregon, May 1964 (Fortean Picture Library)

GabrielIn Christian and Islamic tradition, Gabriel isone of the two mightiest angels. He is theonly angel mentioned in the Old Testament,as the destroyer of Sodom and Gomorrah. Heis said to sit on God’s left hand and to presideover Paradise. Mohammed credits Gabrielwith dictating the Koran to him. In more re-cent times, an entity named Gabriel, identify-ing himself as an archangel, channels througha New York City man named Robert Baker.

Gabriel has spoken through Baker since1990. His principal platform is the weeklymeeting of the Communion of Souls medita-tion group. Baker has a cable-access show,Gabriel Speaks, on a New York television sta-tion every Monday afternoon. Gabriel, whospeaks of himself in the plural, says, “Wecome to you at this most important time inthe evolution of your planet, a time of unityof Soul and Spirit in the physical bodythrough the Light and Power of your being.We encourage you to stand in the Power ofOne, as the individual Light that you are, tocreate a new vision for your world, a newHeaven on Earth through your individual ex-pression of unconditional love for yourselvesand one another. We challenge you to actupon life as creators rather than having life actupon you” (“Gabriel Speaks,” n.d.).

Further ReadingDavidson, Gustav, 1967. A Dictionary of Angels In -

cluding the Fallen Angels. New York: Free Press.“Gabriel Speaks,” n.d. http://childrenoflight.com/

gabriel.htm

GefGef is the central character in an episode thatp s ychical re s e a rcher He rew a rd Carringtoncalled “p re p o s t e ro u s”—a “palpable absurd i t y” —e ven while conceding that it baffled him. Ac-c o rding to one of the most peculiar stories eve rtold as true, Gef was a talking animal—a self-i d e n t i fied mongoose—who plagued a family onthe Isle of Man between 1931 and 1938. Nu-m e rous investigators came to the site and, de-spite suspicions of trickery, left empty-handed.T h i rty years later, when located and inter-v i ewed, the one surviving member of the familys w o re to Ge f ’s authenticity.

In 1931, the Irving family—father James,mother Margaret, and twelve-year-old daugh-ter Viorrey—lived on a small farm known asDoarlish Cashen (Cashen’s Gap in English)on the Isle of Man on the Irish Sea to thenorthwest of England. Facing the sea and 750feet above it, sat their two-story stone house.Inside, the walls were lined with dark match-wood paneling set a few inches from the

G

107

stone. This particular construction detailwould be crucial to what would follow.

One evening in September of that year, sohe would assert, James Irving heard a tappingnoise from the boarded-up attic. The nextmorning, when he went into the attic, hefound a wood carving that he recognized ashis own. He had no idea how it got there, butwhen he dropped it, he heard the same noisethat had sounded earlier. That evening therewere more sounds, only louder, followed byapparent running. As Irving would tell re-searcher Nandor Fodor, “We heard animal

sounds: barking, growling, hissing, spittingand blowing” (Carrington and Fodor, 1951).Suddenly a crack shook the building so hardthat the pictures on the wall moved. Puzzledand frightened, the family listened to gurglingsounds that they presumed came from the un-known animal but which could as easily havecome from a baby learning to speak. A bark“with a pleading note in it” came next. WhenIrving made barking and meowing soundshimself, apparently in an effort to determinewhether the animal was a dog or cat, the crea-ture imitated him.

108 Gef

Archangel Gabriel painted by Pietro Vannucci (Arte & Immagini srl/Corbis)

The sounds were high-pitched and ap-peared to be emanating from a very smallthroat.

The knockings continued for the next fewweeks. Then one day, Irving asked his wife,“What in the name of God can he be?” Fromthe walls a squeaky voice echoed, “What inthe name of God can he be?” These were thefirst recognizable words from Gef, as the ani-mal said it wanted to be called. As timepassed, Gef, whose voice was said to be twooctaves above a normal woman’s, appeared tolearn more and more words, accumulating avocabulary from listening to the family. Healso claimed to travel widely throughout theisland, overhearing others and learning fromthem. He also brought news and gossip andregaled family members with informationthey otherwise would not have known andsometimes did not want to know.

For his part, Gef would assert that for along time he had understood what peoplewere saying, but it was not until he took upresidence with the Irvings that he learned howto speak words himself. When he was there,he knew everything that went on in thehouse. His favorite place, however, was in thewalls of Viorrey’s room.

Irving’s first impulse was to kill Gef, whofrightened the family with his temper and hispenchant for throwing things such as stones.First, he tried to poison him, then to shoothim, but, in response, Gef caused propertydamage and screeched out threats. Accordingto Irving, Gef said, “If you are kind to me, Iwill bring you good luck. If you are not kind,I shall kill all your poultry. I can get themwherever you put them.” The family decidedto do its best to get along with its strangeguest.

Asked who he was, Gef first identified him-self as a “ghost in the form of a weasel” butlater denied that he was a ghost or a polter-geist. He was highly temperamental, his be-havior unpredictable, his speech often pro-fane. The family left food out for him. He atethe same food as the daughter, a detail thatskeptics would later remark on. In return, he

would provide the Irvings with dead rabbitsthat would show up on the doorstep. The rab-bits appeared to have been strangled ratherthan bitten to death.

As Gef became known and feared through-out the island, someone suggested that hemight be a mongoose, though at that point noone had ever seen him. Mongooses (mammalsordinarily found in India) are not native tothe isle, but in 1914 a local farmer had im-ported them to kill rabbits. When asked if hewas a mongoose, Gef said he was. At othertimes, though, he boasted, “Thou wilt neverknow who I am. I am a freak. I have hands,and I have feet.” On another occasion he said,“I am the fifth dimension. I am the eighthwonder of the world. I can split the atom.”Still, the idea took hold that Gef was a mon-goose, and he took to calling himself one.

But if eyewitness testimony is to be be-lieved, he could not have been a mongoose.Those who saw him, according to investigatorWalter McGraw, “said he had a bushy tail likea squirrel’s, yellow to brownish fur, small earsand a pushed-in face. His most-often de-scribed features were his front paws, which ac-cording to Irving were handlike with threefingers and a thumb” (McGraw, 1970). Mc-Graw adds, “he fitted the description of amongoose about as well as he did that of ‘partof the fifth dimension’.” Irving estimated thathe was no more than five or six inches longand weighed no more than a pound to apound and a half. Sightings of him were al-ways fleeting, and on rare occasion the Irvingssaw him in silhouette as a shadow in the wall.Gef said he did not want to be seen becausehe was terrified of being captured or killed. Aphotograph Viorrey took of him at a distanceof five hundred feet showed little except afurry blur.

By early 1932, news of Gef ’s doings hadspread past the isle. In a dispatch dated Janu-ary 10, a Manchester Daily Dispatch reporterwrote that on a visit to Doarlish Cashen hehad heard “a voice I never imagined couldissue from a human throat,” leaving him in “astate of considerable perplexity . . . The peo-

Gef 109

ple here at the farm . . . seem sane, honest andresponsible folk. . . . I find that others, too,have had my strange experience” (Wilkins,1952). As the publicity spread, an Americanpromoter offered the family fifty thousanddollars for the right to exhibit Gef commer-cially. He was refused. Other investigatorsheard Gef ’s voice and witnessed apparent evi-dence of his activities, including stone-throw-ing and knowledge of events at a distance, butnone saw him. Others, such as psychical re-searcher Nandor Fodor, who spent some dayswith the Irvings, could only collect testimony.Gef tended to go into hiding when investiga-tors showed up. In an amusing sidelight, afterone investigator, BBC journalist R. S. Lam-bert, declared that Gef might well exist, acritic called him “crazy.” Lambert took him tocourt and presented a sufficiently persuasivecase that he was awarded seven thousandpounds in damages.

Beyond anecdotal testimony, evidence ofGef ’s physical existence was slight. HarryPrice, the famous “ghost hunter” who laterwrote a book on the case, saw liquid drippingfrom the wall and was told that this was Gefurinating. Hair said to be from Gef turnedout to be from a dog curiously like the Irvings’sheepdog, Mona. The prints he allegedly al-lowed the Irvings to preserve in clay were notat all like a mongoose’s or, for that matter, anyknown animal’s.

Over time, so the Irvings related, Gef ’s vis-itations became rarer and rarer. By 1938 or sohe was heard from for the last time. By thenthe whole outlandish affair had fallen into ob-scurity. It was too much even for the mostsensationalistic newspapers; and parapsychol-ogists, who first took it to be an exotic polter-geist case, did not know what to make of it.The only precedent for something like Gefwas a witch’s familiar (an animal form inwhich witches are sometimes said to appear),and on the Isle of Man in the 1930s, belief inwitchcraft had largely passed.

Though investigators looked carefully forit, only one caught the Irvings in anythingthat looked like suspect activity. From the be-

ginning, skeptics wondered if “Gef” weren’t afiction created by skilled ventriloquism. Earlyin the course of the episode, a reporter for theIsle of Man Examiner thought he caught Vior-rey making a squeaking sound, though her fa-ther insisted the sound was coming from theother side of the room. Aside from this am-biguous episode, investigators on site ex-pressed doubts that so complex a hoax couldbe accomplished so simply, even if it werephysically possible, which struck them as al-most out of the question. Locally, the Irvingswere regarded as reliable, honest people. Ifthey were hoaxers, their motives were clearlynot financial. They made practically nomoney from their participation in the matter.

The Irvings eventually moved away fromDoarlish Cashen and dropped into obscurity.

Skeptical theories have focused on Vi o r-re y’s role. In 1983, Melvin Harris speculatedthat she had first tricked her parents withventriloquism. Later, even after they re a l i ze dthat they had been fooled, her parents gotcaught up in the hoax and played along withit. Harris writes, “Gef never had a personalityor existence independent of Vi o r re y. Heb rought home rabbits, as did Vi o r re y. His fa-vorite foods we re also Vi o r re y’s favorites. Hes h a red her strong interests in mechanicalt h i n g s . ”

In the late 1960s, after thirty years of si-lence, Viorrey was located and interviewedsomewhere in England (she insisted that herplace of residence be kept confidential). Shetold Walter McGraw that she despised Gef,who she thought had ruined her life. She saidthat he had caused her pain and embarrass-ment, and, even at the time, she and hermother had hated the publicity. “It was not ahoax,” she said, “and I wish it had never hap-pened. . . . We were snubbed. . . . I had toleave the Isle of Man, and I hope that no onewhere I work now ever knows the story. Gefhas even kept me from getting married. Howcould I ever tell a man’s family about whathappened?” She complained bitterly that Gef“made me meet people I didn’t want to meet.Then they said I was ‘mental’ or a ventrilo-

110 Gef

quist. Believe me, if I was that good I wouldjolly well be making money from it now!”(McGraw, 1970).

Further ReadingCarrington, Hereward, and Nandor Fodor, 1951.

Haunted People: Story of the Poltergeist down theCenturies. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.

Harris, Melvin, 1983. “The Mongoose That Talkedand Lost for Words.” In Peter Brookesmith, ed.Open Files, 19–27. London: Orbis Publishing.

McGraw, Walter, 1970. “Gef—The Talking Mon-goose . . . 30 Years Later.” Fate 23, 7 (July):74–82.

Wilkins, Harold T., 1952. “History of the TalkingMongoose.” Fate 5, 4 (June): 58–69.

GermaneGermane channels through Lyssa Royal. “He”is neither male nor female, and he does nothave a name; Germane is simply an identifica-tion of convenience. He is from “a realm ofintegration that does not have a clear-cut den-sity/dimensional level.” He is not even an en-tity as such but a kind of personification of agroup-consciousness energy. In the distant fu-ture, once human beings have been fully inte-grated spiritually, physically, emotionally, andmentally, they will be like him.

See Also: ChannelingFurther Reading“ET Civilizations—Germane,” 1994. http://www.

lemuria.net/article-et-civilizations.html

Goblin UniverseGoblin Universe is a kind of catchall phrasesome people use to characterize the realm offantastic but, according to some, real entitiesand creatures that seem out of place in our or-dinary understanding of reality. The GoblinUniverse is said to house everything fromdemons and fairies to ghosts, humanoids, andmonstrous beasts. It is an explicitly paranor-mal or occult concept, rejected by someanomalists who insist that the objects of theirinvestigations—whether UFOs or unknownanimals such as Sasquatch or the Loch Nessmonster—are simply so far undocumented as-pects of this universe or planet.

To its proponents, however, the GoblinUniverse is a deeply mysterious, elusive place.The late F. W. Holiday called it “a hall of dis-torting mirrors. . . . It will not be ignored. Pol-tergeists often throw objects at utter skeptics.Members of the Phantom Menagerie appearin front of bored cops who want only to scrib-ble their daily reports and go home. UFOsswoop over cities like Washington, Rome andLondon to thumb their noses at bureau-crats. . . . Like it or lump it, we are all in thatdamned Hall of Mirrors” (Holiday, 1986).

See Also: Fairies encounteredFurther ReadingHoliday, F. W., 1986. The Goblin Universe. St. Paul,

MN: Llewellyn Publications.

Gordon“Gordon” is the name of an ostensible extra-terrestrial whom two Alaska women claim tohave encountered while traveling throughwestern Canada in October 1974. Their storyamounts to a UFO-age variant of the venera-ble legend of the “vanishing hitchhiker.”

Edmoana To ews of Anchorage and herfriend Nuria Hanson we re returning from ac o n vention of the Coptic Christian Fe l l ow s h i pof America in Kalamazoo, Michigan. On Oc-tober 18, they we re driving on the summit ofSteamboat Mountain in British Columbiawhen they spotted two lights. One, three timesthe apparent size of the moon, appro a c h e dthem, then shot away to hover in the sky. T h eother light resting on the mountainside,looked, on closer examination, like a derby hatwith portholes. The two women pulled into anabandoned driveway and watched the two ob-jects for fort y - five minutes. At one point, thelanded UFO rose and flew one hundred to oneh u n d red fifty feet before resettling on theg round. During the sighting, a truck stopped,and the driver emerged to look at the UFOs ,but the women would not approach—one of anumber of actions (or inactions) they we relater unable to understand.

When they resumed their journey along anicy, fog-covered highway, something seemed

Gordon 111

to take control of the car, even managingcurves perfectly. But no matter what Toewsdid, the vehicle traveled at no more thantwenty-five miles per hour. She and her friendalso became aware of a bright light shiningthrough the mist. It was coming from a whitecloud twenty to thirty feet above them. Astheir trip went on, Toews was shocked to seethat no matter how far they went, the gasgauge did not move.

Late that night, they stopped at a lodge atMuncho Lake. It was closed, but they got outof their car to stretch their legs. A young man,dark-haired and bearded, stepped out of thedarkness. Though the temperature was barelyabove zero, the man was dressed only in shirt,pants, and shoes. The car was packed, and thewomen insisted there was no room for him,but he still persuaded them to drive him tothe next lodge, some eighty miles away, wherehe said he worked. The space was so crampedthat he had to sit on Hanson’s lap. Strangely,she could feel no weight. When she remarkedon it, he responded humorously but vaguely.

Toews asked his name. He leaned towardher and stared into her eyes before saying,“Gordon.” Both women thought he lookedfamiliar, but neither could place him. He waspleasant and friendly in his manner. After theUFO reappeared above trees along the high-way, Gordon inquired about their views of lifein the universe and of angels. In time, Toewsunderstood why Gordon didn’t seem to weighanything: he was hovering about two inchesin the air. She even covertly ran her handunder him to make sure.

When they stopped for the night at an innin northern British Columbia, Gordon sud-denly was no longer there. The women lookedand called for him, but he had not even lefttracks in the snow. They were sure that he hadstepped out of the car with them and that hecouldn’t have been out of their sight for morethan a few seconds.

The inn was closed, so they stayed in thelounge with a truck driver, who refused to be-lieve that they could have come all the wayfrom Steamboat Mountain—one hundred

sixty-five miles away—under existing roadand weather conditions. The strangeness oftheir situation did not hit them until the nextnight, when they were staying at anotherlodge. Toews suddenly realized that Gordonreminded her of her husband, Jim, who hadthe same hair color, eyes, mannerism, bodyshape. And her husband’s middle name wasGordon.

The following morning they set off. At firstconditions were good, but soon a storm camedown. Weirdly, though, the road ahead ofthem remained dry, even as snow fell andswirled on either side. They looked up to seethe mysterious cloud they had observed ear-lier. Later, their car engine failed, and twomysterious men who seemed to know thingsabout the women that strangers could nothave known helped them restart it. The cloudleft only as Toews’s car got to Anchorage andfour blocks away from her house.

The women came to believe that Gordonwas either a spaceman or an angel. Eventually,Joseph J. Brewer, Judge of the District Courtin Anchorage, heard of their experience andinterviewed them. He and Toews wrote an ac-count of it in Fate, a popular magazine on theparanormal and occult.

Further ReadingToews, Edmoana, with Joseph J. Brewer, 1977. “The

UFOs That Led Us Home.” Fate Pt. I. 30, 6(June): 38–45; Pt. II. 30, 7 (July): 63–65, 68–69.

Gray Face“Gray Face” was the name Clyde Preston, aNorth Carolina truck driver, gave to one of anumber of extraterrestrials who visited himover a nearly two-decade-long period. In1993, under hypnosis, Preston recalled beingabducted into a UFO in the course of a (con-sciously remembered) close encounter with aUFO while he was on a run to South Dakota.While aboard the UFO, he encountered a hu-manoid being he calls “Gray Face.”

Even before the abduction memories sur-faced, howe ve r, Preston underwent a series ofstrange experiences that he believed we re tied

112 Gray Face

to his close encounter. He suffered serious mi-graine headaches in the wake of that sighting.They left only after he discussed his encounterwith a ufologist. Soon afterw a rd, he deve l o p e dp s ychic abilities that would come and go errat-i c a l l y. They so disrupted his life that his wife,fearing he had lost his sanity, left him. He un-d e rwent out-of-body episodes and found him-self doing automatic writing at a furious pace.These writings cove red many subjects, fro mE a rt h’s ancient history to future geological cat-aclysms. Much of the material had to do withthe Bible. The writing claimed that the Te nCommandments we re a kind of universal codethat must be deciphered, then obeye d .

One night in 1993, Preston awoke andspotted a beam of light going through hischest. He felt intense pain, then had the sen-sation that he was being pulled out of hisbody. Two shadowy beings, reeking of evil andmenace, had him by the arms and were forc-ing him to a black abyss. This abyss, hethought, was the entrance to hell. He began topray, and the next thing he knew, a beautifulblue sky surrounded him. A soothing light,emanating apparently from God, gave him afeeling of peace and ecstasy. Though he didnot wish to return to his body, something toldhim that he must do so, and he did. He layawake the rest of the night reflecting on allthat had happened to him, and in the morn-ing he vowed to find a hypnotist who couldhelp him fill in the gaps in his memory.

While hypnotized, he recounted the 1977abduction as well as others. These abductionsoccurred in a foggy, dreamlike environment.Besides Gray Face, there was White Face,which looked like a carving of an Egyptiandeity. Another entity, this one especiallyfrightening, wore a mask with a face like aMayan or Aztec god. A week after the hypno-sis session, this being appeared in Preston’sbedroom and removed the mask. Preston wassomewhat relieved to see that it resembledGray Face with slightly heavier features.

In each case, telepathic contact occurred,but it was always one-sided, coming from thealiens to Preston.

He also had two encounters, only an houra p a rt, with Mr. Brown Robe, as he called a fig-u re clad in such a garment. It had no facial fea-t u res, but it was able to communicate men-t a l l y. It stressed the importance of Ma t t h ew 24in the New Testament, the chapter in whichJesus discusses the events that will take placejust prior to the Second Coming. Preston no-ticed that Mr. Brown Robe, Gray Face, andthe others never used the word “Go d” but didtalk of a “u n i versal intelligence.” Still, helinked his visitors with Bible fig u res. He be-l i e ved Brown Robe, for example, to be a kindof angel, Gray Face a “Wa t c h e r” from the Ol dTe s t a m e n t’s Daniel 4.

Preston’s last abduction occurred one nightin 1995 when a group of gray-skinned, large-eyed humanoids—the classic “grays” of ab-duction lore—took him into a UFO, wherehe was subjected to an apparent medical ex-amination. On his return at 2:50 A.M., heheard a mechanical voice speaking to him. Itsaid that the world’s governments not onlyknew about the presence of extraterrestrialsbut also had contact with them. The alienswarned the governments about the dangers ofnuclear testing and environmental destruc-tion. By their blundering, humans had un-knowingly caused trouble with forces beyondtheir comprehension. One consequence wasthat Earth’s magnetism had been altered.

Preston’s contacts ended with that experi-ence. In retrospect, he concluded that thealiens had not always told him the straighttruth, that much of what they told him wasnot strictly accurate. He thought that somehad been agents of Satan, while others, suchas Gray Face and Mr. Brown Robe, had be-nign intentions.

See Also: Abductions by UFOsFurther ReadingDavis, Carolyn, 1998. “The UFO Messenger.” Fate

51, 11 (November): 22–24.

Great MotherIn Escape from Destruction (1955), which waslater reprinted as Escape to the Inner Earth,

Great Mother 113

Raymond Bernard—the pseudonym of Wal-ter Siegmeister—wrote of his association witha Puerto Rican psychic known as Mayita,“whose body functions as an interplanetaryradio.” From extraterrestrial sources, Mayitalearned that an atomic war would erupt onEarth between 1965 and 1970 and that by2000, the planet’s surface would be devoid ofany kind of life. Those few humans of suffi-ciently pure body and spirit would be liftedfrom Earth and flown by flying saucers to asafe haven on Mars. Mayita’s principal contactwas the Great Mother, who lived on thesun—not, she informed the psychic, the un-endurably hot star we believe it to be. TheGreat Mother, described as having a beautifulface, long golden hair, and deep blue eyes, re-lated to her the story of humankind’s secretpast.

One hundred fifty thousand years ago, theGreat Mother, then living on Uranus, gavebirth, via parthenogenesis (self-fertilization),to the first members of a race of superwomen.For the next fifty thousand years they lived ina utopian society. That ended when a mutantnamed Lucifer came into the world. Luciferwas a “defective . . . sterile female”—a man, inother words. Filled with resentment, he even-tually convinced himself of his superiority.Using electromagnetic waves (sexual inter-course did not yet exist), he persuaded someof his sisters to let him impregnate them sothat they would give birth to males as well asfemales. Outraged that more mutants werebeing brought into the world, the GreatMother exiled Lucifer, his wives, and theirchildren to Saturn. On that planet, Luciferchanged his name to Satan and used his maleaggressiveness and propensity for anger andviolence to institute harsh rule. His childrenthrived, however. After another fifty thousandyears Lucifer/Satan turned his eyes on the oneplanet the Great Mother’s daughters had yetto colonize: the Earth.

A fleet of spaceships landed on Earth, andSatan’s reign began. Many of the immigrantsfrom Saturn settled in Lemuria and Atlantis,finally destroying them both in the course of

nuclear conflict. After that, the human race’sdegeneration went on at an alarming pace.War, cruelty, and suffering have continuedunabated over many centuries. Earth’s maleand female inhabitants commit the greatabomination of meat-eating, and they also en-gage in the loathsome practice of sexual inter-course. Men dominate women, even thoughthe latter are superior to the former, becauseof sexual desire and painful, nonpartheno-genetic birth. Even when they think they areworshipping God, they are worshippingSatan.

Only those human beings who abstainfrom sex, meat, caffeine, alcohol, and tobaccocan hope to restore moral and intellectualorder to their existence. Flying saucers willrescue them at the last moment. On their ar-rival on Mars, men and women will be sepa-rated and will live chaste, segregated lives. Inthis new paradise, they will go beyond vege-tarianism and learn to subsist on air and theperfume of certain flowers.

In his book, Bernard urged readers to cometo San Francisco Island, off the coast of Brazil,where he had gone to establish a utopiancolony. Coincidentally or otherwise, Mayitawas preaching a doctrine Bernard had advo-cated for the previous two decades. In it, sex-ual intercourse is vile and unclean, women aresuperior, and men are a dangerous mutation.Critic Walter Kafton-Minkel observes thatthis “story of our origins sounds much like amythology devised by a community of mod-ern radical feminists” (Kafton-Minkel, 1989).

See Also: Atlantis; LemuriaFurther ReadingBernard, Raymond [pseud. of Walter Siegmeister],

1974. Escape to the Inner Earth. Clarksburg, WV:Saucerian Press.

Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, LostRaces and UFOs from inside the Earth. PortTownsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.

Great White BrotherhoodThe Great White Brotherhood figures in suchschools of occultism as Theosophy and Rosi-

114 Great White Brotherhood

crucianism. The Brotherhood is thought toconsist of ascended masters who oversee thespiritual and physical evolution of the humanrace.

Greater Nibiruan CouncilThe Greater Nibiruan Council (GNC) is de-scribed as the “main governing arm of theGalactic Federation,” comprising the smallerNibiruan Councils (NC) in the various di-mensions of the universe. The GNC’s respon-sibilities are many. It sponsors emissaries andambassadors from the many planetary civiliza-tions and provides courts and oversight fordisputes. It also gives military protection tothreatened peoples and trains races for mem-bership in the federation.

On an even larger scale the GNC overseesthe divine evolution of each planet and everyindividual soul in the galaxy. It works withevery level of the spiritual hierarchy to ensurethat all work effectively together. It maintainsthe galactic structure and interacts with othergalactic federations. These are only a few of itsmany tasks, conducted with the assistance ofinnumerable smaller, dimensional councils.The oldest of these is the 9D Nibiruan Coun-cil, also known as “The Ancient Ones” andthe “Pelegians.” This council is headed byDevin and his half-brother Jehowah, membersof the two royal houses of Aln and Avyon.

In the human dimension—the third—the3D Nibiruan Council (3DNC) began inKansas City, Missouri, in January 1997,under the direction of channeler Jelaila Starrand associates Terry Spears and DermotKerin. A year and a half later, it relocated toLos Angeles. Starr is its sole owner, and thecouncil functions as a tax-paying small busi-ness. According to Starr, the 3DNC repre-sents the GNC on Earth and upholds its di-rectives as they apply to this world. Otherresponsibilities include “providing the 9DTools of Integration to the people of Earthalong with support and training for usingthem in the form of books, tapes, videos,workshops, seminars, etc.; providing a living

example of the Ascension Tools in actionthrough their actions; relaying messages in theform of updates and perspectives to the peo-ple of Earth for the purpose of education,support and enlightenment; supporting thework of other groups and individuals involvedin the ascension of earth and its people” (“TheGreater Nibiruan Council Section,” 2000).

The concept of “Nibirua” comes from thewritings of ancient-astronaut theorist Zecha-ria Sitchin, from his reading of ancientSumerian literature. Sitchin, however, believesNibirua to be an inhabited but undetectedplanet in our solar system. Its people, whohave an extraordinarily advanced technology,created the human race in their image usinggenetic engineering. Nibirua orbits Earthevery thirty-six hundred years. In Sitchin’s as-sessment, the planet is due to pass betweenMars and Jupiter in the near future, and theNibiruans—known as the Annunaki—willvisit us again.

Further Reading“The Greater Nibiruan Council Section,” 2000.

h t t p : / / w w w. n i b i ru a n c o u n c i l . c o m / h t m l / g re a t e r _nibiruan_council_secti.html

Sitchin, Zecharia, 1976. The Twelfth Planet. NewYork: Stein and Day.

Grim ReaperThe folkloric figure of the Grim Reaper is al-most universally assumed to be wholly imagi-nary and symbolic. Anomalist Mark Chorvin-sky, however, insists that apparently sincere,sane persons have seen, in death or near-deathcontexts, apparitional forms that match inmost or all particulars the robed, skeletal fig-ure. Chorvinsky has collected a number of re-ports and published some representative ac-counts in his Strange Magazine.

One case came from a retired nurse whoyears earlier had worked at a hospital in Hous-ton. While running down the hallway on avery hot day on her way to replacing anothernurse on duty, she passed a room and glancedinside. She walked on past five other roomsbefore what she had seen sank in and she re-turned to look more carefully. An old woman

Grim Reaper 115

lay in a bed while beside it stood a tall figurein a monk’s robe, its head covered. Apparentlyaware of the nurse’s presence, the figureturned to look at her. She told Chorvinsky,

“His face was a skull with tiny red fires foreyes. His hands, skeletal, were patiently foldedover each other inside the dark sleeves. Myimpression was [that] he was very patient,

116 Grim Reaper

The Vision of Death, an image of the Grim Reaper in an engraving by Gustave Doré (Fortean Picture Library)

waiting” (Chorvinsky, 1997). A terrible deathsmell, like something rotting in the sun, hungin the air.

The nurse felt a literal freezing sensationwhen the figure stared at her. She quickly re-treated. By the time she got to her originaldestination, the male nurse on duty saw thatshe was cold. He wrapped her in blankets andgave her hot chocolate. It was two hours,however, before she felt herself able to speakabout what she had seen.

Another re t i red nurse claimed to haveseen the Grim Reaper on a number of occa-sions. “Us u a l l y,” she said, “I just see a darkf i g u re, robed, standing near the nurses’ sta-tion, or perhaps in the hall. Ve ry rare l y, thef i g u re will be white. I’ve never heard it speak,but someone always dies within a few days ofits appearance.”

A man identified only as A. L. told a storywith a different ending. Late one evening in1974, he was sitting in his Yonkers, NewYork, apartment while his three children sleptin their rooms. His wife was in their bath-room. When he happened to glance to hisright, he was startled to observe a black-hooded figure holding a scythe, its face a lu-minous white skull. It was staring at him as itglided slowly backward and disappearedthrough the door. Fearing that the Reaper hadcome for someone, A. L. banged on the bath-room door. When he got no response, he en-tered and found his wife lying on the floornext to an empty bottle of pills. With the as-sistance of his sister and her husband, wholived close by, he was able to revive his wifeand take her to the hospital. “The encounterhas left me with the feeling that the Reaper isa special friend,” he told Chorvinsky. “He ap-peared to me and gave warning instead of tak-ing someone.”

Someone else claimed that the Grim Re a p e rs a ved his life when he was eight years old.Dennis Wa rd rop was skating on a pond whenthe ice gave way under his feet, and heplunged into the frigid water. He tried desper-ately to find a way out as his lungs filled withthe water. He felt something poking him and

grabbed onto it as it lifted him to safety. Afterhe wiped the water from his eyes, he was terri-fied to learn that he was holding the blunt endof a long scythe in the hands of a tall, large fig-u re with the face of a decomposing corpse. Itw o re a black robe and a hood over its head. In-side the eye sockets we re “swirling whirlpoolsof black and dimly glowing reds.” An “odor ofd e a t h” permeated the air. Perhaps sensing hisf e a r, the fig u re assured him (whether telepathi-cally or orally is not explained) that he wouldbe okay, that it was not yet his time. The boycollapsed from exhaustion. When he re v i ve dsoon there a f t e r, the fig u re was gone, and hefelt curiously warm even though it was onlyf o u rteen degrees above ze ro.

Chorvinsky writes, “I have investigatedparticularly intriguing cases in which theReaper has been seen by multiple witnesses.And . . . I know of incidents in which theReaper was reported to have actually healedinjuries and assisted the ill and the dying.”

Further ReadingChorvinsky, Mark, 1997. “Encounters with the

Grim Reaper.” Strange Magazine 18 (Summer):6–12.

Gyeorgos Ceres HatonnGyeorgos Ceres Hatonn—usually addressedand referred to simply as Hatonn—speaksthrough Doris Ekker (known as Dharma).George and Desiree Green and others associ-ated with the Phoenix Project distribute Ha-tonn’s messages through a magazine called thePhoenix Journal. Hatonn describes himself as“Commander in Chief, Earth Project Transi-tion, Pleiades Sector Flight command, Inter-galactic Federation Fleet-Ashtar Command;Earth Representative to the Cosmic Counciland Intergalactic Federation Council on EarthTransition” (“Who Is Hatonn?”).

Hatonn denies that the process throughwhich he communicates is channeling. It is,he says, more like radio transmission directlyfrom spaceship to contactee. “We travel andact,” he says, “in the direct service and underCommand of Esu Jesus Immanuel Sananda.

Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn 117

Sananda is aboard my Command Craft fromwhence He will direct all evacuation and tran-sition activities as regards the period you onescall the End Prophecies of Armageddon.”

In contrast to the benign words of most oth-e rworldly beings who speak through con-tactees, Hatonn and his fellows preach afie rcely expressed conspiracy theory withopenly anti-Semitic elements. For example:“A n a rchy is something that the Jew pro m o t e sre l e n t l e s s l y. While in complete control of the fi-nancial powers of the state, they promote in-ternecine strife” (Ec k e r, 1992). Hatonn also de-nies that the Holocaust ever occurred. Ha t o n nrefers to Jews who are working with the anti-

Christ, Satan, and the “evil leaders” of the NewWorld Order to control the world. The plotterscall it Plan 2000. The space people and theire a rthly allies such as those in the Phoenix Pro j-ect are working to thwart the conspiracy and toc reate a new Earth after wars and natural disas-ters have reshaped the face of the planet.

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Contactees; Sananda

Further ReadingEcker, Don, 1992. “Hatonn’s World.” UFO 7, 4

(July/August): 30–31.Heard, Alex, 1999. Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in

End-Time America. New York: W. W. Norton andCompany.

“Who Is Hatonn?” http://www.fourwinds10.com/information.html

118 Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn

Hierarchal BoardThe Hierarchal Board communicates throughPauline Sharpe (also known as Nada-Yolanda)via channeling and automatic writing. Theboard is the solar system’s spiritual govern-ment, and its members include Sananda(Jesus), who has orbited Earth in a spacecraftsince 1885. Right now he is in etheric formbut will enter the physical realm as the planetis cleansed and transformed for the comingNew Age, due to arrive sometime around2000. Sharpe’s organization is called Mark-Age, “commissioned by the Hierarchal Boardto implant a prototype of spiritual govern-ment on Earth, the I Am Nation. The I AmNation is a government of, for and by the IAm Selves of all people on Earth. . . . It is nota political government, but is a spiritual con-gregation of all souls who seek to serve God,first and foremost, and the I Am Selves of allpeople on Earth” (Mark Age,” n.d.).

Mark-Age came into being in 1960,though communications from the board hadbegun four years earlier through Charles BoydGentzel. Over the years, several persons re-ceived the messages, but in time Sharpe be-came the organization’s guiding personality. Ithas published a large amount of channeledmaterial, including communications fromGloria Lee, a 1950s-era contactee.

See Also: Channeling; Contactees; J. W.; SanandaFurther Reading“Mark-Age: Love in Action for the New Age.”

http://www.islandnet.com/~arton/markage.htmlOne Thousand Keys to the Truth, 1976. Miami, FL:

Mark-Age MetaCenter.

Holloman aliensA modern legend, widely circulated but neververified, holds that aliens once landed at Hol-loman Air Force Base in New Mexico andconferred with representatives of the govern-ment and military. The event is variously seton April 1964 or May 1971.

The story emerged under curious circum-stances. Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler,two wealthy Los Angeles businessmen, hadgone to Norton Air Force Base in Californiawhere they were to discuss the production of adocumentary film dealing with advanced re-search projects. The discussion soon expandedto include other possible subjects, one dealingwith the air force and UFOs. Emenegger andSandler expressed interest in the UFO project,and their contacts—the head of the base’sU.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations(AFOSI) and audio-visual director Paul Shar-tle—began laying plans. They told the civil-ians that in May 1971 cameras at HollomanAFB had recorded an extraordinary event. A

H

119

flying saucer had landed at the base, and threebeings had stepped outside.

Shartle, who claimed to have seen this16mm film, said on national television in Oc-tober 1988 that the beings were the size of hu-mans but had gray complexions and largenoses. They wore tight-fitting suits and “thinheaddresses that appeared to be communica-tion devices, and in their hands they held a‘translator’” (Howe, 1989). The Hollomancommander and other officers had met withthe aliens over the next several days.

Emenegger claims to have been taken toHolloman and shown the buildings where thesaucer was stored and the meetings con-ducted. He and Sandler were promised thirty-two hundred feet of the landing film, but theynever saw it because permission to view it,much less reproduce it, was subsequentlywithdrawn. They went on to make a UFOdocumentary, and Emenegger wrote a paper-back based on it. In it he mentions the Hollo-man incident but not as something that hadactually happened, merely as something that

could happen in the future. In a section ofphotographs and illustrations, however, thereis a drawing clearly intended to be a Hollo-man alien, said only to be “based on eyewit-ness descriptions” (Emenegger, 1974).

In 1982, Colorado-based ufologist anddocumentary filmmaker Linda MoultonHowe met with Sergeant Richard Doty, anAFOSI agent, at Kirtland Air Force Base inNew Mexico. Asked about the Holloman in-cident, Doty asserted that it had indeed oc-curred but on April 25, 1964, seven years ear-lier than Emenegger had been led to believe.Doty showed her a document that purportedto detail the U.S. government’s interactionwith aliens and its recovery of extraterrestrialwreckage and bodies. He mentioned films,one of them taken at Holloman. Despite re-peated promises, Doty never produced anyfilm or other documentation for Howe. Helater emerged as a suspect in a notorious,forged paper concerning a secret group, Ma-jestic–12, which supposedly studies alien re-mains and supervises the cover-up.

120 Holloman aliens

A government employee photographed a possible UFO as it hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Force Base, NewMexico. (Bettmann/Corbis)

In the 1980s, the legend grew as a right-wing conspiracy theorist named MiltonWilliam Cooper claimed to have seen super-secret documents attesting to an agreementbetween the U.S. government and malevolentaliens. According to Cooper, the first Hollo-man meeting happened in 1954. Officials andaliens agreed that in exchange for the freedomto abduct humans without interference, theextraterrestrials (from a dying planet that or-bits Betelgeuse) would provide the govern-ment with advanced technology, so long as itkept silent about it. Subsequently, Cooperwould write in a wild book allegedly docu-menting the sinister machinations of the “se-cret government” that the agreement brokedown; according to Cooper, aliens and gov-ernment entered into conflict over who wouldget to control and manipulate the humanrace. Among other bizarre allegations, Cooperstated that President Kennedy was assassi-

nated because he planned to expose thescheme to the American people.

Further ReadingBrookesmith, Peter, 1996. UFO: The Government

Files. New York: Barnes and Noble Books.Cooper, Milton William, 1991. Behold a Pale Horse.

Sedona, AZ: Light Technology Publishing.Emenegger, Robert, 1974. UFOs Past, Present and

Future. New York: Ballantine Books.Howe, Linda Moulton, 1989. An Alien Harvest: Fur -

ther Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations andHuman Abductions to Alien Life Forms. Littleton,CO: Linda Moulton Howe Productions.

Jones, William E., and Rebecca D. Minshall, 1991.Bill Cooper and the Need for More Research (UFOs,Conspiracies, and the JFK Assassination). Dublin,OH: MidOhio Research Associates.

Hollow earthA long mythological tradition holds that su-pernatural beings dwell beneath our feet, ei-ther in caves and caverns or in the earth’s inte-

Hollow earth 121

Books on the hollow-earth theory (Fortean Picture Library)

rior. Some beliefs have it that the spirits of theunsaved dead live on in gloom or torment be-neath our feet. The most famous scientificproponent of a hollow earth, Edmond Halley(1656–1743), best remembered for the cometnamed after him, argued that within theearth’s sphere there were three other, smallerones, all harboring intelligent beings. Theoriesabout a hollow earth, while dismissed as phys-ically impossible by scientists, continue on thefringes into modern times.

John Cleeves Symmes (1779–1829) be-came a notorious figure in early American his-tory as a vigorous publicist for the notion firstproposed by Halley, of an earth whose interiorconsisted of concentric spheres. According toSymmes, the interior could be enteredthrough four-thousand-mile-wide holes at ei-ther pole. Symmes hoped to lead an expedi-tion into the earth, and he lectured widely, allthe while lobbying for funding. In the face ofnational ridicule, he argued that the people ofthe interior amounted to a vast new marketfor American goods. Symmes inspired EdgarAllan Poe to write the classic proto-science-fiction novella The Narrative of Arthur GordonPym (1838). Symmes’s son Americus kept thefaith after his father had passed on. As late as1878 he published a collection of the elderSymmes’s writings and lectures.

The 1870s and 1880s saw a hollow - e a rt hre v i val with the publication of still other bookschampioning the notion, including M. L .Sh e r m a n’s The Ho l l ow Gl o b e (1871), a chan-neled work, and Frederick Cu l m e r’s The In n e rWo rl d (1886). Helena Bl a vatsky incorporatedthe hollow earth into her two popular and in-fluential occult texts Isis Un ve i l e d (1877) andThe Se c ret Doctrine (1888). Another import a n tbook, William Re e d’s The Phantom of the Po l e s ,was published in 1906, the first of a small li-b r a ry of hollow - e a rth volumes to be issuedt h rough the twentieth century.

By the late nineteenth century, a re l i g i o nbased on the hollow earth was formed by Cy ru sTeed (1839–1908), after a vision in which theMother of the Un i verse told him he would savethe world. He went on to lead a utopian com-

munity in Fo rt Myers, Florida, devoted to “Ko-re s h a n i t y.” Ko reshanity held that not only is thee a rth hollow, humans live inside it, orbiting thesun, which is at the center of the world. T h estars, planets, and moon are also within thee a rt h’s shell. Marshall B. Ga rd n e r’s book A Jo u r -ney to the Ea rt h’s In t e r i o r (1913) agreed withTe e d’s views to the extent that Ga rdner was will-ing to acknowledge an interior sun, though itwas not t h e sun, and another race, not humans,get their heat and light from it. This other-racel i ves in a pleasant, tropical climate.

Other fringe thinkers, notably H. SpencerLewis and Guy Warren Ballard, wrote thatMount Shasta in northern California is an en-trance to the interior, where a colony of sur-vivors from the lost continent Lemuria liveon. Ballard claimed to have personally metsuper beings under the mountain, includinggolden-haired, angelic Venusians such as thoseGeorge Adamski and later flying-saucer con-tactees would claim to know. Ballard, his wifeEdna, and their son Donald founded a popu-lar Theosophy-based (and fascist) movementaround these experiences and doctrines. Bal-lard died in 1939, but his organization, the “IAM” still exists.

In the 1940s the pages of the science-fic-tion pulps Amazing Stories and Fantastic Ad -

122 Hollow earth

An illustration of the hollow earth from Phantoms of thePoles by William Reed, 1906 (Fortean Picture Library)

ventures carried the allegedly true, intenselycontroversial experiences of Richard S. Shaver.Shaver asserted that he had been inside vastsubterranean caverns, where remnants of anadvanced race that had once populated thesurface still lived. There were two groups, thederos—sadistic idiots who used the ancients’advanced technology to harm surface-dwellers—and the teros—the embattled mi-nority of good guys who tried, mostly withoutsuccess, to stop the deros’ schemes.

When flying saucers and UFOs enteredpopular consciousness in the years after WorldWar II, inevitably, speculation tied them toinner-earthers. Flying Saucers, a magazine ed-ited by Ray Palmer, who, as editor of Amaz -ing, had championed what he called theShaver mystery, brought the concept of holesin the poles and the notion of hollow earthinto its pages. Perhaps the most widely readbook in the literature, The Hollow Earth(1964) by Raymond Bernard (the pseudonymof Walter Siegmeister, a man with a decades-long association with fringe beliefs), statedthat flying saucers come in and out the poleholes. The Canadian neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel,writing as Christof Friedrich, contributed thebook UFOs—Nazi Secret Weapons (1976),which alleged that Hitler and his Last Battal-ion had fled to Argentina, then to Antarctica.From there they entered the earth and dedi-cated their energies to the construction of anadvanced technology. Nazi technology is re-sponsible for what we call UFOs. Zundel—and later the Missouri-based International So-ciety for a Complete Earth—tried to raisefunds to fly through the hole in the pole in ve-hicles prominently displaying swastikas to en-sure that they got a friendly reception.

Some, though not all, current hollow-earthadvocacy is tied to explicit or implicit pro-Nazi sympathies. For example, Norma Cox’svirulently anti-Semitic Kingdoms within Earth(1985) blamed an international Zionist con-spiracy for suppressing the truth about a hol-low globe; she also openly praised Hitler. Amore benign, good-humored approach to thesubject of a hollow earth can be found in

Dennis G. Crenshaw’s occasional periodicalThe Hollow Earth Insider.

See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; King Leo;Lemuria; Mount Shasta; Rainbow City; Shavermystery

Further ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1993.The Smoky God


Bernard, Raymond [pseud. of Walter Siegmeister],1964. The Hollow Earth: The Greatest Geographi -cal Discovery in History. New York: FieldcrestPublishing.

Cox, Norma, 1985. Kingdoms within Earth. Mar-shall, AR: self-published.

Crabb, Riley, 1960. The Reality of the Underground.Vista, CA: Borderland Sciences Research Associ-ates.

Fitch, Theodore, 1960. Our Paradise inside the Earth.Council Bluffs, IA: self-published.

Friedrich, Christof [pseud. of Ernest Zundel], 1976.UFOs—Nazi Secret Weapons? Toronto, Ontario:Samisdat.

———, 1978. Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions.Toronto, Ontario: Samisdat.


Michell, John, 1984. Eccentric Li ves and Peculiar No -t i o n s . San Diego, CA: Ha rc o u rt Brace Jova n ov i c h .

Trench, Brinsley le Po e r, 1974. Se c ret of the Ages: UFOsf rom inside the Ea rt h . London: So u venir Pre s s .

Walton, Bruce A., 1983. A Guide to the Inner Earth.Jane Lew, WV: New Age Books.

X, Michael [pseudonym of Michael X. Barton],1960. Rainbow City and the Inner Earth People.Los Angeles: Futura.

HonorIn early January 1978, according to a WestGerman newspaper, a twelve-year-old Iraniangirl, identified only as Sara, underwent a seriesof contacts with an extraterrestrial creaturenamed Honor. The contacts took place over aseven-day period. Covered with black hair orfur, Honor stood six and a half feet tall andhailed from a world ten light years “ahead” ofEarth. Sara said that the extraterrestrial hadgiven her psychokinetic powers that allowedher to move household appliances with mindpower alone.

Honor 123

Further ReadingBartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,


Hopkins, Budd (1931– )Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, Budd Hop-kins graduated from Oberlin College in 1953.He moved to New York City to embark on asuccessful career as a painter, sculptor, andwriter on the arts. One day in 1964, he andtwo other persons witnessed the appearance ofa disc-shaped object that remained in view fortwo or three minutes. The experience sparkedHopkins’s interest in UFOs. Though for thenext years that interest was confined to the oc-casional reading of UFO literature, in 1975he participated in the investigation of a mul-tiply witnessed close encounter of the thirdkind in a New Jersey park directly across theHudson River from Eighty-eighth Street inManhattan. Hopkins went on to become ac-tively involved in research on abductions. Healso became hugely influential in bringingwider attention to the subject and shaping at-titudes toward it.

Hopkins brought mental-health profes-sionals into his work, which often involvedthe use of hypnosis to retrieve ostensiblememories of abductions masked by amnesia.His first book on the subject, Missing Time(1981), detailed his case studies. A sequel, In -truders (1987), brought forth an expanded vi-sion of the abduction experience, highlightingthe sexual aspects and apparent genetic exper-iments involving mysteriously terminatedpregnancies and human/alien hybrids. He alsoargued that abductions are usually not one-time encounters but events that occur period-ically over abductees’ lifetimes. Hopkins hadalso become convinced that abductions are farmore widespread than anyone had suspected.He helped devise a survey conducted by theRoper Poll. In Hopkins’s view the results—which proved controversial and were read dif-ferently by some others—demonstrated thatmillions of persons in the United States alone

are, whether they are consciously aware of itor not, abductees.

A third Hopkins book, Witnessed (1996),recounted a monumentally complex, ex-tremely bizarre abduction allegedly involvinga number of participants, including an un-named prominent international political fig-ure. (Published accounts have since identifiedthe man as Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secre-tary-General of the United Nations. Perez deCuellar denies the story.) The claim sparkedan intense and often bewildering series ofcharges and countercharges, though criticswere unable to uncover conclusive evidence tosupport hoax allegations. Even so, the storywas so extreme, even by the standards of high-strangeness close encounters, that even sym-pathetic observers found it difficult to believe.Hopkins wrote, “This abduction event sodrastically alters our knowledge of the alienincursion in our world that it is easily themost important in recorded history” (Hop-kins, 1996).

124 Hopkins, Budd

Budd Hopkins, 1997 (Lisa Anders/Fortean PictureLibrary)

Though some abduction proponents haveargued that abducting aliens are benignly in-tentioned, Hopkins holds that they are indif-ferent to human beings and are coldly unemo-tional. Their purpose in coming here is tostudy humans as if they were lab animals, andthey are particularly interested in our geneticmakeup.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Close encounters ofthe third kind; Hybrid beings

Further ReadingBloecher, Ted, Aphrodite Clamar, and Budd Hop-

kins, 1985. Final Report on the Psychological Test -ing of UFO “Abductees.” Mount Rainier, MD:Fund for UFO Research.


———, 1987. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations atCopley Woods. New York: Random House.

———, 1996. Witnessed: The True Story of theBrooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. New York:Pocket Books.

Unusual Personal Experiences: An Analysis of the Datafrom Three National Surveys, 1992. Las Vegas,NV: Bigelow Holding Corporation.

Hopkins’s MartiansIn a letter published in the April 19, 1897,issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a travelingsalesman named W. H. Hopkins reported thatwhile strolling through hills east of Spring-field, Missouri, three days earlier, he encoun-tered two beautiful, unclad Martians.

The alleged incident occurred as newspa-pers throughout America were chroniclingoften sensationalistic accounts of unidentifiedaerial objects generally referred to as “air-ships,” though today they would be calledUFOs. Most people who took the reports seri-ously believed that the ships were the secretcreations of American inventors who soonwould reveal all, but there was also some spec-ulation that Martians might be touring Earth.Dubious tales of encounters with extraterres-trials appeared in some newspapers.

Hopkins claimed that he had seen an air-ship landed in a clearing. The most “beautifulbeing I ever beheld,” a naked young womanwith hair falling to her waist, stood next to the

craft. She was picking flowers, speaking all thewhile in a musical voice in a language Hop-kins did not recognize. She was also vigor-ously fanning herself even though the day washardly warm. In the shade cast by the ship, anaked man with shoulder-length hair and abeard, fully as long as the woman’s hair, lay onthe ground, also working a fan.

Until Hopkins stepped forward, the coupledid not know they were being observed. Theman leaped to his feet, and the woman threwherself into his arms. As Hopkins tried to as-sure them of his good intentions, they glaredback at him, clearly unable to understandwhat he was saying. In time, however, the ten-sion dissipated, and a kind of conversation,mostly involving gestures, ensued. When heinquired about their place of origin, they“pointed upwards, pronouncing a wordwhich, to my imagination, sounded likeMars.” They studied him “with great curios-ity. . . . They felt of my clothing, looked at mygray hair with surprise and examined mywatch with the greatest wonder.”

After he was given a tour of the interior,the ship flew away with the occupants wavingfarewell to Hopkins, “she a vision of lovelinessand he of manly vigor.”

See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Aurora Martian;Brown’s Martians; Dentons’s Martians and Venu-sians; Khauga; Martian bees; Michigan giant;Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians;Oleson’s giants; Shaw’s Martians; Smead’s Mar-tians; Thompson’s Venusians; Wilcox’s Martians



Clark, Jerome, 1981. “The Coming of the Venu-sians.” Fate 34, 1 (January 1981): 49–55.

HweigHweig is an extraterrestrial who channelsthrough an Oregon woman named Ida M.Kannenberg. She believes that she first en-countered aliens in the California desert in

Hweig 125

1940. According to testimony elicited underhypnosis in 1980, aliens placed implants in-side her head to facilitate communicationlater between them and her. In 1978, shebegan to hear from Hweig on a regular basis,after a failed 1968 experiment that so terrifiedher that she ended up in a mental hospital.She was released when no evidence of psy-chopathology could be uncovered.

H weig and his associates are here to re j u ve-nate Earth and its inhabitants. They plan to ac-complish these changes via communicationwith contactees, who will be led to “c e rtain dis-ciples and . . . specific discove r i e s” that will im-p rove humanity’s lot and Eart h’s enviro n m e n t .

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingSprinkle, R. Leo, 1999. Soul Samples: Personal Explo -

rations in Reincarnation and UFO Experiences.Columbus, NC: Granite Publishing.

Hybrid beingsHybrid beings are entities who are parthuman and part humanoid. They figure in anumber of accounts of UFO abductions. Fe-male abductees sometimes report anomalouspregnancies that are enigmatically terminated,typically in association with a missing-timeexperience of the sort in which the abductionsallegedly took place. In a subsequent onboardUFO encounter, the aliens present the ab-ductee with a child who has the features bothof the human mother and of the abductingentities, most often described as thin, gray- orwhite-skinned, with oversized heads and large,hypnotic eyes.

As early as the late 1960s, paranormalwriter John A. Keel, investigating reports ofUFOs and other strange occurrences in NewYork City and on Long Island, noted thatsome female witnesses experienced what hecalled “hysterical pregnancies” (Keel, 1975).Keel’s observation was little noted and soonforgotten. In the 1980s, however, abductionspecialist Budd Hopkins independently cameupon the same phenomenon. Mostly throughthe use of hypnosis, the women “recalled” in-

stances in which a kind of suction device re-moved fetuses from their wombs. In later ab-ductions the women would be shown babies,toddlers, and older children and told to touchand interact with them in other ways. Thoughgenerally human in appearance, the childrenoften appeared to be lacking the emotionalmakeup of human beings.

In time, abductees reported encounterswith young adult hybrids. These hybrids,among those sufficiently human-looking topass unnoticed on the street, would some-times have sexual relationships with youngerabductees, who may or may not have giventheir consent. David M. Jacobs, who has writ-ten extensively on the issue of hybrids, be-lieves these particular beings are from a latestage of the process. His investigations leadhim to believe that first-stage hybrids are half-human/half-alien. These entities tend to look“almost alien.” In the next stage, Jacobs specu-lates, “the aliens join a human egg and spermand assimilate genetic material from the first-stage hybrid . . . into the zygote” (Jacobs,1998). The third-stage hybrid, created fromhuman sperm and egg and genetic materialfrom a second-stage individual, looks morehuman. Only in the latest stages, the fifth orsixth, do the hybrids resemble humansenough to walk among us and, just as impor-tant, reproduce. They retain the strong mentaland telepathic powers of their alien heritage,however. In Jacobs’s view, based on testimonyfrom abductees whom he has hypnotized, thealiens are preparing to replace the human racewith a hybrid population. The aliens them-selves are unable to reproduce, but throughhybrids, their species will survive—at the ex-pense of humanity’s. Jacobs holds that thistakeover could occur at any time and is morelikely to occur sooner than later.

Hybrids are a relatively new conceptamong ufologists and in the accounts of al-leged UFO experiencers. In retrospect, somehave suggested that the presence of human orhumanlike beings in early close encounters ofthe third kind suggests hybrids were beingseen before they were being recognized. In a

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famous October 1957 Brazilian abductioncase, a young man allegedly had sexual inter-course with an alien woman who, were she tohave been reported in a more recent episode,would probably be judged a hybrid. Throughhand gestures, the woman seemed to indicatethat the fruit of their union would be born onanother planet.

On the other hand, critics point out, hardevidence for the existence of hybrids simplydoes not exist. Most of the testimony to theirpresence owes, moreover, to accounts elicitedunder hypnosis, a state in which unconsciousfantasizing frequently occurs. Scientific criticshave stated flatly that hybridization proce-dures of the sort described are biologically im-possible. Though there is no shortage of anec-dotal testimony, no medically documented

instances of anomalously terminated pregnan-cies have ever been demonstrated.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Close encounters ofthe third kind; Hopkins, Budd; Keel, John Alva

Further ReadingHopkins, Budd, 1987. Intruders: The Incredible Visi -

tations at Copley Woods. New York: RandomHouse.

Jacobs, David M., 1992. Secret Life: Firsthand Ac -counts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon andSchuster.

———, 1998. The Threat. New York: Simon andSchuster.

Neal, Richard, 1991. “Missing Embryo/Fetus Syn-drome.” UFO 6, 4 (July/August): 18–22.

Schnabel, Jim, 1994. Da rk White: Aliens, Ab d u c -tions, and the UFO Ob s e s s i o n . London: Ha m i s hHa m i l t o n .

Swords, Michael D., 1988. “Extraterrestrial Hy-bridization Unlikely.” MUFON UFO Journal247 (November): 6–10.

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Imaginal beingsUniversity of Connecticut psychologist Ken-neth Ring theorizes that an “imaginal realm”exists somewhere between reality and fantasy.In this “third kingdom,” entered through(Ring’s italics) “certain altered states of con -sciousness that have the effect of underminingordinary perception and conceptual thinking”(Ring, 1992), one encounters magical yetsemireal entities such as UFO beings, angels,and various otherworldly intelligences. Ring’simaginal realm is much like the “interdimen-sional mind” of another parapsychologicaltheorist, Michael Grosso.

To test certain aspects of the hypothesis,Ring and a colleague, Christopher J. Ro s i n g ,conducted extensive psychological testing ofs e veral groups. They found that persons whore p o rt UFO-abduction experiences and thosewho have undergone near-death experiencesare psychologically indistinguishable. Thoughnot fantasy-prone in the clinical sense, theyh a ve felt a connection with nonord i n a ry re a l-ities since childhood. Mo re ove r, those child-hoods we re troubled with episodes of abuse,trauma, or serious illness. Because of thesedifficulties, these individuals have deve l o p e da “d i s s o c i a t i ve response style as a means ofp s ychological defense.” This causes them to be

so focused on their internal state that theirconsciousness has changed in radical ways.This expanded consciousness allows them toenter the imaginal realm, there to meet ex-t r a o rd i n a ry beings and undergo positive lifec h a n g e s .

UFO abductees and near-death experients,in Ring’s view, are prophets—modernshamans—who are picking up coded mes-sages from the otherworld. Abductees see“small, gray, sickly looking” aliens whoseheads are too big for their bodies. They look,in other words, like starving children. Ringreads this to mean, “The future of the humanrace—symbolized by the archetype of thechild—is menaced as never before.” Ourplanet is experiencing a “near-death crisis,”and we need to listen to what these “extraordi-nary experiencers” are telling us. They areleading us to a “cosmic-centered view of ourplace in creation, a myth that has the power toignite the fires of a worldwide planetary re-generation and thus to save us from the icyblasts of Thanatos’s nuclear winter.”

See Also: Psychoterrestrials

Further ReadingRing, Kenneth, 1992. The Omega Project: Ne a r - De a t h

Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large.New Yo rk: William Mo r row and Company.

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InsectoidsSome UFO abductees report onboard en-counters with entities that resemble giantpraying mantises. These beings, typicallydressed in capes with long robes and high col-lars, are seen in association with the smaller,humanoid grays, though they appear to have ahigher rank than their colleagues. “Otheraliens appear to act somewhat subservient tothe insectlike beings,” abduction investigatorDavid M. Jacobs has written.

Insectoids seldom participate directly in thephysical examinations of humans, though theymay engage in what Jacobs calls “staring pro c e-d u res,” wherein an alien puts its face close toan abductee’s, telepathically probes the con-tents of the individual’s mind, stimulates emo-tions (eve rything from fear to love to sexuala rousal) and conjures up hallucinatory imagesinto it. Though the grays have little to say toabductees, insectoids sometimes are commu-n i c a t i ve. In one of Ja c o b s’s cases, a woman re-p o rted being told that it was the aliens’ inten-tion to take over the Earth with the insectoidsin charge of this new world ord e r.

See Also: Abductions by aliens; MU the Mantisbeing; Nordics

Further ReadingJacobs, David M., 1998. The Threat. New York:

Simon and Schuster.Lewels, Joe, 1997. The God Hypothesis: Extraterres -

trial Life and Its Implications for Science and Reli -gion. Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower Press.

Intelligences from Beyond (Intelligences du Dehors)Intelligences du Dehors—“intelligences fro mb e yo n d” in English translation—allegedlychanneled through French contactee Je a n -Pi e r re Pre vost. Pre vost, a here t o f o re - o b s c u res t reet merchant, had risen to public attentiont h rough his invo l vement in a sensational inci-dent said to have occurred on the morning ofNovember 26, 1979, in a Paris suburb. Pre vo s tand another business associate re p o rtedly wit-nessed the disappearance of their friend Fr a n c kFontaine in the wake of a close encounter witha UFO. Fontaine showed up a week later,

claiming not to remember anything that hap-pened in the interim. Police and civilian UFOi n vestigators suspected a hoax.

Nonetheless, French science-fiction writerJimmy Guieu rushed into print with a bookon the case, but with a difference. In thebook, Contacts OVNI Cergy-Pontoise (1980),Prevost became the central figure in theepisode, the intended target of the alien ab-duction. Within months, Prevost’s own bookrecounted his extraterrestrial contacts with astrong emphasis on the usual contactee mes-sage about noble space visitors and confused,destructive earthlings. His principal contactwas a wise space being named Haurrio. Read-ers inclined to doubt all of this could onlywonder at Prevost statements such as this one:“What does it matter to know, at the factuallevel, where real life ends and imaginationtakes over? Isn’t it more important to take intoconsideration the content of the messages?”(Bonabot, 1983).

In a July 7, 1983, newspaper interview,Prevost confessed that both the Fontaine ab-duction and his own space contacts were fake,concocted, he said, to attract an audience tohis philosophical messages by putting them inthe mouths of advanced intelligences. Evenso, he still tried to start a group with him atthe head, but it failed, as did a publishing en-terprise and an FM radio station. Interviewedby ufologist Jacques Vallee in 1989, Fontainestuck to his story but charged that Prevost waslying about his.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; ContacteesFurther ReadingBonabot, Jacques, 1983. “1979 Fontaine Case in

France Now Admitted to Be a Hoax.” MUFONUFO Journal 190 (December): 10.

Evans, Hilary, with Michel Piccin, 1982. “WhoTook Who [sic] for a Ride?” Fate 35, 10 (Octo-ber): 51–58.

Vallee, Jacques, 1991. Revelations: Alien Contact andHuman Deception. New York: Ballantine Books.

IshkomarIs h k o m a r, an extraterrestrial, began channelingfor the first time in late September 1966

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t h rough a Phoenix man identified only asC h a r l e s — “a blue-collar worker of modest edu-c a t i o n” (St e i g e r, 1973). Ishkomar said he wasspeaking via telepathic light beamed from aspaceship in Eart h’s atmosphere. He himselfhad lived long enough so that he was able tod i s c a rd a physical body, though the ship “c o n-tains others of us who are in human form.”Ishkomar began his Earth mission some thirt ythousand years ago to accelerate evolution sothat human beings could develop more quicklyand be able to accept guidance—though notc o n t rol, which galactic law forbids—from wisespace people like himself. “You must reach ahigh level of mental development and know l-edge to be able to understand our purposes,”he said, so the work continues.

Ishkomar also warned that another gro u palso worked in Eart h’s space. This gro u p, whilenot necessarily evil in itself, had purposes atodds with humanity’s best interests, and itsmembers sought to control human destiny.Ishkomar refused to condemn these beings,saying only that their purpose “c o n flicts witho u r purpose. This does not mean that their in-tentions are not good or honorable.”

Soon there would be “great upheavals” onEarth’s surface, and there would be much suf-fering and death. Only those who were men-

tally and physically prepared would survive.The extraterrestrials did not plan any massiverescue operation, since “you are of no use tous in the Outer Reaches.” But they wouldhelp those human beings who heeded theirwords to make their planet improved and liv-able after the changes.

Ishkomar said his people were not con-cerned solely with Earth. They were galactictravelers and were involved with the fates ofmany worlds throughout the cosmos.

Charles told Brad Steiger that he had noidea why he had been chosen, unless it wasbecause of a sighting of what he took to be aUFO in Michigan in 1956. While observingthe object, he beamed a mental message to itspresumed occupants and told them, “I wouldlike to be your friend.”

After the Ishkomar messages started com-ing a decade later, Charles and his wife, Lois,formed a small group. As Charles channeled,members asked questions and learned lessons.Ishkomar firmly instructed them never to re-veal Charles’s full name, lest his life be endan-gered by unfriendly forces.

See Also: Channeling

Further ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. En-


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J. W.In 1953, a voice in her head identified itself toGloria Lee, a former child actress and model,as that of “J. W.,” an inhabitant of Jupiter.Not quite convinced, Lee demanded physicalevidence of J. W.’s existence. Some days after-ward, J. W. alerted her to the presence of a fly-ing saucer passing over her backyard inWestchester, California. Lee went on to formthe Cosmon Research Foundation, which at-tracted as many as two thousand members, asa forum for the distribution of J. W.’s teach-ings, essentially a variation of Theosophy. Shealso wrote Why We Are Here (1959), a bookwidely read in early contactee circles.

Lee became a martyr to the contact move-ment in 1962 through tragic circumstances.J. W. had provided her with spaceship blue-prints and instructed her to take them toWashington, DC, to show officials. But whenshe and associate Hedy Hood went there, noone was interested in meeting them. Lee toldher friend that J. W. had now informed her,“The space people are going to invade theearth and establish a peace program” (Barker,1965). She was also ordered to go on a fast forpeace that would end when a “light elevator”(spaceship) arrived to transfer her to J. W.’shome planet. The fast began on September 23and lasted till November 28, when Lee’s

alarmed husband had her rushed to a hospital.She died there on December 7.

In less than two months, according to aFlorida-based contactee gro u p, Ma rk - A g eMe t a C e n t e r, Lee herself was sending psyc h i cmessages from Ju p i t e r. She promised thatspaceships would land on Earth within sixmonths if they we re re c e i ved in peace and goodwill. She also mentioned that the recently de-ceased Marilyn Mo n roe had just arrived. Ove rthe years, Ma rk-Age would publish five vo l-umes of Lee-generated channeled material.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingBarker, Gray, 1965. Gray Barker’s Book of Saucers.

Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.Lee, Gloria, 1959. Why We Are Here: By J. W., a Being

from Jupiter through the Instrumentation of GloriaLee. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.

———, 1962. The Changing Conditions of YourWorld, by J. W. of Jupiter, Instrumented by GloriaLee. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.

Mark-Age MetaCenter, 1963. Gloria Lee Lives! MyExperiences since Leaving Earth. Miami, FL:Mark-Age MetaCenter.

———, 1969–1972. Cosmic Lessons: Gloria LeeChannels for Mark-Age. Miami, FL: Mark-AgeMetaCenter.

Jahrmin and JanaIn 1940, according to an account he would re-late many years later, Jananda Korsholm, a

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s e ve n - year-old Danish boy, was playing with afriend when a thunderstorm erupted. As heran home, he saw his sister looking out of thew i n d ow of the family’s apartment. Just as hewas waving at her, he felt a golden light sur-rounding him and an intense heat surging allt h rough his body. He found himself ascendinginside the light until, suddenly, a gold and sil-ver spaceship appeared just above him. It hadno door, but he entered it by passing through awall. Inside a circular room he encountered ahairless, androgynous-looking fig u re who Ja-nanda sensed was male. The fig u re, dressed ina silver uniform with a pyramid logo on hischest, said his name was Jahrmin (pro n o u n c e d“Ya r m i n”). A tall blond woman appro a c h e dhim, touched his hand, and let him know viatelepathy that her name was Ja n a .

Through her touch, the boy found himselftransformed into a young man. Jana told himthat he had a mission on Earth. It would notbe easy because ill-intentioned persons andforces would resist him. She would, however,be there to protect him with her energy, andthey would be reunited at the conclusion ofhis mission. Jananda knew that he had foundhis soul mate, that no earthly love would everfulfill him as the love he shared with Jana.

On a television screen in the middle of theroom, he saw scenes from the solar system’spast, when meteors, comets, and other objectsfalling from space drastically altered the sur-faces of planets, and their inhabitants had tobe evacuated. He saw himself just about to beevacuated from Earth, leaving a wife behind.He also saw Earth’s changed landscape hun-dreds of years in the future.

Jananda Korsholm eventually moved to theUnited States and found his way to Sedona,Arizona, where he works as a channeler,healer, and spiritual counselor.

Further ReadingKorsholm, Jananda, 1995. “UFO’s, Close Encoun-

ters of the Positive Kind.” http://spiritweb.org/Spirit/ufo-positive-negative-jananda.html

JanusIn his memoirs, Air Marshal Sir Peter Ho r s l e y,onetime Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the

Royal Air Fo rc e’s Strike Command, laterEq u e r ry for the Royal Fa m i l y, recounts a meet-ing with a self-identified extraterrestrial whowas introduced to him as “Janus.” He says theincident took place one winter day in 1954,after an acquaintance, a high-ranking militaryofficer interested in UFOs and convinced oftheir friendly intentions, phoned him with acurious message: to go that evening to a housein London’s Chelsea district. A woman methim at the door and led him into a dimly litroom, where he was introduced to a “Mr.Janus.” The stranger immediately asked him totell him what he knew about UFOs. After-w a rd, Mr. Janus expressed a desire to meetPrince Ph i l i p, then launched into a two-hourdiscourse on space travel, visitors from otherworlds, cosmology, and philosophy. Ja n u ss t ressed the human race’s immaturity and itspotential to destroy itself. In the course of thisc o n versation, Horsley came to believe that thestranger was reading his mind.

Janus said that advanced “observers” fromdistant planets are watching Earth, contactinga select few trustworthy terrestrials while try-ing not to interfere directly in human affairs.Once human beings have learned interstellartravel, he said, “it is of paramount importancethat you have learnt your responsibilities forthe preservation of life elsewhere” (Horsley,1997). In the meantime, the visitors also wantto ensure that they leave no conclusive proofof their presence.

Horsley wrote that there was an odd se-quel. Shortly after the meeting he prepared amemo and gave it to Lieutenant General SirFrederick Browning, Treasurer to PrincePhilip. Browning pressed Horsley to arrangeanother encounter. Horsley tried repeatedlyand unsuccessfully to reach the woman atwhose flat he had spoken with Janus. After afew days he personally went to her residence,only to learn that she had suddenly movedout. The general who had set up the en-counter became “distant and evasive” whenHorsley got in touch with him. He never sawhim, the woman, or Janus again.

Interviewed by British ufologist TimothyGood, Horsley thought it “strange” that he

134 Janus

had only a general impression of Janus’s ap-pearance. He remembered only a normal-looking man, approximately forty-five to fiftyyears old, thinning gray hair, and dressed insuit and tie.

When Ho r s l e y’s book was published, theLondon Ti m e s ran an article by Dr. T h o m a sSt u t t a f o rd, who suggested that Horsley wassuffering from hallucination. Horsley in-sists, howe ve r, that the incident occurred asre p o rt e d .

Further ReadingGood, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounters

with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.Horsley, Sir Peter, 1997. Sounds from Another Room:

Memories of Planes, Princes and the Paranormal.London: Leo Cooper.

Stuttaford, Thomas, 1997. “Air Marshal’s Flight ofFancy.” London Times (August 14).

JerhoamJerhoam is a “State of Consciousness” whochannels through John Oliver. He is here, hesays, to help humans “incorporate the GreatKnowledge of the Soul into life to becomemore aware . . . to become more awake, to be-come more loved, and to know how to expresslove in many ways.” He also seeks to recon-nect with students from that time, personswho have reincarnated and live on Earth now.

Many centuries ago—thousands of yearsbefore the Great Pyramid was constructed—Jerhoam occupied a physical body, teaching atthe Great School of Ancient Wisdom.

Further Reading“An Introduction: Who Is Jerhoam?” http://www.

jerhoam.com/whoisjer.html.

Jessup’s “little people”Morris Ketchum Jessup (1900–1959) wrotefour books on UFOs between 1955 and1957. His book The Case for the UFO (1955)was the first to use “UFO” in its title; hereto-fore, publishers preferred the then more fa-miliar “flying saucers.” Jessup also was an ear-lier theorist in what would be called the“ancient astronaut” genre, though his particu-lar interpretation remains unique. He believed

that the “little people” sometimes reported inconnection with UFOs are literally that: pyg-mies of earthly origin and the creators of anextraordinary technology that gave themspace flight long ago.

Jessup first hinted at his theory in UFOand the Bible (1956), asserting that all UFOevidence pointed to the presence of “space-in-telligence, relatively near the earth, but yetaway from it and in open space . . . using nav-igatable contrivances.” In his earlier life, hehad done graduate-level work in astronomy atthe University of Michigan. In the course ofhis studies, and later in his adult life, he trav-eled in Africa and South America, often stop-ping to examine archaeological artifacts. Hebecame convinced that only an advanced civi-lization, with a technology that encompassedteleportation, levitation, and space flight,could have created such structures.

Eve n t u a l l y, he came to believe that about100,000 years ago, “in the pre-cataclysmic erawhich developed a first wave of civilization . . .space flight originated on this planet. . . . Wemay assume that the Py g m i e s . . . developed acivilization which discove red the principle ofgravitation and put it to work” (Je s s u p, 1957).When Atlantis and Mu sank into the oceans,the “little people” fled in their spaceships.They now reside on the moon and in flo a t i n gs t ru c t u res in a “gravity neutral” zone betwe e nE a rth and its satellite.

See Also: Atlantis; LemuriaFurther ReadingJessup, M. K., 1955. The Case for the UFO. New

York: Citadel Press.———, 1956. UFO and the Bible. New York:

Citadel Press.———, 1957. The Expanding Case for the UFO.

New York: Citadel Press.

JinnsIn traditional Arabic and Persian belief, jinnsare demonic, shape-shifting entities. Over thecenturies, the idea evolved that a few jinns aregood. There are five kinds of jinns, and onlyone has occasional benevolent qualities. Typi-cally, jinns take the shapes of insects, toads,scorpions, and other animals deemed unap-

Jinns 135

pealing or obnoxious. The tradition bearssome resemblance to traditions of fairy folk inother societies. At least two prominent writerson the UFO phenomenon, Go rdon Cre i g h t o nand Ann Druffel, are convinced that UFO be-ings are jinns in disguise.

Under the editorship of Charles Bowen,England’s Flying Saucer Review, then a widelyread UFO journal, moved the publicationaway from speculations about extraterrestrialvisitation toward interpretations that castUFOs in paranormal terms. No other c o n t r i b-utor did so as enthusiastically as Cre i g h t o n , aretired British diplomat with a keen interest indemonology. After Bowen’s illness and subse-quent death in the 1980s, Creighton assumededitorship of the magazine and promptly de-clared that he had identified the intelligencesbehind UFO sightings, encounters, and ab-ductions: jinns. In an article in a 1983 issue,he pointed out that jinns materialize and de-materialize, switch between visibility and in-visibility, change shape, kidnap humans, lie,control minds, and engage their victims insexual intercourse—behaviors associated withUFO entities.

He was convinced that the jinns are up tono good. In follow-up writings, he contendedthat these sinister supernatural powers secretlycontrol Earth, using thought control to gethumans to do their bidding. They are behindcrime and violence, and they have broughtAIDS and other deadly diseases into the pop-ulation. “Another great World War may be inthe making,” he wrote in 1990, engineeredfor cosmic purposes we cannot understand;humans are merely property and playthingsand are soon to be removed from the face ofthe Earth.

Ufologists responded to these notions witha tactful silence with one exception: AnnDruffel, an abduction-research specialist whofinds “startling similarities between reports ofabduction scenarios in the Western world andGordon Creighton’s excellent research on thejinns” (Druffel, 1998). Druffel, a Californian,investigated the experiences of an Iranian-American she calls Timur. Timur encountered

humanoids in out-of-ordinary states of con-sciousness—sleep paralysis, meditation, astraltravel—and recognized them as the jinns hehad heard of in his native country.

Druffel concludes that “our own faeriesand jinns are merely an old human problem,shape-shifted and wearing space garb to foolus. They can be fended off by stouthearted,determined individuals.”

See Also: Fairies encounteredFurther ReadingCreighton, Gordon, 1983. “A Brief Account of the

True Nature of the ‘UFO Entities’.” Flying SaucerReview 29, 1 (October): 2–6.

———, 1989. “AIDS.” Flying Saucer Review 34, 1(March Quarter): 12.

———, 1990. “Grave Days.” Flying Saucer Review35, 3 (September): 1.

Druffel, Ann, 1998. How to Defend Yourself againstAlien Abduction. New York: Three Rivers Press.

JosephA Todmorden, Yorkshire, England, police of-ficer named Alan Godfrey was on patrol at5:05 A.M., November 28, 1980, when he en-countered a metallic disc with a dome and arow of windows. When he attempted to alertheadquarters, he found that his radio was notworking. Suddenly, he found himself onehundred yards farther down the road than hethought he was, and the UFO was gone. Hevaguely recalled getting out of his car andhearing a voice. Under hypnosis later, God-frey “recalled” that he lost consciousness aftera light from the object struck him. Then hefelt himself floating into the craft and meetinga humanlike being named Joseph.

Six feet tall, friendly in manner, Joseph hada thin nose, a beard, and a mustache. He worea skullcap and was clad in a sheet, makinghim look something like a prophet from theBible. A large black dog accompanied him.The room also contained eight robots, eachabout three and a half feet tall, making a sortof murmuring chatter. When they touchedGodfrey, beeping sounds emanated fromthem. Joseph directed Godfrey to a bed,where he lay as a beam of light from the ceil-

136 Joseph

ing shone on him. Communicating by telepa-thy, Joseph touched his head, and Godfreylapsed into unconsciousness for an undeter-mined period. The robots took off Godfrey’sshoes and studied his toes. Meanwhile, instru-ments placed on his arms and legs caused himdiscomfort to the point of sickness. A foulodor permeated his nostrils. Joseph asked himquestions, but Godfrey would refuse to tell in-vestigators what they were. The alien indi-cated that they had met before, apparentlywhen Godfrey was a child.

Godfrey would remember an earlier inci-dent from 1965, when he was 18. Around 2

A.M., he and a girlfriend stopped their carabruptly when a woman and a dog steppedout in front of them. Certain that he had hitthe woman, he got out to help her, but therewas no sign of her or the animal. When he gothome, he found that two hours were missingwithout explanation. Another incident—hisseeing a ball of light in his room when he wasa child—also seemed to him evidence that the1980 incident was not his first encounter withaliens.

Further ReadingRandles, Jenny, 1983. The Pennine UFO Mystery.

London: Granada.

Joseph 137

Policeman Alan Godfrey, who was allegedly abducted into a UFO at Todmorden, Yorkshire, drawing a picture of “Joseph,”November 1980 (Janet and Colin Bord/Fortean Picture Library)

KantariansFor four nights in September 1961, DavidPaladin’s son claimed that somebody namedItan was coming into his bedroom and takinghim away in a big “sky car.” Though at firstPaladin dismissed this as a child’s fantasy, aneighbor claimed that he had seen a tall, thinman walking the boy toward a waiting flyingsaucer. That November Itan came into Pal-adin’s own bedroom and engaged him in atelepathic conversation. He and his people,the Kantarians, lived on a planet in anotherdimension. They do not interfere directly inhuman affairs, but they have contacted certainhuman beings in the hope that they couldgently push the human race in a more mature,positive direction. They had been observinghumans since the beginning of Homo sapiensand had even left a genetic imprint in somehumans.

Paladin claimed years of psychic connec-tion with the Kantarian Confederation. Itanand his friends have told him that if humanbeings destroy themselves, the space peoplecan do nothing. But if natural cataclysmsthreaten human existence, the Kantarians willperform a rescue operation. Mostly, though,they hope that humans will reform them-selves, develop wisdom and kindness, and jointheir Space Brothers in the cosmos one day.

Further ReadingMontgomery, Ruth, 1985. Aliens among Us. New

York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

KappaIn traditional Japanese lore the Kappa are ma-licious water demons shaped like monkeyswith scales. They lure the unsuspecting intoponds and rivers, then devour them. One Ja-panese writer, Komatsu Kitamura, has theo-rized that the Kappa were extraterrestrials whocame to Japan sometime between the ninthand eleventh centuries. Others have picked upon this speculation, suggesting that the osten-sibly scaly skin was actually a spacesuit. Al-leged sightings continue even now. In No-vember 1978, two construction workersfishing off the coast of the port city Yokosukareported seeing a creature abruptly emergefrom the sea to glare at them. “It was not afish, an animal, or a man,” one said. “It wasabout three meters [ten feet] in height and[was] covered with thick, scaly skin like a rep-tile. It had a face and two large yellow eyes”(Picasso, 1991).

Argentine ufologist Fabio Picasso has col-lected what he judges to be more or less com-parable reports from his country. For example,on the evening of April 22, 1980, a motorist

K

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in Santa Rosa noticed something falling outof the sky. At that moment, his car enginesuddenly ceased functioning. When he gotout to check the motor, he noticed a coldbreeze at foot level. Looking down, he saw thelegs of something that clearly was not human.Looking up, he saw two humanoid creatures,approximately seven feet in height, approach-ing him. They had webbed hands and wereclothed in black, shiny diving suits. Theirfaces were “skull-like.” Though their protrud-ing mouths were moving, no words werecoming out of them. One put its cold handsaround the witness’s head, and he passed out.He revived a few minutes afterward, but a halfmile from where he had been.

Further ReadingPicasso, Fabio, 1991. “Infrequent Types of South

American Humanoids.” Strange Magazine 8(Fall): 21–23, 44.

KarenLate at night, on the highway between Ma t i a sand Barbosa, Brazil, on Ja n u a ry 21, 1976, acouple in a car saw a blue light envelope thelandscape. The light moved tow a rd them untilit cove red their vehicle. The car “was absorbed

as if through a chimney” into a brilliantly lumi-nous circular object. Two dark - f e a t u red fig u re s ,male and more than six feet tall, appro a c h e dand signaled that the two humans should stepout of their car. The ground seemed to moveunder them, and the woman said she feltd runk even though she had consumed no alco-hol. The couple could not understand thea l i e n s’ strange language until one gave each ofthem a headset and plugged it into a device. Atthat moment, the words became understand-able. The being introduced himself as Kare nand urged them to remain calm.

The woman underwent a series of medicaltests. She and her husband also drank a liquidwith an unappealing taste. Other aliens, one ofthem female, appeared as Karen explained tothem that he and his people we re conductingmedical re s e a rch, even though on their worldthey had conquered all illness, and no one eve rdied anymore. He warned them not to talkabout their experience, since people wouldthink they we re insane. If they wished, headded, they could have their memories erased.The couple turned down that offer. The womanclaimed some subsequent psychic contacts.



Karmic BoardAll living entities must pass before the KarmicBoard before they can be incarnated on Earth.Each entity receives its assignment, and at theend of that assignment (bodily death) the en-tity appears before the board once more, thistime to have its performance reviewed. TheKarmic Board “dispenses justice to this systemof worlds, adjudicating karma, mercy andjudgment on behalf of every lifestream”(“Lords of Karma,” n.d.).

Members of the Karmic Board include theGreat Divine Director, the Goddess of Lib-erty, Ascended Lady Master Nada, Cyclopea(Elohim of the Fifth Ray), Pallas Athena

140 Karen

A Japanese print depicting a Kappa (Victoria and AlbertMuseum, London/Art Resource, NY)

(Goddess of Truth), Portia (Goddess of Jus-tice), and Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy).

Further Reading“Lords of Karma,” n.d. http://www.ascension-

research.org/karma.html

KazikIn September 1953, Albert K. Bender ofBridgeport, Connecticut, suddenly shut downhis International Flying Saucer Bureau(IFSB), confiding to a few close friends thatthree men in black had threatened him andgiven him the frightening answer to the UFOmystery. Though Bender would provide fewdetails, he hinted that the visitors were agentsof the U.S. government. His alleged experi-ence led an associate, Gray Barker, to write asensational and paranoia-drenched book,They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers(1956), about Bender and other supposedlysilenced UFO researchers. Eventually, Barker,who had started a small West Virginia–basedpublishing company, persuaded Bender to re-veal what had happened to him. In FlyingSaucers and the Three Men (1962), Benderwrote that he had run afoul, not of a terres-trial intelligence agency, but of extraterrestrialintelligences from the planet Kazik.

Bender’s IFSB had come into existence inApril 1952 and was soon among the most suc-cessful of early UFO groups, claiming asmany as six hundred members in a number ofcountries. Bender was also an enthusiastic sci-ence-fiction fan. A bachelor, he lived in ahouse full of artifacts from horror films, andat night, as he lay in bed, he would imaginehimself sailing out of his body and into deepspace. Soon, according to Bender’s book,weird things began happening to him. Strangelights and disembodied footsteps frightenedhim, and once glowing eyes, accompanied bya stench of sulfur, stared at him. With col-leagues in Australia and New Zealand, Benderspeculated about a saucer base inside theSouth Pole, and they laid plans for a researchproject to study that possibility.

Bender urged his membership to try tocontact the saucers telepathically at the samehour on March 15, 1953. While participat-ing, he underwent an out-of-body experienceand then heard a voice warning him to “dis-continue delving into the mysteries of theuniverse.”

A few weeks later, he returned home from atwo-week vacation to smell the sulfur odor. Afew hours later, three shadowy, apparitionalfigures dressed in dark suits spoke to him.They gave him a device with which he couldcontact them; all he had to do was hold ittightly in his palm and say “Kazik” over andover again. Two days later, he attempted con-tact. The experience initiated a series of en-counters with monstrous beings who revealedthat “Kazik” was the name of their homeplanet. They took Bender to their antarcticbase, where they revealed their big secret: theyhad come to Earth to gather and refine seawater. They also told him that God does notexist and that there is no life after death.

Bender was given a disc that monitored hisactivities and ensured his silence until theycompleted their business, which was in 1960when they departed from our planet. Benderwas free to tell his story, which he did in abook that few, including (privately) Barker,saw as anything more than a not particularlyinteresting science-fiction novel. Two criticspointed to the story’s inherent implausibility:“The story lacks a good solid motive or pur-pose. . . . How could Bender or anyone elsehave discovered [the Kazakians’] secret untilthey chose to reveal it; and if they wished theirsecret to remain unknown, what possible pur-pose could they have had in revealing it delib-erately to Bender, only to have to then forcesilence upon him, causing him physical painand disturbing his peace of mind for the nexteight years? . . . What was so significant abouta few tons of sea water? . . . What had suchentities to fear from anyone, if Bender didpublish such a ‘secret’? Who would believe it,or be able to interfere with such an advancedcivilization?” (Beasley and Sampsel, 1963).

Kazik 141

Twelve years after Three Men’s publication,Barker expressed the view that the story wassomething Bender had conjured up “in atrance or a dream” (Barker, 1976). Most ob-servers, however, suspected it to be consciousfiction. One fantastic theory, proposed in1980 by British ufologist Brian Burden, heldthat an intelligence agency had subjected Ben-der to a thought-control experiment andcaused him to hallucinate space people.

See Also: Men in blackFurther ReadingBarker, Gray, 1956. They Knew Too Much about Fly -

ing Saucers. New York: University Books.———, 1976. Interviewed by Jerome Clark.Barker, Gray, ed., 1962. Bender Mystery Confirmed.

Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.Beasley, H. P., and A. V. Sampsel, 1963. “The Ben-

der Mystery—Still a Mystery?” Flying Saucers(May): 20–27.

Bender, Albert K., 1962. Flying Saucers and the ThreeMen. Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.

Burden, Brian, 1980. “MIBs and the IntelligenceCommunity.” Awareness 9, 1 (Spring): 6–13.

Young, Jerry A., and Gray Barker, 1976. “Letters.”Gray Barker’s Newsletter 3 (January): 7–12.

Keel, John Alva (1930– )Born Alva John Kiehl in Hornell, New York,on March 25, 1930, John Keel would discoverthe writings of anomalist Charles Fort(1874–1932) at an early age. He grew up tobe a Manhattan-based writer who eventuallybecame internationally known for radical,neodemonological interpretations of UFO,anomalous and paranormal phenomena. Keelwould speculate that a wide range of other-worldly entities, none of which regard thehuman race with favor (“ultraterrestrials,” touse his term), emerge from an alternative real-ity he calls the “superspectrum.”

Keel claims to have attended the first fly-ing-saucer convention ever held, “in the oldLabor Temple on New Yo rk’s 14th St re e t”( Keel, 1991). After a tour of duty in the mil-

142 Keel, John Alva

John Alva Keel (August C. Roberts/Fortean Picture Library)

i t a ry in the early 1950s, he wandered theEast and wrote his first book, Ja d o o ( 1 9 5 7 ) ,on his adve n t u res and observations. Hew rote that while in the Himalayas, he sawthe yeti (“abominable snow m a n”), a beast hewould come to think of as a “d e m o n”( C h o rv i n s k y, 1990). In the 1960s, he em-b a rked full time on investigations of UFOs ,men in black, monsters (including Mo t h-man, an eerie winged humanlike cre a t u rewith which Ke e l’s name would fore ver afterbe associated), contactees, and more. Hee ven re p o rted having his own encounterswith unearthly entities. Borrowing from Cal-ifornia occult theorist N. Meade Layne, Ke e lbecame convinced that there are no visitinge x t r a t e r restrials, only shape-changing super-natural beings “composed of energy from theupper frequencies of the electro - m a g n e t i cs p e c t rum. So m e h ow they can descend to then a r row (ve ry narrow) range of visible lightand can be manipulated into any desirablef o r m . . . . Once they have completed theirm i s s i o n . . . they . . . re ve rt to an energy stateand disappear from our field of vision—for-e ve r” (Keel, 1969).

Though dismissed by some as a crank, Keelhas been an influential theorist in some ufo-logical and Fortean circles. His critics havecharged him with careless writing andcredulity, but his admirers prefer to think ofhim as a bold, even outrageous, iconoclast.

See Also: Contactees; Men in black; Mothman; Ul-traterrestrials

Further ReadingChorvinsky, Mark, 1990. “Cryptozoo Conversation

with John A. Keel.” Strange Magazine 5: 35–40.Clark, Jerome, 1997. Spacemen, Demons, and Con -

spiracies: The Evolution of UFO Hypotheses.Mount Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.


———, 1971. Our Haunted Planet. Greenwich, CT:Fawcett Publications.

———, 1975. The Eighth Tower. New York: Satur-day Review Press/E. P. Dutton and Company.

———, 1975. The Mothman Pro p h e c i e s . New Yo rk :Sa t u rday Re v i ew Press/E. P. Dutton and Company.

———, 1988. Disneyland of the Gods. New York:Amok Press.

———, 1969. “The Principle of Transmogrifica-tion.” Flying Saucer Review 15, 4 (July/August):27–28, 31.

KhaugaKhauga is a “Celestial Being” whom WilliamFerguson met in an out-of-body state whilemeditating on the evening of January 12,1947. Traveling at the “speed of conscious-ness,” he found himself on Mars within tenseconds. Khauga met him on his arrival, re-marking that he had something to say about“the observations that we have made of yourplanet.” He also wanted Ferguson to pass onsome messages to his fellow earthlings.

According to Khauga, a great network ofcanals covers the planet. Electromagneticfields enclose its cities. Martians themselves,all of whom have red hair, red complexions,and broad features, float through the air vialevitation. They are a foot shorter than thetypical Earth person. Khauga expressed in-credulity that human beings kill each other inbattles. Martians, he said, are twenty thou-sand years ahead of earthlings in spiritual evo-lution and scientific development. Concernedabout the state of affairs on our planet, theMartians had decided to “release positive en-ergy particles into the earth’s atmosphere . . .to counteract the negative energy particlesthat man himself has released” (Ferguson,1954). Khauga asked Ferguson to assure thepeople of Earth that things would soon bemuch better in their world.

See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Aurora Martian;Brown’s Martians; Dentons’s Martians and Venu-sians; Hopkins’s Martians; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Muller’s Martians; Shaw’s Mar-tians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingFerguson, William, 1954. My Trip to Mars. Potomac,

MD: Cosmic Study Center.

KihiefKihief was the spirit guide to the late FranciePaschal Steiger, who with her then-husband,Brad Steiger, spearheaded the Star People

Kihief 143

movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s.Paschal Steiger believed herself to be a reincar-nated extraterrestrial. Kihief, who guided herthrough her life, said he was from a place “likeunto Venus” (Steiger and Steiger, 1981). Shetook his words to mean that he was from anotherdimensional counterpart to Earth’s (un-inhabitable) sister planet. Throughout herlifetime, Paschal Steiger interacted with a vari-ety of friendly, spiritually advanced space peo-ple. She met the first of them when, as a five-year-old child, she saw a robed being whomshe took to be an “angel.”

See Also: Star PeopleFurther ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the

Transformation of Man. New York: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich.

Steiger, Brad, and Francie Steiger, 1981. The StarPeople. New York: Berkley Books.

Steiger, Francie, 1982. Reflections from an Angel’s Eye.New York: Berkley Books.

King LeoKing Leo is a reptilian being who is descendedfrom the dinosaurs. He and his fellows live inan underground kingdom, where they haveresided since just before the catastrophe thatdestroyed other life from the Age of Reptiles.Some have met him in person, but most of hiscommunications come through channeling.

King Leo got his name from a woman whoprefers to call herself Joy D’Light (sometimesJoyDLight). Her association with reptilian be-ings began on November 7, 1961, when sheand her husband, an air force man, were liv-ing in Oregon. Her husband had left town onassignment, and it was her first night alone.That night, from her open bedroom door fac-ing the kitchen, she saw three bipedal reptil-ian beings standing next to her refrigerator.Six and a half feet tall, they had scaly skin andspikes down their backs; their eyes were yel-low. Too frightened to leave her bed, she even-tually fell asleep. They were gone when shewoke up; nonetheless, they appeared everynight for two months thereafter. Often theywere waiting for her when she came home

from work. Eventually, she took up a brief res-idence with her sister and returned only aftersome days had passed. The entities, who hadnever harmed her or spoken with her, werenot there.

That changed in 1996 when one showedup in her house. She was wide awake and notin her bedroom this time, and she no longerfelt the terror she had originally experienced.The being spoke for the first time, assuringher that he and his companions had nevermeant to harm her; they were just interestedin her. He vanished after a few moments. Onanother occasion this being or one much likeit showed up briefly on the television screenwhile she was surfing channels. The followingyear, one appeared for about five minutes be-fore disappearing without communicating.

One day in July 1998, she lay down to restwhen instantly she found herself transportedto an underground kingdom. The ruler, whowas standing in front of her, initiated a con-versation, during which he told her that origi-nally the reptilian race had been dinosaurs.Over time they evolved into smaller creatures,though their eating habits—they were herbi-vores—had not changed. Now they wanted toreturn to the surface (“top side,” he called it)and reclaim their rightful roles as rulers ofEarth. Joy explained that no single individualrules the surface, that there are many nationsand many leaders.

When she inquired as to his name, hereplied that her tongue would not be able topronounce it. He suggested that she make upa name with which she felt comfortable. Shedecided to call him “Leo,” telling him that“Leo” means “king.” From then on, she ad-dressed him as King Leo.

King Leo wanted to know what love feelslike, since he and his people had no emo-tions—though such feelings are just nowstarting to evolve in them. They have a reli-gion; they recognize the same Creator as sur-face humans do.

Joy met him again on August 14, 1999,when she was taken into the kingdom again.Leo told her that some of his subjects would

144 King Leo

like to live on the top again, though mostwould be staying behind. Those who wantedto go to the surface, however, were concernedthat human beings would not accept their ap-pearance. He told her that at present one anda half million reptilians live beneath the earth.According to Joyce’s friend Elliemiser, “He isvery congenial, likable and pleasant to com-municate with. . . . Now they are waiting tofind out what our response will be. . . . Theywill not just suddenly pop up and frighten us”(“The Reptilians,” 1999).

King Leo’s reptilians are not to be confusedwith evil reptoids who are coming to Earthfrom the Draco constellation. These beingsare violent meat-eaters who seek to destroyhumans with their advanced technology. Thereptilians, on the other hand, do not havespace travel, and their technology, while de-veloping, is still relatively primitive.

See Also: Channeling; ReptoidsFurther ReadingD’Light, Joy, and Elliemiser, 1999. “The Reptilians

and King Leo.” http://www.greatdreams.com/reptlan/repleo.htm

KortonCommander Korton is a well-loved, ubiqui-tous channeling entity. He is also a leadinglight in the Ashtar Command, a close, trustedassociate of Ashtar. According to a commonbelief, he heads the Ashtar Command KorCommunications Base, located in an other-dimensional correlate to the planet Mars. Histask is to initiate contact with budding chan-nelers and train them for their work. He alsosupervises the Eagles, extraterrestrials who liveon Earth and pass as earthlings while per-forming missions for the Ashtar Command.Some contactees have reported boarding hisship in out-of-body states to attend briefingsin what looks like a large amphitheater.

One psychic who observed him in thecourse of an interstellar conference describeshim as clad in a vanilla-colored robe. “Hiseyes were deep-set,” the observer reported,and blue in color. “He had a strong straight

nose, slightly high cheek bones, firm fullmouth. His hair was golden-blond . . . but hisbeard was lighter. . . . There was a firmnesswith this individual, but there was also a greatdeal of warmth vibration also—the warmth oflove, of acceptance, of ‘you’re o.k.’”(Tuieta,1986).

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; ContacteesFurther ReadingTuella [pseudonym of Thelma B. Turrell], ed., 1989.

Ashtar: A Tribute. Third edition. Salt Lake City,UT: Guardian Action Publications.

Tuieta, 1986. Project Alert. Fort Wayne, IN: Portalsof Light.

KroninOn July 26, 1967, near Big Tujunga Canyonin California, a man and a woman in a carheard a disembodied voice speaking. It alertedthem to the imminent appearance of some-thing out of the ordinary. They spotted aflash, then a disc-shaped UFO that landednearby. A tall, boneless, eyeless figureemerged. He was, he said, Kronin, head of theKronian race. He was also “a space robot en-cased in a time capsule” (Keel, 1975).

When she arrived home, the woman, MarisDeLong, took a phone call. It was from Kro-nin, the first of several in which he discussedcosmic matters.



KuranKuran are a race of people whom anactress/writer given the pseudonym “JessicaRolfe” claims to have met over a period ofyears, beginning in her childhood. TheKuran, who are described as beautiful,tanned, golden-haired people who lookhuman, would materialize in her MiamiBeach, Florida, bedroom and teach her theirsecrets. The Kuran communicate telepathi-cally, though they do make vocal sounds for afew simple sentiments such as “look there,”

Kuran 145

“watch out,” and “wow.” They are amongtwelve alien races who have visited Earth.They have bases here, some off the coasts ofFlorida and Argentina, one in Brazil’s Amazonbasin, and they have lived in them, unknownto human beings, for millions of years. Theystill do not understand humanity’s tendencyto be violent and prejudiced.

The Kuran told Rolfe that the human raceoriginally occupied a planet located betwe e nMars and Ju p i t e r. They visited this planet justb e f o re natural forces we re set to destroy it, of-fering to re m ove the inhabitants to a suitableplace if they agreed to live by Kuran law. T h einhabitants refused, and the Kuran withdrew.The residents of the doomed planet managedto escape on their own. Some went to aplanet in the constellation of Pegasus, and theo t h e r, to the Ku r a n’s displeasure, colonize dE a rth and became our ancestors. Eart hp roved an inhospitable place, not sufficientlye vo l ved to have achieved the cosmic har-monies that give rise to peaceable, we l l -adjusted races. The new colonists, more ove r,i n t e rf e red with Eart h’s ecology, forcing itsp revious, reigning, intelligent species fro mthe land into the oceans; humans now knowthese beings as dolphins. Other alien raceswho arrived we re driven off or forced to livein remote regions. The cre a t u res humans callBi gfoot or Sasquatch originally came fro mouter space.

O ver time, the new inhabitants forgottheir cosmic heritage and their true history.E a rt h’s surface, once a single land mass sur-rounded by ocean (and recalled vaguely as thelost continent of Mu), broke up, and the peo-ple we re scattered. Cut off from one another,they developed different cultures and differ-ent languages. Only an elite group called theMagi pre s e rved knowledge of the true past.Each harbored ambitions for himself and col-lected followers. They used their know l e d g eto abuse Eart h’s natural energies and to har-ness atoms for destru c t i ve purposes. Di s-turbed by these developments, the Kuran re-turned to Earth and tried to reform its

inhabitants. With their followers, they con-s t ructed the paradisiacal land of At l a n t i s ,only to have the Magi destroy it with atomicbombs. The nuclear explosions changedE a rt h’s landscape and climate and created thecontinents we know today.

Even today a secret conflict continues be-tween the Kuran and the Magi. On occasionthe Kuran have tried to interfere in human af-fairs, each time with negative results. Mythsand legends of the gods of the ancient worldrecount, in distorted form, previous Kuran ef-forts to lead us.

See Also: Atlantis; LemuriaFurther ReadingGansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.

Direct Encounters: Personal Histories of UFO Ab -ductees. New York: Walker and Company.

KurmosIn March 1966, a mystically inclined Scots-man named R. Ogilvie (“Roc”) Crombie, vis-iting Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens,spotted a creature that looked half human andhalf animal. Three feet tall, it had clovenhoofs. It told Crombie that its name was Kur-mos. It was a nature spirit that helped trees togrow.

Kurmos accompanied Crombie back to hisapartment, where it stayed for a short time.On a subsequent trip to the garden, Crombiecalled out to him, and Kurmos appeared. Helearned that in earlier ages Kurmos had beenthe god Pan.

Further ReadingAsh, David, and Peter Hewitt, 1990. Science of the

Gods. Bath, England: Gateway Books.

Kwan Ti LasloKwan Ti Laslo channels from the Blue Dia-mond Planet. This planet is not in orbitaround a sun (as planets are virtually by defi-nition) but rather is a sort of giant spacecraftthat travels all over the universe investigatingconditions there. The planet/spacecraft re-ports its findings to the Intergalactic Council.

146 Kurmos

In the mid-1970s, it made a brief visit toEarth’s vicinity. Earthly astronomers mistookthe spacecraft for a comet.

Certain advanced human beings—Kwan TiLaslo mentioned former presidents HarryTruman and John F. Kennedy specifically—are allowed to come to the Blue DiamondPlanet and live there. The planet gives off blue

light from its many waterways and temperateclimate. There is no environmental pollution.“All highly evolved planets have almost in-stantaneous cleansing of air and waters,”Kwan Ti Laslo explains.

Further Reading“The Blue Diamond Planet,” 1976. Other World Life

Review 1, 9 (November): 7.

Kwan Ti Laslo 147

Laan-Deeka and SharannaIn February or early March 1967 a PuertoRican man named Lester Rosas received sev-eral telepathic messages from two Venusians,Laan-Deeka and Sharanna. They promisedthat they would meet with him face-to-faceone day soon.

On the evening of March 31, acting undera strange compulsion, Rosas boarded a busand took it to the end of the line, which hap-pened to be along a coastal area. He keptwalking until he reached a deserted part of thebeach. By then it was pitch black, and he wasunsure about what he was doing there and forwhat, or for whom, he was waiting. Then hefelt an odd sensation as a man who had shoul-der-length hair and was dressed in a close-fit-ting garment approached him. The man ex-tended his hand, but when Rosas tried toshake his hand, the stranger withdrew it aftera mild pressing of palms. He said in Spanish,“Yes, beloved Earth brother, I am Laan-Deeka, of the planet Venus.” He went on tostate that Venusians had been keeping humanbeings under surveillance since their primitiveorigins and had also been living, unnoticed,among them.

Laan-Deeka then commenced to discussreincarnation, saying that advanced earthlingswho obey nature’s laws are permitted to live

their next lives on spiritually developed plan-ets. In the universe, he said, most communi-cation, even interplanetary and interstellarcommunication, occurs by telepathy. Humanbeings are backward, in part, because they failto realize that telepathy is even possible.

The Venusian led Rosas to the other side ofa small nearby wall, where they witnessed thematerialization of a flying saucer. A door slidopen, and a woman emerged to engage Rosasin a palm-to-palm Venusian handshake. “Shewas so lovely that I was speechless for a mo-ment,” Rosas recalled. “Her hair was long andfair, and she had a fantastic figure. . . . I esti-mated her measurements at 5'4" and 37-27-35.” She introduced herself to Rosas as Sha-ranna, Laan-Deeka’s fiancée.

Though the couple looked to be no morethan twenty years old, their manner suggestedwiser, older persons. They had high foreheadsand slightly slanted eyes, his green, hers blue.There was a musical sound to their voices, asense of joy in their speech and action.

The three entered the ship and flew off toVenus, which proved to be the paradisiacalworld re p o rted by other contactees. On theirway to the planet, Sharanna condemned thewar in Vietnam as “senseless and stupid—asa re all wars.” She also criticized those who re-fused to believe contact stories. If contactees’

L

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re p o rts “a re sometimes contradictory,” shesaid, “it is with good reason. Your Earth peoplea re contacting space people from differe n tplanets and different cultures, in differe n tstages of adva n c e m e n t . . . . T h e re f o re the re-p o rts could hardly be the same” (Rosas, 1976).

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingRosas, Lester, 1976. “Visits from Venus.” Other

World Life Review Pt. I. 1, 8 (October): 4–5; Pt.II. 1, 9 (December): 3–4.

Lady of PlutoKelvin Rowe, an acquaintance of such earlycontactees as George Adamski and TrumanBethurum, began hearing voices in his head inearly 1953. The voices were mostly indistinct,and he was unsure of their meaning. OnMarch 9, 1954, while driving to SanBernardino, California, the word “Pluto”sounded inside his brain three times in succes-sion. Later that month, after further briefmessages from beings he identified asGuardians from Space, he requested a direct,in-person meeting. A voice replied that onewould happen, but he might not recognize itwhen it did.

At the Giant Rock Interplanetary Space-craft Convention in the California desert thefollowing year on April 4, he kept companywith Truman Bethurum, whom he hadknown four years before Bethurum beganclaiming an association with the spacewomanAura Rhanes of Clarion. He met three youngpeople, a woman and two men, who lookednormal and were friendly. It was only laterthat Rowe realized that they had said some-thing to him that they could not have knownabout an earlier trip he had taken to seeBethurum. Rowe wondered if they had beenspace people, and soon a mental message con-firmed that they had been. The message wasfrom the young woman, whom he would callthe Lady of Pluto.

In a 1958 book, Rowe recounted the con-versation that followed. The Lady of Plutotold him that contact with space people

would radically alter earthling science and hu-mankind’s beliefs on a range of issues. She alsosaid that earthwomen would be more recep-tive than earthmen, that by the time the opencontact occurred, women would hold posi-tions of authority in business and govern-ment. Their influence would ensure that thechanges took place without undue conflictand destruction. She promised that in time,when he was ready, he would be permitted toboard a spacecraft.

Mental communication with various spacepeople continued over the next months. Even-tually, a spaceman came to Rowe’s house lateone evening. The two had a short conversa-tion via telepathy before the extraterrestrialdisappeared into the night. Soon Rowe wasregularly seeing flying-saucer people. A weekafter the first meeting, the same Space Brotherand a companion reappeared at his door. Heinvited them in for a conversation about cos-mic and philosophical issues. According toRowe, “They were fine looking men, withsmooth, dark sun-tan complexions, and darkhair styled in longer length than our moderncuts” (Rowe, 1958). Three weeks of saucersightings and psychic contacts took place. Thecommunicators were a man and woman fromJupiter: the Brother and Sister, Rowe calledthem. He unexpectedly met them in the fleshfor a short while.

His next contact, a few weeks later in Janu-ary 1955, was with the Lady of Pluto, the firsttime he had seen her since Giant Rock. Shewas accompanied by a Space Brother, andRowe described her as “mettlesome andlovely.” She stood five feet three inches tall,wore a blouse, jacket, and slacks “in contrast-ing tones of a beautiful, pansy-blue, similar toroyal blue, and a shade of red-wine in a scin-tillating, deep intensity.” He was told that shewas the earthly equivalent of a captain on aspacecraft. She also said that an asteroid waspassing dangerously close to Earth but thatthe space people would make sure it did notcause damage.

Some weeks later, Rowe met the Lady ofPluto again, in the company of the Brother

150 Lady of Pluto

and Sister of Jupiter. On this occasion he wasfinally permitted to board a landed ship for afew minutes. In due course, Rowe would fly,more than once, into space onboard space-craft, sometimes with the Lady of Pluto, moreoften with the Sister of Jupiter. “Some thereare who believe UFO’s are the greatest mys-tery of our century,” Rowe wrote. “I onlyhope I have made it clear that there is no mys-tery connected with them.”

See Also: Adamski, George; Aura Rhanes; Bethu-rum, Truman; Contactees

Further ReadingRowe, Kelvin, 1958. A Call at Dawn: A Message from

Our Brothers of the Planets Pluto and Jupiter. ElMonte, CA: Understanding Publishing Com-pany.

Land beyond the PoleAccording to F. Amadeo Giannini, author ofWorlds beyond the Poles (1959), AdmiralRichard E. Byrd discovered a marvelous newland when he flew 1,700 miles beyond theNorth Pole during an expedition in 1947. Hesaw ice-free lakes, mountains, and forests. Heeven caught a glimpse of an enormous animalwalking through the underbrush. In 1956, ona second expedition to the Arctic, he wit-nessed similar sights. Giannini claimed thatthe U.S. government had sworn Byrd to si-lence after he first hinted of his discoveries inhis 1947 interviews with the New York Times.

Giannini, characterized as the “archetypalcrank” by one critic (Kafton-Minkel, 1989),believed that Byrd’s alleged experience verifiedhis—Giannini’s—belief that the Earth is notround but more or less spindle-shaped; ateach spindle point the surface, instead of end-ing, curves back overhead. The universe con-sists not of space but of vast land, “physicalcontinuity” he called it. What appear to hu-mans as stars, planets, galaxies, and other phe-nomena in the distant cosmos are only “glob-ular and isolated areas of a continuous andunbroken outer sky surface.” His original in-spiration, he wrote, was a mystical vision heexperienced while strolling through a NewEngland forest one day in 1926.

Published as a vanity-press (that is, at theauthor’s expense) book, Worlds beyond thePoles would have passed quickly into oblivionif not for the fact that Ray Palmer, editor ofFlying Saucers and promoter of the ShaverMystery, read the book after receiving a reviewcopy. Always looking for an issue to stir up hisreaders, Palmer wrote of Byrd’s supposed se-cret flight to argue that the Earth is hollowwith giant holes at the poles. Anyone enteringthe holes will encounter a hidden world har-boring an intelligent civilization that buildsand flies superaircraft that are called UFOs.Palmer got the Byrd story from Giannini butdid not mention him, claiming that he hadgotten his information from “years of re-search” (Palmer, 1959). A number of readerspointed out that the New York Times storiesabout Byrd’s expedition did not quote him assaying anything about forests or a giant beast;even worse, in 1947 and 1956, Byrd was atthe South, not the North, Pole. Palmer wasforced to acknowledge that his sole source wasGiannini. Unapologetic, he went on to specu-late that perhaps Byrd had made a secret flightto the Arctic in 1947; either that, or “a delib-erate effort was being made to build an edificewhich could be toppled IF AND WHEN THETRUTH CAME OUT ABOUT THE SOUTHPOLE!” (Palmer, 1960). And if neither ofthese were true, the question of which poleByrd had flown over was moot since Byrd hadencountered a lush, green landscape wherenone should have existed and that, in the end,was all that mattered—notwithstanding thenonexistence of any documentation that Byrdhad made any such claim in the first place.Giannini soon weighed in to attack Palmer’shollow earth interpretation and to argue for asecret Arctic expedition by Byrd in 1947,which was followed by a suppression of hisdiscoveries.

In the 1970s, a Missouri-based organiza-tion called the International Society for aComplete Earth, headed by retired marinecorps officer Tawani Shoush, who was also aModoc Indian, issued what it claimed was asecret diary that Byrd kept during his 1947

Land beyond the Pole 151

152

Cover of Flying Saucers magazine, June 1970, with a November 1968 satellite photo allegedly showing the hole in theNorth Pole leading to the interior of hollow earth (Fortean Picture Library)

North Pole expedition. Written in an ama-teurish, pulpy style, strikingly unlike the eru-dite prose found in Byrd’s undisputed pub-lished works, the diary has Byrd and his radiooperator passing over a green landscape andspotting a “mammoth,” while the temperaturerises to seventy-four degrees. Soon the twomen spot three flying saucers with swastika in-signias (perhaps not coincidentally, Shoush’sgroup held that the inner-earthers, a Teutonicrace known as the Arianni, favor theswastika). The saucers take control of Byrd’splane and lead it to a city “pulsating with rain-bow hues of color.” There they meet the Ari-anni and engage in conversation with an aged,wise man known as the Master. The Masterwarns that human beings are insufficiently ad-vanced to be fooling with something as dan-gerous as atomic energy. The diary’s last entry,supposedly written shortly before Byrd’s deathin 1957, says, “I have faithfully kept this mat-ter secret as directed all these years. It has beencompletely against my values of moral right.”

Though unsupported by any evidence, thes t o ry of By rd’s flight beyond the pole became astaple of hollow - e a rth literature. As late as1993, Timothy Green Beckley was asking,“Was it because of Admiral By rd’s we i rd fli g h tinto an unknown Polar land in 1947 that theInternational Geophysical Year was conceive din that ye a r, and finally brought to fruition tenyears later, and is actually still going on? Di dhis flight make it suddenly imperative to dis-c over the real nature of this planet we live on,and solve the tremendous mysteries that unex-pectedly confronted us?” (Be c k l e y, 1993).

Dennis G. Crenshaw, editor of The HollowEarth Insider Research Report, expresses a viewthat is at once skeptical and conspiratorial. Henotes that when the diary quotes some of theMaster’s words, those words bear an unset-tling resemblance to those spoken by theDalai Lama of Shangri-La in the classic 1937film Lost Horizon. He also bluntly charges thatTawani Shoush and his group forged thediary. Nonetheless, he sees a sinister hand inall of this. Byrd’s polar expeditions were in theservice of the “paymasters” of the “Illuminati

and . . . a New World Order . . . John D.Rocherfeller [sic] and his pals.” Moreover, Gi-annini himself consciously served the conspir-acy. From uncertain evidence, Crenshaw con-cludes that Giannini’s family “owned the Bankof Italy and the Bank of America.” He goeson, “If, as my research seems to indicate, it isthe One Worlders’ plan to hide what is goingon at the earth’s poles, what better way tocloud the water, so to speak, than to have oneof their own, an admitted member of an in-ternational banking family, toss in a contro-versy—such as this phony trip by AdmiralByrd—to make hollow earthers appear asridiculous[?]” (Crenshaw, 1996).

See Also: Hollow earth; Shaver mysteryFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1993. The Smoky God


Crenshaw, Dennis G., 1996. “The Missing Diary ofAdmiral Byrd: Fact or Fiction?” The Hollow EarthInsider Research Report 4, 1: 8–15.

———, 1997. “Admiral Byrd’s 1939 Antarctic Ex-pedition and the Mysterious Snow Cruiser.” TheHollow Earth Insider Research Report 4, 2: 4–16.

A Flight to the Land beyond the North Pole, or Is Thisthe Missing Secret Diary of Admiral Richard EvelynByrd? n.d. Houston, MO: International Societyfor a Complete Earth.

Giannini, Amadeo F., 1959. Worlds beyond the Poles.New York: Vantage Press.

Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, LostRaces, and UFOs from inside the Earth. PortTownsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.

Palmer, Ray, 1959. “Saucers from Earth! A Chal-lenge to Secrecy!” Flying Saucers (December):8–21.

———, 1960. “Editorial.” Flying Saucers (Febru-ary): 4, 29–34.

———, 1961. “‘Byrd Did Make North Pole Flightin Feb., 1947!’—Giannini.” Flying Saucers (Feb-ruary): 4–11.

LanelloIn his most recent incarnation on Eart h ,Lanello, an Ascended Ma s t e r, was Ma rk L.Prophet (1918–1973), married to El i z a b e t hC l a re Prophet of the Church Un i versal andTriumphant. Since then, as Lanello, he has

Lanello 153

channeled through Prophet and Caro l y nSh e a re r.

Lanello first came to Earth thousands ofyears ago from his native Venus after SanatKumara—the brother of Sananda (Jesus) andsometimes called Earth’s planetary spirit—de-termined to save the human race from de-stroying itself. Over the centuries Lanellowent through many incarnations, all in fulfill-ment of his earthly mission. In his lives, hehas been an Atlantean priest, Noah, Lot,Amenhotep IV, Bodhidharma (founder ofZen Buddhism), Aesop, Pericles, Mark theEvangelist, Lancelot, Saladin, King Louis XIV(the Sun King), Hiawatha, and HenryWadsworth Longfellow, among others.

See Also: Ascended Masters; SanandaFurther Reading“Ascended Master Lanello: ‘I Am Here and I Am

There! I Am Everywhere in the Consciousness ofGod!’” n.d. http://www.ascension-research.org/lanello.html.

LaskonJames Hill, who lived on a farm near Sey-mour, Missouri, experienced numerous fly-ing-saucer sightings and contacts with theiroccupants, beginning in 1940. The contactsoccurred through his radio or via mentaltelepathy. Eventually, a saucer landed, and asHill watched, the crew let out a large dog,which went under a tree and gave birth topups. Hill kept one of the Venusian pups,named Queenie. Hill’s principal contact overtime was with Brother Laskon, a member ofthe Solar Tribunal on Saturn.

Ac c o rding to Laskon, Jesus is a fre q u e n tspace traveler who visits the many inhabitedplanets. When he is in our system, he stays onMars and Saturn, but most of his time is spenton Venus because of its loveliness. Laskon knewBu c k y, an earthman living on Venus and thef requent contact of another Missouri contactee(and friend of Hill), Buck Nelson. Laskon alsowas able to confirm Chief Frank Buck St a n d i n gHo r s e’s trip to the planet Oreon in the summerof 1959. Saturn, which houses the Solar Tr i-bunal, is a beautiful planet where greatly ad-

vanced, spiritually wise beings reside. T h et we l ve Elder Ones who compose the tribunal“a re the names of all of the prophets in the bib-lical times,” Laskon has said (Dean, 1964). LikeJesus, a senior member of the tribunal, they flewto Earth in spaceships, spent their time here ,and then departed in the same way. Mo s e s ,h owe ve r, lives on Venus, where he serves on theSu p reme Council. John the Baptist returned toE a rth in the 1950s and even attended a con-tactee convention in Los Angeles in July l959.

See Also: Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka; Con-tactees

Further ReadingDean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip -


LazarisLazaris first spoke to Jach Pursel, a Florida re-gional insurance supervisor with no interest inthe New Age or occult, after his wife, Peny,urged him to meditate as a way of easing job-related stress. Instead of meditating, Pursel fellasleep. Soon an oddly accented voice wasspeaking through him. Though startled andeven frightened, Peny grabbed pen and paperand started asking questions. The entity saidits name was “Lazaris.”

The channeling continued for years withLazaris relating a philosophy rather like thatassociated with other popular channeled enti-ties of the period, including Ramtha and Seth.In this philosophy, humans are evolving spiri-tual beings who need to gain access to the di-vine intelligence that is within each of them.

Lazaris became hugely popular, and at thepeak of Lazaris’s fame on the New Age circ u i t ,Pursel was channeling as much as forty hours aweek, with Pe n y — f rom whom he was now di-vo rced—and her new husband managing thebusiness. Lazaris, who always used the pluralp ronoun when speaking, told writer Jon Klimo,“We are always in a state of expansion. We haveno boundary. We have no edge of who we are ,and yet we know who we are. We know wherewe begin and end, although there is nof o r m . . . . We have always been and we will al-

154 Laskon

ways be; and there f o re, we are always constantlyexploring our awareness, gathering data, gather-ing insight, gathering vibration and internaliz-ing that vibration. We are always eve ry w h e reand now h e re simultaneously” (Klimo, 1987).

See Also: Channeling; Ramtha; SethFurther ReadingKlimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re -

ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. LosAngeles: J. P. Tarcher.

Martin, Katherine, 1987. “The Voice of Lazaris.”New Realities 7, 6 (July/August): 26–33.

Pursel, Jach, 1987. Lazaris, The Sacred Journey: Youand Your Higher Self. Beverly Hills, CA: ConceptSynergy.

———, 1988. Lazaris Interviews. Two volumes.Beverly Hills, CA: Concept Synergy.

LemuriaLemuria was the invention of British zo o l o-gist Philip L. Schattler, who conceived of it asan Indian Ocean land bridge connecting

Madagascar and extreme southern In d i a .S c h a t t l e r, who was re s e a rching animal popu-lations, sought to explain why these twowidely separated locations shared many of thesame flora and fauna. (In the twentieth cen-t u ry, continental drift theory re n d e red Schat-t l e r’s hypothesis obsolete.) He called the pos-tulated land bridge “Lemuria,” after thelemurs, animals that the two areas shared incommon. Be f o re long, howe ve r, occultistsand mystics would incorporate the concept ofL e m u r i a — n ow conceived of as a lost conti-nent in the Pa c i fic Ocean—into their own al-t e r n a t i ve histories.

For a time, however, Lemuria remained ascientifically respectable hypothesis. Onemajor champion, German evolutionary biolo-gist Ernst Haeckel, speculated that Homo sapi -ens originated on Lemuria, though that couldnot be proved because any remains had sunkto the bottom of the sea along with the land

Lemuria 155

A science fiction novella about Lemuria by Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer in Amazing Stories, March 1945 (ForteanPicture Library)

bridge. Others theorized that Lemuria wasjust part of a vast continent, called Gond-wanaland, which had circled most of theSouthern Hemisphere, leaving only a patch ofthe Pacific Ocean uncovered. None of the sci-entists argued that either Lemuria or Gond-wanaland had survived into historical time.

Lemuria entered the occult traditionthrough Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, founderof Theosophy. In The Secret Doctrine (1889),Blavatsky wrote that the present human raceevolved through a series of “root races.” Thethird root race lived on Lemuria. These beingshad three eyes, one in the back of the head,and were egg-laying hermaphrodites (possess-ing attributes of both sexes); some had fourarms. Aside from these features, they weregenerally apelike in appearance.

Other occult writers went on to create theirown Lemurians. Through “astral clairvoy-ance” the English theosophist W. Scott-Elliotlearned that it was on Lemuria that humanbeings entered physical bodies. The originalLemurians were twelve to fifteen feet tall, hadflat faces and muzzles, and no foreheads.Their eyes were set so far apart that their vi-sion extended sideways, and they had a thirdeye behind their heads. Eventually, these be-ings began to practice sex, and the Lhas, spiritentities who were to inhabit the bodies andguide them through evolution, were so re-pulsed that they refused their duty. The Lordsof the Flame, advanced Venusians, took overand guided the Lemurians into a more humanand spiritual state. During the Mesozoic eraLemuria began to break up, and one of itspeninsulas became Atlantis.

In the late nineteenth century, archaeolo-gist Augustus Le Plongeon, working in theYucatan, believed he had discovered how totranslate Mayan hieroglyphics. His transla-tions, which other scholars judged dubious,led him to believe that he had uncovered evi-dence of a lost civilization known as Mu. Heassumed Mu to be Atlantis. After his death,however, his friend James Churchward, whohad inherited Le Plungeon’s papers, arguedthat Mu, “the motherland of man,” had been

in the South Pacific, not in the Atlantic. Muhoused a white population of some sixty-fourmillion souls who had built great cities andworshipped the sun. Mu sank beneath the seaten thousand years ago. Churchward claimedto have learned about Mu from tablets writtenin the dead Naacal language. He had beengiven access to them, he said, while serving inIndia in the Bengal Lancers. Churchwardwrote about his “findings” in four books, be-ginning with The Lost Continent of Mu(1926). His failure to produce any evidencethat the Naacal tablets existed outside hisimagination sparked hoax charges thatChurchward never successfully refuted.

Soon Mu and Lemuria were assumed to bethe same place, and thus Lemuria became aPacific equivalent to the Atlantic’s Atlantis. Inthe early years of the twentieth century, specu-lation grew that California was a survivingfragment of Lemuria. A popular occult leg-end, apparently originating in a 1908 articlein The Overland Monthly, held—and stillholds—that a surviving Lemurian colony livesinside Mount Shasta, on the California-Ore-gon border. According to Lemuria: The LostContinent of the Pacific (1931), by H. SpencerLewis (writing as Wishar S. Cerve), whenLemuria broke up, a California-sized part of itcrashed into North America’s west coast andattached itself. In 1936, Robert Stelle ofChicago founded the Lemurian Fellowship,based on his channeled messages fromLemurians living inside Mount Shasta. In twobooks published between 1940 and 1952,Stelle depicted Lemuria as an enormous landmass and a lost paradise.

In the mid-1940s, the Ziff-Davis science-fiction magazines Amazing Stories and Fantas -tic Adventures ran a series of stories and al-legedly factual articles based in part onRichard S. Shaver’s “memories” of life inLemuria, some of whose inhabitants still re-side under the earth. Most have gone mad anduse the advanced technology available to themto torment surface-dwellers.

Lemuria was incorporated into the flyingsaucer-based alternative realities proposed by

156 Lemuria

the contactees and channelers who camealong in the late 1940s and 1950s amid popu-lar speculation about visitation from otherplanets. The Pacific lost continent played aprominent role in George Hunt Williamson’sspeculative books Other Tongues—Other Flesh(1953), Secret Places of the Lion (1958), andRoad in the Sky (1959), which laid out an an-cient history in which Lemurians and At-lanteans interacted freely with a variety of ex-traterrestrial races.

Now an assumed reality in just about anymetaphysical, New Age, hollow earth, orsaucerian worldview, Lemuria sooner or laterenters just about any discussion predicated onthe assumption that everything humans thinkthey know about the ancient history of Earthand the human race is wrong.

See Also: Atlantis; Contactees; Hollow earth; MountShasta; Shaver mystery; Williamson, GeorgeHunt

Further ReadingBlavatsky, Helene P., 1889. The Secret Doctrine. Two

volumes. London: Theosophical PublishingCompany.

Churchward, James, 1926. The Lost Continent ofMu. New York: Ives Washburn.

De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The At -lantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature.New York: Dover Publications.


Scott-Elliot, W., 1925. The Story of Atlantis and theLost Lemuria. London: Theosophical PublishingHouse.

Shaver, Richard S., 1945. “I Remember Lemuria!”Amazing Stories 19, 1 (March): 12–70.


———, 1958. Secret Places of the Lion. London:Neville Spearman.

———, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: NevilleSpearman.

Lethbridge’s aeronautsIn the spring of 1909, the British Isles wereinundated with sightings of enigmatic objectsthat some people called “airships.” Popularand official opinion concurred that German

spies were involved, though it is now knownthat no such German surveillance was occur-ring or, for that matter, was even technicallyachievable. One man claimed to have seen anairship land and to have observed its crew.

Press accounts identify this witness as C.Lethbridge, described in a press account as“an elderly man, of quiet demeanor, [who]did not strike one as given to ro m a n c i n g . ”During the winter, Lethbridge was a dockw o rker in Card i f f. In the warmer months, hep e rformed puppet shows in the towns andvillages of Wales. Around 11 on the eve n i n gof May 18, returning home across re m o t eCaerphilly Mountain, he rounded a bend atthe summit and was taken aback to see some-thing unusual lying along the side of theroad. His first impression was that it was“some big bird.” Standing next to it we re twotall men clad in heavy fur coats and tight-fit-ting fur caps. Their bearing and smart ap-pearance led him to think of them as militaryofficers. They we re working at something,but Lethbridge was not close enough to seewhat it was.

When he got within twenty to thirty yardsof them, they reacted to the rattle of hisspring-cart and jumped up as if startled. They“jabbered furiously to each other in a strangelingo—Welsh or something else; it was cer-tainly not English.” Retrieving something onthe ground, they ran to a carriage underneaththe object, which then ascended in a zigzagmotion. Two lights on its side suddenly cameon. Emitting an “awful noise,” the craft flewhigher and set off in the direction of Cardiff.

After Lethbridge told his story in that city,investigators rushed to the site. If not for thatcircumstance, the episode would have the ap-pearance of an early close encounter of thethird kind. Indeed, it is published in someUFO literature as just that. Most accountsleave out what the investigators found at thesite: a variety of artifacts including parts of let-ters, a spare part for a tire valve, papier-mâchéwads, blue paper containing figures and let-ters, and clippings about airships. All of thissuggests, or at least seems intended to convey,

Lethbridge’s aeronauts 157

the notion that the airship crew consisted offoreign spies.

Though nothing is known about the inci-dent beyond what appears in Welsh and En-glish newspapers of the period, the storyseems suspect. The first chronicler of theUFO phenomenon, Charles Fort, remarkedthat “anybody else [who] wants to think thatthese foreigners were explorers from Mars orthe moon” (Fort, 1941) was free to do so, buthe himself suspected a hoax. Because no for-eign spies were engaged in aerial surveillanceof Britain in 1909, it is hard to imagine an-other explanation.

Coincidentally or otherwise, during a waveof UFO reports in France in the fall of 1954,a railroad worker at Monlucon claimed thatone evening he encountered a tube-shapedcraft. Outside it stood a man dressed in whatlooked like a long, hairy overcoat. When thewitness addressed the figure, the latter re-sponded in an unknown language. The wit-ness left the scene to report it to his supervi-sor, but when the two returned, the UFO andthe hairy-coated figure were gone.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kindFurther ReadingFort, Charles, 1941. The Books of Charles Fort. New

York: Henry Holt and Company.Grove, Carl, 1971. “The Airship Wave of 1909.”

Flying Saucer Review 17, 1 (January/February):17–19.

Vallee, Jacques, 1974. “The Pattern behind the UFOLandings.” In Charles Bowen, ed. The Hu -manoids, 27–76. London: Futura Publications.

Li SungLi Sung, said to be the spirit of a villagephilosopher who lived in northern China inthe eighth century, channeled through AlanVaughan. Vaughan, a longtime writer on psy-chic phenomena, first experienced Li Sung in1983, but sixteen years earlier, three Britishmediums had told him he would be commu-nicating with this Chinese spirit. Vaughansaid he did not believe them. But one day,while he was teaching at a psychic seminar inSedona, Arizona, a couple asked him—he was

then editing a publication called Reincarna -tion Report—if he could divine their past lives.

“ Suddenly a tremendous energy flo o d e dover the top of my head,” he would recall. “Itwas like watching a dream, as the Chinese en-tity Li Sung began to speak through me. Heg a ve them some detailed information aboutpast lives and how they fit into their present lifepaths. For me, it was the beginning of an en-largement of consciousness” (Sh e p a rd, 1991).

Vaughan went on to channel Li Sung inpublic on many occasions. Vaughan contendsthat anyone can channel if he or she wants to.It is, he asserts, as easy as learning how towhistle.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingKlimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re -

ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. LosAngeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

Shepard, Leslie A., 1991. Encyclopedia of Occultismand Parapsychology: A Compendium of Informa -tion on the Occult Sciences, Magic, Demonology,Superstitions, Spiritism, Mysticism, Metaphysics,Psychical Science, and Parapsychology, with Bio -graphical and Bibliographical Notes and Compre -hensive Indexes. Third edition. Detroit, MI: GaleResearch.

Linn-ErriLinn-Erri introduced herself to Robert P. Re-naud one night in July 1961. A Pittsfield,Massachusetts, ham-radio buff and GeneralElectric technician, Renaud heard beepingsounds from his radio and then heard a lovelyfemale voice asking him to stay on the fre-quency for a while. She told him, “I am calledLinn-Erri, and my associates and I come fromthe planet Korendor. We are speaking to youfrom our spaceship many miles above yourearth” (Clark, 1986). She and her fellow Ko-rendorians had chosen to contact him becausethey knew of his interest in UFOs, worldpeace, and the future of humankind. AfterLinn-Erri introduced him to other crewmem-bers, she explained how Renaud could con-struct a transmitter for easy reception of fu-ture messages from space. Later that year, thespace people helped him convert a television

158 Li Sung

set to receive their transmissions. For the firsttime, he saw the beautiful Linn-Erri and wasshocked to learn that she was seventy-fourEarth years old.

In due course, Renaud was meeting per-sonally with the Korendorians, riding in theirships, and learning their science and philoso-phy, which was essentially indistinguishable inits essentials from that widely recounted insaucerian literature. He stayed away from thecontactee lecture and convention circuit andconfined his public activities to a series of arti-cles about his alleged experiences in a meta-physically oriented saucer magazine. He alsoproduced dubious-looking photographs ofsupposed spacecraft.

To outward appearances, nothing distin-guished Renaud from many others makingoutlandish and not very believable claims.Still, ufologist Allan Grise, an interested buthighly skeptical observer of the contacteescene, found Renaud a fascinating and enig-matic figure. “If Renaud was engaged infraud,” he said years later, “it was preposter-ous, unrewarding fraud.”

Grise visited Renaud at his home andfound, as the contactee’s writings asserted, abasement room full of electronic equipment,including the television set and the short-waveradio over which the communications sup-posedly were effected. Grise, an engineer byprofession and ham-radio buff by avocation,found that “everything seemed to make sense.The circuits were all appropriate to extend thereceiving range.” In other words, if he wasgetting messages from an aerial source, he hadthe equipment with which to receive them.

More remarkable, however, were the booksRenaud was writing on Korendorian life andphilosophy. There were a dozen or so of them,all single-spaced, each five hundred to sixhundred pages long. There were, so far asGrise could discern from studying their con-tents, no typographical errors. But that wasnot all.

“When he wrote those books,” Grise re-called, “it was like his hands belonged tosomeone else. He’d sit there in front of his

typewriter and pay no attention to what wascoming out of him. He’d be on the phone ortalking with me, and all the while his handsare going, producing this perfectly typed,clearly written stuff on alien philosophy. Itwas just unbelievable.” Renaud seemed singu-larly uninterested in promoting himself andvolunteered nothing, though he would answerquestions.

Renaud also had a large collection of tapesallegedly of his space communications. Griselistened to some of them and heard what wassupposed to be the voice of Linn-Erri. Therecordings, of excellent quality, carried a voicewith “a kind of hesitancy in speech patternssuggesting a foreign person doing well in En-glish. It had a singsong, melodious quality.”

Soon afterward, Renaud broke off his briefassociation with Grise. He ceased all contactactivities, telling his publisher that he haddone his part and wanted no more of it. Bythe end of the 1960s, Renaud had droppedout of sight. In 1985, Renaud still puzzledGrise. “Something quite out of the normalwas going on,” he said. “Whatever it was.”

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingClark, Jerome, 1986. “Waiting for the Space Broth-

ers.” Fate Pt. I. 39, 3 (March): 47–54; Pt. II. 39,4 (April): 81–87; Pt. III. 39, 5 (May): 68–76.

LunoLuno was one of a number of Space Brotherswho communicated through Lorraine Darr ofRochester, Minnesota. In the mid-1970s, sheand her husband, Victor, performed psychichealing under the direction of friendly extra-terrestrials whom the couple occasionallyglimpsed in apparitional form. Vic also un-derwent out-of-body trips that took him intospaceships. Sometimes they took him toVenus, where he used his healing talents tocure ailing natives. The couple also believedthat while in meditative states they enteredother dimensions. Other Space Brothers whohelped the Darrs included Becovol, Norbol,Muello, Maynell, and Julo.

Luno 159

Further ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the


LyransAccording to the channeling entity Germane,human ancestors interacted with Lyrans,members of an extraterrestrial race that func-tioned as stern, authoritarian teachers. Earlyhumans both revered and feared them. Theywere sturdy, large, light-skinned people. Theirsymbols were birds, cats, and the phoenix.The phoenix image was an invention of theirs,intended to symbolize the indestructibility oftheir empire. They did not hold earthlings inhigh regard and hoped that the Great Flood

would destroy all of them, so that the Lyranscould start over with a new, improved civiliza-tion. Other, more kindly disposed extraterres-trials, however, warned Noah and others, andhumanity was saved.

Travel to Earth from the Lyran system tookgenerations. Thus, once the Lyrans arrivedhere, they could never leave. They lost all con-tact with their home world and eventually in-termarried with native earthlings. Back onLyra the inhabitants continued to evolve andadvance into highly spiritual beings, but theircousins stranded on Earth did not.

See Also: Channeling; GermaneFurther ReadingRoyal, Lyssa, 1994. “ET Civilizations—Germane.”

h t t p : / / w w w. l e m u r i a . n e t / a rt i c l e - e t - c i v i l i z a t i o n s .html.

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MafuMafu channeled through Penny To r res of LosAngeles, beginning in 1986. T h i rty-two thou-sand years old, Mafu claimed to have passedt h rough seventeen incarnations on Earth. Hetaught that God is in eve rything and eve ryo n e ,and eve rything and eve ryone is in God. Be yo n dthat, he championed a macrobiotic diet, medi-tation, and the adoption of a spiritual path.

In 1989, Torres, now Penny Torres Rubin,made a pilgrimage to Hardiwar, India, in theHimalayan foothills. She refashioned herselfwith the title and name of Swami Para-mananda Saraswatti. Back in the UnitedStates she created the Foundation for the Re-alization of Inner Divinity and a subsidiary,the Center for God Realization. Throughthese she has disseminated Mafu’s teachings.

For a time Mafu was among the most pop-ular channeling entities on the New Age sceneof the late 1980s and early 1990s. He wassometimes said to be little more than a cloneof the famous Ramtha, channeled by the con-troversial J. Z. Knight, though at one pointTorres Rubin charged that Ramtha was noth-ing more than a fraud.

See Also: Channeling; RamthaFurther Reading“Interview: Penny Torres on Mafu,” 1986/1987. Life

Times 1, 2 (Winter): 74–79.

L’Ecuyer, Michele, 1986/1987. “Mafu.” Life Times 1,2 (Winter): 80–82.

Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of AmericanReligions. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

MagoniaThe concept of Magonia entered the literatureof ufology in a 1964 issue of England’s FlyingSaucer Review. Ancient-astronaut theoristW. R. Drake, author of a series of pieces high-lighting what he judged to be evidence of ex-traterrestrial visitation, briefly cited a ninth-century French account of a “ship in clouds”from a place called “Magonia.” A slightlylonger version appeared in Jacques Vallee’sPassport to Magonia (1969), in which Valleewent on to turn “Magonia” into the unknownrealm from which many unexplained phe-nomena—everything from elves to demons toUFO humanoids—emerge. He defined Mag-onia as “a sort of parallel universe, which co-exists with our own. It is made visible andtangible only to selected people” (Vallee,1969). In his view, each culture experiencesMagonia in a fashion that conforms to its ownexpectations concerning supernatural encoun-ters. Thus, rural Ireland experiences fairies,while Space Age America has its ostensible ex-traterrestrials. Vallee did not mean to imply

M

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that these experiences were purely hallucina-tory; he was convinced of an underlying butimpenetrable reality forever disguised undermany masks. A British magazine, still pub-lished, named itself Magonia after Vallee’sbook, though the magazine rejects paranor-mal explanations of such phenomena.

The Magonia story appeared originally in acirca 833 manuscript written in Latin by Ago-bard (779–840), the Archbishop of Lyons.The title in English is “Book Against FalseOpinions Concerning Hail and Thunder.”Agobard was fiercely hostile to all non-Chris-tian beliefs. One that particularly infuriatedhim was the “mad and blind” belief that“there exists a certain region called Magonia,from which ships, navigating on clouds, setsail to transport back to this same region thefruits of the earth ruined by hail and de-stroyed by the storm.” Agobard tells of “sev-eral of these senseless fools” who held in cus-tody “three men and one woman, who theysaid had fallen from these ships.” The prison-ers were brought in front of an assembly to bestoned to death, but the archbishop managedto save their lives, after “the truth finally tri-umphed” and he had shown up the absurdityof the charges (Brodu, 1995).

In a critical analysis of the legend, Frenchanomalist Jean-Louis Brodu reviewed Mago-nia’s various uses over the centuries as well asthe embellishments that attached themselvesto it. In the UFO age, the sketchy accountwas variously represented as a landing withaliens or an early abduction case. Some ac-counts twisted details and reported that thecaptives had been stoned to death, Agobard’sexplicit words to the contrary. Surveying thescholarly literature on the Magonian tales,Brodu argues that Agobard’s account makesno sense outside the context of the period,which included the belief that the Earth is flatand that ships can sail through cloud seas.“Magonia” may be a corruption of “Magoni-anus,” meaning “from Port-Mahon,” a once-flourishing harbor on the Balearic island ofMinorca.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Fairies encountered

Further ReadingBrodu, Jean-Louis, 1995. “Magonia: A Re-evalua-

tion.” In Steve Moore, ed. Fortean Studies: Volume2, 198–215. London: John Brown Publishing.

Drake, W. R., 1964. “Spacemen in the MiddleAges.” Flying Saucer Review10, 3 (May/June):11–13.

Vallee, Jacques, 1969. Passport to Magonia: FromFolklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regn-ery Company.

Marian apparitionsVisions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM)have been reported since at least the third cen-tury of the Christian era. The first for whichthere is anything approximating detailedknowledge dates back to 1061 when the BVMprovided a vision of Christ’s residence inNazareth and directed the witness, the lady ofthe manor in Walsingham, Norfolk, to seethat a precise copy was constructed on thespot. A few visions are well known, and theRoman Catholic Church has granted officialrecognition to a small number, though it hasrejected the vast majority as delusional. BVMencounters are far from rare. Every year sev-eral occur around the world. With very fewexceptions, the primary witnesses areCatholics, and usually devout followers of thefaith. Sometimes other supernatural phenom-ena accompany the BVM’s manifestation andbecome, to the faithful, veridical evidence thatthe event was real.

Undoubtedly the most spectacular suchcase took place in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917.The incident is extraordinarily complicated.What follows is a highly abbreviated account.

Around noon on May 13, three children,two girls and a boy, tending sheep, saw a flashof light and observed a brilliantly illuminatedfigure of a woman standing amid the branchesof an oak tree. The apparition announced thatshe was from heaven and would return sixtimes, on each occasion on the thirteenth ofeach succeeding month. On the last visitationin October, she would tell them who she wasand why she had come. Soon word spread,and by June 13 some sixty persons accompa-

162 Marian apparitions

nied the children. Though the BVM ap-peared, no one but the children saw her, andthe communication, which predicted thedeaths of the two younger children in the nearfuture (they died in 1919 and 1920), occurredthrough the oldest child, Lucia de Santos,who was told that she would live long as awitness to the living reality of Mary.

Ever larger groups followed the children tothe site in the succeeding months. In August,the BVM asked that a chapel be built at thesite of her appearances. On September 13,some members of the crowd, estimated to bebetween twenty-five and thirty thousand per-sons, reported seeing the passage from east towest of a mysterious globe-shaped light. Amonth later, the number of pilgrims hadswelled to seventy thousand. The BVM—as

always, visible only to the children—appearedat noon during a blinding rainstorm. Thethree saw her, Joseph, and the child Jesusstanding in the sky near the sun. Meanwhile,some in the crowd saw, or thought they saw,the sun begin to “dance” dramatically throughthe clouds, spinning and shooting colors, asthe rain let up.

In the 1940s, in her memoirs, Lucia deSantos, since 1925 a Carmelite nun, re-vealed two of three “s e c re t s” the BVM hadi m p a rted to her. Although open to other in-t e r p retations, the prophecies we re thoughtby most believers to refer to the end ofWorld War I and the start of World War IIand to the end of Soviet Communism andthe conversion of the Russians to Catholi-cism. The third secret was sent to the Va t i-can in the 1950s. It became the focus ofmuch speculation, most of it alleging that itp redicted a third world war. In May 2000,h owe ve r, as Pope John Paul II embarked ona pilgrimage to Fatima, during which hespoke with the ninety-thre e - year-old Lu c i a ,the Vatican released the pro p h e c y, which heb e l i e ved predicted the 1981 assassination at-tempt on the pope in St. Pe t e r’s Sq u a re — a ni n t e r p retation disputed by others.

The first New World appearance of theBVM is said to have taken place five milesnorth of Mexico City just after dawn on De-cember 9, 1531. A fifty-seven-year-old AztecIndian, Juan Diego, was racing along a hill-side to get to mass in a nearby village. Passinga site at the foot of a hill called Tepeyac, whichearlier had housed a temple to the AztecMother Goddess, he heard a feminine voicecalling his name. He saw a young woman,looking about fourteen years old and havingMexican features, who asked that a chapel bebuilt at the site. She also told him that heshould alert the bishop in Mexico City imme-diately. With some difficulty, he got an audi-ence with the bishop, who was skeptical.Diego returned to report his failure to theBVM, who was waiting for him. She in-structed him to return the next day. This timethe bishop asked for a sign.

Marian apparitions 163

The Vision of Our Lady of Fatima (Fortean PictureLibrary)

That same day, Diego’s uncle, who was se-riously ill, had a vision of the BVM and wascured. Meanwhile, Diego repeated thebishop’s request to the apparition. She toldhim to pick roses from the hillside (thoughthey should have been out of season). He wasinstructed to wrap them in his long outer cape(known as a tilma) and to take them to thebishop. When he did so, he unrolled the tilmaand was as shocked as the bishop and his asso-ciates when the cape turned out to contain afull-color image of the BVM. To this day thetilma is displayed in a Mexico City church,where thousands of pilgrims come to see itevery year.

To skeptics, the figure gives eve ry indica-tion of having been painted on the cloth.They also point out that the figure has moreto do with conventional iconography of theperiod than with otherworldly manifesta-tion. They have also raised questions aboutthe provenance of Juan Di e g o’s story, sug-gesting it is based on an earlier Spanish leg-end. Still, whatever the truth, the story andthe image have proved equally durable andto the faithful remain powe rful symbols ofMa ry’s continuing interest in the Churc hand its believe r s .

A third major BVM appearance occurred atKnock, a small village in western Ire l a n d’sCounty Ma yo, in 1879. A commission of in-q u i ry set up by John Mc Hale, the Arc h b i s h o pof Tuam, investigated it soon afterw a rd. Onthe evening of August 21, Ma ry Beirne, a mid-dle-aged housekeeper for the local priest, waswalking by the chapel when she was surprisedto see three “beautiful” fig u res, one re s e m b l i n gthe BVM, the other St. Joseph, the third ab i s h o p, standing motionlessly near an altar. Awhite light surrounded them. She thoughtsomeone had put on a display of statues. Sh ewent to a friend’s house and stayed for half anh o u r. When she and her friend Ma ryMcLoughlin we re on their way back to thep r i e s t’s house, her friend re m a rked on the fig-u res. She ran off to notify re l a t i ves. Me a n-while, Beirne watched the scene care f u l l y, laterp roviding this description to inve s t i g a t o r s :

I beheld . . . not only the three figures, but analtar further on the left of the figure of theBlessed Virgin Mary, and to the left of thebishop and above the altar a lamb about thesize of that which is five weeks old. Behind thelamb appeared the cross; it was a bit away fromthe lamb, while the latter stood in front fromit, and not resting on the wood of the cross.Around the lamb a number of gold-like starsappeared in the form of a halo. This altar wasplaced right under the window of the gableand more to the east of the figures, all, ofcourse, outside the church at Knock. (Mc-Clure, 1983)

The other witnesses came to the scene ando b s e rved the motionless fig u res. Though itwas raining all the while, they would re p o rt ,the ground around the fig u res remained dry.Yet when Ma ry Be i r n e’s mother appro a c h e dto kiss the BV M ’s feet, she felt nothing. Sh ecould see the fig u res, but she could not touchthem. Eve n t u a l l y, the fig u res faded away. Allin all, at least fifteen persons saw them.Knock is now a major destination for Ma r i a np i l g r i m s .

The tradition of Marian apparitions hascontinued unabated into modern times. In1999, on the eve of the millennium, visionar-ies were encountering the BVM in Germany,New Hampshire, Illinois, El Salvador, On-tario, and elsewhere. Most prophecies relatedwith these visions asserted that nuclear war-fare would erupt before the end of the year.During the conflict for custody of six-year-oldCuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, some of Elian’sMiami relatives claimed to have seen theBVM, manifesting, they asserted, to show hersupport for their belief that the boy should bekept in their custody instead of his Cuban fa-ther’s.

Secular treatments of BVM apparitionsrange from conventional views—for example,that hysteria, hoax, and hallucination underliethe accounts—to more expansive theories.The sightings at Fatima, for example, figure insome UFO literature, in which they are saidto be encounters with an alien being disguisedas or mistaken for the BVM. The late D. Scott

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Rogo, a writer and researcher interested in awide range of anomalous phenomena, treatedBVM and comparable religious miracles asparapsychological phenomena.

Further ReadingDash, Mike, 1997. B o rd e rl a n d s . London: He i n e m a n n .Delaney, John J., ed., 1960. A Woman Clothed with

the Sun: Eight Great Appearances of Our Lady inModern Times. Garden City, NY: HanoverHouse.

McClure, Kevin, 1983. The Evidence for Visions of theVirgin Mary. Wellingborough, Northampton-shire, England: Aquarian Press.

Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer, 1988. Secrets of theSupernatural: Investigating the World’s Occult Mys -teries. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.

Rogo, D. Scott, 1982. Miracles: A Parascientific In -quiry into Wondrous Phenomena. New York: DialPress.

Van Meter, David, 1999. “Digest of Marian Appari-tions and Catholic Apocalypticism.” http://mem-bers.aol.com/UticaCW/Mar-Review.html.

MarkMark may or may not be among the extrater-restrials with whom George Adamski allegedlyinteracted. He figures in an unusually interest-ing contact claim made by a woman identifiedonly as “Joelle” and known to British ufologistTimothy Good, who told her story for thefirst time in a 1998 book. Joelle, a Britishwoman of Russian background, never publi-cized her reported experiences, which oc-curred between 1963 and 1964, and they didnot see print until after her death.

Joelle told Good that the contacts we re initi-ated when she was doing a house-to-housem a rketing survey in the Sheffield area in Se p-tember 1963. At one house she noticed a va r i-ety of gadgets, none of which she re c o g n i zed asc o m m e rcially available. The woman (given thepseudonym “Ro s a m u n d”) whom she was inter-v i ewing said her husband (“Ja c k”) was a scien-tist, inve n t o r, and ham-radio operator. W h e nRosamund stepped briefly out of the ro o m ,Joelle heard a message come through the radiot r a n s c e i ver from someone named “Ma rk,” pro-posing a meeting at “Blue Jo h n” at 4:30 thenext afternoon. On Ro s a m u n d’s return, when

Joelle mentioned that a message had comet h rough, the woman acted shocked andquickly turned off the radio. Su b s e q u e n t l y,Joelle determined that “Blue Jo h n” was theBlue John Caves near Castleton in De r by s h i re .

Intrigued by Rosamund’s reaction (thoughJoelle did not tell her what the message hadsaid), Joelle made a point of driving throughthe cave area on her way back to London.Parking her car in an out-of-the-way place atthe appointed time, she watched from a dis-tance as a disc-shaped aircraft landed and aman from inside the craft emerged to meet awaiting man, apparently Jack, whose car sherecalled seeing parked in front of the housethe day before. As the two drove away, the air-craft shot off at high speed. Joelle thought shehad witnessed spy activity and assumed theaircraft to be an advanced Soviet vehicle.

Joelle was almost ready to report her obser-vations and suspicions to the police but feltcompelled to call on the couple one moretime. She drove directly to their residence andknocked on the door, explaining to Jack—who had barely opened the door—that shehad some further survey questions to ask. Shewas admitted into the house at the insistenceof the man she recognized from the ren-dezvous of a few minutes earlier. The stranger,no longer dressed in uniform but in ordinarystreet clothing, identified himself as “Mark.”Speaking in a teasing, good-natured tone, hesaid he knew why she was there.

Thus began Joelle’s interaction with spacepeople. Over the next fifteen months, shespent eight and a half hours in the companyof Mark and another human-looking extrater-restrial she called “Val.” Mark and Val provedvague about their exact place of origin, exceptto say that it was an earthlike planet in an-other solar system. They also said they hadplayed a role in speeding up human evolution.They were here to work secretly with scientistsfrom several countries, but as to their largerpurpose, they would only state, “We are nothere for entirely philanthropic purposes.”

On one occasion, Joelle was allowed totouch a spacecraft and to watch its departure.

Mark 165

Once she translated a Russian manuscript inthe British Museum for Mark and Val, and atother times she entertained them in herhome, finding them to be pleasant compan-ions with a good senses of humor and a loveof earthly food, wine, and music. She wasshown devices that projected holographic im-ages of their home planet, and once Val him-self showed up in holographic form.

The visitors told Joelle that they and theirassociates had, indeed, contacted Adamski,the best-known and most controversial of theearly contactees, but that he had proved un-trustworthy, revealing information he hadbeen given in confidence. After that they fedhim false information that they knew woulddiscredit him, and Adamski himself, frus-trated because the space people were drawingaway from him, began fabricating encounters.

See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; OrthonFurther ReadingAdamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New

York: Abelard-Schuman.Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounters

with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.

Martian beesIn one of the very first books on the then-newphenomenon of UFOs, British writer GeraldHeard offered a theory that even now, morethan half a century later, is a distinctive one.Heard, who in 1950 was living in Los Ange-les, read an interview in the Los Angeles Timeswith astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Though ve-hemently anti-UFO, Kuiper thought it atleast possible that intelligent life existed onMars. He added, however, that conditionsthere being what there were (or at least as theywere thought to be at the time), Martianswould likely be advanced insects of some sort.Possibly, Kuiper was speaking humorously,but Heard, a mystically inclined individual,took him seriously. He proposed that justsuch beings were piloting the flying saucers.

These superbees were “perhaps two inchesin length . . . as beautiful as the most beautifulof any flower, any beetle, moth or butterfly. A

creature with eyes like brilliant cut-diamonds,with a head of sapphire, a thorax of emerald,an abdomen of ruby, wings like opal, legs liketopaz—such a body would be worthy of this‘super-mind.’ . . . It is we who would feelshabby and ashamed, and may be with ourclammy, putty-colored bodies, repulsive!”

The Martians had come to Earth, Heardspeculated, because they feared the effect hu-mans’ aggressive ways and atomic bombscould have on them. What if human beingsblew up the Earth and huge dust clouds cutoff the sun’s rays, turning Mars into an evencolder planet? It was also possible that Earth’s“very powerful magnetic field” might generatedangerous sunspots and send deadly radiationinto Mars’s atmosphere. Perhaps the superbeeswere here in what amounted to a police ac-tion: to stop us from causing further troubleto them and to the rest of the solar system. Sofar, however, Heard said, the Martians wereacting with remarkable patience, in the fash-ion of “very circumspect, very intelligent gen-tlemen” (Heard, 1950).

See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Aurora Martian;Brown’s Martians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga;Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians;Shaw’s Martians; Smead’s Martians; Wilcox’sMartians

Further ReadingHeard, Gerald, 1950. The Riddle of the Flying

Saucers: Is Another World Watching? London: Car-roll and Nicholson.

MaryMary is one of a number of extraterrestrialswho are alleged to have made appearances atthe annual Giant Rock, California, Interplan-etary Spacecraft Convention held between1954 and 1977. In 1959, while attending theconvention, Harry Mayer observed mysteri-ous globes of light hovering over the runwayat Giant Rock’s tiny airport. As he was run-ning toward them, a pretty, young, blondwoman suddenly appeared in front of him,put out her arm, and stopped him in histracks. Though she was barely more than fivefeet tall, and Mayer was well over six feet, she

166 Martian bees

had, he told ufologist William Hamilton, “thestrength of many men” (Hamilton, 1996).

They spoke long enough for him to learnthat her name was Mary. Under her coat, shewas wearing a chocolate-brown uniform thatlooked something like a ski suit. She was, shesaid, from Venus. Mayer attended at least onemore Giant Rock convention hoping to seeher again, but this turned out to be his oneand only contact with her.

See Also: Van Tassel, George W.; VenudoFurther ReadingHamilton, William F., III, 1996. Alien Magic: UFO

Crashes—Abductions—Underground Bases. NewBrunswick, NJ: Global Communications.

Meier, Eduard “Billy” (1937– )Born on February 3, 1937, in Bulach,Switzerland, Eduard Albert “Billy” Meierwould become an international contacteecelebrity. (His nickname stems from a youth-ful fascination with characters from the Amer-

ican Old West such as Wild Bill Hickok andBilly the Kid.) Meier claims to have received amental message from space people when hewas five years old, after he and his fatherwatched a saucer-shaped object flying neartheir house. In 1944, on his seventh birthday,Meier met Sfath, a wise elderly extraterrestrial,who took him for a ride on his spacecraft. Inthe course of the flight, Sfath placed a helmetover young Billy’s head and filled his mindwith advanced knowledge. Periodic contactswith Sfath continued until Meier was a youngadult. Meier wandered through Europe, Asia,and the Middle East. Traveling in Turkey inAugust 1965, he suffered an accident, whichcost him half his arm. Soon afterward, he metseventeen-year-old Kaliope (“Popi”) Zafireouand married her. Back in Switzerland, theMeiers settled in a rural village. On the after-noon of January 28, 1975, Meier pho-tographed a spacecraft and had an hour-and-a-half conversation with its pilot, a beautifulspacewoman named Semjase (pronounced

Meier, Eduard “Billy” 167

Eduard “Billy” Meier, one of the most controversial contactees (Fortean Picture Library)

sem-ya-see). Meier would produce manymore photographs, claim more contacts, re-count trips into space and through time, andbecome the most controversial contactee sinceGeorge Adamski.

Meier’s aliens came from the Pleiades starsystem and from a planet named Erra, one often planets in orbit around a sun known asTayget. The aliens got there from anotherplanet in the constellation of Lyra, wherethousands of years ago a war forced much ofthe population to flee to other worlds. At onepoint 2.8 million years ago, as they were ex-ploring the new galactic neighborhood, thenew Pleiadians found Earth, then housingprimitive human beings. Some Pleiadians in-termarried with humans, but their educa-tional efforts only led to a war with earthlings,who used the newly supplied extraterrestrialtechnology against the Pleiadians. A secondwave of Pleiadians was destroyed in the sameway. Semjase was part of a third wave. She andher associates hoped to move human beings ina positive direction, and they selected Meier astheir earthly agent.

Unlike nearly all other contacters, Meier’sspace friends were hostile to religion, thoughapparently not to the notion of God as such.Once, when Meier was aboard a spaceship(“beamship” as the Pleiadians called them) hewas able to photograph the “Eye of God” indeep space. He also traveled to the Pleiadesand into another dimension and secured pic-tures of dinosaurs, cavemen, and a futureearthquake in San Francisco. A virtual indus-try of Meier-related publications, photo-graphs, videos, and other materials found anaudience around the world. Wendelle C.Stevens, an American, energetically promotedMeier, till then little known to Americans. Hepublished books supporting Meier and hadthe non-English-speaking Meier’s work trans-lated. Stevens’s efforts encouraged an indepen-dent journalist, Gary Kinder, to write a sur-prisingly sympathetic book for a mainstreampublisher.

To conservative ufologists, Meier seemedlike a shameless hoaxer. He became a particu-

lar obsession to a young California man, KalKorff, who spent years investigating Meier’sclaims. He published two intensely criticalbooks published between 1981 and 1995. In-dependent analyses suggested that the “beam-ships” in the photographs were in fact smallmodels, some suspended on fishing wire, oth-ers apparently held in hand. Investigatorstraced other images in Meier’s photos toNASA footage and (in the case of Semjase) apicture in a European fashion magazine. Inthe mid-1990s, after Popi Meier divorced herhusband, she told European ufologists thather former husband’s claims were bogus.

According to Meier, the Pleiadians—whocall themselves Plejarans—withdrew all oftheir bases on Earth in February 1995 toprotest the proliferation of phony claims ofcontact with them. Since then Meier has ex-perienced approximately four contacts a yearwith Ptaah, who is Semjase’s father. He claimsmore than 250 contacts with Pleiadians, ingeneral, since 1975.

See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; SemjaseFurther ReadingElders, Lee J., Brit Nilsson-Elders, and Thomas K.

Welch, 1979. UFO . . . Contact from the Pleiades,Volume I. Phoenix, AZ: Genesis III Productions.

———, 1983. UFO . . . Contact from the Pleiades,Volume II. Phoenix, AZ: Genesis III Productions.

FIGU—Los Angeles Study Group, n.d. The OfficialBilly Meier Web Page. http://www.billymeier.com/index-alt.html.

Kinder, Gary, 1987. Light Years: An Investigation intothe Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier.New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.

Korff, Kal K., 1995. Spaceships of the Pleiades: TheBilly Meier Story. Amherst, NY: PrometheusBooks.

Korff, Kal K., with William L. Moore, 1981. TheMeier Incident—The Most Infamous Hoax in Ufol -ogy. Fremont, CA: self-published.

Maccabee, Bruce, 1989. “Pendulum from thePleiades.” International UFO Reporter 14, 1 (Jan-uary/February): 11–12, 22.

Stevens, Wendelle C., 1983. UFO . . . Contact fromthe Pleiades—A Preliminary Investigation Re -port—The Report of an Ongoing Contact. Tucson,AZ: self-published.

———, 1989. UFO . . . Contact from the Pleiades: ASupplementary Investigation Report—The Report ofan Ongoing Contact. Tucson, AZ: self-published.

168 Meier, Eduard “Billy”

Stevens, Wendelle C., ed., 1988. Message from thePleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard “Billy”Meier, Volume I. Phoenix, AZ: Wendelle C.Stevens and Genesis III Publishing.

———, ed., 1990. Message from the Pleiades: TheContact Notes of Eduard “Billy” Meier, Volume II.Phoenix, AZ: Wendelle C. Stevens and GenesisIII Publishing.

———, ed., 1994. Message from the Pleiades: TheContact Notes of Eduard “Billy” Meier, Volume III.Phoenix, AZ: Wendelle C. Stevens and GenesisIII Publishing.

Winters, Randolph, 1994. The Pleiadian Mission: ATime of Awareness. Atwood, CA: The PleiadesProject.

Me-leelahMe-leelah is a Pleiadian woman who figuresin an abduction incident said to have oc-curred in Johannesburg, South Africa, in theearly hours of July 19, 1988.

Phyllis and her adult, married daughterDiane we re in the latter’s car (Diane wasdriving her mother home) when they noticedan unusual starlike object. As it appro a c h e d ,they could see inside what proved to be anelongated craft. T h rough its lighted win-d ows, they glimpsed its interior and saw sixf i g u res inside. Su d d e n l y, they felt a pre s e n c einside their vehicle. They heard a clickingsound and abruptly found themselves as-cending a ramp into the UFO. A finelyskinned, short woman with slightly slantede yes and no hair, yet beautiful nonetheless,guided Diane. The alien woman wore a one-piece, navy-blue suit such as a jogger mightwe a r. The three walked through an aro m a t i c“m i s t” before entering the main part of thecraft. Their guide told them, “Greetings. Iam from the Pleiades, and my name is Me -leelah. I am the commander of the craft”( Hind, 1996). She spoke in a soft but high-pitched, sing-song vo i c e .

There were eight persons—two womenand six men—inside the craft. One of themen helped as Me-leelah put the two womenon tables and subjected each to a physical ex-amination, including an X ray and a shotunder the right breast (this, it was explained,

was done in order to collect DNA and RNAsamples). The other crewmembers paid noheed to the abductees. Afterward, Me-leelahshowed them what looked like an ordinarymap of the world. She told them that giantwaves would soon destroy much of SouthAfrica’s Cape area. Comparable destructionwould occur elsewhere on the Earth with con-siderable loss of life. Those who wanted tosurvive should flee to the mountainous areasof Spain. The United States would go to warin the Middle East, and AIDS would killmany people everywhere.

At the conclusion of the examination, thetwo women stepped down from the tables.Me-leelah spoke and then performed some actthat later neither Phyllis nor Diane could re-call. All they knew was that Me-leelah wasabruptly wearing a different, more attractive-looking jacket. Soon the two became awarethat Me-leelah was reading their minds. Shewould verbally answer questions they hadformed only in their minds. At one point,after Diane had answered a question of Me-leelah’s less than truthfully, the Pleiadeanbrought her face within inches of Diane’s. Herpupils became vertical, disturbingly reptilian.After the moment of anger had passed, Me-leelah told them they could go. Two of themen escorted them back to their car, but notbefore the commander had promised thatthey would meet again in two years’ time. Sheadded that this was two years in Pleiadeantime, four in Earth time.

By the time they got home, neither womanremembered the incident. They only notedhow strangely quiet and calm everythingseemed to be: no traffic, no birds, no sound.Over time, memories of the experience gradu-ally returned. May 1992 came and went with-out a further contact.

Cynthia Hind, a ufologist from Harare,Zimbabwe, who investigated the story, saysthe women were unread in the UFO litera-ture. They had not heard of other claims ofPleiadean contacts, they claimed.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Meier, Eduard“Billy”

Me-leelah 169

Further ReadingHind, Cynthia, 1996. UFOs over Africa. Madison,

WI: Horus House Press.———, 2000. “Highlights from an African Case

Book.” Ohio UFO Notebook 21: 1–10.

MeloraMelora is a channeling entity who communi-cates through Jyoti Alla-An of Boulder, Col-o r a d o. Alla-An characterizes Melora as a“higher-dimensional group consciousness”f rom the Sirius system. As is often the casewith such beings, “Me l o r a” — Greek for“golden apple”—is a name of conve n i e n c e ,not the entity’s actual moniker; real namesfor interdimensional beings are either nonex-istent or incomprehensible to humans.Melora and her colleagues, Alla-An says, askus to call them names “with which we re s-onate or which trigger us to remember oursoul histories.”

Melora is a higher member of Alla-An’s“soul group.” At the time of their initial con-tact, Melora was serving on the Council ofFour with Pallas Athena, Ocala (an angel),and Bi-la (a Tibetan guide). The Council ofFour existed to help people express their“Being-ness.” Then Ocala and Bi-la mergedinto Melora. In the future, it appears thatMelora and Athena will merge. Alla-An says,

During these years of my association withMelora, it has been clear that SHE continues tolearn and grow through ME! Her flexibility, herunconditional love, her compassion—all thesehave taught me much about relationship withthe Divine. It has taught me how critical ourconsciousness within incarnation is to the spir-itual development of non-physical versions ofourselves in higher dimensions. Most impor-tantly, working with Melora has taught meabout how honored we are by all the higher be-ings in the light, who fully appreciate the diffi-culty of being light works in 3rd dimension.(Alla-An, 1998)

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingAlla-An, Jyoti, 1998. “Melora.” http://mh102.infi.

net/~lightexp/Melora3.html.

Men in blackAccording to legend and report, strange indi-viduals, who are often menacing and usuallydressed in black suits, have threatened UFOwitnesses and investigators on a number ofoccasions since the beginning of the UFOage. The men in black (sometimes calledMIB) are variously suspected to be govern-ment agents, enforcers for powerful secretgroups (“International Bankers,” the NewWorld Order by another name), alien entities,inner-earthers, or even demons.

In this last context, it is worth noting anepisode that occurred during a religious re-vival in Wales in 1905. When the revival wasat its most intense, many reported divine anddemonic supernatural encounters, and someindividuals, both believers and secular jour-nalists covering the revival, witnessed unusualaerial phenomena that today might bethought of as UFOs. A contemporary accountmentions that a “man dressed in black” visiteda young rural woman over three consecutivenights to deliver “a message . . . which she isfrightened to relate” (Evans, 1905). In hisbook on traditions of Satan, William Woodswrites that the devil “mostly . . . is dressed inblack, and always in the fashion of the day”(Woods, 1974).

Men in black established a place in UFOlore after a September 1953 incident. ABridgeport, Connecticut, man, Albert K.Bender, headed one of the most successfulearly UFO groups, the International FlyingSaucer Bureau, but closed it down suddenly.After much prodding he confided to close as-sociates, most prominently Gray Barker, thatthree individuals in dark suits had visited himto warn that he had come too close to thetruth about UFOs. They passed on informa-tion that frightened him so badly that hewanted nothing more to do with the subject.Barker later wrote a sensationalistic, paranoia-drenched book, They Knew Too Much aboutFlying Saucers (1956), that, more than anyother single piece of writing, launched theMIB legend. Though Bender initially hintedthat his visitors were from the government, he

170 Melora

eventually wrote Flying Saucers and the ThreeMen (1962) for Barker’s small publishingcompany. In what nearly all readers saw as anamateurish science-fiction novel passing itselfoff as factual, Bender identified the three menas space people who abducted him to Antarc-tica, where Bender met monstrous beings atan alien base.

The dismal reception afforded Bender’sbook would likely have ended MIB talk if notfor the emergence in the latter 1960s of JohnA. Keel, who coined the term “MIB.” Keel, afreelance writer living in New York City, se-cured a generous book contract from a majorNew York publisher to write what was in-tended to be the definitive work on UFOs. Anoccult theorist strongly attracted to de-monology, Keel held UFOs and their occu-pants to be shape-shifting entities from a sin-ister otherworld. Among their agents wereMIB who, in common with their brethren,

sought to confuse, manipulate, and even de-stroy those who encountered them or soughtto uncover the truth about them. Keel col-lected MIB reports from several states and fur-ther claimed that he had interacted with thempersonally. In Keel’s view, MIB have played abehind-the-scenes role in much of human his-tory and belief.

For the most part, Keel’s MIB could nothave passed easily for human. They were dark-featured (or, conversely, unnaturally pale),bug-eyed, and confused; and their behaviorbetrayed their unfamiliarity with the earthlyenvironment and social customs. For somereason, they usually drove black limousines,frequently Cadillacs.

Other investigators collected similar re p o rt sf rom around the world. Some suggested thatthe MIB we re government or military opera-t i ves, others that they we re aliens. By 1966,e ven the U.S. Air Fo rce was hearing of such in-cidents and tried to run them down, withoutsuccess. Colonel George P. Freeman, a Pe n t a-gon spokesman for the U.S. Air Fo rc e’s UFO-i n vestigating Project Blue Book, complained,“We have n’t been able to find out anythingabout these men” (Keel, 1975). In the 1990s,ufologist William L. Mo o re would allege,though without providing substantiating evi-dence, that “Men in Black are really gove r n-ment people in disguise . . . members of arather bizarre unit of Air Fo rce intelligencek n own currently as the Air Fo rce Special Ac-tivities Center (AFSAC)” (Mo o re, 1993).

In recent years, Jenny Randles, a well-regarded English ufologist, has looked intoMIB cases in Britain. In her view, some aregenuinely puzzling, sometimes involving wit-nesses who have never heard of the phenome-non yet describe many of its classic features.From interviews and official documents, Ran-dles was led to the conclusion that a secret de-partment of the Ministry of Defense wasmonitoring certain kinds of UFO reports.

See Also: Kazik; Keel, John AlvaFurther ReadingBarker, Gray, 1956. They Knew Too Much about Fly -

ing Saucers. New York: University Books.

Men in black 171

Albert K. Bender’s sketch of one of the three “men in black”who visited his Connecticut house in September 1953 andgave him the solution to the UFO mystery (Fortean PictureLibrary)

Bender, Albert K., 1962. Flying Saucers and the ThreeMen. Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.

Evans, Beriah G., 1905. “Merionethshire Mysteries.”Occult Review 1, 3 (March): 113–120.


Moore, William L., 1993. “Those Mysterious Menin Black.” Far Out (Winter): 27–29.

Randles, Jenny, 1997. The Truth behind Men inBlack: Government Agents—or Visitors from Be -yond. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks.

Woods, William, 1974. A History of the Devil. NewYork: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

Menger, Howard (1922– )Howard Menger (pronounced men-jer), aNew Jersey sign painter who was sometimescalled the East Coast equivalent of GeorgeAdamski, rose to prominence in flying-saucercontactee circles in the 1950s. In his first pub-lic appearance, on Long John Nebel’s radioshow on New York’s WOR, on October 29,1956, Menger claimed lifelong contacts aswell as “flashback” memories of an earlier lifeas an extraterrestrial. The space people weremostly from Venus, and prominent amongthem were beautiful, blond women. In early1956, when the contacts intensified, Mengerbegan taking photographs of alleged space-craft. He also claimed interplanetary flights inthe company of “Aryan-type” beings and pro-duced, among others, pictures of the lunarsurface taken from a flying saucer.

Conservative ufologists scoffed at Menger’stales and rejected his photographs as absurdlyunconvincing. Writing in Saucer News, LonzoDove deemed them “so evidently faked that itis almost foolish to even criticize them”(Dove, 1959). When the anticontactee Na-tional Investigations Committee on AerialPhenomena challenged Menger and othercontactees to submit to polygraph examina-tions, Menger declined.

His supporters flocked to his High Bridge,New Jersey, farm, where some reported seeing,from a distance, “spacemen” in luminous uni-forms and other oddities, attributed by skep-tics to effects engineered by Menger confeder-

ates. One supporter apparently was ConnieWeber, an attractive young blond woman towhom Menger, a married man, had turned hisromantic attentions. Menger declared Weberto be the sister of a spacewoman he had metin 1946. For her part, Weber “recalled” that inprevious lives she had been a Venusian andMenger had been a Saturnian (a relationshipshe documented in a lurid 1958 book, MySaturnian Lover). On one occasion, four fol-lowers of Menger’s were invited separatelyinto a dark room, where each had a brief audi-ence with a spacewoman concealed in shadow.When a sliver of light accidentally caught thesupposed spacewoman, however, one of themrecognized Weber. Subsequently, Menger lefthis wife and married Weber.

By the time his book From Outer Space toYou appeared in 1959, Menger had largelywithdrawn from the saucer scene. The nextyear, interviewed on Long John Nebel’s televi-sion show, Menger startled his host and audi-ence by seeming to disavow his former claims.In the 1960s, he changed his story, now as-

172 Menger, Howard

Howard Menger with a “free energy” machine (ForteanPicture Library)

serting that he had participated in an elabo-rate hoax at the instigation of a secret govern-ment agency that wanted to test human reac-tions to extraterrestrial visitors.

How a rd and Connie Menger moved toVe ro Beach, Florida, where they lived qui-etly for more than two decades. In 1990,they re s u rfaced at the National UFO Con-f e rence in Miami Beach and began publish-ing materials that again presented the spacecontacts as authentic. They also appeared inthe 1992 Di s c ove ry Channel documentaryFa re well, Good Bro t h e r s . They make occa-sional appearances on the saucer and NewAge scene.

See Also: Adamski, George; ContacteesFurther ReadingBaxter, Marla [pseud. of Constance Weber Menger],

1958. My Saturnian Lover. New York: VantagePress.

“Contactee Letters,” 1957. Confidential Bulletin toNICAP Members (September 6).

Dove, Lonzo, 1957. “Menger’s Adamski-TypeSaucers.” Saucer News 4, 2 (February-March):6–7.

Menger, Howard, 1959. From Outer Space to You.Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.

Moseley, James W., 1966. “Strange New Ideas fromHoward Menger.” Saucer News Non-ScheduledNewsletter 26 (January 25).

Nebel, Long John, 1961. The Way Out World. Engle-wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Schwarz, Berthold E., 1972. “Beauty of the Night.”Flying Saucer Review 18, 4 (August): 5–9, 17.

MerkAccording to George Hunt Williamson,eighteen thousand years ago a Venusiannamed Merk flew a “Light Ship” to Telos, aneastern section of Lemuria in what is now Ari-zona, initiating a period of cordial and pro-ductive relationships between Venusians andLemurians, who then had developed flightbut not space flight. The Lemurians built amemorial to commemorate the spot whereMerk’s craft had landed.

See Also: Lemuria; Williamson, George HuntFurther ReadingWilliamson, George Hunt, 1959. Road in the Sky.

London: Neville Spearman.

MerschAc c o rding to Colorado contactee Da ve Schultz,six extraterrestrial races are visiting Earth. On eis the Mersch. The Mersch are six feet tall,weigh two hundred pounds, and have baldheads and slanted eyes. Their home planet is inthe constellation Scorpio. They are active in ab-ductions and mutilation of cattle and other ani-mals in western states.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees; OllianaOlliana Alliano

Further ReadingSprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky

Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies, Uni-versity of Wyoming.

MetatronMetatron is a “divine interface between Godand the outer worlds—meaning us on theouter layers of physical creation—the hard-ened shell around the cosmic egg of Light”(Arvey, 1994). Metatronic energy is transmit-ted once a week to the Earth, and seekers cangain access to it if they are attuned to theproper frequency. Much of the informationMetatron sends is of a densely technical na-ture. A good part of the channeled materialcomes through James J. Hurtak, who recordsit in The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch(1982). Hurtak, however, is far from the onlyMetatron channeler.

The most famous communicant withMetatron is the rock guitarist Carlos Santana.Santana claims that Metatron was responsiblefor the restoration of his career in 1999 and2000. During a meditation session Metatrontold him, “We want to hook you back to theradio-airwave frequency” and to “reconnectthe molecules to the light,” presumably mean-ing renewed airplay and popular attention(Gates and Gordon, 2000).

The name Metatron comes out of tradi-tional Jewish mysticism, where Metatron isdepicted as an archangel, perhaps the highestof them all. Some mystics believe that onEarth he was the prophet Enoch whom Godtook directly to heaven without the transi-

Metatron 173

tional detail of dying. Other sources assertthat it was he who led the Israelites throughthe wilderness after the Exodus.

Further ReadingArvey, Michael, 1994. “Metatron.” http://www.spir-

itweb.org/Spirit/metatron-arvey.html.Davidson, Gustav, 1967. A Dictionary of Angels. New

York: Free Press.Gates, David, and Devin Gordon, 2000. “Smooth as

Santana.” Newsweek (February 14): 66–67.Gilmore, Robert and Laurie, eds., n.d. “The Ascen-

sion Is Life Lived from Joy.” http://www.nite-hawk.com/daydove/25metatr.html.

Hurtak, James J., 1982. The Book of Knowledge: TheKeys of Enoch. Los Gatos, CA: Academy for Fu-ture Science.

Stone, Joshua David, 1994. The Complete AscensionManual. Sedona, AZ: Light Technology Publish-ing.

MichaelIn two books, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro chroni-cled the channeling experiences of a youngSan Francisco–area woman given the name

Jessica Lansing. Yarbro wrote that in 1970, asJessica and her husband, Walter (also a pseu-donym), played with a ouija board after din-ner, they began receiving communicationsfrom an entity who first refused to answer thequestion, “Who is this?” Eventually, underprodding, it said, “The last name a fragmentof this entity used was Michael.” “Michael”went on to say, “We are of the mid-causallane. The astral plane is accessible to the phys-ical plane. We are not” (Yarbro, 1979).Michael claimed to be composed of morethan a thousand fragments of “old souls.”

In later automatic writing and channeling,Michael—who resisted being identified by amasculine pronoun—taught that each indi-vidual must go through seven basic soulstages over a minimum of seven re i n c a r n a t e dl i ves. But Michael would respond impatientlyif someone asked a question about his or herpersonal life. “We are not the Ann Landers ofthe cosmos,” Michael snapped. As theMichael phenomenon grew, howe ve r, thischanged, and Michael would speak to indi-viduals about themselves and offer themg u i d a n c e .

Jessica Lansing herself was uncertainwhether Michael was an independent intelli-gence or some manifestation of an aspect ofher psyche. In time, others reported commu-nications from Michael. In 1984, two follow-ers founded the Michael Educational Founda-tion. The foundation maintains that Michaelis a collection of one thousand fifty souls, allof whom once lived lives on Earth. It sponsorsother Michael groups throughout the UnitedStates. Michael F. Brown, an anthropologistwho has studied the channeling movement,calls Michael “as close to a channeling fran-chise as one can find in the United Statestoday” (Brown, 1997).

“According to Michael,” the foundationstates, “we agree to come into each lifetimewith a basic Role that we play to best supportthe world around us. In addition to this Role,we have numerous ‘Overleaves’ or personalitytraits that we choose to play from” (“Who IsMichael?” n.d.).

174 Michael

Carlos Santana, the most famous communicant withMetatron, performing in Munich, Germany, May 2000(AFP/Corbis)

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingBrown, Michael F., 1997. The Channeling Zone:

American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of AmericanReligions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Re-search.

“Who Is Michael?” n.d. http://amt.to/mef/mchan.html.

Ya r b ro, Chelsea Quinn, 1979. Messages from Mi c h a e l .New Yo rk: Pl a y b oy Pa p e r b a c k s .

———, 1986. More Messages from Michael. NewYork: Berkley Paperbacks.

Michigan giantAccording to the Saginaw Courier-Herald ofApril 17, 1897, a “flying machine” landed halfa mile southwest of Reynolds, Michigan, at4:30 A.M. on the fourteenth. Witnesses whohad seen it hovering rushed to the scene,where, to their shock, they spotted its pilot,who appeared human but was nine and a halffeet tall. His “talk, while musical, is not talk atall, but seems to be a repetition of bellowing.”The being looked hot and uncomfortableeven though he was nearly naked. Whatlooked like polar-bear pelts lay nearby, appar-ently winter clothing for which the travelerhad no use at the moment.

One farmer made the mistake of approach-ing the figure too closely. For his efforts hefound himself at the receiving end of a severekick. It was delivered with sufficient ferocityand velocity that the man’s hip broke.

The article, clearly written with tongue incheek, concludes, “Great excitement pre va i l sh e re, and lots of people are flocking here fro mMorley and How a rd City to view the strangebeing from a distance, as no one dares to go near.He seems to be trying to talk to the people.”

See Also: Aurora Martian; Close encounters of thethird kind; Oleson’s giants; Smith; Wilson



MigrantsIn George Hunt Wi l l i a m s o n’s alternative his-t o ry Other To n g u e s — Other Fl e s h (1953), “Mi-g r a n t s” are spirit beings from the Sirius Star sys-tem. They arrived on Earth during the Mi o c e n eEpoch (between twe n t y - five and thirteen mil-lion years ago) with the intention of looking forbodies to inhabit. At first, they gave serious con-sideration to cats, but after due re flection theydecided that apes we re more likely to evo l ve to-w a rd intelligence, civilization, and technology.In the meantime, employing their vast paranor-mal powers, the Migrants conjured upg rotesque material forms for themselves. T h i speriod is known among extraterrestrial histori-ans of Earth as the “Great Ab o m i n a t i o n . ”

Williamson reported, “The abominationwas so vast that forms were fusing togetherinto monsters having no purpose but self-de-struction. Men and animals were growing in-terchangeable of spirit and structure. Man wasbeastly and beast was manlike.” These abom-inable entities took the forms of the creaturesremembered in legend and mythology asgriffins, centaurs, dragons, and sphinxes.Eventually the “Host on the Sirian planets”could take no more of this insubordination.Men were to be men, beasts were to be beasts,the Host declared before setting loose a kindof global warming that melted the poles andsparked huge floods. “Monsters and anom-alies were destroyed,” the channeled entityElder Brother informed Williamson. “Nolonger could they propagate. Pure specieswere saved and pronounced sterile unto allbut themselves.” The Migrants lost all theirpsychokinetic powers and became normal pri-mates. They began engaging in sexual unionswith ape-women, and out of these alliancesmodern Homo sapiens eventually emerged.

See Also: Williamson, George HuntFurther ReadingWilliamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues—


Mince-Pie MartiansThe so-called Mince-Pie Martians appeared ina kitchen in Rowley Regis, in England’s West

Mince-Pie Martians 175

Midlands, on January 4, 1979, to star in whatmay well be Britain’s most bizarre close en-counter of the third kind.

At 6 A.M., Jean Hingley, forty-five yearsold, had just sent her husband off to workwhen she noticed a light outside. Thinkingthe carport light was still on, she went out tocheck. She was unsettled to see a large orangesphere hovering over the carport roof. Shehurried back inside and, with her dog Hobo,watched the UFO. As she was doing so, shenoticed that the dog seemed to be frozen as ifparalyzed. Suddenly he fell over sideways andlay there motionless.

At that moment, three winged figureszipped past her, leaving Mrs. Hingley feelingcold and weak. She managed to follow theminto the living room, where two of them wereshaking the Christmas tree so hard that thefairy atop it fell to the floor. The figures them-selves looked almost fairylike. Three and ahalf feet tall, they were humanoids with wide,white faces, big, dark eyes, no noses, slitlikemouths, and large oval wings covered withglittering dots of various colors. Each wore atransparent helmet on its head; at the top ofthe helmet a light shone. There were no fin-gers on the hands or feet on the legs; each justtapered to a point. The wings did not movelike a bird’s but fluttered gently or folded inlike a concertina.

Hingley found herself paralyzed, unable tospeak or move, until the beings spoke to her,saying, “Nice?” They spoke in unison withwhat sounded like a gruff, masculine voice.Then she could move and talk again. Whenshe asked where they were from, they weresilent. They sailed around the room, thenlanded and bounced up and down on thecouch. She shouted at them to stop, and theydid, though this would be the last time theydid what she asked them to do.

The episode lasted for an hour. It was oftendifficult, trying, and even painful. If they didnot like what she had to say, a beam wouldshoot from the light at the top of their hel-mets and hit her on the forehead just abovethe bridge of the nose. Sometimes she would

be blinded. At other times she would be para-lyzed. And at yet other times, when she hadaddressed them with a seemingly inoffensivequestion, the light would not hurt her. Theywould not tell her why they shot the light ather, or why they would quote back to her anyquestion she asked them. The experiencemade her eyes sore, and when she com-plained, the beings insisted they did not in-tend to harm her.

When she inquired again about their placeof origin, they replied this time, “From thesky.” Seeing a picture of Jesus on the wall,they flew up to it and engaged her in a con-versation about him, then went on to banalsubjects (a British entertainment figure, theQueen, the role of the housewife, children)before returning to Jesus. Then they floatedslowly around the room picking up small ob-jects, including cassette tapes. Hingley toldinvestigators, “They touched all the Christ-mas cards and all the furniture. . . . I thinkthey had magnets in their hands, ’cause theykept lifting things that they touched.” Theyasked for water. In response she filled fourglasses and put them on a tray, along with sev-eral mince pies. She lifted a glass, and the be-ings lifted theirs, but when they saw herwatching them, they blinded her with thelight beam. The next thing she knew, theywere putting empty glasses down. Next shethought of offering them cigarettes and cigarsthat they were looking at. When she lit one,however, the beings recoiled in fright. Shethought they were afraid of fire.

A loud noise brought her to the window,where she saw that the orange UFO was back.The beings “put their hands to their sides,”she recalled. “They lifted themselves up,”pressing buttons on their chests, and “theyglided themselves out.” Each was holding itsmince pie. They sailed out the back door andentered through an opening in the UFO,which flew away and was soon lost to view.

At that moment, Hingley suffered “a g o n y,p u re agony. . . . My legs, I couldn’t feel them,and then I was wobbly, and ve ry, ve ry weak. Igrabbed the table. I slid my feet along the

176 Mince-Pie Martians

carpet, and I got on the settee, and I didn’tk n ow how long I was there. Ooh! I wasdead!” (Budden, 1988). She lay incapacitateduntil five o’clock that afternoon. Fi n a l l y, hers t rength was sufficiently re s t o red so that shewas able to phone her husband, a neighbor,and the police.

In vestigators found an oval-shaped im-p ression in the backyard snow. Hingley com-plained that her clock, radio, and televisionwe re no longer functioning. The cassettetapes that she said the beings had touchedwe re ruined. She suffered a range of physicald i s c o m f o rts in her eyes, ears, and jaw. He rdoctor became alarmed enough about herwell-being that he ord e red her to stay homef rom work for two weeks. As outlandish asher story sounded, investigators did notdoubt her sincerity.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kindFurther ReadingBudden, Alfred, 1988. “The Mince-Pie Martians:

The Rowley Regis Case.” Fortean Times 50 (Sum-mer): 40–44.

Miniature pilotsOne day in 1929, according to a story shetold many years later, a five-year-old girl andher eight-year-old brother were playing in thegarden of their Hertford, Hertfordshire, En-gland, home when they heard an enginesound. It was coming from a nearby orchardand over the garden fence. As its source cameinto view, the children saw a tiny biplane,with a wingspan of no more than twelve to fif-teen inches, descend and land briefly by agarbage pail. During the few seconds that itwas on the ground, both children got a clearview of a figure they described as a “perfectlyproportioned tiny pilot wearing a leather fly-ing helmet,” who they said, “waved to us as hetook off.”

The sight so unsettled the two that it wasn’tuntil they were well into their adult lives,around 1960, that they spoke of it to eachother. “I have no explanation to offer,” thewoman said, “but I do know that this was not

a figment of my imagination” (Creighton,1970).

In a UFO-age counterpart to this strangestory, a Seattle woman reported that around 2A.M. one night in late August 1965 she awokeparalyzed. Unable to speak or move, shewatched helplessly as a football-shaped grayobject sailed through her open window andhovered over a carpet in her bedroom. As thetiny UFO prepared to land, three tripod legsdropped from it. Once settled on the floor,the UFO let out a ramp, down which steppedfive or six miniature beings clad in tight-fit-ting uniforms. They then engaged in what ap-peared to be repair work on their craft. Oncompleting the job, they walked up the rampand into the ship and flew away. At thatpoint, the witness found that she had regainednormal mobility.

It seems likely that this second incident wasa hallucination of a kind frequently associatedwith sleep paralysis.

Further ReadingCreighton, Gordon, 1970. “A Weird Case from the

Past.” Flying Saucer Review 16, 4 (July/August):30.

Hufford, David J., 1982. The Terror That Comes inthe Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Super -natural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia, PA: Uni-versity of Pennsylvania Press.


MonkaMonka first surfaced as the disembodied voiceof a Martian on a tape owned by contacteeDick Miller. Miller played the message at theApril 1956 Giant Rock Interplanetary Space-craft Convention, telling the audience thatthe voice had mysteriously appeared on a tapeinside a sealed can. The message had Monka(“I am what you would call the head of mygovernment”) promising, “On the evening ofNovember 7, of this your year 1956, at 10:30P.M. your local time, we request that one ofyour communications stations remove its car-rier signal from the air for two minutes”(“Mon-Ka of Mars,” 1956). From ten thou-

Monka 177

sand feet the occupants of a brilliantly illumi-nated spacecraft would speak to the people ofLos Angeles.

The message electrified occultists andsaucerians in California and elsewhere. Whenplayed in London in September, it had thesame effect on their British counterparts.Newspaper coverage mocked the tape andmessage, and conservative ufologists dismissedthe message as a silly hoax. On November 2,the Los Angeles Mirror-News reported thatsome months before, while living in Detroit,Miller had been caught faking a radio messagefrom a spaceman. All this notwithstanding,the Monka message spurred two mass ralliesin Los Angeles, and Monka enthusiast andrally organizer Gabriel Green appeared on thewidely viewed House Party television show tospread the word that friendly extraterrestrialswould be talking to southern California onNovember 7.

As a publicity stunt, two area radio stationswent off the air for two minutes on the nightin question as hundreds of believers gatheredon rooftops. No UFO appeared, of course,but Monka would live on in channeled mes-sages from hundreds of contactees up to thepresent. No longer a Martian, he is now usu-ally taken as a close associate of the mostbeloved and ubiquitous of interdimensionalchanneling entities, Ashtar.

See Also: Ashtar; ContacteesFurther ReadingBeckley, Timothy Green, 1981. Book of Space Con -

tacts. New York: Global Communications.Garrison, Omar, 1956. “Time Flew by, but That Fly-

ing Saucer Didn’t.” Los Angeles Mirror-News (No-vember 8).

“Mon-Ka of Mars Gives Saucer Research a BlackEye,” 1956. CSI News Letter 6 (December 15):3–5.


MothmanMothman, a monstrous cre a t u re re p o rted byd o zens of witnesses in towns along the Oh i oR i ver Va l l e y, got its name from a villain in the

then-popular Ba t m a n television series. T h o u g htheir stories re c e i ved little public attention, atleast one witness claimed to have had a kind ofcommunication with it.

Mothman first appeared in the local pressin November 1966, after two young couplesspotted it around 11:30 P.M. while drivingthrough an abandoned World War II muni-tions complex known locally as the “TNTarea.” Gray in color with humanlike legs, thecreature had glowing red, “hypnotic” eyesand, witness Roger Scarberry said, “wasshaped like a man, but bigger. Maybe six anda half feet tall. And it had big wings against itsback” (Keel, 1975). Terrified, the witnessesfled in their car only to spot the same or asimilar creature on a hill by the road. Thatcreature spread its batlike wings and pursuedthe vehicle at speeds of up to one hundredmiles per hour. All the while, it made asqueaking sound. As they sped toward PointPleasant, West Virginia, where they would telltheir story to a deputy sheriff, they noticed alarge, dead dog along the side of the road.

This last detail would seem significant tolater investigators after they learned of theexperience that had happened an hour beforeto Newell Pa rtridge from rural Salem, We s tVirginia. Pa rtridge had been watching televi-sion when suddenly he saw an unfamiliarkind of interf e rence on the screen. In themeantime, he could hear his dog Ba n d i th owling strangely. When he picked up aflashlight and stepped outside, he wasshocked to see—at one hundred fifty yard s’distance—the dog circling a shadowy figurewith glowing red eyes that did not look likean animal’s. Something about the scenes t ruck Pa rtridge as deeply abnormal, and hefelt cold chills running down his back. Ju s tas he was about to go inside, Bandit chargedthe intru d e r, ignoring his master, who wast rying to restrain him. Pa rtridge went insideto get a gun but could not bring himself togo outside again. He went to sleep. The nextmorning he discove red that Bandit was miss-ing. Later, when he read a newspaper ac-count of the Point Pleasant incident, the re f-

178 Mothman

e rence to a dead dog struck him. Bandit wasn e ver seen again.

Other witnesses reported seeing “Moth-man,” as the press soon dubbed it, in theTNT area and elsewhere. Sightings continuedfrom time to time for months afterward. Re-ports consistently described a gray entitylarger than a man, who was headless and hadwings, legs, and glowing red eyes on its upperchest. When in flight, its wings did not flap.When it walked, it had a shambling gait. Ob-servers seemed especially terrified of the eyes.Because of the witnesses’ manifest sincerityand terror, no one argued that the sightingswere hoaxes. The most popular conventionalexplanations held that they had seen owls orsandhill cranes. The episode became the sub-ject of two books.

In May 1976, nearly a decade after thes c a re had run its course, re p re s e n t a t i ves of theOhio UFO In vestigators League looked upsome of the witnesses. All stuck by their orig-inal testimony and insisted that they had notmistaken ord i n a ry birds for Mothman. T h emost curious testimony came from early wit-ness Linda Scarberry (wife of Roger Scar-b e r ry), who said that she and her husbandhad seen the cre a t u re “hundreds of times,”one from as close as three or four feet. Sh ewent on,

It seems like it doesn’t want to hurt you. It justwants to communicate with you. But you’retoo afraid when you see it to do anything. . . .We rented an apartment down on ThirteenthStreet, and the bedroom window was right offthe roof. It was sitting on the roof one night,looking in the window, and by then I was soused to seeing it that I just pulled the blindsand went on. I felt kind of sorry for it [be-cause] it gives you the feeling like it was sittingthere wishing it could come in and get warmbecause it was cold out that night. (Raynes,1976)

A Mothmanlike cre a t u re was also invo l ve din a close encounter of the third kind fro mSandling Pa rk, near Hyde, Kent, England, onNovember 16, 1963. That evening a group of

young people saw a glowing oval, some fif t e e nto twenty feet in diameter, hovering over afield. A few seconds after the UFO disap-p e a red behind a clump of trees, witness Jo h nFlaxton related, “a dark fig u re shambled out. Itwas all black, about the size of a human butwithout a head. It seemed to have wings like abat on either side and came stumbling tow a rd sus. We didn’t wait to inve s t i g a t e” (“The Sa l t-wood My s t e ry,” 1964). This is the only know nre p o rt to link such a cre a t u re with a UFO.

Whatever Mothman may or may not havebeen, no encounters with it have been re-ported in recent years.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kindFurther ReadingBarker, Gray, 1970. The Silver Bridge. Clarksburg,

WV: Saucerian Books.Keel, John A., 1970. Strange Creatures from Time and

Space. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Gold Medal.———, 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New York:

Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and Com-pany.

Raynes, Brent M., 1976. “West Virginia Revisited.”Ohio Sky Watcher (January/February/March):9–10.

“The Saltwood Mystery,” 1964. Flying Saucer Review10, 2 (March/April): 11–12.

Mount LassenMount Lassen, in California’s Tehama County,houses good and evil beings who live deep in-side caves and engage in conflict with ad-vanced weapons, according to the testimony ofa man identified as Ralph B. Fi e l d s .

At some unspecified time, apparently, inthe latter twentieth century, Fields and a com-panion named Joe (no last name offered) wentto the mountain in search of guano (batdung), which they hoped to market as fertil-izer. On their first night, the two slept at thefoot of the mountain. By the third day, theywere nearing the mountaintop when they de-cided to make camp and prepare a meal. Joewent off to collect dead scrub bush for thefire. Suddenly, he returned in a state of highexcitement. He had found a big cave nearby,and it looked like a promising place to searchfor the object of their quest.

Mount Lassen 179

The deeper the two went into the cave, thedeeper it seemed. Once they got twenty feetinto it, the walls expanded to ten feet wideand eight feet high. They could see a hundred

yards ahead to a point where the wall bent.They followed the bend off to the left anddown, and they kept going until suddenly, re-alizing how far they were from the surface,

180 Mount Lassen

A Morlock (with victim) as depicted in the 1960 movie version of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (Photofest)

they began to get nervous. Besides that, therewas no evidence of guano. Still curious, theydecided to plow ahead and kept walking foranother mile or two. Then, with the aid oftheir flashlights, they made an amazing dis-covery: the floor was worn smooth, and thecavern walls and ceiling seemed cut artificially.What had seemed a cave now looked morelike a tunnel.

A light flashed, and three men confrontedFields and Joe. The men were of normal ap-pearance, seemingly around fifty years of age,dressed in jeans and flannel shirts. Only theirshoes, with their unusually thick soles, lookedout of the ordinary. One of the strangersasked what they were doing there, but heacted as if he did not believe the two men’s an-swer. Two more strangers showed up. Theguano-hunters were badly frightened, con-vinced that they had fallen into the hands of acriminal gang in hiding. Their fears only rosewhen one of the band told them that theyshould accompany them deeper into the cave.

About two miles later, they came to a spotwhere the walls expanded. There they encoun-tered a strange device that looked like a tobog-gan with a seat and a control panel. It gave offa buzzing sound. The group sat on the wideseat and flew off at a “terrific” speed. After ajourney of some considerable distance, theysaw a similar machine approaching them.Suddenly acting nervous, they maneuveredtheir machine to a stop. It landed two feetfrom the other one. The crew of the first shipleaped out and tried to run away, but the crewof the second, who were carrying pencil-likeweapons, shot them down, killing all of them.

Certain of their imminent doom, Fieldsand Joe watched as the new group approachedthem. One member asked if they were “sur-face people.” After telling him that they hadcome from there just recently, the strangerwent on to say that they were lucky they hadbeen rescued. “You would have also becomehorloks, and then we would have had to killyou also.” The man spoke in a friendly man-ner, giving Fields the confidence to ask whatwas going on. All the man would say was that

surface people “are not ready to have thethings that the ancients have left. . . . How-ever, there are a great many evil people herewho create many unpleasant things for bothus and the surface people. They are safe be-cause no one on the surface believes that weexist.”

Ralph and Joe were flown back to the sur-face and warned never to return. Fields says,“We had been told just enough for me to be-lieve that down there somewhere there wereand are things that might baffle the greatestminds of this Earth. Sometimes I am temptedto go back into that cave if I could again findit, which I doubt, but then I know the warn-ing I heard in there might be too true” (Com-mander X, 1990).

It may be worth noting that H. G. Wells’sfamous science-fiction novel The Time Ma -chine (1895) features a race of violent subter-ranean humans known as Morlocks.

See Also: Brodie’s deros; Hollow earth; MountShasta; Shaver mystery

Further ReadingCommander X [pseud. of Jim Keith], 1990. Under -

ground Alien Bases. New Brunswick, NJ: AbelardPublications.

Mount ShastaMount Shasta in northern California, near theOregon border, is the scene of occult legendsthat go back to the nineteenth century. Evenbefore white settlers arrived in the region in1827, however, local Indian tribes believedthat giant creatures, apparently of theSasquatch variety, lived in caves on the moun-tain. The giants were feared because of theirhabit of capturing individuals and takingthem to their caves, where they would squeezetheir victims to death. Another race of beings,small, usually invisible entities akin to fairies,also called Shasta their home, according totribal traditions.

But it took Frederick Spencer Oliver ofnearby Yreka, California, to put the mountainon the mystical map. In the mid 1880s,Oliver, then in his teens, produced a novel, ADweller on Two Planets, which he claimed an

Mount Shasta 181

entity named Phylos the Tibetan had dictatedto him. In fact, when the novel was publishedin 1899, Phylos, not Oliver, was identified asthe author. Phylos said he had experiencedseveral incarnations, including one in Atlantisand another on Venus. In his most recent one,during the mid-century California gold rush,he (“he” being Walter Pierson, the name heheld during that lifetime) met Quong, a Chi-nese man. Quong, a knower of mystical se-crets, led Pierson into Shasta via a hidden tun-nel. Inside the mountain they found hugechambers and treasures belonging to a secretbrotherhood of advanced beings who hadlived there for a very long time, devotingthemselves to humanity’s spiritual betterment.In his astral body, Pierson traveled to Venus,where he learned many secrets; he also learnedof his previous lives. Once enlightened, hewas rechristened Phylos and became aguardian of the cosmos. A modern chroniclerremarks that the “Tibetan” part of his title“seems to have been added for Mystery’s sake”(Kafton-Minkel, 1989).

Oliver’s novel owed much of its inspirationto Madame Blavatsky’s theological writingsand to works of mystical fantasy such as Ed-ward Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni: A RosicrucianTale and Marie Corelli’s A Romance of TwoWorlds. It was original, however, in setting asecret civilization within Mount Shasta. Thenext writer to do so, Harvey Spencer Lewis(writing as “Wishar C. Cerve”), identified theinhabitants as survivors of Lemuria, the Pa-cific Ocean’s version of Atlantis. According toLewis’s Lemuria: Lost Continent of the Pacific(1931), when Lemuria split and sank, its eastcoast crashed into part of North America’swest coast to become the states of Washing-ton, Oregon, and California. Many of the sur-viving Lemurians took up residence insideShasta.

Lewis claimed that persons living nearShasta occasionally encountered distin-guished-looking men in white robes as theywalked out of the forest. Sometimes these be-ings, who stood seven feet tall, did business inlocal stores, using gold nuggets to make their

182 Mount Shasta

A nineteenth-century engraving of Mount Shasta, California, the scene of occult legends from far back in the past (Libraryof Congress)

purchases and refusing change. The strangershad long, curly hair, and on their large fore-heads there were bulges visible with “specialdecoration” over them covering their thirdeyes. Along the thick forests on Shasta’s east-ern flank, the Lemurians had built great mar-ble temples. On some evenings they held mys-tical celebrations at which they lit big fires anddanced. They also raised odd-looking cattle.They flew “peculiarly shaped boats whichhave flown out of this region high in the airover the hills and valleys . . . to the waters ofthe Pacific Ocean.” Mostly, however, theLemurians managed to keep themselves andtheir activities invisible, setting up energywalls that effectively concealed them fromprying eyes.

The American branch of the Rosicrucians,headquartered in San Jose, published Lewis’sbook. During the 1930s, it also sponsored ex-peditions that sought to locate the secret en-trances to Shasta. Articles in Rosicrucian Di -gest discussed the mountain’s “mysteries.”Then on May 22, 1932, the Los Angeles Times’Sunday magazine ran a destined-to-be-influ-ential piece by Edward Lanser. Lanser claimedthat while taking a train trip on the ShastaLimited on his way to Portland, he observedmysterious lights on Shasta in the early dawn.The conductor told him that “the Lemurians”were holding ceremonies. On his way back toPortland, Lanser wrote, Lanser spent time inthe Shasta area and found that nearly every-one there took the reality of the Lemurians forgranted. “Business men, amateur explorers,officials, and ranchers in the country sur-rounding Shasta spoke freely of the commu-nity, and all attested to the weird rituals thatare performed on the mountainside after sun-set, midnight and sunrise,” he wrote (DeCamp, 1980). The Lemurians performedthese rituals to celebrate their escape to “Gau-tama” (North America). He asserted that“Prof. Edgar Lucien Larkin,” whom he char-acterized as a famous astronomer, had actuallybeen able to observe Lemurians and theirtemples through a telescope. Larkin was in re-ality an occult buff who had died some eight

years earlier. Though widely quoted since,Lanser’s story was a hoax or—more to thepoint—a tongue-in-cheek exercise satirizingthe curious beliefs the mystically minded werecirculating about a beautiful but otherwise or-dinary natural monument.

In Unveiled Mysteries (1934) Guy WarrenBallard, writing as Godre Ray King, reportedthat in 1930, while working as a mining engi-neer at Shasta, he met Saint Germain, an im-mortal being who gave him a creamy liquid todrink. The liquid, Saint Germain explained,was “Life—Omnipresent Life.” Many otherencounters followed, and Ballard (who died in1939) soon formed the I AM Activity, a noto-rious cultlike organization that combinedTheosophical doctrine with fascist ideology.Around the same time, occultist Maurice Do-real was detailing his own Shasta experiences,which were with the Atlanteans who lived in acolony seven miles beneath the mountain.Though the colony had only three hundredfifty-three inhabitants, it dominated theLemurians, four and a half million of whomlived, essentially, as prisoners of the Atlanteanseven deeper under Shasta. Doreal was uniquein his depiction of the Lemurians as evil anddangerous.

As Sh a s t a’s legends continued to expand, itwas said that the mountain’s interior housedtwo magnificent Lemurian cities, Il e t h e l e m eand Yaktayvia. The latter, some said, was thes o u rce of beautiful bell sounds, which somehad professed to hear emanating from themountain. The Yaktayvians are master bellbuilders. All the while, occult pilgrims we rearriving in growing numbers to the are a ;many would stay. Some claimed to have seenand communicated with Lemurians andother extraord i n a ry beings. Others re p o rt e dUFO sightings on the mountain. Be l i e ve r sexplained the phenomena as Lemurian air-craft or visiting extraterrestrial spacecraft call-ing on their friends inside the mountain. Atleast one person, Nola Van Va l e r, swore thatshe had met Phylos the Tibetan on themountain. On another occasion she spokewith Saint Ge r m a i n .

Mount Shasta 183

See Also: Atlantis; Bonnie; Fairies encountered;Lemuria; Shaver mystery

Further ReadingCommander X [pseud. of Jim Keith], 1990. Under -

ground Alien Bases. New Brunswick, NJ: AbelardProductions.

De Camp, L. Sprague, 1980. The Ragged Edge of Sci -ence. Philadelphia, PA: Owlswick Press.

Frank, Emilie A., 1998. Mt. Shasta, California’s Mys -tic Mountain. Hilt, CA: Photografix Publishing.

Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, LostRaces, and UFOs from inside the Earth. PortTownsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.

Tierney, Richard L., 1983. “America’s MysticalMount Shasta.” Fate 36, 8 (August): 70–76.

Mr. XOn the afternoon of November 5, 1957,Reinhold Schmidt, a grain buyer with aprison re c o rd, allegedly encountered thec rew of a landed flying saucer along thebanks of Ne b r a s k a’s Platte Rive r. Tw oc rewmembers ushered him inside, where hemet two other men and two women, all ofwhom spoke “high Ge r m a n” to one anotherand German-inflected English to Schmidt.Their captain identified himself as “Mr. X.”After a brief conversation about America’ssatellite program, Schmidt left the craft,which then depart e d .

When Schmidt reported his encounter tothe sheriff ’s office in nearby Kearney, officerswent to the site and found footprints as wellas a greasy substance at the supposed landingsite. They also located two empty oil cans notfar away, leading them to suspect a hoax. Afterbeing held overnight in jail, Schmidt was ex-amined by two psychiatrists and pronouncedmentally ill. He spent a few days in the Hast-ings State Hospital before being released.

Thereafter, he pursued a career on the con-tactee scene, claiming further contacts withMr. X and his associates, who he learned werefrom Saturn. His space friends flew himaround the world, to Egypt, to the Antarctic,and elsewhere. It all ended, however, after hetold a California widow that from a spaceshiphe had seen quartz crystals with healing pow-

ers and persuaded her to invest in a worthlessmining venture. At a trial in Oakland in Oc-tober 1961, a young astronomer named CarlSagan assured the jury that human life couldnot exist on Saturn. Schmidt received a one-to ten-year sentence for grand theft.

See Also: ContacteesFurther Reading“‘Flying Saucer’ Figure Convicted,” 1961. Oakland

[California] Tribune, October 27.“The Kearney, Nebraska, ‘Contact’ Claim,” 1957.

CSI News Letter 10 (December 15): 12–13.Schmidt, Reinhold O., 1963. The Edge of Tomorrow:

A True Account of Experiences with Visitors fromAnother Planet. Hollywood, CA: self-published.

MU the Mantis BeingA West Virginia woman who prefers to usethe pseudonym Rebecca Grant says she hashad a lifetime of paranormal experiences, in-cluding missing-time episodes and apparentUFO abductions. When she was forty yearsold, aliens revealed themselves to her. At firstthe communications were purely telepathic.After two years they began to appear physi-cally to her. These appearances, always brief,at first frightened her, but in due course shebecame friendly with a being who looked likea giant praying mantis, a kind of entity some-times reported by abductees. The mantisbeing, apparently possessing a sense of humor,conveyed the idea that he would like to becalled MU, short for “Master of the Uni-verse,” though Grant said she would preferthat he be “MU-Bug . . . to help keep thingsin perspective.” MU communicates telepathi-cally and is not physically present during thecommunications.

MU told her that he and his race had helpedlife evo l ve on Earth. Close to one hundred dif-f e rent alien groups visit Earth, some from otherplaces in the galaxy, some from parallel uni-verses. They are on Earth because of their con-cern about what human beings are doing to thep l a n e t’s environment. Though they possess themeans to do so, they are not repairing the dam-age because humans have to learn to do thatt h e m s e l ves; alien help would only prolong hu-

184 Mr. X

m a n i t y’s existence. “We might surv i ve longenough to find an even grander way to destroyo u r s e l ves,” Grant says MU has observed, “o n ethat could harm worlds other than our ow n .These beings feel that . . . they would be con-demning themselves to a violent confro n t a t i o nwith us in the future.” The aliens have taken amiddle course. They abduct people and re m ovesome of their DNA, combining it with theDNA of various alien races; thus, “s o m e t h i n gof the human race will continue.” Others aret rying to implant spiritual beliefs and psyc h i cp e rceptions into the brains of humans in thehope that greater wisdom will lead them to sur-v i val and peace.

According to MU, alien science indicatesthat Earth faces a bleak future of ecologicalcollapse, geophysical cataclysms, and politicaland social upheaval, which may lead toatomic and biological warfare. None of this iscertain, only probable. If these things happen,MU says, the aliens may “remove a group ofwomen and children from the surface of theEarth to protect them for the purposes of pro-creation.” These would all be abductees whosegenetic make-up had already been altered.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; InsectoidsFurther ReadingLewels, Joe, 1997. The God Hypothesis: Extraterres -

trial Life and Its Implications for Science and Reli -gion. Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower Press.

Muller’s MartiansA medium’s contacts with Martians are thesubject of a classic early work on abnormalpsychology, Theodore Flournoy’s From Indiato the Planet Mars (1899). Flournoy, a promi-nent Swiss psychologist, gives the medium thepseudonym Helene Smith in his book, buther real name was Catherine Elise Muller.

Born in 1861, Muller possessed a consider-able imagination and a keen intelligence. Shegrew up in a family in which psychic and vi-sionary experiences were common, and sheherself had a number of them. Friends drewher attention to spiritism, and soon she be-came a medium. Through her, such historicalfigures as the great novelist Victor Hugo andthe legendary occultist Cagliostro spoke, spin-ning what Flournoy characterizes as “complexsagas.” Her Martian adventures began onlyafter a friend remarked, in her presence, onsomething he had read recently. It was a state-ment by the popular science writer CamilleFlammarion that “Martian humankind andEarth humankind may one day enter intocommunication with the other.” The friendexpressed the hope that such a thing wouldhappen.

Soon afterward, Muller informed him thatshe had made contact with Martians. Theseencounters occurred in a variety of mentalstates, including sleep. Flournoy was led tothe conclusion that, at least at some level ofher psyche, Muller was always living with theMartians. The communications and experi-ences were voluminous. She had many Mart-ian friends and was often on that planet inter-acting with them and observing everythingaround her. She even produced, albeit inpiecemeal fashion, a Martian language thatFlourney recognized as an “infantile travestyof French.”

See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Aurora Martian;Brown’s Martians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga;Martian bees; Monka; Shaw’s Martians; Smead’sMartians; Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingFlournoy, Theodore, 1963. From India to the Planet

Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism withGlossolalia. New Hyde Park, NY: UniversityBooks.

Muller’s Martians 185

NomaIn 1961, investigating the Brown Mountainlights (believed by most authorities to be re-fractions of distant light sources such as pass-ing automobiles) near Morganton, NorthCarolina, Ralph Lael discovered that if he senttelepathic messages to the lights, they wouldrespond. One light urged him to enter a doorconcealed on the mountainside, where the en-tities responsible for the lights operated. Laelpassed into an eight-foot-square room withtransparent walls. There a voice told him thatthe human race had come into being on aplanet once known as Pewam, now the aster-oid belt between Mars and Jupiter. On a sub-sequent visit not long afterward, Lael boardeda flying saucer and was taken to Venus. There,besides meeting the direct descendants of Pe-wamites, he encountered a lovely, scantily cladwoman named Noma. His hosts also showedhim footage of Pewam’s destruction and ofearly Earth humans.

Further ReadingMachlin, Milt, and Timothy Green Beckley, 1981.

UFO. New York: Quick Fox.

NordicsNordic is a name given to a kind of alienbeing reported in UFO encounters that range

from contact claims to close encounters of thethird kind to abductions. The term did not,however, come into general use among ufolo-gists until the 1980s. Nordics are said to re-semble Scandinavians, at least in a genericsense; they are tall, blond, fair-skinned(though sometimes described as deeplytanned), and attractive-looking. Witnessesoften claim that their eyes are different fromnorthern Europeans in being somewhatslanted or even almond-shaped.

The beings that would later be calledNordics were first known as Space Brothers—often, though not always, from Venus—when1950s contactees such as George Adamski andHoward Menger reported meetings withfriendly extraterrestrials, with whom theytraveled into space and had other adventures.Though conservative ufologists rejected theseclaims as absurd hoaxes, generally similar fig-ures were reported in the testimony of wit-nesses who did not fit the contactees’ flam-boyant profiles.

In one such incident, a farmer near LinhaVista, Brazil, while working in a field heard asewing-machine sound. When he looked toits source, it turned out to be a strange craft,“shaped like a tropical helmet,” hoveringnearby. A man could be seen inside the UFO,another stood near a fence, and a third was

N

187

approaching the witness, who was sufficientlystartled to drop his hoe. The being smiled andpicked up the hoe, handing it back to thefarmer before he and his companions returnedto the ship and flew away. The beings, clad inlight brown coveralls, had long blond hair,pale skin, and slanted eyes. The farmer, whoknew nothing of flying saucers, thought thecraft and its occupants were from the UnitedStates.

Typically in these kinds of close encoun-ters, the Nordics were not communicative,just silent and distant; they were not un-friendly but not forthcoming either. Ufolo-gists collected hundreds of such accountsfrom all over the world. As abduction reportsrose to prominence in later years, Nordicsshowed up in many stories, almost alwaysseen in association with little gray aliens andin circumstances that suggested that they oc-cupied a higher position in the otherworldlychain of command than did their smaller fel-lows. One writer on the abduction phenome-non, David M. Jacobs, believes that “the evi-dence clearly suggests that the Nordics aremost probably adult hybrids, the products ofhuman/alien mating” (Jacobs, 1998).

No rdics live on in current contactee lore ,w h e re they are assumed to be genuine extrater-restrials, perhaps re p resenting the race thatseeded the Earth and gave rise to modern Ho m os a p i e n s . No rdics, according to Billy Meier andother post-Adamski friends of the space people,come from the Pleiades star system.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;Close encounters of the third kind; Contactees;Hybrid beings; Meier, Eduard “Billy”; Menger,Howard; Walton’s abduction


York: Abelard-Schuman.Bowen, Charles, ed., 1974. The Humanoids. Lon-

don: Futura Publications.Jacobs, David M., 1998. The Threat. New York:

Simon and Schuster.Menger, Howard, 1959. From Outer Space to You.

Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.Randles, Jenny, 1988. Abduction: Over 200 Docu -

mented UFO Kidnappings Investigated. London:Robert Hale.

Stevens, Wendelle C., 1983. UFO . . . Contact fromthe Pleiades—A Preliminary Investigative Report—The Report on an Ongoing Contact. Tucson, AZ:Wendelle C. Stevens.

NostradamusNo s t r a d a m u s — Michael de Nostradame (1503–1566)—was a French physician, astrologer,and counselor to Kings Henry II and CharlesIX. He is remembered for his prophecies ofworld events, culminating in the SecondComing of Christ in 2000. According to anIndiana woman, he returned to this world in1996 as a channeled entity after living on theGreat Central Sun since his death.

A woman who identifies herself only as Patireports that on a Friday night in July 1996,she was sitting in on a channeling session withlike-minded friends when a message camethrough from an anxious-sounding Nos-tradamus. Though Pati had never paid muchattention to Nostradamus or his propheciesbefore, she felt a strong, immediate connec-tion. Nostradamus communicated onlybriefly, but before he withdrew, the channel-ing group assured him that he was welcome tocome back anytime he wished to do so.

The next day, while on a long drive thro u g hthe country, Pati felt No s t r a d a m u s’s spirit insideh e r, seeing and hearing all that passed thro u g hher eyes and ears. He asked questions aboute ve rything around them. Over the next twomonths, Pati felt other “e n e r g i e s” enter her. Sh esuspected that they we re friends and associatesof No s t r a d a m u s’s from the Great Central Su n .“ Judging by the questions that we re asked,” Pa t iwrites, “these energies either had not been onthis planet before or, if they had been, it was solong ago that nothing looked familiar apartf rom the trees, rocks and water. They askedquestions about how houses we re built, whythis or that particular shape? What materials didwe use? On and on, they went, asking aboutplanes, cars, barns and llamas, and why do peo-ple MOW their grass!” (Pati, 1999).

On two occasions, Pati verbally channeledNostradamus. On the first, he expressed satis-faction with his life now and praised the ef-

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forts of Pati and like-minded people who weremaking life on Earth better. On the second,he identified two women in the channelinggroup as his wife and servant in his Earth in-carnation. He apologized for treating them asless than his equals.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingPati, 1999. “Nostradamus Comes Back . . . And

Likes What He Sees!” Planet Lightworker (Sep-tember/October). http://www.planetlightworker.com/articlefarm/pati/article1.htm.

Nostradamus 189

Nostradamus, shown in magician’s garb in his laboratory, writing about astrology (Bettmann/Corbis)

Octopus aliensWhile doing chores in his barnyard at 6 A.M.on August 16, 1968, a Serra de Almos, Spain,farmer noticed a light about half a mile away.Thinking it was from a stalled car, he walkedover to help what he assumed to be a strandedmotorist. The “car” turned out to be a globe-shaped object hovering just above the ground.Nearby were two bizarre-looking creaturesthat resembled octopuses. They were light incolor and three feet tall, and they were dash-ing on “four or five legs” toward the UFO,which shot away as soon as they entered it.

Journalists and ufologists who examinedthe site soon afterward found an abundanceof burned grass. They also reported that theirwatches had abruptly ceased operating.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kindFurther ReadingBallester Olmos, Vicente-Juan, 1976. A Catalogue of

200 Type-I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal.Evanston, IL: Center for UFO Studies.

OgattaOgatta is, in the channeling of North Car-olina psychic Greta Woodrew, one of fiveplanets in a “jorpah” (solar system) in anothergalaxy. (The other planets are Oshan, Archa,Mennon, and Tchauvi.) Woodrew, a wealthy

professional woman who grew up and livedmuch of her life in New York City and Con-necticut, discovered her connection withOgatta while exploring her paranormal tal-ents, prominently including metal-bending,with noted parapsychologist Andrija Puha-rich. Under hypnosis on December 17, 1976,she underwent an out-of-body experience, inwhich she encountered a figure with bothhuman and bird features. It was clad in a silversuit and had marvelous, golden eyes with aloving expression. Via telepathy she learnedthat he was Hshames from the Ogatta jorpah(his actual home planet was Mennon).

Soon, under hypnosis and then by chan-neling, Woodrew was communicating withother entities, one named Ogatta after theplanet. She would form a particularly close as-sociation with a female Ogattan named Tauri.She learned that many cosmic civilizations,including the Ogattans, are visiting the Earthin ships; the Ogattans call their ships “gattae.”Woodrew herself had a dual existence. In oneaspect she lived on Earth; in another she livedon Ogatta as “Plura.” Plura had made the de-cision to live—or at least to have a part of herlife—on Earth in order to prepare earthlingsfor the coming Earth changes that will devas-tate much of the planet before a new agebrings peace and harmony.

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In time Wo o d rew learned, via re c ove re d“memories,” that she had been interacting withthe Ogattans since her childhood. Her fir s tcontact took place in the early 1930s when shewas three and a half years old. For the next sixyears, she had many experiences with spacepeople. She was flown to a beautiful planetw h e re she could “hear colors” and “see music”because, like her fellow Ogattans, she was fre eof the limitations of human physiology; thus,her brain processed stimuli differe n t l y.

Though her contacts we re ove rw h e l m i n g l ywith Ogattans, on occasion she met beingsf rom other worlds. Once she had an out-of-body encounter with beings who looked half-human and half-fish. These entities seemedf r i e n d l y, but, on a handful of other occasions,she dealt with extraterrestrials who we re not soamiable. Some believed the Earth to be of nos i g n i ficance, thus its problems we re of no con-cern to major players in the larger cosmic ord e r.

Woodrew became a lecturer on the NewAge circuit, wrote a self-published book, andpublished a newsletter, The Woodrew Update.After the Ogattans warned them that theywould have to move to preserve their safetyduring the coming geological upheavals,Woodrew and her husband, Dick Smolowe,bought a property in western North Carolinain 1982. They moved from Westport, Con-necticut, to the survivalist compound theynamed Reisha Way. In 1988, Doubleday re-leased Woodrew’s book Memories of Tomorrow.A few years later, Woodrow and Smolowemoved to Winston-Salem for health reasons.

See Also: Channeling; Dual referenceFurther ReadingHeard, Alex, 1999. Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in

End-Time America. New York: W. W. Norton andCompany.

Woodrew, Greta, 1981. On a Slide of Light. BlackMountain, NC: New Age Press.

———, 1988. Memories of Tomorrow. New York:Dolphin/Doubleday.

OINTS“OINTS” are “Other Intelligences” in anacronym coined by maverick biologist and

anomalist Ivan T. Sanderson. To SandersonOINTS are any beings that are on Earth butare not human. He did not confine his defini-tion simply to extraterrestrial visitors, who inhis view are only one among a variety of be-ings present on this planet. Poltergeists—in-visible, destructive spirits—are one kind ofOINT. So are the entities who, so he theo-rized in Invisible Residents (1970), dwell underthe oceans, occasionally snatching ships,planes, and their crews in places such as theBermuda Triangle. (“Could there haveevolved a technological civilization . . . under-water? I am afraid I have to say that . . . thereis no logical reason for stating that there couldnot be.”) He also believed that invisible di-mensions or parallel universes surround hu-mans. From these other dimensions, entitiespop in and out of human reality with regular-ity, manifesting as everything from fairies toUFOs. They shift their shapes to whateverform may be appropriate to the occasion andthe circumstance.

Curiously, however, Sanderson held a dimview of all such visitors, not because he fearedthey might be unfriendly but because “theOINTS are . . . incredibly and abysmally stu -pid.” He suspected that they were so advancedthat their technology now controlled themand that they have given up mental activity,just as technology has caused humans to re-duce much of their physical activity. “Thatthey are for the most part overcivilized andquite mad,” he wrote, “is, in my opinion, anopen-ended question but quite probable. Per-haps, we will never be able to cope with themuntil we, too, all go quite mad.”

See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Fairies encounteredFurther ReadingSanderson, Ivan T., 1970. Invisible Residents: A Dis -

quisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and thePossibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters of theEarth. New York: World Publishing Company.

Old HagThe “Old Hag” is a folk expression—popular,for example, in Newfoundland—for the par-

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ticular experience that gave rise to the word“nightmare.” Nightmare has come to be asynonym for “bad dream,” but traditionallynightmare (from the Anglo-Saxon nicht[night] and mara [incubus or succubus]) re-ferred to a specific nocturnal experience. Amenacing supernatural entity, often perceivedas an ugly witch, enters a bedroom and sits onthe witness’s chest, leaving him or her with thesensation of being crushed. All the while thevictim lies paralyzed and helpless.

Though the experience occurs frequentlyto Americans—one in six, according to a sci-entist who has studied the phenomenon—American culture has no name for it. Thus,those who undergo it are at a loss to under-stand it or to put it into any larger context.Many, having never heard of others’ experi-ences, are left wondering about their sanity.

The Old Hag is the subject of a classicwork, The Terror That Comes in the Night(1982), by David J. Hufford, a medical scien-tist and folklorist at Pennsylvania State Uni-versity. Hufford uses the experience, amongother things, to scrutinize the way psycholo-gists have dealt with such reports and to ex-amine the trustworthiness of eyewitness testi-mony to anomalous events. Most scientistsand scholars have sought to explain Old Hagattacks as the result of perceptual errors, faultymemories, lies, psychotic episodes, or halluci-nations shaped by images in the claimants’cultural environment. According to Hufford,they have often discarded witness testimony,resulting in what Hufford charges was an ef-fort to reinvent the experience so that it couldbe “explained.” Referring to a study by earlypsychoanalyst and Freud biographer Ernest

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Henri Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781 (The Detroit Institute of the Arts, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bert L. Smokler and Mr. andMrs. Lawrence A. Fleishman)

Jones, Hufford says that “one can hardly dis-tinguish the experiences themselves from theirinterpretations.”

Hufford argues that if would-be explainershad listened to what the witnesses reportedabout the particular symptoms of Old Hagexperience, they might have been able to ex-plain it sooner. Research in the 1960s and1970s in sleep paralysis both underscores theaccuracy of the testimony and explains mostof it, though, so far, not the peculiar fact thatthe contents of the experience are consistent nomatter to whom or in what cultural contextthey occur.

In Hufford’s judgment, too much scholarlywriting on extraordinary experience reflects“unexamined prejudices and makes facile as-sumptions about cultural processes,” thusconfusing rather than clarifying issues.

Old Hag sleep paralysis may explain atleast some abduction and other ostensiblyUFO-related “bedroom visitations.” For ex-ample, John A. Keel, author of several bookson UFOs, has written of his own encounterswith strange entities, including one in which“I woke up in the middle of the night to findmyself unable to move, with a huge dark ap-parition standing over me” (Keel, 1970).

Addressing the abduction phenomenon,Hufford has said, “If the paralysis attacks, asdescribed by abductees, are directly linked toabductions, there is every reason to believethat the abduction phenomenon has great his-torical depth and is associated in complexways with other classes of anomalous experi-ence” (Hufford, 1994).

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Keel, John AlvaFurther ReadingHufford, David J., 1982. The Terror That Comes in

the Night: An Experienced-Centered Study of Su -pernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: Uni-versity of Pennsylvania Press.

———, 1994. “Awakening Paralyzed in the Presenceof a Strange ‘Visitor’.” In Andrea Pritchard,David E. Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey,and Claudia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceed -ings of the Abduction Study Conference, 348–354.Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press.

Keel, John A., 1970. Strange Creatures from Time andSpace. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Gold Medal.

Oleson’s giantsOn May 2, 1897, during a spate of mysteri-ous “a i r s h i p” sightings that some popularspeculation tied to possible visitors fro mother planets, the Houston Po s t published aletter from John Leander of El Campo, Te x a s .Leander related the story of a local man,i d e n t i fied only as Mr. Oleson, an elderly, re-t i red sailor who once served on Danish ve s-sels. Ac c o rding to Leander, in Se p t e m b e r1862 Oleson had witnessed the crash of amysterious craft and seen the bodies of thegiant beings who had flown it.

At the time the incident took place, Olesonwas serving as mate on the brig Christine onthe Indian Ocean. A furious storm eruptedand raged for hours until, finally, a wavewashed over the ship, and Oleson and fivecompanions were swept onto a small, rocky is-land. All were injured, and one soon died.The island was devoid of life, and the men re-signed themselves to their deaths. As they sathopeless at the base of a cliff, they witnessed abizarre and terrifying sight: an immense flyingship, apparently out of control and about tocrash, was heading directly toward them. For-tunately, the wind blew it off course, and itsmashed against the rocks a few hundredyards away.

Overcoming their deep fear, the sailorsmade their way to the wreckage. The ma-chine, which they deduced had been the sizeof a battleship, lay in a shapeless mass, reveal-ing little except that the craft had had fourlarge wings. There were things that lookedlike tools and furniture, evidently from theship’s interior, and the men opened boxes cov-ered with unusual characters. Inside theboxes, they uncovered nourishing food.

“But their horror was intensified,” Leanderwrote, “when they found the bodies of morethan a dozen men dressed in garments ofstrange fashion and texture. The bodies were adark bronze color, but the strangest feature ofall was the immense size of the men. They hadno means of measuring their bodies, but esti-mated them to be more than twelve feet high.Their hair and beards were also long and as

194 Oleson’s giants

soft and silky as the hair of an infant”(Bullard, 1982). The sight so unsettled one ofthe men that he was driven mad. Hepromptly hurled himself off into the sea,where he drowned.

The survivors retreated from the scene, andit took them two days to restore their couragesufficiently to return. They rummaged forfood and then dragged the giants’ bodies offthe cliff and into the water. Using pieces ofthe spaceship, they built a raft and set out onthe now-still ocean. Sixty hours later, theycame upon a Russian vessel heading for Aus-tralia. Before they could reach port, however,three more of Oleson’s companions died fromtheir injuries and shock.

“Fortunately as a partial confirmation ofthe truth of his story,” Leander wrote, “Mr.Oleson took from one of the bodies a fingerring of immense size. It is made of a com-pound of metals unknown to any jeweler whohas seen it, and is set with two reddish stones,the names of which are unknown to anyonewho has ever examined it. The ring was takenfrom the thumb of the owner and measuretwo and one-quarter inches in diameter.”

L e a n d e r’s yarn was one of many told inthe spring of 1897 about airships and theirsupposed crews. Newspapers all over Amer-ica carried comparable tall tales, includingone alleging a Ma rt i a n’s crash-landing andhis subsequent burial in a small nort h - Te x a st ow n .

See Also: Aurora Martian; Michigan giant; WilsonFurther ReadingBullard, Thomas E., ed. 1982. The Airship File: A


Olliana Olliana AllianoSpeaking at a contactee conference in 1982,Dave Schultz, an electrician from Louisville,Colorado, related a lifetime of interactionswith extraterrestrials, among them the OllianaOlliana Alliano. The Olliana Olliana Alliano

are forty inches tall, humanlike in appearanceexcept for a slightly larger head. Schultz calledthem “the good people,” guardians of theEarth. It was Olliana Olliana Alliano whodied in the 1948 spaceship crash at Aztec,New Mexico, chronicled in Frank Scully’s Be -hind the Flying Saucers (1950).

This alien group is here to “get the vibra-tions of the planet up to a level in which wecan join the space federation.” Before thathappens, humans have to shed their violent,warlike, greedy ways. The Olliana Olliana Al-liano have contacted every political leader onEarth to deliver this message.

See Also: Contactees; MerschFurther ReadingSprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky


OrthonOrthon was the name George Adamski—or,more accurately, his ghostwriter CharlotteBlodget—gave to the Venusian Adamski metin the desert of southern California on No-vember 20, 1952. Space people, Adamski ex-plained, never call themselves by name wheninteracting with human beings because theyhave “an entirely different concept of names aswe use them” (Adamski, 1955). In that firstencounter, Adamski communicated with thebeing he called Orthon via gestures, sign lan-guage, and snatches of telepathy, duringwhich the Venusian expressed concern aboutearthlings’ warlike ways. Adamski saw Orthonagain briefly when he flew overhead in hisscout craft the following December 13.

He next met Orthon in the early morninghours of February14, 1953, when two space-men picked him up at a Los Angeles hotel anddrove him into the desert to an awaitingsaucer. As he approached the ship, he saw Or-thon, who was finishing some repair work.Seeing “a very small amount of molten metalthat he had thrown out,” Adamski scooped upthe object. When his companions asked himwhy he was doing that, he said he wanted

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concrete proof of his contacts. Orthon ex-plained, though, that “you will find that thisalloy contains the same on all planets”(Adamski, 1955). They boarded the shiptogether and flew into space, where Adamskiand Orthon—now speaking lucid English, ashad not been the case in their first en-counter—engaged in extended conversation.

A third meeting with Orthon took placeon August 23, 1954, after the same two space-men, Firkon of Mars and Ramu of Saturn,picked up Adamski at his home and took himto a spacecraft. Adamski was reunited notonly with Orthon but also with other extra-terrestrials, including the beautiful women Il-muth (a Martian) and Kalna (a Venusian)who had been aboard the ship he had enteredearlier. This time Orthon showed Adamskiscenes from the Venusian surface. The Venu-sians, Orthon said, have an average lifetime ofa thousand years.

On April 25, 1955, Adamski flew intospace again with Orthon. A crewmember usedAdamski’s camera to take photographs of anearby Venusian Mother Ship into whichAdamski had transferred. Two of the blurryresults are reproduced in Inside the SpaceShips. One of them, according to the caption,shows a Venusian looking out of a porthole,Adamski out of a second, though to the un-trained eye the faces look like no more thanblobs of light. Lou Zinsstag, a Swiss womanwho was close to Adamski and eventually be-came his biographer, reported that one day in1959, while the two were conversing, hepulled out his wallet and extracted from it aphotograph of Orthon in profile. Zinsstag,who was allowed to study it briefly, was struckby the figure’s pronounced chin.

In the early 1960s, according to Ad a m s k i ,a new group of space people replaced the oldone. In later years, after his death, old associ-ates such as Blodget, Madeleine Ro d e f f e r,Fred Steckling, and St e ve Within madeclaims of having met Orthon, but AliceWells, Ad a m s k i’s executor and head of theGeorge Adamski Foundation, rejected theira s s e rt i o n s .

See Also: Adamski, George; RamuFurther ReadingAdamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New

York: Abelard-Schuman.Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounters

with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.Hallet, Marc, 1997. “Adamski and His Believers: A

Reminiscence.” In Hilary Evans and DennisStacy, eds. UFOs 1947–1997: From Arnold to theAbductees: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers, 28–34.London: John Brown Publishing.


Zinsstag, Lou, and Timothy Good, 1983. GeorgeAdamski—The Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent,England: Ceti Publications.

OxalcOxalc is from the planet Morlen, settled longago by human beings from the Orion system.They sought to establish a supercolony. Theplanet now houses six large cities in which be-ings from many worlds, including Earth, cur-rently reside. Oxalc oversees forty-nine extra-terrestrial guides involved in Mission Rama.According to one source, “The word RAMAcontains a vibratory activator and was chosenforty-two hundred years ago. RA representsthe Sun or irradiation and MA representsMother Earth. The mantra Rama means Irra-diating Light on Earth” (Edilver, n.d.). Mis-sion Rama’s purpose is to help planets in tran-sition, such as Earth (also known as Merla), asthey enter the fourth dimension.

O x a l c’s presence on Earth became know nin 1973 after a group of Pe ruvian fly i n g - s a u c e renthusiasts led by Sixto Paz Wells decided tot ry to establish psychic communications withe x t r a t e r restrials. The initial contacts took placet h rough automatic writing from an entity whocalled himself Oxalc. Oxalc gave a specific dateand place where he would meet them person-a l l y. The group went to the location, a coastalregion thirt y - s e ven miles south of Lima, andwe re shocked to see a brilliantly lighted, ham-burger-shaped metallic craft hovering less thant h ree hundred feet over their heads. Their fearand excitement we re so intense that Oxalc,

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communicating telepathically, informed themthat no meeting would take place; before onecould happen, they would have to learn howto control their emotions.

The messages continued and began to circ u-late through the Spanish-speaking world. T h e ydescribed the nature of the cosmos, Eart h’s se-c ret history, and human beings’ spiritual na-t u re. The teachings we re circulated under thename Mission Rama, organized as a nonpro fitcorporation. They hold that there are three dif-f e rent universes: material (Septennial), mental( Eternal), and spiritual (Mental). Our ow nMilky Way is under the direction of twe n t y -four highly evo l ved beings, the Elders of theGa l a x y. Beneath them are advanced civiliza-tions which actively assist lesser but deve l o p i n graces. Each of these takes on a particular task,as Genetic Engineers, Keepers, Gu a rdians, In-s t ructors, and the like. “Galaxy M-31,” in theA n d romeda constellation, is the seat of an ex-t remely important council where re p re s e n t a-t i ves of a number of galaxies in our region ofspace deliberate. The council is called theCouncil of Nine, and the beings sitting on ita re the Nine of Andromeda. T h e y, along withthe twenty-four Elders of each galaxy, comprisethe Great White Brotherhood of the St a r.

Members of the Earth’s Mission Rama havereported extraordinary experiences, not justUFO sightings but otherworldly journeysthrough artificially constructed space-timeportals (Xendras). “Many others received their‘Cosmic Names,’ whose pronunciation is intune with the total nature of each individual’ssoul,” one document states (Edilver, n.d.).

See Also: Great White BrotherhoodFurther ReadingEdilver [pseud. of Giorgio Piacenza], 1992. “Mission

Rama.” Coral Gables, FL: self-published.

Oz Factor“ Oz Fa c t o r” is a phrase coined by British ufol-ogist Jenny Randles, who calls it the “s e n s a t i o nof being isolated, or transported from the re a lworld into a different environmental frame-w o rk.” Randles noted its presence in a number

of UFO cases she investigated. It was as if, shew rote, witnesses we re “being transported tem-porarily from our world into another, wherereality is but slightly differe n t . . . . I call it ‘t h eOz Fa c t o r,’ after the fairytale land of Oz”(Randles, 1983). She suspects that in many os-tensibly straightforw a rd UFO encounters, wit-nesses are in an altered state of consciousness.

In Oz Factor incidents, an individual maywitness a spectacular UFO display or evenlanding and contact in a public space at a timewhen other persons should be about. Yetother people will be weirdly absent, and azone of silence will surround the scene. Thewitness may feel as if he or she has been “cho-sen” to view the object.

Such phenomena have also been reportedin the context of men in black encounters. Forexample, Peter Rojcewicz tells of an experi-ence he underwent one afternoon in Novem-ber 1980, when he was doing research on aPh.D. dissertation in folklore at the Univer-sity of Pennsylvania library. His subject wasUFOs. A strange man dressed in black inter-rupted his work and engaged him in a dis-jointed exchange about flying saucers. Thestranger then seemed to disappear. “I washighly excited and finally walked around thestacks to the reference desk and nobody wasbehind the desk,” Rojcewicz wrote. He couldfind no one else in the library anywhere, a sit-uation he regarded as virtually incomprehen-sible. Fighting panic, he returned to where hehad been sitting. “In about an hour I rose toleave the library,” he recalled. “There weretwo librarians behind each of the two desks!”(Rojcewicz, 1987).

An American psychiatric social workerwriting under a pseudonym recounts a life-time of encounters with a range of other-worldly beings. She says,

I apparently entered into an altered state whenencounters occurred. It seemed to be an alteredenergy or time field created by the beings.Everything fell silent. The air felt heavy, likeliquid crystal, and it seemed to carry nonverbalinformation between the beings and myself.

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Time slowed and eddied in strange ways. Be-ings usually informed me (telepathically inmost cases) that I would not remember theevents until much later. As they communicatedthis, an opaque screen formed in my mind,and the encounter began to feel dim, evenwhile it was still occurring. Additionally, whenthe encounter ended, the altered field also dis-solved. Merely exiting the field also cloaked thememory. (Oakman, 1999)

See Also: Men in blackFurther ReadingOakman, Lisa [pseud.], 1999. “UFO Beings, Folk-

lore, and Mythology: Personal Experiences.” In -ternational UFO Reporter 24, 4 (Winter): 7–12.

Randles, Jenny, 1983. UFO Reality: A Critical Lookat the Physical Evidence. London: Robert Hale.

Rojcewicz, Peter M., 1987. “The ‘Men in Black’ Ex-perience and Tradition: Analogues with the Tra-ditional Devil Hypothesis.” Journal of AmericanFolklore 100 (April/June): 148–160.

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From left to right: Peter Brookesmith; Jenny Randles, the ufologist who coined the term “Oz Factor”; and Jerome Clark atFortean Times UnConvention95 (Lisa Anders/Fortean Picture Library)

Paul 2Paul Solem, an Idaho rancher, first heard fromPaul 2—though he did not know his name atthe time—in 1948 when a mental voice froma flying saucer told him, “You will hear fromus later” (Clark, 1971). Four years later Solemmet Paul 2, a self-identified “angel” fromVenus. Solem was informed that he had beena Venusian in a previous life and that his mis-sion in the present incarnation was to workwith North and South American Indians toprepare the City of Zion. A great cataclysmwas coming, and in its wake a utopian societywould be built with the aid of space peopleand their earthly allies.

Solem surfaced publicly in July 1969 at theFort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho, wherehe and several Indian associates declared in aseries of campfire meetings that flying saucershad arrived to fulfill a Hopi prophecy aboutthe Day of Purification. According to Hopitradition, a great fiery explosion would heraldthe coming of the True White Brother. Onlythose who had remained true to the ancientHopi ways would be spared.

Moving his operation to Hotevilla, Ari-zona, where the Hopi Sun Clan was head-quartered, Solem worked with the 106-year-old Chief Dan Katchongva to integrate flyingsaucers into the tribe’s traditional faith.

Katchongva was a friend of contactee andfringe archaeologist George Hunt William-son, author of books speculating about the re-lationship of native religions and visiting ex-traterrestrials. Younger tribal members resistedKatchongva and Solem’s efforts, though otherresidents of the area were claiming UFOsightings that they took to be evidence of theprophecy’s imminent fulfillment.

Solem announced that Paul 2 would bringin flying saucers for all to see on four occa-sions, beginning on Easter Sunday 1971.Their failure to appear on the first scheduleddate destroyed Solem’s credibility, and soonafterward Katchongva was ousted from hisposition as leader of the Sun Clan. He diedthe following year. Solem lapsed into obscu-rity. His last known public appearance was onJuly 21, 1990, in the resort town of Lava HotSprings, Idaho, where he spoke to a smallcrowd and tried without success to enticesaucers to fly overhead.

See Also: Contactees; Williamson, George HuntFurther ReadingClark, Jerome, 1971. “Indian Prophecy and the

Prescott UFOs.” Fate 24, 4 (April): 54–61.Davis, Rick, 1990. “Would You Believe, Flying

Saucers over Lava?” Idaho State Journal(Pocatello, July 15).

Katchongva, Chief Dan, 1970. Hopi Prophecy.Hotevilla, AZ: Hopi Independent Nation.

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Kimball, Richard W., 1995. “American IndianProphecies Confirm the Reality of FlyingSaucers.” Prescott [Arizona] Daily Courier Gazette(December 24).

Waters, Frank, 1963. Book of the Hopi. New York:Viking Press.

Williamson, George Hunt, 1959. Road in the Sky.London: Neville Spearman.

Philip“Philip” is an imaginary entity said to havebeen given a degree of physical reality when aToronto-based parapsychological group con-sciously “invented” him. He was part of an ex-periment intended to demonstrate that men-tal energies can create the sorts of entitiesreported in spiritualist séances and poltergeistepisodes.

In September 1972, members of theToronto Society for Psychical Research in-vented Philip, laying out a detailed personalbiography. A pro-royal aristocrat during En-gland’s Civil War, Philip fell in love with aGypsy woman but lost her when authoritiestried and burned her at the stake as a witch.His failure to find a way to save her filled himwith guilt and grief and prevented his soulfrom passing on to the afterlife, leaving it anearthbound spirit. The group, whose mem-bers included psychologist A.R.G. Owen andhis wife Iris, began to meditate on Philip inhopes that he would “appear” to them insome fashion. Nothing happened for a year.

Then the group decided to try a differenttactic. Members decided to imitate the meth-ods of nineteenth-century spiritualist circles,on the theory that skepticism inhibited theoccurrence of paranormal phenomena. Likethe earlier spiritualist sitters, they sat in a cir-cle, sang, or otherwise tried to create an at-mosphere conducive to the manifestation ofthe unknown. Within a few weeks, they beganhearing raps from the table. They were able tocommunicate with the knocker by asking sim-ple “yes” or “no” questions. Once the table ap-parently levitated. Eventually, Philip seemedto take on a personality of his own, indepen-dent of the one the group had assigned him.

He would reject or contradict his “life” story.Once, when a member reminded him that hewas purely imaginary, he disappeared forsome weeks, to reappear only when membersmanaged to recapture some semblance of be-lief in his actual existence.

On one occasion, the group demonstratedPhilip’s manifestations on a television pro-gram. Iris Owen and another member, Mar-garet Sparrow, wrote a book on the episode,which they believed demonstrated the realitynot of ghosts but of psychokinesis. One subse-quent observer, however, cautions that though“potentially highly significant, the experimenthas not been repeated by other researchers”(Dash, 1997).

See Also: TulpaFurther ReadingDash, Mike, 1997. Borderlands. London: Heine-

mann.Owen, Iris M., and Margaret Sparrow, 1976. Con -

juring up Philip. New York: Harper and Row.

Planetary CouncilCeleste Korsholm, a Sedona, Arizona, chan-neler and metaphysical counselor, learned ofthe Planetary Council one day in 1991. In anout-of-body state, she met the twelve as-cended masters who compose the ruling bodyof Earth’s solar system. Over the next fewyears, they returned individually to channelthe histories of the planets and their futures.Each planet, she learned, is like a university.Each of us comes from somewhere else, froma higher dimension of existence known as theSource, and enters through star gates such asLyra, Orion, Sirius, and the Pleiades, “whereour higher frequencies of Light are graduallydecreased to prepare for life in the denserthird dimension,” in Korsholm’s words (Kor-sholm, 1991), on the way to the solar system.

The education starts at the Schools of Sa t-urn, where the pilgrim gets a crash course ineach planet’s vibrations before spending a sepa-rate lifetime on at least one other planet beforemaking the decision whether to volunteer for“postgraduate work on Eart h” (Ko r s h o l m ,

200 Philip

1995). On the chosen planet, one assumes thephysical form of its inhabitants. That meansthat on Venus one becomes a winged hu-manoid that gives off light and color as it fli e s .Merbeings live on Neptune, and on Ur a n u sone finds hairy primates with the features ofboth human beings and the great apes. Ma r shas two advanced insect races, one of ants, theother of praying mantises. Jupiter housesgiant, intelligent reptilian forms. Each speciesgot its Light Intelligence from a group of trav-eling extraterrestrials called the Watchers whomonitor planets looking for species of exc e p-tional promise. As Earth was being deve l o p e d ,the inhabitants of other planets we re asked tocontribute re p re s e n t a t i ves, thus fairies, mer-men and mermaids, Bi gf o o t / Sasquatch, in-sects, and dinosaurs. Ex p l o rers and re f u g e e sf rom star wars live on the other planets. Ev i-dence of the presence of neighboring extrater-restrials can be found in archaeological discov-eries and ancient myths. Each group tended toconcentrate its efforts in a particular re g i o n ,for example Ma rtians in the Middle East, Ur a-nians in Mexico, and Plutonians in China.

Earth and other planets have undergonemuch turbulence, much of it caused by thetenth planet, Phoenix. “This huge planet’sthree thousand plus year orbit is at right an-gles to the plane of all the other planets’ or-bits,” Korsholm explains (Korsholm, 1995),and when the other planets are on the sameside of the sun as it, its powerful magneticforce field causes havoc on the surfaces ofthose worlds, both destroying and creating.The Planetary Council must always monitorthe location and effects of Phoenix. Its mem-bers also deal with the periodic arrival ofgroups from other solar systems. Some arehighly evolved and benign, others less devel-oped and belligerent.

According to Korsholm, the members ofthe Planetary Council are: Horus, represent-ing the sun, coordinates the council’s workwith that of higher space intelligences andChrist councils. Hermes (Mercury) is incharge of communication through space.Adonis (Venus) guides the evolution of love

and beauty. Enoch (Earth) oversees prophecy.Croesus (Mars) is responsible for the coordi-nation of council activities with the dictates ofthe Ascended Masters in the Brotherhood ofLight. Athena (the asteroid belt, formerly theplanet Maldek) defends truth and justice. Jove(Jupiter) balances magnetic fields. Zoroaster(Saturn) monitors order, structure, and des-tiny. Quetzalcoatal (Uranus) leads religiousand philosophical change. Merlin (Neptune)directs scientific discovery. Lao-Tzu (Pluto)offers objective, detached wisdom, and Apollo(Phoenix) generates change. All of these indi-viduals figure in earthly mythology and (inthe case of Lao-Tzu, the founder of Taoism)history.

See Also: Ascended Masters; Athena; Fairies encoun-tered; Sasquatch

Further ReadingKorsholm, Celeste, 1991. “Lao-Tzu, Planetary

Council Member from Pluto.” http://www.spir-itweb.org/Spirit/pluto-celeste.html.

———, 1995. “Tales from the Planets.” http://spir-itweb.org/Spirit/tales-planets-celeste.html.

PortlaPortla is best remembered as the extraterres-trial who in a July 18, 1952, channeling withGeorge W. Van Tassel introduced Ashtar, themost ubiquitous and beloved of New Age be-ings. The psychic message was, “Approachingyour solar system is a ventla [spaceship] withour chief aboard, commander of the stationSchare in charge of the first four sectors. . . .We are waiting here at 72,000 miles aboveyou to welcome our chief, who will be enter-ing this solar system for the first time” (VanTassel, 1952). The chief was Ashtar.

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Van Tassel, George W.Further ReadingVan Tassel, George W., 1952. I Rode a Flying Saucer!

The Mystery of the Flying Saucers Revealed. LosAngeles: New Age Publishing Company.

Power of Light (POL)One day in 1967, a deeply unhappy Swe d i s hman, Bjorn Ortenheim, vowed to commit sui-

Power of Light 201

cide. Prior to committing the act, howe ve r, helapsed into a deep, almost comalike sleep.When he awoke, he was mysteriously trans-formed, full of scientific ambitions and boldideas. He soon became aware that otherw o r l d l yentities we re instructing him during his sleep.They we re particularly interested in nonpollut-ing technology and in other inventions thatwould elevate human consciousness. In 1981,the leader of the gro u p, Power of Light (Ort e n-heim soon began thinking of him as POL), ap-p e a red to him in waking consciousness.

Ortenheim found himself ever more at-tracted to the Hawaiian island of Maui. POLinformed him that Lemurian ruins with stillpowerful energies and vibrations could befound on or near the ocean. In fact, the capi-tal city of Lemuria, Denerali, lay under thewater in the bay outside Maui. POL said alarge crystal from that lost continent existed

there. Ortenheim should use its energies, em-ploying his own technological innovations toenhance them, to raise human consciousness.

He soon moved to Maui to pursue hiswork, always under POL’s guidance. Accord-ing to Ortenheim, POL is not a person but anear-god who is among God’s highest ser-vants. POL is, he says, “in charge of the ulti-mate energy and source of life in our universe,the Universal Magnetic Field, UMF” (Mont-gomery, 1985).

See Also: LemuriaFurther ReadingMontgomery, Ruth, 1985. Aliens among Us. New


Prince NeosomPrince Neosom was Lee Childers, a Detroitbaker who, in 1958, reinvented himself as a

202 Prince Neosom

Landscape with volcanic craters, Haleakala Mountains, Maui, Hawaii National Park. Bjorn Ortenheim was informed byPower of Light that Lemurian ruins with still powerful energies and vibrations could be found on or near the ocean aroundMaui. (Library of Congress)

member of the royal family of the planetTythan, eight and a half light years fromEarth. Neosom said he had replaced the bodyof a stillborn child (Childers). He also claimedthat he could travel instantaneously throughspace simply by closing his eyes and wishinghimself to other planets. Three times, he said,the men in black had killed him, and threetimes a rejuvenation machine had broughthim back to life.

At the peak of his brief moment in thespotlight, Neosom/Childers was brought toNew York City to lecture. In December 1958,he appeared on Long John Nebel’s popularWOR radio show, which catered to the eccen-tric and the esoteric, but he managed to getthrown off the air before his allotted time wasup; his stories were too outlandish even forthe famously tolerant Nebel. By this time,Childers had left his wife and five childrenand taken up with Beth Docker, soon re-named Princess Negonna, whom he soonmarried and honeymooned with on Tythan.

Childers’s career on saucerdom’s fringescontinued until the early 1960s.

See Also: Men in blackFurther ReadingBarker, Gray, 1959. “Chasing the Flying Saucers.”

Flying Saucers (May): 19–43.Mann, Michael G., 1960. “Prince or King, He Isn’t a

Spaceman!” Saucer News 7, 1 (March): 5–7.Mapes. D. O., 1959. Prince Neosom, Planet: Tyton

[sic]. Buffalo, NY: self-published.

PsychoterrestrialsNew Age psychologist Michael Grosso usesthe term “psychoterrestrials” to describe arange of anomalous and paranormal entities,including UFO beings, Marian apparitions,and men in black. He believes that such enti-ties, though “mythic constructs,” are able toassume a quasi-physical reality because of thedeep resonance they have in humanity’s col-lective psyche. Another name for psychoter-restrials is psychic projections.

Grosso believes that UFOs and other exoticphenomena are “forces of rebirth” that the

“ultradimensional mind” has conjured up totransform mass consciousness in order to savethe human race for otherwise certain self-destruction. “Given the timeless, spaceless na-ture of ESP and PK [psychokinesis], perhapssome (or all) human minds form a system—aparallel universe of mind, a distinct entitywith its own properties. . . . It would be amind with properties distinct from compo-nent minds, on the assumption that the wholeis greater than the sum of its parts. . . . Per-haps this is the entity that holds the secret tothe UFO mystery” (Grosso, 1991).

In his view, psychoterrestrial phenomenaare so powerful that, for example, in theirUFO manifestation they are even able toshow up on radar. Grosso drew inspiration inhis speculations from the celebrated Swisspsychologist and philosopher C. G. Jung. Inhis own reflection on the UFO phenomenon,however, Jung, who thought UFOs wereprobably of extraterrestrial origin, rejected the

Psychoterrestrials 203

An artist’s impression of a gray alien, based on witnessdescriptions, an example of a psychoterrestrial being(Debbie Lee/Fortean Picture Library)

notion of “materialized psychisms” as impossi-ble, and, in particular, he dismissed the no-tion that materialized psychisms, even if theycould be proved to exist, could be detected byinstruments such as radar.

See Also: Imaginal beings; Marian apparitions; Menin black

Further ReadingGrosso, Michael, 1985. The Final Choice: Pl a y i n g

the Su rv i val Ga m e . Walpole, NH: St i l l p o i n tPu b l i s h i n g .

———, 1992. Frontiers of the Soul: Exploring PsychicEvolution. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.

———, 1989. “UFOs and the Myth of the NewAge.” In Dennis Stillings, ed. CyberbiologicalStudies of the Imaginal Component in the UFOContact Experience, 81–98. St. Paul, MN: ArchesProject.

———, 1991. “The Ultradimensional Mind.”Strange Magazine 7 (April): 10–13.

Jung, C. G., 1959. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth ofThings Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt,Brace and Company.

204 Puddy’s abduction

Puddy’s abductionAn incident from Australia in the early1970s may or may not shed light on theUFO abduction phenomenon. Ma u re e nPu d d y’s experiences, some contend, indicatethat persons who believe that aliens have kid-napped them may instead be suffering vividhallucinations, perhaps in altered states ofc o n s c i o u s n e s s .

On the evening of July 3, 1972, on her wayhome from seeing her hospitalized son, thisthirty-seven-year-old Victoria woman wasalarmed to see a glowing blue UFO pacingher car at a distance of no more than a hun-dred feet. Just as suddenly as it appeared, itwas gone. One night later that month, shebegan hearing a mental voice repeatedlyspeaking her name. The next evening, July 25,at the same place she had seen it before, theUFO showed up. Her car engine abruptly

Aliens, or psychoterrestrials, capture a man played by James Earl Jones in The UFO Incident, an NBC TV movie, 1975.(Photofest)

ceased functioning, and everything becameeerily silent. A mechanical voice speaking “tooperfect” English told her, “All your tests willbe negative.” It went on, “Tell the media. Donot panic. We mean no harm” (Magee, 1972,1978). At the UFO’s departure the car’s en-gine resumed operation.

She next heard the voice in Fe b ru a ry, when iti n s t ructed her to return to the “meeting place.”By this time she had met with two pro m i n e n tufologists, Judith Magee and Paul Norman, soshe called them and asked them to meet her atthe designated location. As Puddy waited in herp a rked car for the two to arrive, a man withlong, blond hair, wearing a uniform that lookedlike a ski suit, briefly appeared next to her be-f o re he vanished. As soon as they pulled up,Magee and Norman joined her inside her ve h i-cle. Puddy shouted that the same strange manwas beckoning to her, but the investigators sawnothing. She then seemed to faint, though hermouth kept moving. She spoke of being in around room and watching as a mushro o m -shaped device rose from the middle of the flo o r.It was cove red with markings reminiscent of hi-e roglyphics. Near it stood the blond-haired fig-u re she had seen minutes before. She said theman was telling her to describe what she wasseeing. All the while Puddy was growing eve r

m o re frightened, until finally she broke intotears. At that moment she regained full con-sciousness but re m e m b e red nothing.

She claimed one other subsequent en-counter with the stranger, whom she sawstanding in the road about a week later.

Australian ufologist Keith Basterfieldwould write, “All who interviewed MaureenPuddy thought her to be a normal, healthy in-dividual. The entire series of events puzzledher, and she got nothing but ridicule frompersons for reporting the episodes” (Baster-field, 1992). Her story bore some resemblanceto abduction accounts, but there are also somedifferences, notably the absence of the med-ical examination which figures in most suchexperiences. Still, skeptics see it as evidencethat what witnesses believe to be objective ex-periences may in fact be subjective in nature.

See Also: Abductions by UFOsFurther ReadingBasterfield, Keith, 1992. “Present at the Abduction.”

International UFO Reporter 17, 3 (May/June):13–14, 23.

Magee, Judith, 1972. “UFO over the MooraducRoad.” Flying Saucer Review 18, 6 (November/December): 3–5.

———, 1978. “Maureen Puddy’s Third Encounter.”Flying Saucer Review 24, 3 (November 1978):12–13, 15.

Puddy’s abduction 205

R. D.In both abduction reports and contactee sto-ries, claimants sometimes report seeinghuman beings onboard a UFO and in thecompany of aliens. One such incident is saidto have occurred on June 5, 1964, in Ar-gentina. At 4 A.M., a doctor and his wife weredriving a few miles from the airport at PajasBlancas, in Cordoba province, when their en-gine failed. A huge, extraordinary-lookingcraft landed on the highway in front of them.For the next twenty minutes the couple staredin puzzlement and unease at the UFO. Then,according to a press account, a man walkedout of it and spoke to them in Spanish, “Don’tbe afraid. I am a terrestrial. My name is R.D.” Apparently the man gave his full name,but published accounts give only his initials.He went on, “Tell mankind about it, in yourown fashion” (Creighton, 1974).

The man walked slowly back toward theUFO and was joined by two gray-clad beingswho had suddenly appeared. They boardedthe ship, and it flew rapidly away, a violet-col-ored trail in its wake.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; ContacteesFurther ReadingCreighton, Gordon, 1974. “The Humanoids in

Latin America.” In Charles Bowen, ed. The Hu -manoids, 84–129. London: Futura Publications.

RaRa channeled through Carla Rueckert. Ra wasnot an individual but a group entity, part ofthe “Confederation of Planets in the Serviceof the Infinite Creator” (Rueckert and Elkins,1977). The goal, Ra said, was to “give instruc-tions to those of planet Earth who would seekthe instructions for how to produce withinthemselves the vibration that is more harmo-nious with the original thought.”

Further ReadingRueckert, Carla, and Don Elkins, 1977. Secrets of the

UFOs. Louisville, KY: L/L Research.

Rainbow CityRainbow City was the ancestral, earthly homeof the human race, according to a mysticallyinclined couple, W. C. and Gladys Hefferlin.It was located in Antarctica before the Earthtipped on its side, and the continent becamethe uninhabitable place as it is known today.

The Hefferlins surfaced in 1946, in shortpieces published in Ray Palmer’s Amazing Sto -ries, then publishing a series of stories detail-ing the Shaver mystery, a supposedly true ac-count of Richard Shaver’s adventures withgood and evil races living in caverns under theearth. After W. C. Hefferlin made a passingreference to “Rainbow City,” Palmer ap-

R

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pended a statement describing it as “the head-quarters, a deserted city of the Gods (or theElder Race) under the ice of the [South] Pole”(Kafton-Minkel, 1989). Hefferlin claimed tohave access to advanced weapons and devicesleft over from Rainbow City, but his asser-tions about the science behind them were sofull of elementary technical errors that readerridicule encouraged Palmer to cease publish-ing Hefferlin’s writings.

He and his wife reappeared, however, in1947 and 1948, in publications of the Cali-fornia-based Borderland Sciences ResearchAssociates. In a series of articles, they re-counted their association with a mysteriousman named Emery, whom they first met in1927. Over time they developed a system oftelepathic communication with him, sendingthoughts back and forth from their Indianahome to his in New York City. Emery beganto travel widely, dropping out of sight withoutexplanation, then reappearing. Just before theonset of World War II, he informed them thathe had met a Tibetan master who lived in ahidden valley in that nation. Soon he wasworking under orders from the Masters ofHuman Destiny, otherwise known as the An-cient Three.

Recognizing W. C. Hefferlin as a reincar-nated engineer who had worked for the an-cients long ago, the Three asked him for helpin constructing a fleet of three hundred-fiftycircle-winged aircraft. After the craft werecompleted, they searched Antarctica for theruins of Rainbow City, where the Three hadlived during their first earthly incarnation.Emery himself participated in the search,which ended on Thanksgiving Day 1942when he found Rainbow City.

O ver time, Em e ry re vealed the secrets of theT h ree to the Hefferlins. Once, they said, thehuman race ruled hundreds of galaxies. Un f o r-t u n a t e l y, the spacefarers eventually encountere dthe Snake People, and soon deadly confli c ts p read through the cosmos. After centuries ofstalemate, the tide turned in the Snake Pe o p l e’sf a vo r. The Snake People pursued the humanst h rough space, stranding some on obscure ,

backwater planets. The rest made it to theplanet now known as Mars, where the last ofthe Human Em p i re lived in re l a t i ve comfortfor a long time. Then the planet began to die,its oxygen and water evaporating and the tem-p e r a t u re growing ever colder.

Thus the humans found their way to thethird planet in the solar system. They settledin what is now Antarctica, a pleasant, temper-ate place. They built seven cities, each with itsown color (Red City, Green City, Blue City,and so on). The greatest of all was RainbowCity, constructed from many colors of a veryhard plastic. Under the wise leadership of theson and daughter of the Great Ruler (still onMars) and the daughter’s fiancé (later to becalled the Ancient Three), the colony thrived,and a golden age ensued, ending when theSnake People, having discovered where thehumans were hiding, mounted a surprise at-tack. In the fierce battles that followed, theEarth was knocked on its side, turningAntarctica into a wasteland. The humans weredriven to other, now warmer continents.Their technology destroyed, they were re-duced to a primitive state and gradually lostall memory of their former elevated state.

When they rediscovered it, Emery and hisassociates found the city surrounded by tenthousand feet of ice, thus concealing the re-mains from previous explorers. Hot springsbeneath the city kept it warm, and the searchparty went through all six levels. Inside thecity, plants and trees of all kinds still grew,along with huge butterflies. All kinds of evi-dence of the ancients’ presence survived, in-cluding clothes (which suggested they wereeight feet tall) and advanced technology. Thetechnology included a teleportation deviceand a vast subway system. The trains werelinked to hollow caverns all over the earth.Emery traveled to some of them and foundyet more wonders from the ancients.

The Ancient Three sought to restore thehuman race’s former glories. According to theHefferlins, the world’s nonwhite races had al-ready accepted their leadership, which washeadquartered in seven temples in Africa,

208 Rainbow City

Asia, and South America. The “thought ma-chines” inside these temples broadcast vibra-tions to those who were receptive to them.The principal message was that other nationsmust free themselves of European domina-tion, though the Ancient Three had opposedthe Japanese imperial designs that helpedspark World War II. Once the Ancient Threehad realized their vision and taken benevolentcontrol of the Earth, there would be no moreslavery, colonialism, or excessive taxation, andall races would be equal.

Though the Hefferlins soon faded into ob-scurity without ever providing proof of Rain-bow City (or even of their enigmatic friendEmery, for that matter), the notion of Rain-bow City figured in Robert Dickhoff ’sAgharta: The Subterranean World (1951) andMichael X. Barton’s Rainbow City and theInner Earth People (1960).

See Also: Shaver mysteryFurther ReadingKafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:


X, Michael [pseud. of Michael X. Barton], 1960.Rainbow City and the Inner Earth People. Los An-geles: Futura.

RamthaRamtha, perhaps the leading channeled entityof the 1980s, first appeared in a Tacoma,Washington, living room to announce, “I amRamtha, the Enlightened One, and I havecome to help you over the ditch”—by which,it turned out, he meant the “ditch of limita-tion” (Knight, 1987). J. Z. Knight (born Ju-dith Darlene Hampton) and her husband hadbeen experimenting with pyramids, which ac-cording to a 1970s New Age belief had myste-rious powers. For a short time, Knight be-lieved that Ramtha was a demonic entity.Soon, however, a spiritualist friend helped herunderstand the nature of her experience, andshe gave her guidance in how to channelRamtha. On December 17, 1978, she gavethe first public channeling of Ramtha.

Ramtha claimed to be 35,000 years old,born on the lost continent of Lemuria.Lemuria, in the Pacific, was destroyed in an ir-responsible experiment its scientists con-ducted. Some residents, including Ramtha’sfamily, escaped to southern Atlantis (the ex-periment that devastated Lemuria also de-stroyed much of north Atlantis). There theylived, experiencing poverty and discrimina-tion in the slums of a city called Onai. Whenhe grew into adulthood, Ramtha led a revolt,which overthrew the existing order in At-lantis. As he was recovering from wounds, hebecame interested in meditation and spentmuch time reflecting on metaphysical ques-tions. He also learned to alter his body so thatits vibrations changed, allowing him to enterthe light realm. On the occasion of his physi-cal death, he ascended permanently to thatrealm. Just before that happened, though, hedemonstrated his new paranormal powers inIndia, where he is still remembered andrevered as the incarnate deity Rama.

In the early 1980s, Knight went publicwith Ramtha. She traveled throughout theUnited States giving two-day workshopsknown as “Ramtha Dialogues.” Along theway, she attracted the attention of New Age-oriented celebrities such as Shirley MacLaine,Richard Chamberlain, Mike Farrell, and Shel-ley Fabres, who enthusiastically supported herwork. MacLaine discussed Ramtha in herbest-selling Dancing in the Light (1985).Knight put together a nonprofit corporationthat evolved into the non-tax-exempt Sover-eignty, Inc.

By this time, Knight had amassed so muchmoney that a growing legion of critics ques-tioned her sincerity. She now lived on a luxu-rious horse-breeding ranch in Yelm, Washing-ton, the focus of a large following of pilgrimswho had moved to the Northwest fromhomes all over the nation and the world.Some, seeking a safe haven from the cata-clysmic Earth changes that Ramtha said wereabout to occur, had left families to do so. Ses-sions with Ramtha were expensive. Beyondthat, critics charged, Ramtha had become, in

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effect, Knight’s business partner; would-be in-vestors in Knight’s Arabian horses would seekthe master’s advice. After some complainedthey had purchased mediocre horses afterheeding Ramtha’s advice, authorities investi-gated, and Knight ended up reimbursing un-happy buyers, though no charges were filed.Critics also asserted that the once gregarious,friendly Ramtha had grown ever more author-itarian and demanding. Even some sympa-thetic to channeling beliefs speculated that“whatever energy came through J. Z. Knighthas either shifted, departed, or been replacedby a less benign entity” (Klimo, 1987).

In 1988, Knight formed Ramtha’s School ofEnlightenment, which claims some three thou-sand students from twe n t y - t h ree countries. In1995, a small scandal erupted when press ac-counts exposed the Federal Aviation Ad m i n i s-t r a t i o n’s payment of $1.4 million for sensitiv-ity-training classes overseen by a Ramthadisciple. Over the past decade or so, accord i n gto one knowledgeable observe r, “the pro p h e c i e sof Knight and Ramtha seem to have move dcloser to those of right-wing surv i valists anda n t i - Semites, who foresee a world held in thesinister group of international bankers as partof a New World Ord e r” (Brown, 1997).

Knowledgeable observers, such as religious-studies scholar J. Gordon Melton, say thatmuch of Ramtha’s teaching comes from theGnostic tradition, which holds that God ex-ists within each of us and is to be found therethrough contemplation and self-mastery.

See Also: Atlantis; Channeling; LemuriaFurther ReadingBrown, Michael F., 1997. The Channeling Zone:

American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cam-bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Carroll, Robert Todd, n.d. “The Skeptic’s Dictio-nary: Ramtha aka J. Z. Knight.” http://skepdic.com/channel.html.

Kauki, Christopher Vincent, 1997. “Ramtha in thePetri Dish: The Mixing of Science and Faith inYelm.” Syzygy 6, 1 (Winter/Spring): 139–142.

Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re -ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. LosAngeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

Knight, J. Z., 1987. A State of Mind. New York:Warner Books.

MacLaine, Shirley, 1985. Dancing in the Light. NewYork: Bantam Books.

Melton, J. Gordon, 1998. Finding Enlightenment:Ramtha’s School of Ancient Wisdom. Hillsboro,OR: Beyond Words Publishing.

Stearn, Jess, 1984. Soul Mates. New York: BantamBooks.

Weinberg, Steven L., ed., 1986. Ramtha. Eastsound,WA: Sovereignty.

———, ed., 1988. Ramtha: An Introduction. East-bound, WA: Sovereignty.

RamuRamu is the name George Adamski gave to avisitor from Saturn. With Ramu and others,Adamski flew around the moon one memo-rable night in 1954. He cautioned, however,that Ramu, like the other Space Brothers, has“an entirely different concept of names as weuse them” (Adamski, 1955). Thus, Ramu wasnot really the spaceman’s name. Adamski de-scribes Ramu as slightly over six feet, withruddy complexion and dark brown eyes andwavy black hair.

A different Ramu from Saturn figures in astory that farmer Velma Thayer told theCincinnati Enquirer in August 1955. ThisRamu landed in a flying saucer at her LakeGeneva, Wisconsin, farm on October 15,1928, along with other “little fellows.” Allwere blond-haired and from four feet sixinches to five feet three inches in height. Theystayed for ten days (it is not clear whether atThayer’s residence or in their saucer). Ramutold Thayer that they were from Saturn andhad come with peaceful intentions. U.S. gov-ernment authorities came to the farm andplaced a guard around the ship. At one point,however, the guard fell asleep, and the saucerescaped. Thayer said she had had occasionalcontacts since with Ramu and his crew.

Nonetheless, in an earlier account—onepublished in a contactee-oriented magazinebefore Adamski’s Ramu became known—Thayer did not mention a Ramu in connec-tion with the alleged experience, suggestingthat the inclusion of the name was a later em-bellishment. This earlier version says nothing

210 Ramu

about communication or interaction with thecrew. When the saucer landed, according toher, “Seven small people emerged and ran intothe woods,” never to be seen again (“SpaceShip,” 1954). In their absence, she examinedthe ship inside and out. Rather than escaping,the craft was taken to the General Electric lab-oratory, which subsequently informed herthat it was made up of materials that “defi-nitely did not belong to this earth.” Accordingto Thayer, a dozen landings of ships with sim-ilar crews took place in Wisconsin and Illinoisbetween 1919 and 1930.

See Also: Adamski, George; ContacteesFurther ReadingBartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,


“Space Ship Lands in Celery Field,” 1954. Interplan -etary News Digest (March): 22.

RaphaelRaphael is responsible for the “Starseed trans-missions,” said to come from a parallel dimen-sion through channeler Ken Care y. Care y, aMissouri farmer, had no previous channelingexperience before Raphael came through oneday in 1979. He says the messages first arrive dvia “w a ves or pulsations” that translated sym-bols into their verbal correlates. “Often,” hewrites, “it was the case that the only humanconceptual system with approximating termi-nology was religious. Hence, the occasionaluse of ‘Christian’ words and phrases” (Care y,1982). Eve n t u a l l y, the communications oc-c u r red more straightforw a rdly in En g l i s h .

Raphael says he exists only when he is in-teracting with Carey or with whomever he iscommunicating through Carey. When he isnot active, he merges “back into the Being be-hind all being,” awaiting his next mission. Onone occasion, however, he claimed to be theintelligence represented by Christ.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingCarey, Ken, 1982. The Starseed Transmissions: An Ex -

traterrestrial Report. Kansas City, MO: UNI-SUN.

RaydiaAfter a 1979 UFO sighting, Lyssa Royalfound herself more and more fascinated withparanormal subjects. Her interests led her, in1984, to Darryl Anka, who channeled Bashar.During the period of her association withAnka, she had a vivid dream in which an en-tity appeared to inform her that soon she her-self would be channeling. She was led to achanneling class in Los Angeles. By 1985, anumber of entities were making their presenceknown to her. One was Raydia, who stayedwith Royal for three years.

Royal went on to found the Association ofL ove and Light, channeling Raydia as well assome others. Raydia was a “heart - c e n t e re d”female entity, “a collective consciousness”with “a strong affiliation with the star Arc-t u rus.” She last communicated in 1988,telling persons who we re sitting in on a chan-neling session, “You will never see me in thisform again.” Royal says that Raydia “inte-grated herself” into an entity Royal wouldsubsequently channel, Germane (“Behind theVeil,” 1998).

See Also: Bashar; Channeling; GermaneFurther Reading“Behind the Veil: A Look at the Phenomenon of

Channeling,” 1998. http://www.royalpriest.com/channel.htm.

Melton, J. Go rdon, 1996. En c yclopedia of Am e r i -can Re l i g i o n s . Fifth edition. De t roit, MI: Ga l eRe s e a rc h .

RenataRenata channels through Scott Amun. OnApril 15, 1999, she (gender is presumed sincethe entity does not specify its sex) camet h rough for the first time to discuss va r i o u si s s u e s .

Renata says that on her planet, Os y l l i u m ,people look and act much like humans; ye t ,p a r a d ox i c a l l y, Os y l l i u m’s history is richer andm o re diverse than Eart h’s. Perhaps one re a s o nis that Osyllium people change their languagee ve ry four or five years. They do this by ad-justing their brain frequencies, and the pur-pose is to accelerate change and encourage

Renata 211

n ew insight. Great changes are about to occuron Earth through the electrical energy thatemanates from the north pole. Human beingssoon will notice a “special effect” in then o rthern lights—a message from Re n a t a’speople. Humans will also sense a changingsituation in their dreams, which will help pre-p a re them for their “opening into higher elec-trical fre q u e n c i e s . ”

Further ReadingAmun, Scott, 1999. “Morning Dawns on the

Human Race.” http://www.scottamun.com/write/April1598write.htm.

Reptoid childIn a story represented as true by Mexican ufol-ogist Luis Ramirez Reyes, a woman is said tohave given birth to a hideous alien baby after amissing-time, presumed abduction experi-ence. Ramirez claims that the birth took placein September 1993 but “due to its very naturehas been kept under wraps.”

The unnamed woman, a cosmetics sales-person, was on her usual route, which tookher between Mexico City and Poza Rica, Ver-acruz, one day in early 1993. As she passedthe Teotihuacan pyramids, she saw what shethought was a UFO in the clear sky. Suddenly,she found herself in Poza Rica. Though herwristwatch told her it was 11 A.M., the actualtime was 2 P.M. She had no idea how she hadtraveled the 185 miles to the city.

In the weeks to come, she experiencedweakness and nausea. When a doctor exam-ined her, he pronounced her pregnant. Sheprotested that this was impossible; she was avirgin. Nonetheless, seven months later, shegave birth to a hideous creature described ashaving “double-membraned eyes, thick frog-like lips, joined fingers and hard, shell-featureon its skin which [was] similar to a tortoise’sshell.” At first the doctors and nurses pan-icked. The clinic director finally managed tocalm them. He ordered them to keep the mat-ter strictly confidential.

The creature was kept in an incubator forthree weeks, fed on a diet of herbs. It recoiled

from ordinary light but was comfortable ininfrared light. Scales began to grow along itsspine. An expert “who has requestedanonymity” examined photographs of thecreature, which he deduced belonged to a“saurian” species.

The mother is raising the creature in seclu-sion. It is an “amphibian reptile” said to be“horrible to behold.”

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; ReptoidsFurther ReadingCorrales, Scott, 2000. “Alien Shock: The Encounter

Phenomenon Overseas.” Ohio UFO Notebook 21:22–26.

ReptoidsBeings sometimes referred to as “reptoids” or“reptilians” figure in a number of abductionand contact reports. According to one source,three different varieties exist: “the Reptoid(reptilian-humanoid crossbreeds), the variousreptilian-gray crossbreed types, and the hierar-chical reptilian overlords called the Draco(winged reptilian types)” (“Reptilian ‘Aliens,’”n.d.). Draco is a constellation from which,some believe, the reptoids come.

A close encounter of the third kind involv-ing reptoids (though before the concept hadbecome popular) happened on November 17,1967, when thirteen-year-old David Seewaldtof Calgary, Alberta, while crossing a vacantlot, heard a high-pitched sound. When helooked for its source, he saw a house-sizedUFO landing. It shot a beam of light at him,putting him into a trancelike state as he waslevitated into the craft. There two hideous-looking entities with brown crocodile skintook off Seewaldt’s clothes and led him into aroom where he was examined and given ashot. He was then beamed back to the field.By the time he got home, all conscious mem-ory of the encounter had passed. It returnedfive months later in a vivid dream. A yearlater, investigators, including a University ofAlberta psychologist, interviewed the youth.

John S. Carpenter, a Missouri-based socialworker and abduction researcher, reports cases

212 Reptoid child

213

An artist’s rendition of the “Loveland Frogman,” a reptoid that was seen by two Ohio policemen in March 1972 (RonSchaffner/Fortean Picture Library)

of “repulsive and insensitive” reptilian aliens.“What is fascinating,” he writes, “is that per-sons who had never heard of these lizard-typesare reporting strikingly similar details in re-gards [sic] to their anatomy, manner, and be-havior. In every case of mine the reptilianforces a rape upon the subject with no expla-nation or apparent reason” (Carpenter, 1994).Another researcher, Karla Turner, has writtenof similar incidents, including one in whichan abductee “recalled” being on a table sur-rounded by humanoid aliens. She said, “Areptile-looking creature was getting on top ofme, I guess to rape me,” just before she lapsedinto unconsciousness (Turner, 1994).

Besides such experiential claims, reptoid/reptilian aliens have given rise to a newmythology that fuses conspiracy theories, bib-lical literalism, hollow earth, and other ideas.Among the most bizarre is the assertion by aleader of Britain’s Green Party, David Icke,who holds that the Royal Family are shape-shifting reptilians who conduct bloody ritualson hapless human victims, including children.At least one writer reports that former Presi-dent George Bush is a reptilian. Others assertthat reptoids live in vast caverns underground,working in collaboration with evil forces inU.S. military and intelligence communities.Others say that the reptilians have been slan-dered, that—except for their (to the humaneye) unsettling appearance—they are gentle,decent, and well intentioned.

One who speaks well of reptilians is jazzsinger Pamela St o n e b rooke, who has spokenopenly of a sexual relationship with one. Sh ehas “g reat re s p e c t” for him and a “p ro f o u n dconnection with this being.” Under hypnosis,she was re g ressed to an earlier life hundreds ofthousands of years ago to find herself a mem-ber of a band of “reptilian warriors facing ac a t a s t rophic event in which we perishedt o g e t h e r. . . . I believe that on one level, I maybe meeting these entities again, perhaps fellowwarriors from the past warning us of an im-pending, self-inflicted doom” (“The Re p t i l-ians,” n.d.). Carpenter has written of re p t o i dwitnesses known to him, “On e . . . sheepishly

admits to having an incredible orgasm whilebeing totally repulsed by the intru d e r’sg rotesque appearance. Within two months asecond female from the same town re p o rt e dindependently the same type of Reptilian in-va d e r, with the same surprising and embarrass-ing orgasmic response!” (Carpenter, 1993).

Some observers believe that the reptiliansare satanic entities related to the serpent wholed Adam and Eve astray. They maintain thathundreds of thousands of these creatures—asmany as one hundred fifty-thousand in NewYork alone—live in underground bases, feast-ing on children whom they lure into theirlairs. According to some, however, the reptil-ians are vegetarians.

John Rhodes writes that the reptilianstravel from their home region—Alpha Draco-nis—in mother ships with most of the occu-pants in a state of suspended animation forthe bulk of the voyage. As they pass planets,some of the functioning crew fly off in scoutships to study the new worlds and establishsubterranean bases thereon. Where Earth isconcerned, according to Rhodes, the reptil-ians hatch their plots from these bases, “estab-lishing a network of human-reptilian cross-bred infiltrates [sic] within various levels ofthe surface culture’s military industrial com-plexes, government bodies, UFO/paranormalgroups, religious, and fraternal (priest) orders,etc. These crossbreeds, some unaware of theirreptilian genetic ‘mind-control’ instructions,act out their subversive roles as ‘reptilianagents,’ setting the stage for an [sic] reptilianled ET invasion” (Rhodes, n.d.).

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Close encounters ofthe third kind; Hollow earth; Hybrid beings;King Leo; Reptoid child; Volmo

Further ReadingAllan, W. K., 1975. “Crocodile-Skinned Entities at

Calgary.” Flying Saucer Review 20, 6 (April):25–26.

Carpenter, John S., 1993. “Abduction Notes: Reptil-ians and Other Unmentionables.” MUFONUFO Journal 300 (April): 10–11.

———, 1994. “Other Types of Aliens: PatternsEmerging.” In Andrea Pritchard, David E.Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey, and Clau-dia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the

214 Reptoids

215

A painting of Madame Helene Blavatsky, who proposed the theory of five “root races,” with the symbol of the TheosophicalSociety above her head (Fortean Picture Library)

Abduction Study Conference, 91–95. Cambridge,MA: North Cambridge Press.

Coleman, Loren, 1988. “Other Lizard People Revis-ited.” Strange Magazine 3: 34.

D’Light, Joy, and Elliemiser, 1999. “The Reptiliansand King Leo.” http://www.greatdreams.com/reptlan/repleo.htm.

McClure, Kevin, 1999. “Dark Ages.” Fortean Times129 (December): 28–32.

“Reptilian ‘Aliens’: What Do They Look Like?,” n.d.http://www.reptoids.com/phydes.htm.

“Reptiles/Serpents/Lizards in History/Mythology/Religion,” n.d. http://www.channel1.com/users/com/cci/reptiles.htm.

Rhodes, John, n.d. “O.R.I.G.I.N.S.” http://www.reptoids.com/origins/htm.

Turner, Karla, 1994. Taken: Inside the Alien-HumanAbduction Agenda. Roland, AR: Kelt Works.

Root RacesIn the alternative reality proposed in the influ-ential nineteenth-century Theosophical writ-ings of Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, the worldhas seen five “root races,” each with its ownseven “sub-races,” and these latter with theirown “branch races.” Blavatsky wrote that twomore root races will come before the humanrace finishes its evolution.

The First Root Race, of “fire mist” folk,lived near the north pole in the ImperishableSacred Land. They were invisible. The SecondRoot Race were astral beings on their way tobecoming material and visible. Also living inthe polar region, they occupied a more or lessmaterial continent known as Hyperborea,where they learned how to reproduce sexually.The Third Root Race were apelike in appear-

ance with characteristics of both sexes; somehad four arms, and some had an eye in theback of their heads. These beings lived on thenow-lost Pacific continent of Lemuria. By thetime the Fourth Root Race, dwelling on At-lantis, appeared on Earth, the present humanform had developed. Humans represent theFifth Root Race. In the relatively near future,the Sixth Root Race will replace humans.After the Seventh Root Race has risen andfallen, a new cycle of civilizations will beginon the planet Mercury.

Blavatsky claimed as her source for theserevelations an “archaic Manuscript—a collec-tion of palm leaves made impermeable towater, fire, and air, by some specific unknownprocess. . . . On the first page is an immacu-late white disk within a dull black ground. Onthe following page, the same disk, but with acentral point” (Blavatsky, 1889). These “Stan-zas of Dzyan” recorded the hidden history ofthe cosmos and all of its inhabitants, includ-ing the human race. Other scholars, however,contend that Blavatsky drew on contempo-rary scientific and occult literature and embel-lished it considerably, though not quite be-yond recognition.

See Also: Atlantis; LemuriaFurther ReadingBlavatsky, H. P., 1889. The Secret Doctrine, London:

Theosophical Publishing Company.De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The At -

lantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature.New York: Dover Publications.

Meade, Marion, 1980. Madame Blavatsky: TheWoman behind the Myth. New York: G. P. Put-nam’s Sons.

216 Root Races

Saint MichaelSaint Michael the Archangel is perhaps bestk n own from the traditional Georgia Sea Is-lands spiritual “Michael, Row the BoatA s h o re,” but even in contemporary timesome people claim to have experienced hisp resence. One is a Southern Californiawoman, Melissa MacLeod, a practicingRoman Catholic. In the 1980s, she experi-enced terrifying nocturnal visitations inwhich a tall, black-hooded fig u re stared at hermenacingly from beside her bed. She is con-vinced, according to ufologist Ann Dru f f e l ,that her intense belief in Michael saved herf rom this demonic manifestation.

Fascinated by MacLeod’s experiences, afriend, writer and parapsychologist StephenA. Schwartz, engaged in three months’ intensemeditation to see if he could visualizeMichael. After three months, a point of lightsuddenly shone in his room. Within it, theform of a luminous entity, human in shapebut larger, emerged into view. “He had a de-meanor of absolute implacability,” Schwartzrecalled (Druffel, 1998). He was convinced hehad seen the archangel.

Further ReadingDruffel, Ann, 1998. How to Defend Yo u r s e l f

against Alien Ab d u c t i o n . New Yo rk: T h re eR i vers Pre s s .

SanandaSananda, a popular channeling entity, is a pow-e rful being who is Ashtar’s superior in the spacemission to redeem Earth. Sananda, known asJesus in an earlier, earthly incarnation, is per-haps best known, howe ve r, as the principalcontact of Do rothy Ma rtin (Sister T h e d r a ) ,whose failed prophecy of earth-shaking eve n t sin December 1954 attracted worldwide atten-tion and became the subject of an influ e n t i a lcase study in the sociology of re l i g i o n .

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Hierarchal Board; Sis-ter Thedra

Further ReadingFestinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley

Schachter, 1956. When Prophecy Fails. Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press.


SasquatchSasquatch—also known as Bi gfoot—is a largeapelike cre a t u re unre c o g n i zed by zoology butoften re p o rted seen in the forests of the Pa c i ficNo rt h west of the United States and Canada’sfar west. To those few scientists who are willingto concede its possible existence, Sasquatch isthought to be related to Homo sapiens’ primateancestors. In other words, though intelligent as

S

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218

Saint Michael casting the dragon Satan and his angels down to Earth (Fortean Picture Library)

animals go, it does not have human, much lesssuperhuman, intelligence. T h e re are, howe ve r,individuals who claim contacteelike dealingswith Sasquatch, which they describe as highlye vo l ved beings with extraord i n a ry mentalp owe r s .

Southern California psychic Joyce Pa rt i s e ,holding a sealed envelope containing a pho-tograph of an alleged Sasquatch footprint,d e c l a red that “t h e re’s a civilization of thou-s a n d s” of “gorilla men” who live under-g round and are “able to communicate withthose in outer space” (Slate, 1976). So m ewitnesses assert that when they tried to takephotographs or collect other direct evidenceof their Sasquatch sightings, the cre a t u re sused a kind of hypnosis to pre vent themf rom acting.

Still others say they have re c e i ved detailedp s ychic messages, often consisting of spiri-tual and ecological material. The Sa s q u a t c hmay appear, at least initially, as no morethan a pair of glowing eyes or a ball of lightthat can enter anywhere, even into closedhouses and bedrooms. They can also changeshapes. In a handful of cases, UFO witnessessay they have seen apelike cre a t u res duringclose encounters, and a small number of ab-duction incidents recount onboard interac-tions with Sasquatch cre a t u res, seen in thecompany of (re l a t i vely) more conve n t i o n a lh u m a n o i d s .

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; ContacteesFurther ReadingChorvinsky, Mark, 1994. “Our Strange World.” Fate

47, 10 (October): 22–24.

Sasquatch 219

A photograph of the track of a huge animal, seen by Mount Everest climbers and said to be made by the AbominableSnowman, 1958. Similar creatures, generally called Bigfoot or Sasquatch, are often reported in the forests of the PacificNorthwest of the United States and Canada’s far west. (Bettmann/Corbis)

Fenwick, Lawrence J., 1983. “Multiple Abductionsin Canada.” MUFON UFO Journal Pt. I. 183(May): 10–13; Pt. II. 184 (June): 3–6.

Halpin, Marjorie, and Michael M. Ames, eds., 1980.Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records andModern Evidence. Vancouver: University ofBritish Columbia Press.

Slate, B. Ann, 1976. “Gods from Inner Space.” UFOReport 3, 1 (April): 36–38, 51–52, 54.

Slate, B. Ann, and Alan Berry, 1976. Bigfoot. NewYork: Bantam Books.

SatoniansSatonians, according to the Solar Cross Foun-dation, a onetime organization of contacteesympathizers, are evil space people. They lookexactly like good space people, but personswho encounter them can detect their negativethoughts. They also respond ambiguously andevasively when asked to identify themselves.Satonians always lose in conflicts with theirbenevolent counterparts. A person approach-ing a spacecraft should be certain it is not aSatonian ship.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingTuella [pseud. of Thelma B. Turrell], ed., 1989.

Ashtar: A Tribute. Third edition. Salt Lake City,UT: Guardian Action Publications.

Secret Chiefs“Secret Chiefs” are shadowy superhumanadepts who have used their magical power andknowledge to initiate and guide occult groupsand hidden societies.

According to British occultist S. L. Mac-Gregor Mathers (1854–1918), who claimedto have met the Secret Chiefs on a number ofoccasions, these people or entities are able tolive in both physical and psychic bodies. Theyare, he told a correspondent, “possessed of ter-rible . . . powers. . . . I felt I was in contactwith a force so terrible that I can only com-pare it to the shock one would receive frombeing near a flash of lightning during a greatthunderstorm” (Keith, 1997).

Further ReadingKeith, Jim, 1997. Casebook on the Men in Black. Lil-

burn, GA: IllumiNet Press.

SemjaseSemjase is best known in contactee circles as abeautiful spacewoman from the planet Er r ain the Pleiades star system. Ed u a rd “Bi l l y”Meier of Sw i t zerland claims to have met herafter her “beamship” landed on his farm onthe afternoon of Ja n u a ry 28, 1975, initiatinga series of contacts that made Meier the mostwell known and controversial of the second-generation contactees. Meier would allegetrips through space and time in the companyof Semjase and her associates, and he wouldp roduce photographs said to depict her butthought by critics to be a model in a Se a r sc a t a l o g .

According to Meier, Semjase is around 350years old, though she looks to be in her twen-ties. She is blond, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned.Her only extraterrestrial characteristic is herextended earlobes. Because she possessesknowledge remarkable even by Pleiadian stan-dards, she is considered an Jshrjsh (ish-rish), asort of demigoddess. Before meeting Meier in1975, she spent eight years in the DAL Uni-verse (a twin parallel universe to the Earth’s,known as the DERN Universe) in the com-pany of Asket, a DAL native woman who hadassisted Meier through his early—child andyoung-adult—interactions with extraterrestri-als. She then left the DAL Universe and re-turned briefly to Erra before arriving in Eu-rope. Meier insists that her orders were towork exclusively on that continent.

While visiting the headquarters of theMeier movement, the Semjase Silver StarCenter in Hinterschmidruti, Switzerland, onDecember 15, 1977, she suffered a life-threat-ening accident. A beamship rushed her backto Erra for medical treatment. On returningthe followed May, she resumed contact withMeier. Those contacts ended on March 16,1981, when other duties kept her away untilearly 1984. Their final contact occurred onFebruary 3, 1984, Meier’s forty-seventh birth-day. The following November, complicationsfrom her 1977 accident led to a health emer-gency. She was taken to the DAL Universe tobegin the decades-long process of recovery.

220 Satonians

Fred Bell of Laguna Beach, California, hashis own Semjase tales to tell, to Meier’s in-tense displeasure. An inventor, musician,artist, and holistic-health enthusiast, Bell—acommitted believer in pyramid energy—oncewent about in the world with a small pyramidon his head. He says that beginning in 1971he received mental impressions of an oddly fa-miliar, beautiful blond woman. Eventually, hebecame convinced that he had known her in aprevious lifetime, when he was an archaeolo-gist who uncovered evidence that Paladinslanded on Earth long ago. Soon Bell metSemjase personally. At first she would not givehim her name, but when they got close—ap-parently even having a sexual relationship fora time—she told him her life history and re-vealed the secrets of the Pleiadians. She helpedhim with various projects and inventions. Bellcame to refer to Semjase as his “soul mate.”He also met her father, Ptaah, and others.

For a time, Bell was on friendly terms withWendelle C. Stevens, an Arizona man mostresponsible for bringing Meier’s claims to anAmerican audience. Stevens has published aseries of books based on his investigations inSwitzerland and also on Meier’s contact di-aries. At first Stevens cited Bell’s claims as in-dependent evidence for the existence of Sem-jase and Pleiadean visitors.

In due course, however, Meier denouncedBell’s stories as lies. A Pleiadian named Quet-zal told Meier that Bell could not possibly betelling the truth because Semjase and Ptaahhad never been to America. Moreover, thePleiadians entered into physical contact onlywith Meier, and nobody else. Quetzal wasamong the extraterrestrials with whom Bellsupposedly interacted.

One fundamentalist Christian writer holdsthat Meier got the name “Semjase” from thefallen angel/demon Shemyaza, described inthe apocryphal Book of Enoch. Or it mightbe the Semjase, a real entity, that is one ofSatan’s emissaries, one of the “many evil de-ceptive forces at work in the world right now”(“Billy Meier and the Swiss UFO Case,” n.d.).

See Also: Contactees; Meier, Eduard “Billy”

Further Reading“Billy Meier and the Swiss UFO Case,” n.d. http://

netpci.com/-tttbbs/Articles-UFO/semjase.html.Meier, “Billy” Eduard Albert, n.d. “‘Billy’ Eduard Al-

bert Meier Dissociates Himself from Dr. FredBell’s Lies and Claims.” http://www.figu.ch/us/critics/contra/bell.htm.

Steiger, Brad, 1988. The Fellowship: Spiritual ContactBetween Humans and Outer Space Beings. NewYork: Dolphin/Doubleday.

SethJane Roberts’s channeling of Seth had largeimpact on the emerging New Age movementin the 1960s. Seth first appeared when theElmira, New York, writer and her husbandwere playing with a ouija board in 1963. SoonRoberts learned how to put herself into atrance state and let Seth—whom she thoughtof less as a spirit than as some kind of intelli-gent energy force—speak through her. Sherecorded these sessions and used a few ofthem in a book, How to Develop Your ESPPower (1966), later reissued as The Coming ofSeth (1976).

In 1970, with the publication of The Se t hMa t e r i a l , Ro b e rts commenced writing a se-ries of books, most of them focused onSe t h’s teachings. In time, a Seth move m e n tcame into existence on the New Age scene.Ro b e rts also started channeling Wi l l i a mJames, the great American psyc h o l o g i s t ,p h i l o s o p h e r, and psychical re s e a rc h e r, andreleasing books based upon Ja m e s’s allegedp o s t m o rtem observations and experiences.Unlike some channelers who would followh e r, Ro b e rts remained re c l u s i ve and public-ity-shy and rarely appeared in public. Sh edied on September 5, 1984. After her deathother channelers claimed to have heard fro mSeth. One, Thomas Massari, re p o rted thatSeth had communicated with him as early as1 9 7 2 .

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingRoberts, Jane, 1970. The Seth Material. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.———, 1972. Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the

Soul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Seth 221

———, 1978. The Afterdeath Journal of an AmericanPhilosopher: The World View of William James. En-glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

———, 1981. The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto.Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

ShaariShaari is an extraterrestrial who inhabits thebody of a young professional woman. Thewoman, an occasional practitioner of channel-ing, was seriously injured in a car accident.After the accident, she decided that she hadserved her life purpose and would go on toanother level of existence, though without“dying”; instead, she gave her body to a beingof higher consciousness. This being would beable to observe and offer insight into upcom-ing planetary changes that will affect every-body who lives on Earth.

The Intergalactic Council of Twelve (con-sisting of space people and angels) and theStar Command, working with the earth-woman, carefully effected the change over aperiod of six months between January andJuly 1989. On July 14, the exchange occurred.By this time, the woman was out of the hospi-tal and had resumed a part-time occupation,the conducting of channeling workshops. Thewoman was holding one on an island in thePacific Northwest when she was instructed togo to the south part of the island, lie down onthe shore, and breathe rhythmically. Shaari,waiting in a spaceship in the company ofAshtar and others, found herself enveloped inlight and drawn into the woman’s body.

“Everything that I was familiar with hadjust shifted,” she recalled. “There I was in abody that felt like concrete. Nothing moved,everything felt very heavy. . . . As I started tothink about moving, these awkward fleshylimbs began to respond and jerk and twitch.Finally, I managed to get on my feet and even-tually made it back to the workshop site. Thepeople there were wonderful and took care ofme in all ways.” Shaari says her mission is to“bridge the gap between human and extrater-restrial communication and to establish the

potential for technological exchange and in-terplanetary trade” (Shaari, 1994).

Prior to her incarnation on Earth, Shaariwas a commander in the Star Command,which she had served for most of her 750years. She was born a Pleiadian/Arcturian hy-brid “created out of the thoughts of aPleiadean and Arcturian council.” In otherwords, she did not have biological parents.Even so, she has a family and a mate namedMishar, a Star Command officer, counselor,and healer. Nearly seven feet tall, he hailsfrom Arcturus, which means that he has aspectacular set of wings. These wings allowhim to shift consciousness and to run throughdifferent color, light, and sound frequencies.With this power he monitors the fluctuationsof mass human consciousness, which can havean adverse effect on weather patterns. If neces-sary, he shifts that consciousness in a morepositive direction toward less destructiveweather. Mishar also seeks an earthly incarna-tion but has yet to find an Earth male who iswilling to surrender his consciousness in ex-change for Mishar’s.

The British Columbia woman who nowcalls herself Shaari claims to have all memoriesof her extraterrestrial life available to her inwaking consciousness. Though she can chan-nel, she does not often do so because she doesnot have the need.

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Hybrid beingsFurther ReadingShaari, 1994. “An Extraterrestrial’s Journey to

Earth.” http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/et-jour-ney.html.

ShanShan is a name space people sometimes callthe Earth. Shan is regarded as a troubledplanet strongly influenced by dark forces. Itsreputation is such that spaceships from otherworlds have come here both to protect extra-terrestrials from human influence and to re-form humans and defeat Satan.

According to the pseudonymous contacteePatrick J. Bellringer, Shan is undergoing radi-

222 Shaari

cal changes now that it has been permitted tomove from the third dimension to the fourthdimension. In 1962, Shan entered the PhotonBelt, an invisible band of powerful light en-ergy, as it began the transition which contin-ues now but which will be completed in theearly years of the twenty-first century. Begin-ning on August 17, 1987, Shan was led a dis-tance of thirteen million light years into a neworbit closer to the Great Central Sun as mil-lions of starships, using powerful magneticbeams, transferred it to another solar systemin the Pleiades. The process was completed onDecember 15, 1995. Sahn is now the fourthplanet in the orbit of Coeleno (see-lee-no).

Few human beings have noticed the transi-tion because the space people have gone togreat lengths to conceal their operation. If thesky looks familiar, appearances are deceptive;the familiar stars and planets have been re-placed by hovering starships, which take careto remain in precisely the same configurationas the constellations of old. Only the most ob-servant have realized that the sun is emittingmore intense light but looks smaller (becausewe are now seven million miles farther awayfrom our new sun so as to adjust for the dif-ferences from the old one). Our new moon isbrighter because of Coeleno’s more brilliantlight. Soon Shan will be moved into the spiri-tually advanced fourth dimension, but not be-fore all kinds of devastating changes occur.Radical weather changes, massive volcaniceruptions, and other cataclysms will wipe outthe unenlightened parts of humanity (un-aware of but still under Satan’s influence) sothat only those who are morally pure and in-tellectually superior will survive to enter thenew realm.

Among the victims will be Satan and hisminions, who live on Shan but remain oblivi-ous to the Earth’s new location in space. Thespace people will launch a surprise attack onSatan and drive him and his troops into thevoid where they can no longer do harm.

According to Bellringer—himself reincar-nated from the Coeleno system but from thefifth planet, Hatonn, to which he and his

Pleiadean family will return soon—Shan fromthe beginning was regarded as a planet of un-usual attractiveness. Two hundred six millionyears ago immigrants from the Pleiades—ourancestors—settled on it. Bellringer states thatShan “held a position at the cross-roads of theCosmos as a supply planet for other planets.Because of its abundance and beauty it waschosen as the ‘prison’ planet by Lucifer, theArch-Angel when he left the Cosmic Realmsfor his anarchy against God/Aton.” Because ofthe presence of Satan and his allies, the peopleof Shan have had an extremely difficult timeachieving “complete harmony and balancewith the Laws of God and of the Creation.”Among other things, Satan has kept humansignorant or fearful of the extraterrestrial racesthat are visiting Shan and attempting tochange it for the better. “Shan has been a spe-cial schoolroom for the ‘gifted kids’—a toughcourse to learn tough lessons. Sadly enough,most have failed the course” (Bellringer, n.d.).

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingBellringer, Patrick H., n.d. “People of the Lie: The

Photon Belt.” http://www.fourwinds10.com/phb/photon.htm.

Shaver mysteryThe Shaver mystery is named after RichardSharpe Shaver. Shaver’s strange claims abouthis experiences with cavern-dwelling deros(deranged and vicious) and teros (virtuous butoverwhelmed), warring remnants of an an-cient earthly race and possessors of advancedtechnologies, were featured prominently inthe popular science-fiction pulp Amazing Sto -ries between 1944 and 1948. Amazing’s editor,Ray Palmer, promoted Shaver’s stories for thenext three decades, and Shaver continued totell them until his death.

The genesis of the episode was a letter theh e re t o f o re obscure Sh a ver wrote to Am a z i n g i n1943. The letter purported to be a re p ro d u c-tion of an ancient alphabet from Lemuria, alost continent said to have sunk into the Pa c i ficOcean some twe l ve thousand years ago (in re a l-

Shaver mystery 223

i t y, Lemuria is a nineteenth-century inve n t i o n ) .Palmer published it in Am a z i n g’s Ja n u a ry 1944issue. By then, he and Sh a ver we re corre s p o n-ding. Sh a ver produced a ten-thousand-wordmanuscript titled “A Warning to Fu t u re Ma n , ”which Palmer rew rote as a science-fic t i o nn ovella, “I Remember Lemuria!” The story ap-p e a red under Sh a ve r’s by-line in the Ma rc h1945 issue. Palmer presented it as a true storybased on racial memory, though Sh a ve rclaimed that he had re c e i ved his knowledge ofh u m a n i t y’s hidden history directly from beingswho live in a vast network of tunnels and cave sunder the Eart h’s surf a c e .

The response was a flood of letters fromcurious readers and some from persons whorelated unusual experiences that they thoughtvalidated Shaver. A promotional genius withthe instincts of a carnival barker, Palmercoined the phrase “Shaver mystery,” started aShaver Mystery Club, and opened Amazing’s

pages to allegedly factual material and science-fiction stories based on it. Palmer wrote thatwhen he visited Richard and Dorothy Shaverat their farm, he heard mysterious voices that“could not have come from Mr. Shaver’s lips.”They were speaking first in English then in a“strange language,” about a woman who ear-lier that day had been “torn into four quartersabout four miles away and four miles down[from the Shaver house]” (Palmer, 1961).

At least in its most vital phase, the Shavermystery ended in 1948, when pressure fromoutraged science-fiction fans led Ziff-Davis,Amazing’s publisher, to order its closing. Thatsame year Palmer and Curtis Fuller foundedFate, dedicated to the “true mysteries” Amaz -ing had featured along with Shaver matters,and he left the science-fiction magazine thefollowing year. Not long afterward, Palmermoved to Amherst, Wisconsin, where hestarted Mystic (later Search) and Other Worlds(later Flying Saucers). These publications car-ried articles by and about Shaver. Between1961 and 1964, Palmer published sixteen is-sues of a trade-paper-formatted magazine, TheHidden World, devoted entirely to the Shavermystery. Shaver died in 1975. Palmer, whohad continued to champion the “mystery”while disputing some of Shaver’s interpreta-tions, died two years later.

Though to all but a few Shaver’s claimswere outlandish and absurd, even grotesque,Shaver did not strike those who knew him as ahoaxer. There seemed little doubt that Shaverbelieved what he said, notwithstanding somenoteworthy inconsistencies in his testimonyover the years. For example, he told at leastfour mutually exclusive stories about how helearned of the Earth’s secret past and its sub-terranean races. In his most frequent telling,however, it occurred first through telepathicmessages from a mysterious woman, then asmental voices emanating from depraved crea-tures known as “deros” (from “detrimental ro -bots,” though they were not robots as such;see explanation on next page).

These experiences seem to have occurred inthe early 1930s. Always vague on dates,

224 Shaver mystery

Cover of The Hidden World magazine, spring 1961,containing articles on the Shaver mystery (Fortean PictureLibrary)

Shaver was also vague on what was happeningin his life amid his growing realization of, andinteraction with, the reality of a literal under-ground. It appears, from uncertain thoughnot entirely implausible inference, that hespent some time in a mental hospital, and hemay also have served a short prison stretch forbootlegging. On occasion Shaver intimated asmuch, even as he less plausibly claimed tohave lived in the caves with the embattledteros (“integrative robots”; again, like their en-emies the deros, beings of flesh and blood).How long he supposedly lived there is alsounclear.

In any event, out of these elements came acomplex, alternate history of the human race.Long ago, according to Shaver, extraterrestri-als known as Atlans and Titans or the ElderRaces colonized the Earth. (The Atlans livedon Atlantis, the Titans on Lemuria.) These be-ings, who possessed fantastic technologies,lived extraordinarily long lives and neverstopped growing, owing to the integrative(positive) energies cast out by the sun. Somegrew to fifty feet, a few considerably more.Eventually, however, the sun changed andbegan to beam detrimental (negative) energy,causing, among other effects, aging and mor-tality. To block the deadly rays, the Eldersbuilt an immense Cavern World to house theEarth’s fifty billion Atlans and Titans. But theeffort ultimately failed, and twelve thousandyears ago the Elders who survived fled toother stars, leaving behind a small population,which had fallen victim to the detrimental ra-diation. Some wandered to the surface and intime forgot their history as they became themortal and confused Homo sapiens. The oth-ers stayed in the caves to become the sadistic,cannibalistic idiots called deros. One othergroup, the smallest of the three, was the teros,who had escaped the negative rays but who,for various reasons, had not joined the exodusfrom Earth. Both the deros and the teros were“robots” not because they were walking me-chanical contraptions but because they wereunder the influence of, respectively, negativeand positive energies.

The deros used the advanced technologiesto torment surface-dwellers. As Palmer ex-plained it, they “have death rays, giant rocketsthat traverse in the upper air . . . ground vehi-cles of tremendous power, machines for therevitalizing of sex, known as ‘stim’ machines(in which these degenerates sometimes spendtheir whole lives in a sexual debauch that ac-tually deforms their bodies in horribleways) . . . and ben rays which heal and restorethe body but are also capable of restoring lostenergy after a debauch” [Palmer, 1961]). Be-sides causing plane crashes, madness, violence,and other maladies on the surface, derossometimes abduct human beings, usuallywomen, and subject them to hideous tortures.Their rays cloud human thought and keepthem oblivious to the deros’ existence. Thebadly outnumbered teros are engaged in aprotracted but ultimately futile conflict withtheir evil counterparts.

After its exile from Am a z i n g , the Sh a ver mys-t e ry passed from the attention of all but a tinyband of occult and tru e - m y s t e ry enthusiasts,who continued to re p o rt on and speculateabout deros and caverns in amateurish new s l e t-ters as well as Pa l m e r’s periodicals. The “m y s-t e ry” fig u red in a few not widely read UFO-erabooks, including Eric No r m a n’s The Un d e r - Pe o -p l e (1969) and Brinsley le Poer Tre n c h’s Se c ret ofthe Ages: UFOs from inside the Ea rt h ( 1 9 7 4 ) .Se veral writers of a skeptical bent have arguedthat through Sh a ve r, as one puts it, Palmer “a l-most single-handedly created the myth ofU F Os as extraterrestrial visitors” (Kafton-Minkel, 1989). In fact, a connection betwe e nthe Sh a ver mystery and the international UFOphenomenon of the past five decades has yet tobe demonstrated. Flying saucers as such did notenter Sh a verian mythology until after the rest ofthe world started talking about them.

A more interesting issue concerns the moti-vations of the principals. Sh a ve r’s manifest be-lief in experiences that could not have hap-pened in consensus reality leads some, such ash o l l ow - e a rth chronicler Walter Kafton-Mi n-kel, to see Sh a ver as a visionary, “a member ofthat ancient fellowship of re c e i vers of re ve a l e d

Shaver mystery 225

k n owledge,” a prophet like Moses or Jo s e p hSmith though without the religious trappings.Even if Sh a ver technologized hell, he re m a i n e dto the end an atheist and a materialist. To himthe caverns existed in this world and had noth-ing to do with the supernatural.

Though usually depicted as a cynical ex-ploiter of a deluded man whom any responsi-ble adult would have directed to the nearestpsychiatrist, Palmer himself—for all his pro-motional instincts, which he exercised vigor-ously in the long course of his associationwith Shaver—may have been caught up in thebelief in at least something. Perhaps, he some-times suggested in public statements, Shaver’sexperiences had occurred on the “astral realm”(Steinberg, 1973). On one occasion, he de-fended the “mystery” in private circumstancesin which he not only had nothing to gain butalso risked looking foolish. Though we willnever know for sure, one reasonable readingof Palmer’s role in the affair is that this com-plex man was both believer and exploiter.

See Also: Atlantis; Brodie’s deros; Hollow earth;Lemuria; Mount Lassen

Further ReadingKafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:


Palmer, Ray, 1961. “Invitation to Adventure.” TheHidden World A-1 (Spring): 4–14.

———, 1980. “The Dero and the Tero.” GrayBarker’s Newsletter 12 (July): 7.

Shaver, Richard S., 1945. “I Remember Lemuria!”Amazing Stories 19, 1 (March): 12–70.

Steinberg, Gene, 1971. “The Caveat Emptor Inter-view: Ray Palmer.” Caveat Emptor 1 (Fall): 9–12,26.

———, 1973. “The Caveat Emptor Interview:Richard S. Shaver.” Caveat Emptor 10 (Novem-ber/December): 5–10.

Wright, Bruce Lanier, 1999. “From Hero to Dero.”Fortean Times 127 (October): 36–41.

Shaw’s MartiansIn November 1896, unidentified “airships”—what today would be called UFOs—were re-ported over northern California, initiating aflurry of sightings and excitement that within

months would move eastward until all ofAmerica was affected. This was the first UFOwave in America, and on November 25, 1896,the first ever UFO abduction occurred—ifone credits the testimony of Colonel H. G.Shaw, who claimed a near escape from captureby Martians.

Shaw told his story two days later in a letterpublished in the Stockton Evening Mail, a Cal-ifornia paper on whose editorial staff he hadonce served. On the day of his adventure, heand a companion, Camille Spooner, left Lodiat six o’clock in the morning and were quietlymoving along when their horse abruptlysnorted in terror and stopped in its tracks.“Three strange beings . . . nearly or quiteseven feet high and very slender,” of more orless human appearance, strange beauty, andnudity, stood in front of them on the road.When Shaw approached them and askedwhere they came from, they gave a responsethat to his ear sounded like “warbling.”Speaking to each other, their voices gave off a“monotonous chant.” They had small hands,delicate-looking and without fingernails, andlong, narrow feet. When he briefly touchedone, Shaw had the impression that the beingweighed no more than an ounce. He wrote,

They . . . were covered with a naturalgrowth . . . as soft as silk to the touch, andtheir skin was like velvet. Their faces and headswere without hair, the ears were very small, andthe nose had the appearance of polished ivory,while the eyes were large and lustrous. Themouth, however, was small, and it seemed tome that they were without teeth. That andother things led me to believe that they neitherate nor drank, and that life was sustained bysome sort of gas. Each of them had swungunder the left arm a bag to which was attacheda nozzle, and every little while one or the otherwould place the nozzle in his mouth, at whichtime I heard a sound as of escaping gas.(Bullard, 1982)

Each also carried an egg-sized device that castan “intense but not unpleasant light” whenopened.

226 Shaw’s Martians

At this point the beings—whom Shaw pre-sumed to be from Mars—tried to carry himand his friend away, but weighing as little asthey did, they lacked the strength. So theyturned around and flashed lights in the direc-tion of a nearby bridge. The two men thenperceived an airship, some one-hundred fiftyfeet long, hovering twenty feet over the water.The three Martians floated with a swayingmotion toward the craft. A door opened onthe side, and the trio disappeared inside. Theship flew away and was seen no more.

Concluding his letter, Shaw blasted otherairship stories as “clumsy fakes” that “shouldnot be given credence by anyone”—presum-ably with tongue buried deeply in cheek. Be-sides being the first known alien encounter inAmerica to see print, Shaw’s was also the firstof many hoaxes to come in the months ahead,as newspaper columns were filled with out-landish tales of airships and their occupants,extraterrestrial and human.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Allingham’s Mart-ian; Aurora Martian; Brown’s Martians; Calf-rustling aliens; Dentons’s Martians and Venu-sians; Hopkins’s Martians; Khauga; Lethbridge’saeronauts; Martian bees; Michigan giant; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians; Smead’sMartians; Smith; Wilcox’s Martians; Wilson



Sheep-killing alienIn early 1968, according to a Bolivian news-paper, a farm woman near Otoco went to hersheep corral early one evening to discover thata strange net had been placed over it. A hu-manlike figure, four feet tall and wearing abulky-looking spacesuit, was busy slaughter-ing sheep with a tubular, hooked instrument.After killing the animals, he would dumptheir entrails into a bag.

The woman shouted at him and hurledstones in his direction. The alien strolled over

to a boxlike instrument with a wheel at thetop. As he twisted the wheel, the net waswithdrawn into the box. As he was so en-gaged, the witness had picked up a club andwas about to use it on the intruder. In re-sponse, he threw his weapon at her. Each timeit returned to his hands like a boomerang, andeach time it passed the woman, it cut her.Gathering his tools, the alien then floatednoisily upward and was lost to sight.

The local police colonel counted thirty-four dead sheep. Each had had some of its di-gestive organs removed.

See Also: Calf-rustling aliens; Close encounters ofthe third kind

Further ReadingGalindez, Oscar A., 1970. “Violent Humanoid En-

countered in Bolivia.” Flying Saucer Review 16, 4(July/August): 15–17.

ShivaShiva is usually known as a major Hindu god,associated both with destruction and chaosand with wisdom and meditation. But in Feb-ruary and March 1994, Shiva—“the blood,the muscle, fur, bone, and spirit of animals”—communicated through Sedona, Arizona, psy-chic Toraya Ayres. He spoke from and for theanimal point of view. He described himselfonce as having the physique of a bear, anothertime calling himself only a “body of energy”and denying that he had any physical body.

Shiva said that human beings need to reex-amine their destructive relationship with ani-mals. Humans should not see animals as infe-rior to them but as equal but differentspiritual beings. Animals do not have a con-cept of God, but they do have a profound un-derstanding of their place in nature’s order.“We do live in an eternal now of loving coop-eration within nature, which we recognizewithout words as a divine force, and as manydivine energies working together for thegreater good.” Like humans, animals evolveand move into higher dimensions “in a differ-ent vibrational range.”

“The physical world that you know is onlya tiny part of reality,” according to Shiva.

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“You will be exploring the nonphysical worldsand dimensions, too. As multi-dimensionalbeings you already do this in your dreams, butyou will soon do it consciously.”

See Also: AyalaFurther ReadingAyres, Toraya, 1997. “Messages from the Animal

Kingdom.” http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/ani-mal-kingdom-ayres.html.

ShovarShovar is the name of a humanlike entity thepseudonymous Rachel Jones of Coeur d’A-lene, Idaho, allegedly met during a UFO-abduction experience over a two-hour periodbetween June 20 and 21, 1977.

Awakened at 11:55 P.M. when she heardsomeone walking upstairs, Jones found her-self paralyzed. She saw someone enter theroom, then felt a lifting sensation. In whatseemed an instant, she regained her ability tom ove. She was astonished to see that it wasthen 1:57 A.M.

Under hypnosis conducted by psycholo-gist/ufologist R. Leo Sprinkle, she told of see-ing an ugly intruder with no pupils in hiseyes, a thin-lined mouth, normal-lookingnose, and thinning hair. He had four fingerson each hand but no thumbs. Picking her up,he brought her to an unknown place andpassed through a door into a chamber with acold floor. Three other beings were there. Onewas human or near-human in appearance.The man accompanied her into another roomcontaining various instruments, includingtwo wheel-shaped devices and a boxlike table.She sat on the table and conversed with theman, who said his name was Shovar. He askedher to take off her shirt. After resisting, she re-luctantly did so. Shovar expressed puzzlementabout her suntan, which she then explained tohim.

She was instructed to lie on her stomach asa light shined on her back. The other beingsrubbed a liquid on her shoulders. It causedgreat pain, and she protested. Shovar said thepain would stop, and it did. She did not ac-

cept his apology, however. It did not soundsincere, and, moreover, she got the distinctimpression that he did not even know whatpain was.

Even under hypnosis Jones could not re-call what happened next. Her memorypicked up with a conversation with Sh ova r,who she re a l i zed was communicating tele-p a t h i c a l l y. Sh ovar told her that they hadchanged her so that she would be “better forothers.” They had met before, he went on,and they would meet again. Asked why theyhad taken her, he replied that he could nota n s wer the question right then. T h ree beingse n t e red the room, and Jones abruptly foundherself back in bed.

Headaches plagued her for the next fewdays, and she noticed a small round scar onher shoulder.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Sprinkle, RonaldLeo

Further Reading“Idaho Abduction Case,” 1977. The APRO Bulletin

(November).

Sinat Schirah (Stan)Since 1983, Sinat Schirah, known affection-ately as Stan, has channeled through ArleneNelson. Three years later, Nelson began aprocess she called “pure channeling”—chan-neling so intense that she had no conscioussense of it while it was happening or con-scious memory of it afterward. It would takeplace one weekend every month between Jan-uary and May.

She and her husband, Mervin “Beaver”Colver, with whom Nelson believes she hasshared a number of incarnations, foundedLifelight University in Mill Valley, California,in 1987. Students are instructed in a variety ofNew Age beliefs and practices. Stan’s chan-neled messages are preserved on tapes and inbooks.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingMelton, J. Go rdon, 1996. En c yclopedia of Am e r i -

can Re l i g i o n s . Fifth edition. De t roit, MI: Ga l eRe s e a rc h .

228 Shovar

Sister ThedraSister Thedra was born Dorothy Martin, butto most of the world she is remembered as“Marian Keach,” the pseudonym given her inthe classic sociological book When ProphecyFails (1956). In 1954, through space peoplewho communicated with her through auto-matic writing, she learned of an imminentcatastrophic, earth-changing event, to occur aweek before the end of the year. She and hersmall band of followers in Illinois and Michi-gan would be swooped up in a flying saucerand rescued just before the cataclysm tookplace. Martin and her followers sought topublicize the prophecy, only to be ridiculed innewspapers all over the country. After the fail-ure of the prophecy, Martin—soon renamed“Sister Thedra” at the urging of her space con-tacts—moved to the Southwest, then to Perufor five years. Returning to the United States,she established and headed a contactee-ori-ented spiritual group in Mount Shasta, Cali-fornia. Toward the end of her life, she relo-cated to Sedona, Arizona, and died there in1992.

Born in 1900 in West Virginia, Martin dis-covered occultism in the late 1930s while liv-ing in New York City. First attracted toTheosophy, she explored the spectrum of eso-teric literature and became an early student ofDianetics (from which Scientology grew). Shealso read the works of Guy Warren Ballard,creator of the I AM movement, arguably thefirst religious group to make extraterrestrialcontacts a central tenet. Another book, Oah -spe, recorded the 1881 channeling of JohnBallough Newbrough, depicting a richly pop-ulated spiritual cosmos whose inhabitants in-clude guardian angels known as “ashars” whosail the universe in etheric ships. When flyingsaucers came on the scene and the contacteemovement followed in their wake, Martin fol-lowed developments with interest.

In the meantime, Charles and Lillian Laug-head (pronounced Law-head) were doing thesame. Their own odyssey had begun in 1946,when the couple were Protestant medical mis-sionaries in Egypt and Lillian started suffering

seemingly untreatable nightmares and fears.Seeking relief, the couple turned to occultism.On their return to the United States in 1949,Dr. Laughead took up a staff position at theMichigan State College Hospital in East Lans-ing. He and his wife continued their mysticalstudies, incorporating flying saucers into theirnewfound faith. In early 1953, on a trip tosouthern California, Laughead met GeorgeAdamski, whose claimed meeting with aVenusian named Orthon in the Californiadesert was causing a worldwide sensation. Ofparticular interest to Laughead were the foot-prints the Venusian had left in the desert sand.They contained enigmatic symbols whosemeaning Adamski’s followers were already dis-cussing and debating.

Laughead returned to Michigan with draw-ings of the prints, which his wife devoted thenext five months to deciphering. She con-cluded that the left print’s symbols depictedthe sinking of the lost continents Atlantis andLemuria, the right their reemergence from theocean floor following geological cataclysmsthat soon would befall the planet.

Through an automatic-writing messagegiven him by an acquaintance, Dr. Laugheadheard from the “Elder Brother,” who later, ac-cording to Laughead, “identified himself asbeing Jesus the Christ and also Sananda.”Laughead was to continue his work withsaucers, and soon Venusians would contacthim.

At this stage, the Laugheads had not heardof Dorothy Martin. They did not know thatshe also was in psychic contact with the ElderBrother as well as with a group of beings shecalled the Guardians. In April 1954, one ofthe latter introduced himself as Sananda fromthe planet Clarion. In a previous lifetime,Sananda said, he was Jesus. Martin—or atleast her unconscious mind—got the nameClarion from contactee Truman Bethurum,but Bethurum’s Clarion was a planet on theother side of the moon; Martin/Sananda’sClarion, on the other hand, existed in theetheric realm. A companion planet, Cerus(sometimes confusingly referred to also as a

Sister Thedra 229

“constellation”), housed other space peoplewho kept Martin’s arm and hand in furiousmotion with automatic writing as they madegood on their promise to teach her cosmicwisdom. The Elder Brother promised that hewould return “soon. . . . They that have toldyou that they do not believe shall see us whenthe time is right” (Festinger et al., 1956).

Martin’s messages were attracting atten-tion, and a handful of followers soon cametogether in the Chicago area. Among thosewho spoke with Martin was John Otto, aUFO lecturer of national reputation and no-table credulity. Visiting Detroit to hear a lec-ture by Adamski, Otto met the Laugheads,who informed him of their saucer interestsand experiences. Otto in turn urged them toget in touch with Martin. Soon afterward,they wrote and introduced themselves. All ofthis seemed particularly significant to Martinwhen she received a message urging her to goto East Lansing to seek “a child . . . to whom Iam trying to get through with light.” Wheninformed, Mrs. Laughead immediately con-cluded that she was the “child” (Festinger, etal., 1956).

After the Laugheads met Martin in OakPark in early June 1954, the three formed aclose association that would profoundly affecttheir lives and fortunes in the months andyears to come. By this time, Martin was re-ceiving as many as ten messages a day, all ofthem ominous, all warning of imminent dis-asters and cataclysms. The news was not en-tirely bad: Those who would “listen and be-lieve” would enter a New Age of knowledgeand happiness. The messages got more spe-cific. Spaceships would land soon, and se-lected individuals would be flown to otherplanets, along with space people who hadbeen on secret Earth assignment.

On August 1, Martin, the Laugheads, andnine believers showed up at a Chicago-areamilitary base, where they had been told a fly-ing saucer would land at noon. No shipshowed up, but the next day Sananda in-formed her through automatic writing that hewas the stranger the group had observed pass-

ing by during the wait for the landing. Itwould not be the last time Martin would in-flate a mundane incident into a signal fromthe cosmos. Nor would it be the last of theunfulfilled prophecies.

In that same message on August 2,Sananda warned that soon a tidal wave offLake Michigan would wash over Chicago andcause enormous destruction. Subsequentcommunications spoke of enormous geologi-cal upheaval that would break North Americain two, sink much of Europe under the ocean,and raise Mu from its underwater grave.

Martin and the Laugheads reported theserevelations to the larger world in a seven-pagemimeographed document, “Open Letter toAmerican Editors and Publishers,” sent outon August 30. A handwritten addendum ap-pended at the last minute cited December 20as the “date of evacuation,” in other words,the final day on which human beings living inthe affected area could save themselves. A sec-ond mailing two weeks later concerned the“terrific wave” that would rise from LakeMichigan at dawn on December 21 and en-gulf Chicago.

Soon the group found itself featured in atongue-in-cheek newspaper story. The public-ity brought followers, curiosity-seekers, andpractical jokers to Mrs. Ma rt i n’s door. It alsob rought her and her group to the attention ofthe Un i versity of Mi n n e s o t a’s Laboratory forRe s e a rch in Social Relations, which enlisted thes e rvices of five psychologists, sociologists, andgraduate students. The volunteers we re to ob-s e rve—as participants and self-identified be-l i e vers—a prophetic movement at work and tosee what happened when the anticipated eve n t sdid not occur. In due course, Leon Fe s t i n g e r,He n ry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, thep rofessors who had directed the experiment,c h ronicled the episode in When Prophecy Fa i l s .

Though Ma rtin, Laughead, and the othersh a r b o red ambivalent feelings about the public-ity and proselytization, it would have been im-possible to conceal what was going on. T h eg roup now claimed followers not only in theChicago area but also in East Lansing and De-

230 Sister Thedra

t roit. In East Lansing, Laughead led a churc h -related Quest group and, more ove r, had ties tothe De t roit saucer community, dominated bycontactees and mystics, including medium Ro s ePhillips, who had her own cosmic sourc e s .When some of Ma rt i n’s followers asked Ph i l l i p sabout the December 21 pro p h e c y, those sourc e sresponded ambiguously.

On the Earth plane, Dr. Laughead was fac-ing a serious professional and personal crisisover his ever more visible advocacy of beliefsthat most people thought bizarre or evenlaughable. On November 22, he was asked toresign his position with the college health ser-vice effective December 1, though word of thefiring would be withheld for another threeweeks. College president John A. Hannahlater told the press that students had com-plained about Laughead’s “propagandizing”them “on a peculiar set of beliefs of question-able validity” (“The End,” 1955). Effectivelycutting their ties to East Lansing, the Laugh-eads moved into the Martin residence andawaited the arrival of the flying saucers thatwould save them and their companions at theonset of the December 21 cataclysm.

On December 17, a Chicago newspaperexposed the group’s strange beliefs and Laug-head’s loss of employment. Other papersaround the country, and soon afterward theworld, picked up the story, and the result wasblistering ridicule on an international scale.The publicity also left the relentlessly gulliblegroup open to pranks that periodically sent itsmembers packing in preparation for meetingswith space people or saucer landings.

Though on the morning of the twentieththe Guardians promised that they wouldboard a flying saucer just after midnight, nospaceship appeared. Stunned, the group triedto figure out what had happened. Finally,someone suggested that the group’s positivework had prevented the flood. Not long after-ward, a message from Sananda confirmed thatinterpretation. When Laughead called re-porters and wire services to pass on the goodnews, he triggered a fresh round of ridicule-laced stories. Even worse, group members

who had given up jobs and cut ties with skep-tical family members faced uncertain futures.

Prank calls and visits over the next 24 days,however, kept the group open to the prospectof a landing. Martin also claimed that earth-quakes that had taken place in Italy and Cali-fornia validated her prophecy. By now she wasgrasping at anything. A message on thetwenty-third directed everyone to stand infront of the Martin house at 6 P.M. and singChristmas carols, at which time a saucerwould come down and its crew would engagethe group in personal conversation. The mes-sage further instructed the group to publicizethe new prophecy and to invite all interestedpersons to come.

For Ma rtin, the caroling episode marked aturning point. It sparked a near riot and drewl a w - e n f o rcement personnel to the scene. Com-munity pre s s u re forced the police to draw up awarrant against Ma rtin and Laughead, charg-ing them with disturbing the peace and con-tributing to the delinquency of minors. Sh ewas also warned that she faced psychiatric ex-amination and possible institutionalization.

Early in Ja n u a ry 1955, Do rothy Ma rt i nslipped out of town. Under an assumed name,she flew to Arizona. In her new residence shefound herself much closer to the hub of con-tactee activity. Both Truman Be t h u rum andGeorge Hunt Williamson (a contactee, fringea rchaeologist, and alleged witness to Ad a m s k i’sfirst Venusian encounter) lived in Arizona. T h eLaugheads, now resettled in southern Califor-nia, dropped in from time to time.

Through Williamson’s channelings, theLaugheads and Martin learned of the Brother-hood of the Seven Rays, a supernatural orderdating back to Lemurian times and headquar-tered in the present Lake Titicaca in Peru.Guided by further prophecies of imminentapocalypse channeled through both William-son and Martin, the two—along with a smallband of disciples—moved to Titicaca to estab-lish the Priority of All Saints in the remotenorthern town Moyobamba. From Hemet,California, the Laugheads kept the NorthAmerican faithful abreast of developments. A

Sister Thedra 231

bulletin reported day-by-day activities there.Each report was accompanied by a transcriptof channeled or automatically written mes-sages, often with apocalyptic overtones. Soon,these messages said, cataclysmic changeswould bring flying saucers down from theskies and Lemuria and Atlantis up from theocean bottom.

By the summer of 1957, however, nearly allof the spiritual pilgrims were back in theUnited States. The exception was Martin,whom Sananda had directed to stay behind.

Living under the most primitive condi-tions, suffering from poverty and ill health,Martin barely survived. She felt that her col-leagues had betrayed her. She spent a portionof her meager income on postage for mailingsto North America, but no one seemed to lis-ten or care. Even so, the messages continuedto come at a furious pace. Now they includeddramatic visionary encounters with variousspace people, angels, and religious figures.

Though expecting to spend the rest of herlife in the Andes, Martin was surprised to re-ceive instructions to return to the UnitedStates in 1961. She moved to southern Cali-fornia and was there for nearly a year beforeheading to the far northern part of the stateand Mount Shasta, long an attraction toAmerica’s mystically minded. Occult legendheld that a colony of Lemurians lived insideor under the mountain. The Lemurians main-tained contacts with extraterrestrials who reg-ularly arrived in saucers.

Sananda and Sanat Kumara ordered Mar-tin to establish the Association of Sanandaand Sanat Kumara. Finding peace and stabil-ity at last, she took up residence in the Shastaarea and worked with a small but devotedband of followers who carefully recorded andcirculated the messages she received daily.

By 1988, with Sedona, Arizona, now theNew Age center of North America, the spacepeople dictated yet another move. It was here,on June 13, 1992, that Sister Thedra’s long,strange trip ended. Just before her deathSananda told her of his plans for her in thenext world. As her body failed, her hand

guided a pen one last time to write the finalmessage from her beloved cosmic friend: “It isnow come the time that ye come out of theplace wherein ye are. . . . Let it be, for manyshall greet thee with glad shouts!”

See Also: Adamski, George; Atlantis; Bethurum,Truman; Contactees; Lemuria; Mount Shasta;Orthon; Sananda; Williamson, George Hunt

Further ReadingClark, Jerome, 1997. “The Odyssey of Sister The-

dra.” Syzygy 6, 2 (Summer/Fall): 203–219.“The End of the World,” 1955. The Saucerian 3, 2

(Spring): 4–7, 55–60.Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley

Schachter, 1956. When Prophecy Fails. Min-neapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Ibn Aharon, Y. N. [pseud. of Yonah Fortner], 1957.“Diagnosis: A Case of Chronic Fright.” SaucerNews 4, 5 (August/September): 3–6.

Sky peopleBrinsley le Poer Trench, author of a series ofbooks proposing esoteric theories about every-thing from space visitors to the Earth’s hiddenhistory, held that the “sky people”—called theElohim in the Old Testament—created Ani-mal or Adamic Man, otherwise known as thepresent human race. The creation occurred viawhat would now be called genetic engineer-ing, and it was done by a renegade band ofElohim called the Jehovah. The Jehovah,knowing that their experiment was an unau-thorized one, removed their creation to an ob-scure location—what the Bible calls the Gar-den of Eden—on Mars. In due course,another extraterrestrial race, known as the Ser-pent people, learned of the Garden and visitedit, curious about experiments that had createdwomen. The Serpent people gave the hereto-fore-innocent inhabitants of the Garden wis-dom and scientific knowledge, and they alsointroduced them to sexual intercourse and re-production. Many of the Adamic Womenbore children sired by the Serpent race.

The Jehovah were furious when they foundout about the Serpent people’s interference,but it was too late for them to continue theirdomination of Adamic Man. The individualJehovah most responsible for the experiment,

232 Sky people

Noah-I, was driven from Mars. With his cre-ations, he flew back to Earth in a spaceship(Noah’s Ark) and populated the Earth.

According to Trench, all human conflictstems from mankind’s dual nature. Only if weachieve “total consciousness”—in which boththe superior Serpent heritage and the Animalnature are integrated—can we claim our placeas wise, peaceful citizens of the galaxy.

Further ReadingTrench, Brinsley le Poer, 1960. The Sky People. Lon-

don: Neville Spearman.

Smead’s MartiansA century ago pioneering psychical researcherJames Hyslop investigated a case in which anAmerican woman received psychic messagesfrom Mars. The Martians, however, were notnatives of the planet but deceased relativeswho were now living on the Red Planet.

The woman, whom Hyslop identifies onlyas Mrs. Smead, was married to a clergyman.All her life she had had psychic experiences,many of them involving spirit communica-tions through automatic writing. Then in1895 a different set of messages started tocome through. They were from her three deadchildren and her deceased brother-in-law.One of the daughters, Maude, provided a de-scription of her new home, which she said wascrisscrossed with canals, reflecting a belief tothat effect (since conclusively debunked)promulgated by astronomer Percival Lowell.

The communications ceased, then resumedagain five years later as if there had been nointerruption. Invited to assess them, Hyslopdeduced that they came out of a “secondarypersonality”—what now would be called theunconscious mind—of Mrs. Smead’s. Hewrote,

We find in such cases evidence that we neednot attribute fraud to the normal conscious-ness, and we discover automatic processes ofmentation that may be equally acquitted offraudulent intent; while we are also free fromthe obligation to accept the phenomena at

their assumed value. Their most extraordinarycharacteristic is the extent to which they imi-tate the organizing principle intelligence of anormal mind, and the perfection of their im-personation of spirits, always betraying theirlimitations, however, just at the point where wehave the right to expect veridical testimony totheir claims. (Hyslop, 1908)

See Also: Aliens and the dead; Allingham’s Martian;Aurora Martian; Brown’s Martians; Dentons’sMartians and Venusians; Hopkins’s Martians;Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians;Monka; Muller’s Martians; Shaw’s Martians;Wilcox’s Martians

Further ReadingHyslop, James H., 1908. Psychical Research and the

Resurrection. London: Fisher Unwin.

SmithDuring a wave of sightings of mysterious,never-explained “airships” (UFOs in modernterminology) in the spring of 1897, a Rock-land, Texas, man named John Barclay claimedan encounter with a close-lipped pilot whogave only his last name. The Houston DailyPost of April 25 reported the incident.

Around 11 P.M., as Barclay told the story,he heard his dogs barking frantically. Glanc-ing out his window, he was startled to see anoblong-shaped object with wings circling justabove his pasture. Moments later the shiplanded. Winchester rifle in hand, the witnessstepped outside where he spotted a stranger.The stranger identified himself only as“Smith.” He would not allow Barclay to getcloser to the ship. “We cannot allow you toget any closer, but do as we request [and] yourkindness will be appreciated,” Smith said,“and we will call on you some future day andreciprocate your kindness by taking you on atrip.” He handed Barclay ten dollars andasked him to purchase lubricating oil, twocold chisels, and bluestone from a nearby sawmill and railroad depot. On his return Barclayasked the aeronaut where he was from. “Any-where,” Smith replied, then added, “We willbe in Greece day after tomorrow.” He enteredthe ship and was gone.

Smith 233

Since conventional aviation history atteststhat no such ships were flying over America inthe late nineteenth century, some UFO writ-ers have theorized that the so-called aeronautswere really extraterrestrials or supernatural en-tities in disguise. A more likely explanation isthat the stories were hoaxes of the sort thatfilled many period newspapers.

See Also: Aurora Martian; Lethbridge’s aeronauts;Michigan giant; Ultraterrestrials; Wilson

Further ReadingChariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas Airship

Mystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing.Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The Great Airship Mystery: A

UFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead andCompany.

SourceThe Source, a sort of universal mind, waschanneled through Paul Solomon. Solomon’schanneling began in 1972 when he was livingin Atlanta and going through acute personaldistress in the wake of a failed marriage. In aneffort to deal with his emotional problems,Solomon underwent hypnosis. Under hypno-sis a powerful voice spoke through his mouth,warning, “You have not attained sufficientgrowth or spiritual awareness to understandcontact with these records!” Bewildered,Solomon and hypnotist Harry Snipes III de-cided to explore the mystery in a second ses-sion. From there the Source, as Solomon andSnipes called it, began instructing Solomonon how to communicate with it and how topass on its wisdom to others.

The Source taught a spiritual philosophythat it called “Inner Light Consciousness,”thus the name of the organization Solomonsoon formed: Fellowship of the Inner Light.In 1974, Solomon and his followers relocatedto Virginia Beach, Virginia, where EdgarCayce, to whom Solomon would be com-pared, had lived and had pursued his spiritualwork. Like Cayce’s, Solomon’s readings en-compassed Atlantis, reincarnation, healing,prophecies, and more.

The Source claimed to be a greater powerthan the spirit or channeling entities that were

a good part of the focus of the New Agemovement of the 1970s and 1980s. Its mis-sion was to provide a way for seekers to touchthe Holy Spirit within them and, thereafter,to let it guide them. Before his death in 1994,Solomon had conducted thousands of read-ings, many preserved on tape and sold by as-sociates who seek to keep his and the Source’smemory alive.

See Also: Atlantis; ChannelingFurther ReadingBeidler, William, 1977. “Paul Solomon . . . Another

Cayce?” Fate 30, 2 (February): 56–61.A Healing Consciousness, 1978. Virginia Beach, VA:

Master’s Press.Spiritual Unfoldment and Psychic Development

through Inner Light Consciousness, 1973. Atlanta,GA: Fellowship of the Inner Light.

Wheeler, W. Alexander, 1994. The Prophetic Revela -tions of Paul Solomon: Earthward toward a Heav -enly Light. New York: Samuel B. Weiser.

SPECTRAUnder hypnosis on November 30, 1971, Is-raeli psychic Uri Geller “recalled” an incidentthat occurred when he was three years old.Geller encountered a dazzling light fromwhich a voice emanated. The voice said it washis “programmer.” Over the years, Geller re-ceived many more messages from this intelli-gence, which called itself SPECTRA and,sometimes, Hoova. It gave Geller his reportedparanormal talents. In the opinion of Geller’shypnotist and then-collaborator, physician/parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, Gellermay have been a prophet “specifically createdto serve as an intermediary between a ‘divine’intelligence and man” (Puharich, 1974).

SPECTRA claimed it was a supercomputerinto which the minds and bodies of a wide va-riety of intelligent beings had been trans-ferred. These beings communicated withGeller through automatic writing, states of al-tered consciousness, and voices on blanktapes. SPECTRA’s first appearance on Earthwas twenty thousand years ago, when itsspaceship landed in the present nation of Is-rael. Since then SPECTRA has seen the Jews

234 Source

as its special people and has tried to protectthem. In the meantime, other beings fromother planets and dimensions unrelated toSPECTRA have visited Earth. The beings be-hind SPECTRA have said that they live in thefuture. They are short and generally human inappearance, looking like—in their words—“certain exotic types of Japanese.”

This fantastic tale figured largely inPuharich’s Uri (1974), but Geller himself dis-tanced himself from it. His own autobiogra-phy, published a year after Puharich’s book,does not even mention SPECTRA, though itdoes recount his childhood close encounterwith a “silvery mass of light” that seemed tomake time stand still. As the light approachedhim, the youthful Geller felt a sharp pain inhis forehead, then lost consciousness for anundetermined period of time.

Further ReadingGeller, Uri, 1975. Uri Geller: My Story. New York:

Praeger Publishers.Puharich, Andrija, 1974. Uri: A Journal of the Mys -

tery of Uri Geller. Garden City, NY: AnchorPress/Doubleday and Company.

Springheel JackSpringheel Jack (sometimes referred to asSpring Heeled Jack) is a figure out of Victo-rian folklore, a mysterious man or being of vi-olent disposition and a strange ability to jumpgreat distances. Stories about him were firsttold in suburban London in September 1837.Some victims described him as a man wearinga flowing cloak and glaring at his victims withglowing eyes. It was claimed that he shotflames from his mouth. Others said he dis-guised himself as a white bull or bear, while atleast one witness claimed he wore “polishedsteel armor, with red shoes” (“Credulity,”1838). Some reports suggested that the at-tacker was not acting alone. Many of the at-tacks were on women and were seemingly sex-ual in nature (he ripped their clothes), thoughapparently they did not involve actual rape.London police, who took the reports seri-ously, investigated them but made no arrests.Popular speculation pointed to Henry Mar-quis of Waterford, a man noted for reckless-ness, drunkenness, and other behavioral ex-cesses, but no clear or convincing evidencebacked up the suspicions. Superstitious peo-ple held that Springheel Jack was a ghost, andthat belief took root in folklore.

Sporadic sightings of a mysterious leapingfigure occurred in various places in Englandinto the twentieth century. In 1877, manyresidents of Caistor, Norfolk, saw someonedressed in sheepskin (reminiscent of earlier re-ports of Jack’s cladding himself in animalskin) jumping from roof to roof, and the sameor a similar individual was widely observed inLincolnshire. On one occasion, when a mobchased him, he leaped over walls and roofs. In1904, in Liverpool’s Everton district, residentssaw a man dressed in a cloak and black boots

Springheel Jack 235

Uri Geller, the psychic performer, ca. 1978 (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis)

executing high leaps, on one occasion al-legedly springing from the ground to arooftop twenty-five feet high.

Though Springheel Jack legends are not apart of American folklore, figures very muchlike him appear in a few curious episodes. In1938, a century after the London reports,people in and around Provincetown, Massa-chusetts, claimed encounters with a leapingman with fierce-looking eyes and pointedears. They said he stunned his victims with ablue flame emanating from his mouth. Com-parable stories were told in Baltimore in thesummer of 1951. On June 18, 1953, threewitnesses in a Houston neighborhood al-legedly sighted a leaping, black-clad figure ina cloak and saw a rocket-shaped UFO zoomaway moments after the being’s disappear-ance. At least two other cases link leaping,Jacklike figures to UFOs, one in Gallipolis,Ohio, in the early 1960s, another at Washing-ton’s Yakima Indian Reservation in December1975.

The first suggestion that Jack may havebeen an extraterrestrial appeared in theMa rch 6, 1954, issue of the British magazineEve ry b o d y’s . The next ye a r, in a book on Live r-pool history and lore, Richard W h i t t i n g t o n -Egan re m a rked that such a theory “would ac-count for his astounding leaping pro c l i v i t i e sbecause he would be adapted to the re q u i re-ments of life on a greater-gravity planet. Like-wise, differences in physical constitutionwould probably enable him to live longer one a rth and might well explain the fla m e - l i k eemanations from his mouth” (W h i t t i n g t o n -Egan, 1955).

On the other hand, in an extended surveyof all available literature on the legend, Britishwriter Mike Dash rejected any notion that thevarious reports over a century and a half wereconnected except as folklore. In Dash’s view,“Springheel Jack” is a catchall name denotingunrelated pranksters, hoaxers, and criminals.Still, it is hard to deny that intriguing ques-tions remain, and Springheel Jack—whateverhe or it may or may not be—constitutes anappealingly romantic mystery.

Further Reading“Credulity—The Ghost Story,” 1838. London Times

(January 10).Dash, Mike, 1996. “Spring-Heeled Jack: To Victo-

rian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost.” In SteveMoore, ed. Fortean Studies, Volume 3, 7–125.London: John Brown Publishing.

Haining, Peter, 1977. The Legend and Bizarre Crimesof Spring Heeled Jack. London: Frederick Muller.

Whittington-Egan, Richard, 1955. Liverpool Colon -nade. Liverpool, England: Son and Nephew.

Sprinkle, Ronald Leo (1930– )R. Leo Sprinkle is a psychologist in priva t epractice in Laramie, Wyoming. Prior to that,as a member of the counseling department ofthe Un i versity of Wyoming, he becamek n own as one of a handful of mental-healthp rofessionals with a sympathetic interest inthe UFO phenomenon. He was the first tostudy the psychological make-up of abducteesand contactees. In 1968, as a psyc h o l o g i c a lconsultant for the U.S. Air Fo rc e – s p o n s o re dUn i versity of Colorado UFO Project, he hyp-n o t i zed a Nebraska police officer who re-p o rted a puzzling period of missing time dur-ing a close encounter. Sp r i n k l e’s principali n t e rest, howe ve r, was in persons who be-l i e ved themselves to be in psychic and othercontact with friendly space people, whomSprinkle called “UFOlk.” In 1980, he and theInstitute for UFO Contactee Studies held thefirst Rocky Mountain Conference on UFOIn vestigation. From then until 1996 hewould direct the meetings, which bro u g h ttogether contactees, their followers, and in-t e rested observe r s .

Sprinkle’s interest was, and is, more thanacademic. He believes himself to be a con-tactee and maintains an active interest in rein-carnation and other metaphysical questions.UFOs and their occupants are here, he be-lieves, “so that human development movesfrom Planetary Persons to Cosmic Citizens”(Sprinkle, 1995).

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; ContacteesFurther ReadingParnell, June O., and R. Leo Sprinkle, 1990. “Per-

sonality Characteristics of Persons Who Claim

236 Sprinkle, Ronald Leo

UFO Experiences.” Journal of UFO Studies 2(new series): 45–58.

Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1999. Soul Samples: Personal Explo -rations in Reincarnation and UFO Experiences.Columbus, NC: Granite Publishing.

———, 1969. “Personal and Scientific Attitudes: AStudy of Persons Interested in UFO Reports.” InCharles Bowen, ed. Beyond Condon: Flying SaucerReview Special Issue No. 2, June, 6–10. London:Flying Saucer Review.

———, 1976. “Hypnotic and Psychic Aspects ofUFO Research.” In Proceedings of the 1976CUFOS Conference, 251–258. Evanston, IL:Center for UFO Studies.

———, 1995. “The Significance of UFO Experi-ences.” In David Pursglove, ed. Zen in the Art ofClose Encounters, 164–165. Berkeley, CA: NewBeing Project.

Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1980. Proceedings of the RockyMountain Conference on UFO Investigation.Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies.

Star People“Star People” is a notion made popular in thelate 1970s and early 1980s. Brad Steiger, aprolific writer on paranormal, occult, and ufo-logical subjects, introduced the phrase in a1976 book. He writes that the “majority ofAmerindian Medicine People” believe thatStar People—individuals who many lifetimesago came to Earth with a mission from theirhome worlds—are “becoming active at thistime in an effort to aid mankind [in surviv-ing] a coming Great Purification of theplanet” (Steiger, 1976). In the course of hisinvestigation of channeling and channelers, hesays, he became aware of women he calls “StarMaidens.” Such women shared certain physi-cal characteristics and had “memories” of ar-riving on Earth twenty thousand years ago ina starship. Before long Steiger became con-vinced that just as many men—includinghimself—had similar claims to extraterrestrialorigin.

Steiger eventually married a woman he be-lieved to be a Star Maiden, Francie Paschal.Paschal reported a lifetime of otherworldly ex-periences, beginning with childhood visionsin which an apparitional spaceman, lookinglike a “Hollywood-type Viking prince,” told

her, “Like unto another Christ child you willbe.” He said she was from a “planet . . . likeunto Venus” (Steiger, 1976). She and Steigerbelieved they had shared previous lives. Aspart of what they believed to be their mission,the couple moved from upstate New York toScottsdale, Arizona.

An article on their beliefs concerning St a rPeople in the May 1, 1979, issue of the Na -tional En q u i re r b rought them a flood of let-ters and telephone calls. It turned out thatother persons suspected that they also we respace people put in place to help the humanrace through coming cataclysms and changes.Many said they had heard a disembodiedvoice tell them, “Now is the time,” short l yb e f o re they read the En q u i re r piece. T h eSteigers went on to release books in the “St a rPeople Series,” three originals and tworeprints of earlier Brad Steiger titles. T h eoriginals we re based in considerable part onFr a n c i e’s channelings.

According to these messages, the Starseedsare the true Star People. As direct descendantsof extraterrestrials, they have both alien andhuman genes. The Star Helpers are descen-dants of the extraterrestrials’ original disciples.Later, from further channeling, hypnotic re-gression, and testimony from others, theSteigers concluded that three different typesof space ancestors could be discerned: Refu-gees who crash-landed on this planet thou-sands of years ago, after escaping from turmoiland destruction on their home planet; Utopi-ans, benign aliens who colonized other worldsto give them perfect societies; and EnergyEssences, nonphysical entities who driftthrough space, drop in on planets, and occa-sionally occupy a host body.

In The Star People (1981), the Steigers re-ported that a number of their correspondentsbelieved they had insights into the immediatefuture. They foresaw worldwide famine in1982, a pole shift between 1982 and 1984,World War III no later than 1985, and Ar-mageddon around 1990. Somewhere in themiddle of this, space people would land andannounce their presence.

Star People 237

By the mid-1980s, the Steigers had di-vorced, and only Francie maintained enthusi-asm for the Star People notion. Her death, afew years later, effectively ended what re-mained of the movement.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. En-

glewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.———, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the


———, 1983. The Seed. New York: Berkley Books.Steiger, Brad, and Francie Steiger, 1981. The Star

People. New York: Berkley Books.Steiger, Francie, 1982. Reflections from an Angel’s Eye.

New York: Berkley Books.

Stellar Community of Enlightened EcosystemsSometime in the 1980s, Je r ry Doran of Wi l m-ington, California, claims to have had an out-of-body experience. He ascended into space wherehe encountered “five blue skinned dolphinsfloating inside [a] spaceship.” T h rough telepathythe dolphins informed him that they we re asso-ciated with the Stellar Community of En l i g h t-ened Ecosystems. The community sought toguide human evolution tow a rd attainment of a“ Group Mind which includes the animals andplants of Earth, the Earth itself, the Sun andsimilar enlightened star systems throughout theC o s m o s” (Melton, Clark, and Ke l l y, 1990).

Further ReadingMelton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A.

Kelly, 1990. New Age Encyclopedia. Detroit, MI:Gale Research.

Strieber, Whitley (1945– )Whitley Strieber began his career as a success-ful writer of horror and science-fiction nove l sbut has since become better known as a chro n-icler of his own paranormal and otherw o r l d l yexperiences, including abductions by UFOs .

Born to a prominent San Antonio family, heattended the Un i versity of Texas, then move dto New Yo rk to begin a writing care e r. On thee vening of December 26, 1985, he experienced

a number of peculiar encounters of which hedid not have full conscious recall. A subsequenthypnosis session led him to believe that he hade n c o u n t e red aliens who inserted a needle intohis brain. Strieber sought out the we l l - k n ow nabduction investigator Budd Hopkins, whol i ved not far from him though the two had notmet till then. Hopkins introduced him to psy-chiatrist Donald F. Klein, who subjectedStrieber to psychological tests and pro n o u n c e dhim normal. Strieber and Hopkins soon part e dcompany on bad terms around the timeStrieber published a best-selling account of hisabduction experiences, C o m m u n i o n ( 1 9 8 7 ) .

Communion sparked something of an up-roar, with some critics—most vocally ThomasM. Disch in The Nation—accusing Strieber ofhaving written a science-fiction novel that hewas passing off as fact. Strieber also had hisdefenders, who argued that he had too muchto lose to engage in that sort of literary fraud.A follow-up book, Transformation (1988), re-counted further experiences, and it, in turn,was followed by more books recounting ever

238 Stellar Community of Enlightened Ecosystems

Whitley Strieber (Dennis Stacy/Fortean Picture Library)

more fantastic interactions with “the visitors,”as Strieber calls them. By the time he pub-lished Secret School in 1996, he was claimingthat aliens had been interacting with him allof his life, beginning in his childhood whenthe visitors instructed him and other San An-tonio children on their missions as adults.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Extraterrestrialsamong us; Hopkins, Budd

Further ReadingConroy, Ed, 1989. Report on “Communion”: An Inde -

pendent Investigation of and Commentary on Whit -ley Strieber’s “Communion.” New York: WilliamMorrow and Company.

Strieber, Whitley, 1987. Communion: A True Story.Beach Tree/William Morrow.

———, 1988. Transformation: The Breakthrough.New York: William Morrow and Company.

———, 1995. Breakthrough: The Next Step. NewYork: HarperCollins Publishers.

———, 1996. The Secret School: Preparation forContact. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Strieber, Whitley, and Anne Strieber, eds., 1997. TheCommunion Letters. New York: HarperPrism.

Swords, Michael D., 1987. “Communion: A Reader’sGuide.” MUFON UFO Journal 229 (May): 3–6.

Sunar and TreenaDean Anderson of Egg Harbor, Wisconsin,was atop a riding lawn mower at a golf course

when a flying saucer landed. It was 4:15 A.M.,August 22, 1976. A door opened, and two be-ings, a man and a woman, floated out on abeam of light. As they stepped toward Ander-son, the saucer vanished. They shook Ander-son’s hand, and the man said, “We come inpeace. I am Sunar, from Jupiter. This isTreena. She comes from Saturn” (Bartho-lomew and Howard, 1998). Sunar, who hadcopper skin, said he was more than two hun-dred years old. The lightly tanned Treena, cladin a one-piece, skin-tight, green, glistening,metallic suit, looked, Anderson thought, likeElizabeth Taylor.

The space people told him that they hadcome to Earth to gather specimens. Be f o rethey left, they handed him an envelope withi n s t ructions not to open it for five Eart hdays. After waiting for the designated period,Anderson found a golden amulet inside. Onone side there was a bird resembling a dove .On the other, a message read, “Peace andfriendship fore ve r, Treena and Su n a r,” withdepictions of Saturn and Jupiter beside then a m e s .



Sunar and Treena 239

TabarOn the night of December 10, 1979, a RhodeIsland woman, Elaine Kaiser, saw a white lightand fell unconscious. Subsequent probingthrough hypnosis elicited the “memory” offloating in a beam into a room aboard a space-craft. There she encountered a giant being in adark metallic suit. By telepathy, the being toldher his name was Tabar, and he was from 2.4million light years away. She was laid on atable and connected by instruments to a manwho lay on another. She did not recognize theman. The procedure seemed to be somethinglike a blood transfusion. At first it was painful,but Tabar waved a hand in front of her face,and the discomfort ceased.

Several months later Kaiser saw the man inan audience. He did not act as if he recog-nized her, and she did not approach him.

Further Reading“Alien Visitors?” 1982. Oakland [Michigan] Press

(August 22).

TawaTawa, a Blackfoot Indian and a friend ofJesus in a previous incarnation, emerged in aOuija board session in suburban Chicago onAugust 22, 1968. Previous to this, CandyFletcher had been pursuing spiritual ques-

tions by reading metaphysical books and ex-ploring altered states of consciousness. But itwas through her husband, Re y, that Ta w aspoke. Under hypnosis, Rey Fletcher chan-neled Ta w a’s teachings until late 1970 whenhe turned his attention to more prosaic con-cerns. His wife, howe ve r, transcribed theteachings and began work on a book basedon them. She also founded the Circle ofPower Foundation. In 1984 the Fl e t c h e r sm oved to Vi c t o r, Montana, to devote fulltime to their spiritual concerns.

According to Tawa, Jesus was born againinto the world in 1962, but the individualhad yet to realize that he was the Messiah.Soon, however, he would come to that knowl-edge and reveal himself to the world, whichthis time would accept his mission. But beforethat happened, the anti-Christ would exertmalign influences and power before Jesus van-quished him.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingFletcher, C. R., 1984. Spirit in His Mind. Victor,

MT: Circle of Power Foundation.

TecuTecu (pronounced Tey-coo) is an entity whochanneled through a young California

T

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woman, Sanaya Roman. Roman first heardfrom him when she and a friend were vaca-tioning in Kauai, Hawaii. At that time, hedictated a book-length manuscript on how toheal psychically and how to use the universallaws of energy to one’s benefit. According toRoman, “Tecu identified himself as a Lord ofTime from the portals of the world of essencewhere all matter is created” (Roman andPacker, 1987).

He came to her a second time on anotherHawaiian trip. Then she learned that he camefrom a universe of a different frequency, thusmaking communication difficult and infre-quent. In that universe, energy is “symmetri-cal.” A jolly being, he took in good humor thedifficulties he encountered trying to walk inRoman’s body. Because in his realm energy isabsorbed whenever it is necessary, he was atfirst perplexed by the experience of eatingfood. “Eating is at the root of your problems,”he remarked wryly. “First you have to havefood. Then you need dishes. Then you have tobuild a house to contain the dishes. Then youhave to go to work to pay for the house. Allbecause you have to eat!”

Tecu came back on several occasions to dis-cuss the coming Earth changes and to encour-age Roman to continue her project of teach-ing others how to channel.

See Also: ChannelingFurther ReadingRoman, Sanaya, and Duane Packer, 1987. Opening

to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide.Tiburon, CA: H. J. Kramer.

Thee ElohimIn April 1971, a Milwaukee woman, JuneYoung, experienced a vision in which whiteand black people linked hands. All were wear-ing black robes with large white rosariesaround their necks. Soon she began receivingmessages from Archangel Michael. “He toldme to start a class dealing with the higher lawsof God,” she said. “He gave me full instruc-tions. The lessons were brought and taught byMichael and his Angels. Michael is the head

of our class as well as our protector.” She cameto understand that her original vision was ofthe group she would form, the Arising Sun’sInterplanetary Class of Thee Elohim.

She explained to writer Brad Steiger thatThee Elohim are the seven spirits of God:Chamuel, Gabriel, Raphael, Zadkiel, Mi-chael, Jophiel, and Uriel. “They stand beforeGod and co-create with Him,” she explained.“They manage and direct all forms that exist.”

In 1972 Jophiel, “the angel of intuitivelight,” told her that because she had man-aged to ove rcome “your desires of the flesh,”he and his colleagues we re giving her backthe name she had held in her previous incar-nation as a Venusian: Bright St a r. Ever aftershe went by that name, working at her mis-sion to “bring the material and spiritualkingdoms together.” Ac c o rding to her spacefriends, the Earth would go through deva s-tating physical and social upheaval in the lastyears of the twentieth century, but with thehelp of the space people and their terre s t r i a lassociates, the Eart h’s people will eve n t u a l l yenter a new age of peace, harmony, and spiri-tual wisdom.

See Also: Contactees; MichaelFurther ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the


Thompson’s VenusiansSamuel Eaton Thompson’s story is as strangeas any from the UFO age. Before the word“contactees” had been invented, Thompson,an elderly, poorly educated, retired railroadworker, claimed to have spent two days in thecompany of naked, Edenic Venusians and,moreover, seemed to actually believe his ownstory was true.

Thompson’s strange odyssey began onMarch 28, 1950, as he was driving betweenMorton and Mineral, Washington, on his wayhome from a visit to relatives in Markham. Ashe passed through a wooded area, he decidedto stop and take a break. He took a stroll

242 Thee Elohim

down an old logging trail that took himdeeper into the forest. As he entered aclearing, he saw a hovering UFO that, he laterrelated to a local newspaper reporter, “ap-peared to be made of a glowing, sun-coloredsubstance similar to plastic and was shapedlike two saucers fused together. I judged it wasabout eighty feet horizontally and thirty-twovertically” (“Centralian Tells,” 1950). Equallypeculiar was the sight of tanned, fine-featured,naked children playing on steps that led fromthe saucer to the ground.

Excited, Thompson approached the craft,feeling a mild heat emanating from it—thecause, he would learn subsequently, of its oc-cupants’ tanned skins. As he came nearer, hispresence brought the adults—beautiful andnude, with dark blond hair—to the door.They seemed frightened of him. He told themhe meant no harm, and they relaxed. Afterasking him in clumsy English to remove hisshoes and socks, they invited him inside,where he spent the next forty hours.

He learned that they we re from Ve n u s .The ship was also their home. It carried tenmen and ten women as well as twe n t y - fivec h i l d ren between six and fifteen years old. In-t e rv i ewed a few days later by private pilot andwe l l - k n own UFO witness Kenneth Arnold,Thompson said the Venusians we re friendlyand cheerful but curiously naïve. He com-p a red them to animals, meaning that instinctrather than intellect governs their activities.They knew nothing of the technology thatp owe red their ship; they knew which buttonsto push and levers to pull to get where theywanted to go, and that was it. They had nosense of time and no curiosity, and because oftheir eating habits—they we re ve g e t a r i a n sand stayed away from cooked foods—theyn e ver got sick and lived long lives. Their ve g-etables we re like those found on Earth, andThompson ate some while on the “s p a c e s h i p”(the word the Venusians used for their craft).He pronounced the food “just gre a t . ”

Venusians fear earthlings because humanaircraft had shot down some of their space-ships. Earth is considered a bad planet, but

Mars is even worse. There are twelve inhab-ited planets in the solar system. Each residentis born under the sign of the planet on whichhe or she is born, except for Earth, whoseproblems stem from the fact that each personis born under a different sign. Venusians andearthlings long ago were very close, sharing“the first religion ever known,” but the peopleof Earth eventually became corrupt, and acurse was cast upon their planet. Venusiansand other space people are now reincarnatingon Earth; their goal is to reform the earthlingsand prepare them for Christ’s Second Comingin A.D. 10,000.

After sleeping overnight in a chair in one ofthe ship’s bedrooms, Thompson asked for per-mission to go home and pick up a camera.They did not know what a camera was. Whenhe explained, they said he could go but askedhim not to bring anyone else along. The pho-tographic experiment came to nil. It was “justlike trying to take a picture of the sun,” hetold Arnold. “It has a glow to it. That film wasjust blank. I wanted to get some of them rightonto the ground to take some pictures ofthem, but they wouldn’t come out” (Clark,1981).

The Venusians left on Ma rch 30, caution-ing Thompson to keep certain information toh i m s e l f. If he ever saw them again, no one eve rk n ew. For many years his story was littlek n own, with a brief newspaper account theonly re c o rd of it. In 1980, Arnold gave a tapeof his early April 1950 interv i ew with T h o m p-son to Fa t e magazine, and an article largelybased on it appeared in the Ja n u a ry 1981issue. Arnold re m a rked on T h o m p s o n’s igno-rance and lack of imagination, and he wasconvinced that Thompson believed his story,its outlandish, even absurd, qualities notwith-standing. Arnold speculated that he had un-dergone some sort of “p s yc h i c” experience.

See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; Hopkins’sMartians

Further ReadingArnold, Kenneth, 1980. “How It All Began.” In

Curtis G. Fuller, ed. Proceedings of the First Inter -national UFO Congress, 17–29. New York:Warner Books.

Thompson’s Venusians 243

“Centralian Tells Strange Tale of Visiting VenusSpace Ship in Eastern Lewis County,” 1950. Cen -tralia [Washington] Daily Chronicle (April 1).

Clark, Jerome, 1981. “The Coming of the Venu-sians.” Fate 34, 1 (January): 49–55.

TibusTibus channels through Diane Tessman, achanneling contactee now living in Iow a .Tibus, a member of the Ashtar Command andthe Free Federation of Planets, has visited theE a rth thousands of times. Under hypnosis withp s ychologist/ufologist R. Leo Sprinkle, Te s s-man recounted several childhood “m e m o r i e s”of encountering Tibus aboard a mother ship.He was in the company of two humanoids, oneof whom was insectlike in appearance. The hu-manoids performed medical experiments onh e r. One experiment, which occurred when shewas three years old, left a surgical scar betwe e nher nose and upper lip. Tessman believes thatthe space people we re seeking to implant areplica of Ti b u s’s soul inside her.

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Contactees; Sprinkle,Ronald Leo

Further ReadingMontgomery, Ruth, 1985. Aliens among Us. New


Time travelersAccording to Bruce Goldberg, a Californiaphysician and a prolific writer on occult andmetaphysical subjects, visitors from the futureare here. He claims to have met several“chrononauts,” as he calls them. They arehere, he says, to help us in our spiritual evolu-tion, and they, not extraterrestrials, are theagents responsible for UFO abductions.

Time travel was, or will be, invented in theyear 3050. The inve n t o r, Taatos, was the godHermes thousands of years ago, in anotherlifetime. Be f o re Taatos traveled back to ourtime to talk with Dr. Goldberg, howe ve r, hehelped send holographic images into our pre s-ent re a l i t y. Goldberg writes that the chro n o-nauts “have mastered hyperspace travel be-t ween dimension[s], and can move thro u g h

walls and solid objects. By existing in the fif t hdimension, they can observe us and remain in-visible. Genetic manipulation of our chro m o-somes is a routine pro c e d u re for them. T h e yh a ve greatly speeded up our rate of evo l u t i o n . ”

While traveling in an out-of-body statet h rough the fifth dimension, Goldberg en-c o u n t e red a thirt y - s i x t h - c e n t u ry man whocalled himself Traksa. Traksa told him thatmany chrononauts are living quietly amonghumans, keeping out of the public eye ande ven spending much of their time in a literallyinvisible state. Traksa eventually acknow l e d g e dto Goldberg that one purpose of his visit wasto introduce Goldberg to Art Bell, then host ofa nationwide radio show catering to enthusi-asts of the esoteric. Goldberg then re a l i zed thatspelled backwards, Tr a k s a’s name was “A S KA RT.” Afterw a rd Goldberg appeared at leastnine times on Be l l’s popular pro g r a m .

He also met Muat, Traksa’s supervisor fromthe fortieth century. In earlier lifetimes, heplayed big roles in both Atlantis and Lemuria.Nirev (thirty-first century) helped with thenineteenth century’s industrial revolution,and Alsinoma (thirty-fourth century) tutoredLeonardo da Vinci. Chat Noy (fiftieth cen-tury) is or will be one of the great pioneers oftime travel.

“Chrononauts are spiritual people,” Gold-berg writes. “They follow us from lifetime tolifetime, tracing our souls back to previouslives and monitoring our spiritual unfolding.Their ultimate purpose is to facilitate the per-fection of the human soul to allow for ascen-sion and the end of the karmic cycle. Thereare also future problems—wars, pollution, in-fertility—in this and parallel universes thatthey are trying to avert by assisting us now inour spiritual progress” (Goldberg, n.d.).

Marc Davenport theorizes that UFOs arevisitors from the future. In his view, “Thesetime machines are peopled by a complex mix-ture of human beings, evolved forms of hu-manoid beings, genetically engineered lifeforms, androids, robots and/or alien lifeforms. These occupants make use of advancedtechnology based on principles that will be

244 Tibus

discovered at some point in our near future toproduce fields around their craft that warpspace-time. By manipulating those fields, theyare able to traverse what we think of as spaceand time as well” (Davenport, 1992). Daven-port, however, does not claim to have seenany of these time travelers himself.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Atlantis; LemuriaFurther ReadingDavenport, Marc, 1992. Visitors from Time: The Se -

cret of the UFOs. Tigard, OR: Wild Flower Press.Goldberg, Bruce, n.d. “Time Travelers I Have Met.”

h t t p : / / w w w. d r b ru c e g o l d b e r g . c o m / Ti m e Tr a ve l-ers2.htm.

Tin-can aliensFour miles east of Long Prairie, Minnesota, at7:40 P.M. on October 23, 1965, a young radioannouncer named James Townsend wasrounding a curve when suddenly he saw some-thing in the road and slammed on his brakes.It was a rocket-shaped UFO resting on thre efins. The car skidded to a halt only twenty feetf rom the device, which stood thirty to fort yfeet tall and was ten feet in diameter.

In a circle of light beneath the UFO,Townsend observed three objects or entitiesthat looked like beer cans on tripod legs andwith three matchstick arms. Even though theyhad no eyes, he was certain that they werestaring at him. When he stepped out of hiscar, they came toward him. After what seemedan eternity, they scooted under the ship anddisappeared into the light circle. The UFOshot off with an ear-splitting roar.

His outlandish story notwithstanding, law-enforcement officers and civilian investigatorsbelieved that Townsend, a devoutly religiousman, was not perpetrating a hoax.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kindFurther ReadingJansen, Clare John, 1966. “Little Tin Men in Min-

nesota.” Fate 19, 2 (February): 36–40.

Tree-stump aliensOne of the most bizarre close encounters ofthe third kind ever took place on the evening

of April 5, 1966, in Newport, Oregon, duringa nationwide UFO wave. Though such re-ports overwhelmingly describe human or hu-manoid entities, two teenaged girls claimed tohave seen aliens that looked like tree stumps.

As they told the story, they were walking tothe house of one of them—Kathy Reeves—when they sensed that someone was followingthem. At a turn in the road, they looked be-hind them to see something like a “flashlightwith a cover over the end.” Assuming it was aprankster trying to scare them, they threwrocks toward the light. But when they did so,other, bigger lights suddenly switched on.Frightened, the girls started running. Theirdash home was interrupted, however, by abizarre sight: three shapes moving across apasture apparently heading toward the lights.

They looked, Kathy Reeves later said, like“three little tree stumps” walking on legs thatresembled a tree trunk’s tap roots. They hadno heads or arms. They were clad in multicol-ored clothes, “orange, blue, white, yellow, andwatermelon-colored” (Brandon, 1978). Thesight set the witnesses screaming homeward.

The resulting publicity brought investiga-tors and curiosity-seekers to the Reeves resi-dence over the next few days. At least two ofthem, including Deputy Sheriff Thomas W.Price, reported seeing strange moving lights.There were no further reports of aliens, tree-stump ones or otherwise, though.

See Also: Close encounters of the third kindFurther ReadingBrandon, Jim, 1978. Weird America: A Guide to

Places of Mystery in the United States. New York:E. P. Dutton.

Tulpa“Tulpa” is a Tibetan term for an entity createdby mental concentration. Such an entity is be-lieved to take on at least a quasi-physical formand to be visible to others besides its creator.

The most famous tulpa account appears inAlexandra David-Neel’s With Mystics and Ma -gicians in Tibet, originally published in 1931.David-Neel, an adventurous French woman

Tulpa 245

educated at the Sorbonne, traveled widelythrough Tibet in the early part of the twenti-eth century, exploring places and meetingBuddhist holy men that no European had be-fore encountered. The Geographical Societyof Paris awarded her a gold medal, and the Le-gion of Honor knighted her.

David-Neel wrote that while living withthe Tibetan yogis, she decided to conjure up atulpa. She imagined him to be a fat, jollylama. After some months, the being came intoexistence. Apparently David-Neel essentiallyconsidered him a vivid hallucination, a kindof imaginary companion, and she was unset-tled when it began to take on a reality of itsown. First, she claimed, it became no longernecessary for her to think of it for it to appear,and it seemed to adopt a recognizable person-ality and to perform appropriate actions.

“A change gradually took place in mylama,” she said. “The countenance I hadgiven him altered; his chubby cheeks thinnedand his expression became vaguely cunningand malevolent. He became more importu-nate. In short, he was escaping me. One day ashepherd who was bringing me butter saw thephantasm, which he took for a lama of fleshand bone.”

Alarmed, she decided that she had to de-stroy the entity. It was not easy. It took sixmonths of hard mental work. She concluded,“That I should have succeeded in obtaining avoluntary hallucination is not surprising.What is interesting in such cases of ‘material-ization’ is that other persons see the form cre-ated by thought.”

Though such first-person allegations ofreal-life tulpas are exceedingly rare, David-Neel’s story would inspire a great deal of spec-ulation that seeks to explain a broad range ofextraordinary entities, from lake monsters toUFO humanoids, as tulpalike “thoughtforms” or (in Michael Grosso’s phrase) “psy-choterrestrials” (Grosso, 1992).

See Also: Imaginal beings; PsychoterrestrialsFurther ReadingDavid-Neel, Alexandra, 1957. With Mystics and Ma -

gicians in Tibet. New York: University Books.

Grosso, Michael, 1992. Frontiers of the Soul: Explor -ing Psychic Evolution. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.

The TwoThe Two were Marshall Herff Applewhite,also known as Bo, and Bonnie Lu Nettles, alsoknown as Peep, two of the stranger flying-saucer contactees. Nettles would be long deadwhen Applewhite, then heading a cultlikegroup called Heaven’s Gate, led thirty-eightfollowers to mass suicide in a house in awealthy neighborhood of San Diego in March1997. Their departure from this world—in-tended to free their bodies so that their soulscould board a spaceship thought to be accom-panying the Hale-Bopp comet—generatedheadlines the world over.

Behind the tragedy lay a quarter-century ofspiritual odyssey that began in 1972, whenthe psychiatrically troubled Applewhite, amusical director at a local Episcopal church,met Nettles, a nurse, at a Houston hospital.The Two shared an interest in the occult, andin Nettles, Applewhite found someone he hadbeen looking for: a woman with whom to es-tablish a platonic relationship and a sharedmetaphysical mission. Applewhite’s homosex-uality had caused him legal and employmentproblems and spiritual confusion. The occultdoctrine the Two would create, under guid-ance from space people, eschewed sexualityand demanded chastity from its adherents.

Beginning in 1973, Ap p l ewhite and Ne t-tles set out on a rambling pilgrimage thro u g hs e veral western states. While living alongOre g o n’s Rogue Rive r, they experienced are velation that they we re the two witnesseswho Re velation 11 had prophesied wouldappear on Earth during its last days. T h e i rfirst attempt to announce themselves to alarger world occurred in Oklahoma City,w h e re they introduced themselves to localufologist Ha yden Hewes, who had a flair forp u b l i c i t y. They told Hewes to announce thatthey we re here to help the human race as-cend to its next evo l u t i o n a ry level. Ac c o rd i n gto Hewes, they spoke as if “humans we re

246 The Two

alien to them” (Hewes and St e i g e r, 1976).Their behavior and general demeanor we reso odd that Hewes wondered if they we re ac-tual extraterre s t r i a l s .

T h rough leaflets signed by Human In d i v i d-ual Metamorphosis (HIM), the Two soughtf o l l owers. The documents identified them astwo individuals who had come from an ad-vanced realm to testify to the same messagethat Jesus had given to the world. Those whof o l l owed them would have to abandon all tiesto this world, including family, friends, jobs,and possessions. When they achieved meta-morphosis, they would experience actual bio-logical and chemical changes in their bodies.

Bo and Be e p, as they then called them-s e l ves, made themselves available to the publicin the spring of 1975 at a meeting held in thehome of a Los Angeles psychic. Twe n t y - f o u rpersons followed them to participate in furt h e rgatherings in California, Colorado, and else-w h e re, where new believers we re solicited tobecome Bo and Pe e p’s sheep. Little of this at-tracted press attention until twenty membersof an audience, which had come to hear theTwo in Wa l d p o rt, Oregon, disappeared withthem the next day. Newspaper accounts de-picted the couple as mysterious. The accounte ven seemed to leave open the possibility thatthe missing audience members had flown offin a UFO. In fact, they had joined the pilgrim-age. Six weeks later, two Un i versity of Mo n-tana sociologists found them—though not Boand Peep—in Arizona. Bo and Pe e p, fearingassassination, had dropped out of sight. Be f o retheir depart u re, howe ve r, they separated their150 to 200 followers in autonomous “f a m i l i e s”of about a dozen persons each. Within eachfamily there was further bre a k d own into cou-ples, preferably a man and a woman, who we reto observe each other care f u l l y. Sex and eve nfriendship we re explicitly discouraged; the “re-l a t i o n s h i p” had one purpose, which was thateach person would have his or her faultspointed out, thus making it possible to ove r-come human limitations.

Each family went its own way, supportingitself via meetings, contributions by new

members, and begging. The reception of suchproselytizing was usually hostile, but smallnumbers of recruits filled the ranks, often re-placing those who had lost interest. Most fol-lowers were occult tourists whose fascinationwith any particular metaphysical doctrine wasonly passing. The failure of flying saucers toarrive to take believers to a New World alsodiscouraged interest.

In early 1976, the movement, now consist-ing of fewer than one hundred members, re-treated with Bo and Beep to a mountain campnear Laramie, Wyoming. The couple’s author-itarian control was intensified, and thosejudged unqualified were forced out. By fall,the band had relocated to Salt Lake City.Around this time, two members inherited agreat deal of money, which they turned overto Bo and Peep. They purchased houses(“crafts” in their terminology) in Denver and

The Two 247

Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles,photographed after their 1975 arrest by local police inHarlington, Texas, for auto theft and credit card fraud(Bettmann/Corbis)

Dallas–Fort Worth and essentially removedthemselves from the world. Press stories aboutthem were few, though in 1979 one memberspoke with Time and recounted the day-to-day spiritual activities of the group, whichwere rigidly directed. Nettles died, apparentlyof cancer, in 1985.

In 1993, the group reemerged into viewwith an advertisement in USA Today and fol-lowed it with pronouncements in other publi-cations. Now calling themselves Total Over-comers, members lectured in various cities.Two years later, the group, by then calledHeaven’s Gate, moved to San Diego and setup a successful computer business with itsown web site. In October 1996, it purchased amansion in San Diego’s exclusive RanchoSanta Fe.

It was there that the mass suicide occurred,apparently on the night of March 25–26,1997. Alerted by an anonymous phone call(the caller was later identified as Richard Ford,one of the group’s followers), police found thebodies of thirty-nine identically dressed menand women of androgynous appearance.Some of them, it was learned, had been surgi-cally castrated. All had died of poison and suf-focation. One of them was Applewhite. Ac-cording to a videotaped statement, the deathsoccurred so that members could leave their

“vehicles” (bodies) and join a giant spaceshipthat they believed was following the Hale-Bopp comet.

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingBalch, Robert W., 1995. “Waiting for the Ships: Dis-

illusionment and the Revitalization of Faith inBo and Peep’s UFO Cult.” In James R. Lewis, ed.The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from OtherWorlds, 137–166. Albany, NY: State University ofNew York Press.

Bruni, Frank, 1997. “Cult Leader Believed in SpaceAliens and Apocalypse.” New York Times (March28).

“Flying Saucery in the Wilderness,” 1979. Time (Au-gust 27): 58.

Hewes, Hayden, and Brad Steiger, eds., 1976. UFOMissionaries Extraordinary. New York: PocketBooks.

Hoffmann, Bill, Cathy Burke, and the staff of theNew York Post, 1997. Heaven’s Gate: Cult Suicidein San Diego. New York: Harper-Paperbacks.

Niebuhr, Gustav, 1997. “On the Furthest Fringes ofMillennialism.” New York Times (March 28).

Oliver, Evelyn Dorothy, 1997. “Graduating to theNext Level: The Heaven’s Gate Tragedy in theContext of New Age Ideology.” Syzygy 6,1 (Win-ter/Spring): 43–58.

Peters, Ted, 1977. UFOs—God’s Chariots? FlyingSaucers in Politics, Science, and Religion. Atlanta,GA: John Knox Press.

Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and theTransformation of Man. New York: HarcourtBrace Jovanovich.

248 The Two

UlktUlkt, a Martian, introduced himself throughautomatic writing to a Salt Lake City UFObuff, Mary Sewall, in early 1982. He told herthat Earth is overloaded with negative vibra-tions. Humans cannot join the federation ofintelligent worlds until they learn to cast posi-tive vibrations. If they stop conflict and im-moral behavior, their collective vibratory ratewill rise. Ulkt signed each communicationwith what looked like an H on its side. Sewalltook this to be a symbol of infinity.

Further ReadingSprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky


UltraterrestrialsUl t r a t e r restrials dwell in the superspectrum, afield of intelligent energy capable of manipu-lating matter. Ul t r a t e r restrials are among them a t e r i a l i zed manifestations from this alterna-t i ve re a l i t y. They appear to human beings in arange of guises: as demons, extraterre s t r i a l s ,channeling intelligences, angels, fairies, mon-sters, men in black, and other supernatural en-tities. They are behind all of the world’s re l i-gions, and they have manipulated history. All

u l t r a t e r restrials have one thing in common: adetestation of human beings and all they standf o r. Human beings who encounter them oftenend up psychically enslaved or destroye d .

In Keel’s view, heavily influenced by tradi-tional demonology, “The Devil’s emissaries ofyesteryear have been replaced by the mysteri-ous ‘men in black.’ The quasi-angels of Bibli-cal times have become magnificent spacemen.The demons, devils, and false angels were rec-ognized as liars and plunderers by early man.These same impostors now appear as long-haired Venusians” (Keel, 1970).

See Also: Channeling; Fairies encountered; Keel,John Alva; Men in black

Further ReadingKeel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.

New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

UmmoUmmo is supposedly the name of a planetthat revolves around a star known to Ummitesas Iumma, 14.6 light years from the Earth. Itis also the focus of one of the most complex,enigmatic hoaxes in the history of the con-tactee movement.

The episode began in February 1966 in aMadrid suburb, where witnesses allegedly sawa UFO hovering close to the ground. One

U

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witness, Jose Luis Jordan Pena, reported see-ing a strange symbol on the bottom of thecraft. It resembled two reverse parentheses,with a vertical bar between them. Only JordanPena told of seeing such a symbol (in factquite similar to the stylized H used sometimesto represent the planet Uranus), which he de-scribed in a letter to prominent Spanish ufolo-gist Antonio Ribera. On June 1, 1967, thesame man claimed to have investigated an-other close encounter at San Jose de Valderas,near Madrid. He said witnesses had told himthat they saw a symbol on the UFO’s bottom.It was like the earlier one, except that now ahorizontal bar crossed the vertical and linkedthe two reverse parentheses. The followingday, Antonio San Antonio, a newspaper pho-tographer, took a phone call from an anony-mous young man. The caller said he hadtaken pictures of the UFO, and San Antonio

could pick them up at a certain photographiclaboratory. One of the pictures depicted thecurious logo.

Soon afterward, leaflets signed “HenriDagousset” asserted that the UFO had leftcapsules in the area. “Dagousset” offered threehundred dollars for each sample, referring tak-ers to a general delivery address at Madrid’smain post office. In August, Barcelona writerMarius Lleget, author of a recently publishedUFO book, received a letter with no returnaddress from “Antonio Pardo.” Inside the en-velope were two more pictures of the San Josede Valderas object with the identical symbol.Pardo said he had taken them moments afterthe first photographer had snapped his. Healso enclosed a green plastic strip with thesymbol on it, explaining that he had recoveredit from a boy who had found it and a similarstrip inside a mysterious tube. (Subsequent

250 Ummo

One of several UFO photographs taken by “Antonio Pardo” at San Jose de Valderas, Madrid, Spain, June 1, 1967 (ForteanPicture Library)

analysis determined it to be a weather-resist-ant plastic developed for military and aero-space use. It was, in other words, of earthlyorigin.) Then a man identifying himself asPardo phoned Lleget and spoke with him atlength. Lleget never asked for his address, andPardo did not provide it, to the later frustra-tion of Ribera and Rafael Farriols. The twoufologists called every Antonio Pardo (An-thony Brown in English) in Madrid’s phonebook without ever finding anyone who wouldown up to being Lleget’s informant.

A related development, investigators wouldsoon learn, had occurred on May 20, whenthe Spanish newspaper Informaciones pub-lished a peculiar announcement: that soon aflying saucer would land near Madrid to re-turn earthbound extraterrestrials to theirhome planet, Ummo. On the evening of thethirtieth, three persons reportedly watched aUFO land near a restaurant in Santa Monica,another Madrid suburb. The next day, accord-ing to one of the witnesses, impressions, burnmarks, and small amounts of a metallic sub-stance attested to the UFO’s presence. Thesealleged events seemed to confirm a predictionmade by contactee Fernando Sesma, presidentof the Society of the Friends of Space, on May31. In a speech to a small group, he revealedthat since 1965 he and two associates hadbeen recipients of phone messages and writtencommunications from Ummites. They hadinformed him of a sighting to occur on June1. They provided the exact geographical coor-dinates. The Santa Monica incident seemed toconfirm the Ummites’ statement.

The written messages soon started to arrivein the mail of Spanish UFO enthusiasts, thento some of their French colleagues. Postmarksindicated that they were sent from all over theworld, from cities in Europe to others in NewZealand and Canada. On each page theUmmo symbol appeared. It was the same oneJordan Pena and other witnesses had report-edly seen and the anonymous young man hadphotographed. The messages typically con-sisted of many pages of discourse on Ummite

life, society, science, technology, language,and politics. Besides the monographs, therewere phone calls from purported Ummites,always speaking with great precision in amonotone voice. Untraceable or unsigned let-ters came from human beings who had dealtwith Ummites face to face (they were de-scribed as tall, blond, and Scandinavian in ap-pearance) and witnessed marvelous technol-ogy. The quantity of such material wasastounding. By 1983, according to an esti-mate by one knowledgeable student of theepisode, some sixty-seven hundred Ummo-related communications were in the hands ofa variety of recipients. Most were written inSpanish, a small minority in stilted Frenchthat seemed to have been translated fromSpanish.

In one document, the Ummites said theyhad arrived on Earth in March 1950. The fol-lowing April 24, they revealed in another doc-ument that they had stolen a number of itemsfrom a family in an isolated house in theFrench Alps. By this time, the French govern-ment had become interested, and at last it hadan investigatable claim. But official inquiriesturned up nothing: no police records, no evi-dence of the cave in which the Ummites as-serted they had been living between theirlanding and the break-in. In the 1970s, theSan Jose de Valderas “UFO” fell victim tophotoanalysis that established that the objectwas an eight-inch plate, the symbol drawn inink. Still, the communications continued, andan Ummo cult grew up around them. A num-ber of books, mostly in Spanish and French,would examine or celebrate Ummo.

Though no evidence supports the existenceof Ummo and Ummites, the identity of theperpetrators of the hoax is still unknown.French-American ufologist Jacques Vallee,trained in astrophysics and computer sciences,characterizes the contents of the documents as“clever and occasionally stimulating. . . . Ascience journalist, a government engineerworking on advanced projects, or a frustratedwriter could match the psychological profile

Ummo 251

of the UMMO author” (Vallee, 1991). Hecontends that the perpetrator or perpetratorsgot their inspiration from Jorge Luis Borges’sfantastic short story “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Ter-tius” (1941), a fable about imaginary planetsthat in some sense become “real.” Other sus-pects are Fernando Sesma, Jordan Pena, orsome intelligence agency involved in a psy-chological experiment. Hilary Evans thinks abetter, more sustained investigation by theSpanish ufologists who probed the affairwould have produced answers and madeUmmo less mysterious than it appears to be.Whatever the case, Ummo documents stillshow up in the mail of a few individuals, mostprominently the French aerospace engineerJean-Pierre Petit. Whoever is beyond theepisode has expended much time and energyto it over three decades.

Further ReadingEvans, Hilary, 1983. “Ummo: A Perfect Case?” The

Unexplained 12, 134: 2661–2665.———, 1983. “The Ummites Tell All.” The Unex -

plained 12, 135: 2686–2689.———, 1983. “Ummo—Red Alert.” The Unex -

plained 12, 137: 2738–2740.Ribera, Antonio, 1975. “The Mysterious ‘UMMO’

Affair.” Flying Saucer Review Pt. I. 20, 4 (Janu-ary): 20–24; Pt. II. 20, 5 (March): 13–16; Pt. III.21, 1 (June): 26–28; Pt. IV. 21, 2 (August):24–25, 27; Pt. V. 21, 3–4 (November): 43–46.

Vallee, Jacques, 1991. Revelations: Alien Contact andHuman Deception. New York: Ballantine Books.

Unholy SixAc c o rding to George Hunt Williamson, sixsolar systems housing planets peopled by“n e g a t i ve space intelligences” exist in theOrion nebula. The “Unholy Si x” live ondying worlds, and they plan to destroy theE a rth so that they can have access to its re-s o u rces. The Orion group has its own subve r-s i ve agents on Earth, working with them tou n d e rcut the work of friendly, pro - h u m a nspace visitors of the Space Confederation.Though incapable of entering the Eart h’s at-m o s p h e re in their own spacecraft, the Un h o l ySix project their intelligences into the brainsof certain eart h l i n g s .

Williamson wrote that the underlying causeof conflict between the Space Confederationand the Unholy Six is that “the former areDeists and the latter are Ideists.” In otherw o rds, the Space Confederation believes in adivine power to which all are answerable, andthe Unholy Six believe only in the primacy ofthe “id”—the power of the individual. “Fo rcountless millennia there have been no possi-bilities of reconciliation between theseg roups,” Williamson said (Williamson, 1959).


Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.———, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: Neville

Spearman.

252 Unholy Six

VadigVadig is an extraterrestrial invented by self-confessed hoaxer Thomas F. Monteleone. InMarch 1968, as a psychology student at theUniversity of Maryland, Monteleone heardWest Virginia contactee Woodrew Deren-berger talking about his space contacts onWashington, DC, radio station WWDC.Derenberger claimed to have traveled to theplanet Lanulos. Convinced that Derenbergerwas lying, Monteleone decided to play a prac-tical joke and to assert that he, too, had beento Lanulos. He called the station under thename “Ed Bailey” and added new detailsabout the planet and its people. Derenbergerreadily agreed with what the caller said.

To Monteleone’s chagrin, the station wasable to trace the call. Derenberger’s managerHarold Salkin phoned him and learned histrue identity. A week later, Salkin, Deren-berger, and the latter’s wife called on Mon-teleone, who tape-recorded the interview. Inthe interview, the young man reported thatwhile driving home on an interstate highwayhe witnessed a UFO landing. Two aliensemerged, and one introduced himself asVadig. Two months later, Vadig showed up atthe Washington restaurant where Monteleoneworked part-time. He arranged a meeting,ending the encounter, as he had before, with

the enigmatic words “I’ll see you in time.”The following Sunday night, Vadig drove theyoung man into rural Maryland where theyboarded a spaceship and flew to Lanulos,where the inhabitants walk about naked. Oneweek later Monteleone met Vadig and anotherLanulosian for the last time.

Not long after the initial interv i ew theDe renbergers and Salkin returned to talkonce more, bringing along with them occultjournalist John A. Keel. Keel, who thoughtMonteleone had re vealed information only areal contactee would know, wrote about theVadig encounter in later magazine art i c l e sand in a book. When Vadig said he would“see you in time,” according to Keel, he washinting that UFO beings “originate outsideof our time frame. . . . UFOs are from an-other time cycle vastly different from ourow n” (Keel, 1969).

Monteleone went on to a short career as apublic contactee. His story appears in a bookDerenberger wrote with Harold W. Hubbardin 1970, cited as evidence of the authenticityof Lanulos and the author’s experiences withit. In 1979, in a short article in Omni, Mon-teleone confessed the hoax, noting, “I contra-dicted Mr. Derenberger’s story on purpose.But on each occasion, he would giveground . . . and in the end corroborate my

V

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own falsifications. He even claimed to knowpersonally the ‘UFOnaut’ who contacted me!”A fuller account of the episode appeared in1980 in a Fate article by ufologist Karl T.Pflock. By this time Monteleone had em-barked on what was to prove a successful ca-reer as a science-fiction writer.

See Also: Contactees; Keel, John AlvaFurther ReadingDerenberger, Woodrow W., and Harold W. Hub-

bard, 1971. Visitors from Lanulos. New York:Vantage Press.


———, 1969. “The Time Cycle Factor.” FlyingSaucer Review 15, 3 (May/June): 9–13.

Monteleone, Thomas F., 1979. “Last Word: TheGullibility Factor.” Omni 1 (May): 146.

Pflock, Karl T., 1980. “Anatomy of a UFO Hoax.”Fate 33, 11 (November): 40–48.

Val ThorVal (or Valiant) Thor, a Venusian, met FrankE. Stranges, evangelist and contactee, in thePentagon one morning in December 1959. Atthe time Stranges was conducting a Christiancrusade in Washington. An anonymous Pen-tagon official of his acquaintance invited himto the building. In one room he met a hand-some, tanned man with wavy brown hair. Inthe course of a half-hour conversation, thestranger informed him that he was fromVenus. Over the course of years, Stranges flewon spacecraft with Val Thor and wrote twobooks about their experiences together.

Stranges reported that Venusians are physi-cally like humans in all ways, except that theydo not have fingerprints. Fingerprints “are asign of fallen man,” according to Val Thor(Stranges, 1974). Venusians, who are withoutsin, are devout Christians, but they have noneed for the Bible because of their closeness toits author. In their first meeting Strangeslearned that seventy-seven Venusians were liv-ing secretly in the United States, but thatnumber was subject to constant change be-cause the Space Brothers were always comingand going. Val himself was scheduled to re-

turn to Venus on March 16, 1960. The Venu-sians had come to Earth to “help mankind re-turn to the Lord.”

On the morning of Fe b ru a ry 5, 1968, Va lThor phoned Stranges and instructed him tomeet at the San Diego Airport. From there ,the two drove across the border into a coastalt own in Sonora, Me x i c o. Near there, theyb o a rded a flying saucer with a large crew, in-cluding a woman named Teel. Inside Va l’sc o m p a rtment, Stranges learned that his friendhad spoken with Sen. Ro b e rt F. Ke n n e d y, thenrunning for the Democratic nomination to thep re s i d e n c y. Kennedy had written Val a letterrequesting a meeting, and Val had re s p o n d e d .Val found Kennedy “n e rvous and suspicious.”That evening aboard the spaceship, as theywatched a large televisionlike screen, St r a n g e s ,Val, and several dozen Venusians sorrow f u l l yo b s e rved Ke n n e d y’s assassination.

On another occasion, in January 1974,Stranges flew to Las Vegas to meet Val andfriends. At the airport, two young mendressed in black called him by name. Assum-ing they were the space people who were totake him to Val Thor, he followed them into ablack Cadillac. Suddenly, they and a third,similarly clad man turned on him and werebeating him severely when two men—spacepeople—came to the rescue. They caused theCadillac and the three men in black, agents ofdark forces opposed to the Venusians’ benevo-lent mission, to disappear. They then tookStranges to the scheduled conference with Valinside a flying saucer.

Still an active lecturer and saucer personal-i t y, Stranges claims to have photographic pro o fof Va l’s existence. The photographs, re p ro-duced in his books and shown at his lecture s ,depict a man dressed in a suit and surro u n d e dby other persons in what look like ord i n a ry so-cial situations. Val Thor resembles a Ho l l y-wood bit player more than an extraterre s t r i a l .

See Also: Contactees; Men in blackFurther ReadingStranges, Frank E., 1974. My Friend from beyond

Earth. Second edition. Van Nuys, CA: Interna-tional Evangelism Crusades.

254 Val Thor

———, 1972. The Stranger at the Pentagon. Secondedition. Van Nuys, CA: International EvangelismCrusades.

ValdarIn 1960, a young man identified only asEdwin was working in a factory in Durban,South Africa, when he met and befriended anew supervisor. One night while the two werefishing together, the latter spoke into a me-chanical device, called up space people, andproduced a sky show with UFOs. Soon after-ward, the man confessed to Edwin that hisreal name was Valdar. He also told Edwin thathe was from Koldas, a planet that existed inan anti-matter universe to which he mustsoon return. He left Edwin the device beforehe disappeared. In a few months, the twowere talking over the interdimensional radio.Edwin learned that Koldas is one planet in atwelve-world confederation.

The exchange continued for years. Beforelong, Edwin channeled the messages ratherthan taking them through the radio. Many ofthe messages were of a technical and scientificnature. Others were occult and metaphysical.In 1986, South African ufologist Carl vanVlierden published a book-length account ofEdwin’s alleged experiences and messages.

Further ReadingHind, Cynthia, 1996. UFOs over Africa. Madison,

WI: Horus House.Van Vlierden, Carl, and Wendelle C. Stevens, 1986.

UFO Contact from Planet Koldas. Tucson, AZ:UFO Photo Archives.

Van Tassel, George W. (1910–1978)Besides being a contactee himself, George VanTassel made his mark as the foremost pro-moter of the early contactee movement. Everyyear he sponsored the Giant Rock Interplane-tary Spacecraft Convention at his residence inthe high desert between Yucca Valley andJoshua Tree, California. He also introducedAshtar, among the most ubiquitous andbeloved of channeling entities, to the occultand flying-saucer world.

Born in Ohio, Van Tassel moved to Califor-nia in 1930 with his family. He worked as ana i rcraft technician for, among others, How a rdHughes. In 1947, the Van Tassels took up re s i-dence inside an immense, partially hollowe d -out rock called simply Giant Rock. Van Ta s s e ls t a rted receiving psychic messages from extra-t e r restrials in Ja n u a ry 1952, the first of themf rom “Lutbunn, senior in command first wave ,planet patrol, realms of Schare [pro n o u n c e dSh a re-ee, a starship station in space]. We haveyour contact aboard 80,000 feet above thisp l a c e” (Van Tassel, 1952). A flood of othermessages followed in the next days, weeks, andmonths, all from peace-loving space people as-sociated with the Council of Se ven Lights onthe planet Shanchea. Van Tassel wrote whatmay be the first contactee book, in the modernsense, I Rode a Flying Sa u c e r ! (1952). Its titlenotwithstanding, at that point all of his con-tacts had been mental ones. Not until Au g u s t24, 1953, would Van Tassel board a spacecraft(or “ventla,” in the vo c a b u l a ry of his spacef r i e n d s ) .

Beginning in early 1953, Van Tassel heldweekly public channeling sessions. The GiantRock conventions began that spring, attract-ing the new contactee stars and their followersand affording the emerging movement muchpublicity. Soon Van Tassel, in person andthrough his College of Universal Wisdom,was raising money for the Integratron, a ma-chine to be built according to extraterrestrials’specifications. It was supposed to rejuvenatetissue and restore youthful vigor. By 1959, thestructure was partially built, but for all VanTassel’s subsequent efforts it would never becompleted.

More than any other single figure, Van Tas-sel gave direction and cohesion to what other-wise would have been a disparate movement.He supported contactees whose claims—aswas often the case—conflicted with his own,to the expense of his own credibility. UfologistIsabel L. Davis, for example, saw him as acharlatan who knew fully well that the contactstories were bogus. Others, however, judgedhim to be sincere and dedicated to a meta-

Van Tassel, George W. 255

physical vision in which, however outlandishit may have seemed to others, he truly be-lieved.

Van Tassel died in Santa Ana, California,on February 9, 1978. Since then, some chan-nelers have reported messages from him. “Iwas immediately taken into fellowship withthe Great Masters of the Council of which Iwrote,” he told one (Tuella, 1989).

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; ContacteesFurther ReadingCurran, Douglas, 1985. In Advance of the Landing:

Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: AbbevillePress.

Davis, Isabel L., 1957. “Meet the Extraterrestrial.”Fantastic Universe 8, 5 (November): 31–59.



Van Tassel, George W., 1952. I Rode a Flying Saucer!The Mystery of the Flying Saucers Revealed. LosAngeles: New Age Publishing Company.

———, 1958. The Council of Seven Lights. Los An-geles: DeVorss and Company.

Vegetable ManJennings Frederick, a young West Virginiaman, claimed that while bow-and-arrowhunting one afternoon in July 1968, he hearda “high-pitched jabbering, much like that of arecording running at exaggerated speed.”Even so, he could understand it, and it wascommunicating to him that he should not beafraid. “I come as a friend,” the voice said.“We know of you all. I come in peace. I wishmedical assistance. I need your help.” ThenFrederick saw the creature whom wags wouldsoon dub Vegetable Man.

The being had semi-human facial features.Its ears were long, its eyes yellow and slanted,and it had very thin arms about the size of aquarter in diameter. It had three seven-inch-long fingers at the end of each arm. Instead of

256 Vegetable Man

George Van Tassel (right) with Long John Nebel (Fortean Picture Library)

fingertips, the fingers had needlelike tips andsuction cups. Its slender body looked like thestalk of a plant, and so did its color: green.

Suddenly the entity gripped Frederick’shand. Before he realized what was happening,it was drawing blood from it. Then its eyesturned red, and they began to rotate like spin-ning orange circles. The effect was hypnotic.Frederick no longer felt any pain from the ex-traction, which lasted a minute or so. After-ward, a restored Vegetable Man bounded up anearby hill, each of his steps covering twenty-five feet.

Frederick’s pain resumed. As he started towalk home, he heard a humming sound. Itmade him panic because he thought the entitymight be coming after him in its flying saucer.He ran as fast as he could and got back homeunharmed.

Frederick was friends with Gray Barker ofClarksburg, West Virginia, a publisher andpromoter of outlandish saucer materials.Barker was also a self-confessed hoaxer andencouraged other hoaxers. For a time, Veg-etable Man played a large role in Barker’s pro-motions. No one else has ever reported an en-counter with him.

See Also: Tree-stump aliensFurther ReadingSteiger, Brad, 1978. Alien Meetings. New York: Ace

Books.

VenudoDan Boone, the son-in-law of George W. VanTassel, a leading figure in the contactee move-ment of the 1950s and 1960s, was in a YuccaValley, California, liquor store early one Satur-day evening when he heard a group of peo-ple—two men and two women—ask for di-rections to Giant Rock. He offered to leadthem there, and they followed him to the site.Boone assumed they were there to attend theweekly channeling and discussion group VanTassel held. He was right. The leader, whosaid his name was Venudo, sat near Booneand Van Tassel while the other three rested ona couch nearby.

Venudo casually produced a device that hadbeen hanging around his neck. He tapped itand, in full view of about thirty witnesses, hevanished instantly. A minute later he becamevisible again. Boone asked him if he could dothat once more, and Venudo obliged. This timeBoone reached over and felt Ve n u d o’s shoulder,though he could not see it. Ac c o rding toBoone, Venudo and his friends we re space peo-ple checking in on Van Ta s s e l’s activities.

See Also: Channeling; Contactees; Van Tassel,George W.

Further ReadingHamilton, William F., III, 1996. Alien Magic: UFO

Crashes—Abductions—Underground Bases. NewBrunswick, NJ: Global Communications.

Villanueva’s visitorsIn 1953, Sa l vador Vi l l a n u e va Me d i n a’s claimedencounter with friendly men from anotherworld sparked international excitement. Fo l-l owers of the emerging contactee move m e n tsaw it as evidence that the space people we ren ow expanding their mission to Latin America,and for a time Vi l l a n u e va became something ofa hero in that re g i o n’s occult world.

As the story went, Villanueva, a taxi andlimousine driver, was contracted to drive fromMexico City up to Laredo, Texas. He and histwo passengers from Texas left Mexico Cityon the morning of August 22. In the late af-ternoon, the car’s differential gave out, andVillanueva managed to roll the car to the sideof the highway before it came to a completestop. The two passengers decided to walk tothe nearest village to see if they could find amechanic. The driver stayed with the car anddid what he could to get it running again. Hejacked up the car and crawled underneath itand began tinkering. There was little traffic,and he felt very much alone.

Darkness had fallen when he heard foot-steps. From beneath the vehicle, he saw twolegs covered in what look like corduroy. Hecrawled out uneasily and stood to face theman. The stranger had a pale white face. Hewas dressed in a one-piece suit and had a

Villanueva’s visitors 257

three-inch-wide belt around his waist. Lightsshone from little holes in the belt, and he washolding a helmet under his arm. He had finefeatures and a penetrating stare. He hadshoulder-length gray hair and his face washairless. He was four feet tall.

Too stunned and frightened to speak, Vi l-l a n u e va could not find the words to respond totwo questions, spoken in fluent Spanish, aboutwhat was wrong with the car. Fi n a l l y, he man-aged to ask if the man was an aviator. The littleman replied in the affirmative, then added anodd re m a rk about “my machine which yo upeople call an airplane.” He indicated that itwas parked behind a mound not far away.

Feeling more comfortable, Villanueva in-vited him to sit down in the car. But at thatmoment the lights on the belt started to flash,and a buzzing noise sounded. The strangerdonned his helmet and walked toward thehill. The driver returned to his business withthe car, and not long afterward two motorcy-cle police officers came by and ordered him totake the vehicle off the road. Afterward, he laydown to sleep inside it.

Sometime later, knocks sounded on thew i n d ow. Groggily Vi l l a n u e va sat up, assumingthat his passengers had returned. He was sur-prised to see instead the “a v i a t o r” and a com-panion, the latter a taller version of the fir s t .They entered the car and conversed with thed r i ve r. The shorter one did most of the talking.As they described their home, Vi l l a n u e va re a l-i zed that they we re space people. It took himawhile to decide that they we re not joking.

Over the next few hours, he learned muchabout their home world, its civilization, itscities, its technology, and more. Thousands ofyears ago, he was told, many destructive warswere fought between the planet’s nations,until finally its inhabitants established a one-world government under what amounted to abenevolent dictatorship of a council of wisemen. The state raised and educated the chil-dren, and there was no serious poverty. Peoplefrom this planet live undetected among earth-lings, reporting on human affairs to their oth-erworldly superiors.

Toward dawn the buzzing sounds, emanat-ing from either the helmets or the belts, re-sumed. The two left the car, with Villanuevafollowing. Eventually, they came to the ship, asaucer-shaped structure. The men invited himinside the craft, but at that moment he lost hisnerve and fled back to the car. From it he sawthe saucer ascend and disappear in the direc-tion of the rising sun.

When his experience became known soonafterward, Villanueva was compared to theprominent American contactee GeorgeAdamski. Adamski met Villanueva in Mexicoin the spring of 1955 and asked him a seriesof questions. An American couple that alsowas there would write, “If the questions as-tounded us, so did the answers. Salvadorpassed his examination at the hands of a manwho, having seen a saucer himself, knew howto ask about certain things which no mereimaginary contact could give the answers to”(Reeve and Reeve, 1957). Desmond Leslie,Adamski’s associate and co-author, visited Vil-lanueva later that year. Leslie claimed thatAdamski had confided “the Key” to him, ex-plaining that “every man who has received atrue and physical contact with men fromother worlds has been given a certain ‘Key’whereby it shall be known that he is speakingtruly. No man . . . could ever stumble uponthis key by guess or chance. . . . Villanuevagave it without hesitation” (Good, 1998).

Unlike Adamski and other contactees of theperiod, Vi l l a n u e va did not embark on a pro f e s-sional care e r. So far as is known, he claimed nof u rther meetings with extraterre s t r i a l s .

See Also: Adamski, George; ContacteesFurther ReadingGood, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earth’s Encounters

with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer

Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

VIVenusThe woman who called herself “VIVenus”—“Viv” for short—made her mark in the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. She said she was a

258 VIVenus

Venusian who replaced a woman, her exactphysical double, who had committed suicidein a New York hotel on September 24, 1960.As she was brought to Earth that night, shelost all memory of her life on Venus, “a worldof Love” (VIVenus, 1982). The memories re-turned seven years later, and she embarked ona mission to reform this corrupt, cruel planet.

From Christmas 1974 until mid-1982, Vivwalked an average of ten miles a day andpreached the cosmic gospel to whoever wouldlisten. When she wasn’t preaching, she wasplaying guitar and singing interplanetaryhymns. In 1980, she campaigned for her fa-vorite presidential candidate under the slogan“It’s Not Odd to Vote for God” (Shoemaker,1980).

See Also: Dual referenceFurther ReadingShoemaker, Susan, 1980. “A Venusian Visitor Goes

Campaigning.” Oakland [California] Tribune(July 13).

VIVenus: Starchild, 1982. New York: Global Com-munications.

VolmoTed Rice grew up in rural Alabama. Early inlife he learned that he had psychic abilities, andhe was aware of what he took to be spirit guidesbut later identified as extraterrestrials. One ofthese was a reptoid entity named Vo l m o.

Volmo communicated spiritual truths toRice as he slept. It was only when he saw Vo l m othat he re a l i zed Volmo was not an angel but ag rotesque-looking alien. Under hypnosis, in anostensible reliving of his first physical en-c o u n t e r, he re m a rked that Volmo “just isn’th u m a n . . . . He’s really tall . . . six and a half feett a l l . . . and massive. He’s got a strong, powe rf u lb o d y, and it’s dark colored, dull gray or oliveb row n . . . . T h e y’re dark, sort of ye l l ow - g o l d ,with sharp teeth. . . . T h e re are only three orfour fingers on each hand, and I think they’rewebbed. The hands look clawlike, because he’sgot these long, pointed nails on each fin g e r. ”

See Also: King Leo; Reptoid child; ReptoidsFurther ReadingTurner, Karla, 1994. Masquerade of Angels. Roland,

AR: Kelt Works.

Volmo 259

Walk-insRuth Montgomery popularized the notion ofthe “Walk-in,” highly evolved souls who takeover the bodies of human beings who are will-ing to relinquish them. These beings are be-lieved to be so advanced that it is not practi-cal, or sometimes even possible, for them togo through the normal process of reincarna-tion, starting out as a baby. In any event, theyhave no time to waste and a serious mission tofulfill. In Montgomery’s words:

T h e re are Walk-ins on this planet. Tens ofthousands of them. Enlightened beings, who,after successfully completing numerous incar-nations, have attained sufficient awareness ofthe meaning of life that they can forego thetime-consuming process of birth and child-hood, returning directly [to] the adultb o d i e s . . . . The motivation of the Walk-in ishumanitarian. He returns to physical beingin order to help others help themselve s ,planting seed-concepts that will grow andflourish for the benefit of mankind. (Mo n t-g o m e ry, 1979)

Walk-ins, according to Mo n t g o m e ry, in-clude Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Christo-pher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, Ga n d h i ,Ma ry Baker Ed d y, Thomas Jefferson, Be n-jamin Franklin, and others who have playe d

large roles in politics, religion, the arts, andother aspects of human life.

In a later elaboration of the notion, Mont-gomery contended that there are also extrater-restrial Walk-ins, in other words the souls ofkindly space people who have possessed (aftermutual agreement) the bodies of humans. Theextraterrestrial Walk-ins are among the ad-vanced souls that come to guide humans intoa New Age of peace, harmony, and spiritualinsight.

Further ReadingMontgomery, Ruth, 1979. Strangers among Us: En -

lightened Beings from a World to Come. New York:Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan.

———, 1983. Threshold to Tomorrow. New York:G. P. Putnam’s Sons.

———, 1985. Aliens among Us. New York: G. P.Putnam’s Sons.

Walton’s abductionFew UFO abduction cases are as spectacularor as puzzling as one that allegedly took placein November 1975 in a remote area of east-central Arizona. Forestry worker Travis Wal-ton’s five-day disappearance received world-wide attention when it occurred, and it hassince been the subject of books, television dra-mas, a movie, polygraph tests, and endlesscontroversy.

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The incident began as the seven-membercrew of young men, ranging in age from sev-enteen to twenty-eight, were quitting work at6 A.M. on November 5. As they left the site,located in the Apache-Sitgreaves NationalForest, they noticed, ahead of them, a brilliantglow, its source hidden by the trees. As theirpickup continued down the road, they ob-served a disc-shaped structure, approximatelyone-hundred feet in diameter, twenty feetwide, and eight feet high. It was hoveringtwenty feet above a clearing. As the pickupslowed down, Walton jumped out and ran to-ward the object. According to Walton’s owntestimony as well as what other crew memberssubsequently told law-enforcement authori-ties and civilian ufologists, Walton got withinsix feet of the bottom of the craft. Soundsbegan to come from the UFO, unnervingWalton, who was starting to back away whena bluish green beam hit him, shooting himback some ten feet.

Te r r i fied, the others fled in the truck. A fewminutes later, their panic somewhat subsided,they returned to re t r i e ve their cow o rk e r, only tofind no trace of him. After twenty minutes off ruitless searching, they drove to nearby He b e r,A r i zona, and re p o rted the disappearance to theauthorities. The crew returned to the site in thecompany of two sheriff ’s officers. They foundno clues to tip them off to Wa l t o n’s where-abouts. At midnight, Wa l t o n’s mother andother family members we re notified. The nextday searches resumed. By now the authoritiessuspected that either the crew had murd e re dWalton and concocted a wild UFO tale toc over up the deed or Walton and his bro t h e rDuane had engineered a hoax for monetaryreasons. No actual evidence supported either ofthese suppositions, but the alternative—that aUFO had kidnapped Travis Walton—was toooutlandish to be taken seriously.

As publicity spread, reporters, ufologists,and curiosity-seekers descended on the scene,and charges and countercharges flew. The au-thorities insisted that the witnesses undergopolygraph examination. According to exam-iner Cy Gilson, the results in five cases werepositive—indicating that the men had given asincere account—and in one instance incon-clusive. Sheriff Marlin Gillespie declared thathe was now convinced that the UFO storywas true, after all.

Near midnight on November 10, Walton’sbrother-in-law Grant Neff took a call, whichhe first took to be a prank, from a weak-voiced, confused-sounding man who claimedto be Travis Walton. The caller said he wasphoning from a gas station in Heber, thirtymiles east of Taylor, where Neff and his wifelived. When Neff seemed ready to hang up,the voice became desperate, and Neff realizedthat he was indeed speaking with Travis. Neffand Duane Walton drove to Heber and foundTravis at a phone both near the station, shiv-ering in the same clothes he had been wearingfive days earlier. It was only eighteen degreesoutside.

A complex series of events followed, withhoax charges being leveled by some (though

262 Walton’s abduction

UFO abductee Travis Walton (Dennis Stacy/ForteanPicture Library)

not all) local police officers and then byWilliam H. Spaulding, head of a Phoenix-based group called Ground Saucer Watch. Jimand Coral Lorenzen, directors of Tucson’s Aer-ial Phenomena Research Organization(APRO), entered the investigation and, withthe National Enquirer, arranged for Walton totake a secret polygraph test. It was adminis-tered by John J. McCarthy, who did not hidehis skepticism of Walton’s claim and grilledhim about a youthful scrape with the law. Af-terward, when Walton had taken the exami-nation, McCarthy declared that he hadflunked it. Walton’s critics cited the test as rea-son to reject Walton’s story, while his defend-ers disputed the results as the consequence ofa hostile examiner’s harassment of an alreadyshaken witness. In any case, the results weresuppressed and did not come to light untilUFO debunker Philip J. Klass learned aboutit sometime later from McCarthy.

The following February, Duane Waltonand then Travis took a polygraph, this one runby George J. Pfeifer. Pfeifer concluded thattheir responses were truthful. Mary Kellett,their mother, whom some had accused ofbeing a conspirator in a hoax, also passed thetest, in Pfeifer’s judgment.

Walton would tell the same story withoutelaboration over the next two decades andmore. He reported that after the beam hithim, he lost consciousness and had no mem-ory of anything until he awoke in what hethought was a hospital. The atmosphere waswet and heavy, and he had a hard time breath-ing in it. Three humanoid figures with bigstaring eyes, large hairless heads, and tinymouths, ears, and noses, stood by the bedside.

Terrified, he leaped out of bed and pushedone into another. Grabbing a cylindrical tubehe noticed on a shelf jutting from the wall, hewaved it like a weapon toward the beings,who put out their hands as if to stop him.After a short time, they fled through a doorbehind them. Soon afterward Walton ran outthe door himself and ran to his left, through acurving, three-feet-wide corridor. Seeing anopen room to his right, he ducked into it. The

room seemed empty, though Walton wasnervous about a high-backed metal chair inthe middle. Because he was observing it fromthe back, he did not know if anyone was sit-ting in it or not. No one was. As Walton ap-proached it, the lights in the room began todim. When he stepped back, the light re-turned. As he went forward again, the lightdimmed again, and now stars surroundedhim. He did not know if he was witnessing aplanetarium effect or if the room had becometransparent. He would recall that the experi-ence was “like sitting in a chair in the middleof space” (Walton, 1978).

On the right arm of the chair, he saw apanel of buttons and a screen with blacklines going up and down. On the left therewas a leve r. Curious, Walton pushed thel e ver forw a rd. Suddenly the lines on thes c reen moved, and the stars began to spine ven while maintaining their re l a t i ve posi-tions. When he let go of the leve r, eve ry t h i n greturned to the way it had been before. After

Walton’s abduction 263

A drawing by Travis Walton’s boss, Michael Rogers, basedon Walton’s description of the being he saw when he wasabducted (Fortean Picture Library)

he stood up, the light returned to the ro o m ,and the stars disappeare d .

At that point, a human-looking figurewearing a spacesuit and helmet entered theroom. He stood over six feet tall, looked to beabout two-hundred pounds, and had blondhair long enough to cover his ears. His skinwas deeply tanned. Thinking that the strangerwas a fellow human being (even though hewould recall that the eyes were peculiar, a“strange bright golden hazel”), Walton felt re-lieved and peppered him with questions. Inresponse the figure only grinned, then beck-oned him to follow. He took Walton’s arm,and the two proceeded down the curving hall-way. They came to a door and opened it toenter a tiny “metal cubicle” of a room. Theypassed through it into a huge space that Wal-ton thought looked like a hangar of somekind. Inside it was bright as sunshine, andbreezes blew as if they were outdoors. He real-ized that they had just left the craft. When heturned to examine it, he observed that it re-sembled the UFO he had seen in the clearingbut this one was bigger. He also saw two otheridentical but smaller craft parked near thewall.

They then went through another door intoanother hallway, strolling past a number ofclosed double doors until finally they enteredyet another room. Inside this room two menand a woman sat, not only dressed like hiscompanion but looking enough like him thatWalton wondered if they were related to him.They were all good-looking, and the woman’shair was longer than the men’s. The three werenot wearing helmets. Walton had assumedthat he had not been able to communicatewith the first man because the stranger couldnot hear him through the helmet. But like thefirst man, they did not respond to Walton’squestions, just smiled pleasantly. When thehelmeted man left, the others led him to atable. Suddenly frightened, Walton demandedto know what they were doing. The womanforced something that looked like an oxygenmask with no connecting tubes onto his face.He passed out. The next thing he knew, he

was lying on his back near Heber, ten milesfrom where he had been before all of thisstarted. In the darkness “one of those roundcraft [hovered] there for just a second. Ilooked up just as a light went out. A whitelight just went off on the bottom of it. Thecraft was dark, and it wasn’t giving off anylight” (Barry, 1978).

Walton’s return was an international newsevent. Soon afterward, UFO debunker PhilipJ. Klass embarked on what would amount to alifelong crusade to prove that Walton, hisfamily, and the logging crew had conspired tohoax the incident. No very good evidence of ahoax would emerge, however, even after oneof the crew was reportedly offered ten thou-sand dollars to expose the story. Walton wenton to marry, become a family man and re-spected member of his community, and writetwo books on his experience, the second con-taining a long and pointed rejoinder to theskeptics’ case. On February 1, 1993, TravisWalton, Duane Walton, and witness AllenDalis (who had not seen Travis in twodecades) underwent new polygraph examina-tions, again administered by Cy Gilson.Gilson judged them to be telling the truthwhen they responded affirmatively to theUFO questions and negatively to the hoaxcharges. In March 1993 Paramount Picturesreleased a movie drama, Fire in the Sky, basedloosely on the incident, with D. B. Sweeneyin the role of Travis.

Few students of this complex episode be-l i e ve it to be a hoax. Alternative, non-UFOexplanations tend to focus on psyc h o l o g i c a lor natural causes. One theory holds thatWalton and his companions saw an eart h-quake light—a luminous phenomenon gen-erated by electrical fields in rocks in faultzones—that triggered hallucinations. Ap roblem with this hypothesis is the thinlyclad Wa l t o n’s surv i val in the woods over fivebitterly cold mountain nights. The Wa l t o nabduction story remains one of the most in-triguing cases of the UFO age.

Interestingly, Walton’s is one of the firsttwo cases in the UFO literature to describe

264 Walton’s abduction

the gray aliens that would assume a promi-nent role in the abduction phenomenon oflater years. The other incident was one ofwhich Walton could not have been aware in

November 1975. It was known to ufologistsJim and Coral Lorenzen, who were quietly in-vestigating it when the Walton story eruptedinto the headlines. U.S. Air Force Sergeant

Walton’s abduction 265

A dramatization of the abduction of Travis Walton as seen in the movie Fire in the Sky, 1993 (Photofest)

Charles Moody had confided to them that theprevious August 13, he saw a UFO in theNew Mexico desert and was taken aboard. Inearly November, in a letter to the Lorenzens,he had this to say of the occupants: “The be-ings were about five feet tall and very muchlike us except their heads were larger and hair-less, their eyes very small[,] and the mouthhad very thin lips” (Lorenzen and Lorenzen,1977). Moody’s description is virtually identi-cal to the one Walton gave to the first groupof humanoids he allegedly encountered. Wal-ton’s also anticipated later abduction lore inclaiming to see both little gray entities and themore humanlike beings whom some ufolo-gists would call Nordics aboard the same ship.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; NordicsFurther ReadingBarry, Bill, 1978. Ultimate Encounter: The True Story

of a UFO Kidnapping. New York: Pocket Books.Bullard, Thomas E., 1987. UFO Abductions: The

Measure of a Mystery. Volume 1: ComparativeStudy of Abductions. Volume 2: Catalogue of Cases.Mount Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.

Clark, Jerome, 1998. “Walton Abduction Case.” InJerome Clark. The UFO Encyclopedia, SecondEdition: The Phenomenon from the Beginning,981–998. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.

Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFOAbductees. New York: Walker and Company.

Klass, Philip J., 1989. UFO Abductions: A DangerousGame. Updated edition. Buffalo, NY: Prome-theus Books.

Lorenzen, Coral, and Jim Lorenzen, 1977. Abducted!Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space. NewYork: Berkley.

Persinger, Michael A., 1979. “Possible InfrequentGeophysical Sources of Close UFO Encounters:Expected Physical and Behavioral Biological Ef-fects.” In Richard F. Haines, ed. UFO Phenomenaand the Behavioral Scientist, 396–433. Metuchen,NJ: Scarecrow Press.

Walton, Travis, 1978. The Walton Experience. NewYork: Berkley Medallion Books.

———, 1996. Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experi -ence. New York: Marlowe and Company.

WanderersWanderers are extraterrestrials who traversethe cosmos in search of what George Hunt

Williamson calls “trash can worlds”—in otherwords, backward planets such as the Earth.When they find such a world, they offer theirsouls to the reincarnation cycle. On Earththeir leader was the Elder Brother—alsoknown as the Son of Thought Incarnate and,in a later life, Jesus Christ. The Elder Brothercame to this planet accompanied by one hun-dred forty-four thousand Lesser Avatars. Overthe centuries, many forgot their cosmic ori-gins and mission, but some kept the faith.After World War II, with the coming of flyingsaucers, the seeding process accelerated. A“space friend” told Williamson, “Many of ourpeople are in your world now. There arenearly ten million of them, with six of thosemillion in the United States itself.”



White EagleWhite Eagle, believed to represent the NewTestament’s Saint John, was channeledthrough British spiritualist medium GraceCooke (also known as Minesta) from the1930s until her death in 1979. By the 1950s,White Eagle’s teachings had found their wayto North America. White Eagle taught aneclectic mix of Christian-based ideas and rein-carnation theories as well as the occult doc-trine of the Great White Brotherhood. He ad-vocated kindness toward one’s fellows andvegetarianism, and love for animals.


Religions. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

White’s little peopleOne August night in 1891, hours before hewould leave his native El Dorado, Kansas, tom ove to Kansas City and become one of Amer-i c a’s most highly re g a rded journalists, Wi l l i a mAllen White was awakened by the brightmoonlight streaming in through his back win-d ow. He was about to turn his head in the op-

266 Wanderers

posite direction when he thought he heardmusic. Looking outside, he saw a group of littlepeople—no more than three or four incheshigh—dancing under the elm tree. They alsoseemed to be humming along with the melody.The scene was clear and unmistakable.

Yet, still unable to credit his senses, heturned away, then glanced back. The strangetiny fig u res we re still there. He got up andlooked through another window in case thewhole scene was simply a trick of light. Hecould still see the fig u res. He moved aboutv i g o rously to discharge any extant imageskept over from sleep. After five minutes thelittle people began to fade away, and soononly the grass on which they had been mov-ing re m a i n e d .

Exhausted, he returned to bed and fellasleep. He would never forget the incident.Recalling it many years later in his autobiog-raphy, he reflected ruefully, “When I recallthat hour I am so sure that I was awake Ithink maybe I am still crazy.”

See Also: Fairies encounteredFurther ReadingWhite, William Allen, 1946. Autobiography. New

York: Macmillan.

Wilcox’s MartiansAs he went about his chores on the morningof April 24, 1964, Newark Valley, New York,dairy farmer Gary T. Wilcox had a premoni-tion that something out of the ordinary wasgoing to happen that day. Driving his tractorup a hill, he glimpsed a shiny object just in-side a nearby clump of woods. He stopped thetractor, got off, and walked toward the woods.The closer perspective allowed him to see thatthe object was an egg-shaped structure,twenty feet long and sixteen feet wide, hover-ing two feet above the ground. All the while itemitted a sound that to Wilcox’s ears was likea car idling. Just after he touched the UFO,two Martians came up from under it.

Wilcox did not learn of their planet of ori-gin immediately, but the figures did not lookearthly. Four feet tall and two feet wide, they

were clad in silver suits that covered their en-tire bodies. Each carried a small tray filledwith soil and plant samples. An eerie voice ad-dressed him, apparently from the chest of thenearer figure (the other stood near the UFO).The voice said, “We are from what you knowas the planet Mars” (Schwarz, 1983). Askedwhat he was doing, Wilcox explained that hewas spreading manure. The Martian wantedto know what manure was, and he asked a se-ries of questions about it. He said he wouldlike a sample of it, but when Wilcox volun-teered to go to the barn to retrieve some, thealien changed the subject. They could cometo Earth only every two years, he said, andwarned would-be travelers from Earth to stayaway from Mars, since its conditions are in-hospitable to human life. They were here tostudy the Earth’s organic life, and they saidsomething that Wilcox understood to meanthat “the earth and Mars, plus some otherplanets, might be changed around.” They alsopredicted that within a year two American as-tronauts, John Glenn and Virgil (Gus) Gris-som, and two Soviet cosmonauts would bekilled. They said that other Martian shipswere surveying the Earth.

After two hours, the conversation ended.The Martians said that Wilcox should not tellanyone about the exchange “for your owngood,” though Wilcox did not interpret thisas a threat.

All the while, Wilcox would tell familymembers, he suspected that he was at the re-ceiving end of a hoax engineered by the televi-sion show Candid Camera. He found a jelly-like substance on the ground where the UFOhad been, but he could not pick it up. Itslipped through his fingers.

Wilcox confided the story to family mem-bers and friends. The matter probably wouldhave ended there if two local women, whoworked with Floyd Wilcox, Gary’s youngerbrother, had not heard the story. Both be-longed to a Washington-based UFO organiza-tion. They asked permission to interviewGary Wilcox, who provided them with a shortstatement. A neighbor woman interested in

Wilcox’s Martians 267

UFOs spoke with him at greater length andexamined the landing site, but rain hadwashed away whatever might have been thereoriginally. She alerted the sheriff ’s office,which sent a deputy to investigate. On May 7a detailed account appeared in the Bingham -ton Press, after a reporter spoke with a reluc-tant Wilcox. Subsequently, Walter N. Webb,an astronomer and field investigator for theNational Investigations Committee on AerialPhenomena, spoke with Wilcox and others.“Neighbors, friends, and authorities unani-mously agreed that Wilcox had a good reputa-tion in the area,” Webb would write. Wilcoxhad no previous history of interest in the eso-teric and in fact was not much of a reader.

A psychiatric examination conducted byBerthold Eric Schwarz, M.D., a psychothera-pist, concluded that Wilcox suffered no men-tal abnormalities. Unlike many figures in thecontactee movement, Wilcox made no at-tempt to exploit his alleged experience. Hediscussed it only when asked, and with no-table hesitation. He made no further claims ofencounters with extraterrestrials.

See Also: Allingham’s Martian; Aurora Martian;Brown’s Martians; Close encounters of the thirdkind; Dentons’s Martians and Venusians; Hop-kins’s Martians; Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Muller’s Martians; Shaw’sMartians

Further ReadingHotchkiss, Olga M., 1964. “New York UFO and Its

‘Little People’.” Fate 17, 9 (September): 38–42.Ochs, Reid A., 1964. “Martian ‘Visit’ Stirs Tioga.”

Binghamton [New York] Press (May 7).Schwarz, Berthold E., 1983. UFO-Dynamics: Psychi -

atric and Psychic Aspects of the UFO Syndrome.Two volumes. Moore Haven, FL: RainbowBooks.

Webb, Walter N., 1965. The Newark Valley-Conklin,New York, Incidents: The Binghamton Area Flap of1964. Cambridge, MA: self-published.

Williamson, George Hunt (1926–1986)George Hunt Williamson was a leading figurein the contactee movement of the 1950s. Onthat fringe he even had a reputation as ascholar and deep thinker, even if by main-

stream standards his ideas about ancient andmodern visitations from space by friendly andhostile extraterrestrials seemed the product ofa fertile, even crankish imagination. William-son claimed not only to have witnessedGeorge Adamski’s meeting with a Venusian inthe California desert in November 1952 butalso to have had contacts with space peoplehimself. A colorful, intelligent, and educatedman, Williamson advanced many ideas thatstill circulate in popular culture, though hehimself dropped out of sight in the 1960s anddied in obscurity in Long Beach, California,in January 1986.

Born in Chicago, Williamson pursued ar-chaeological and anthropological interests incollege. Several psychic experiences in hisyouth drew him to the occult and the para-normal, and then to flying saucers. He hadclose contacts with the Chippewa and theHopi and lived with them in the early 1950s.In 1952, while residing in Prescott, Arizona,he and his wife, Betty, met Alfred and BettyBailey. The two couples attempted to contactsaucers and soon began receiving messages,through automatic writing and the ouijaboard, from visitors from Venus, Mars,Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. Then one mes-sage, from Zo of Neptune, informed themthat they would be receiving Morse code sig-nals on the radio. They were instructed to ap-proach one of Bailey’s coworkers, LymanStreeter, who was a ham-radio operator. SoonStreeter, his wife, and the two other coupleswere hearing from extraterrestrials with color-ful names: Zo, Affa, Um, and Regga. Furthercommunications took place through radioand mental telepathy.

Through his reading, Williamson heard ofGeorge Adamski, a Californian who was pro-ducing pictures of alleged spacecraft. The twoexchanged letters, and Adamski invitedWilliamson to visit him at his home in Palo-mar Gardens. In the presence of theWilliamsons and the Baileys, Adamski chan-neled messages from space people. On No-vember 20, alerted that a landing wouldoccur, the two couples met with Adamski and

268 Williamson, George Hunt

two associates along the California-Arizonaborder. The other six would sign affidavits at-testing to their observation (albeit from somedistance) of Adamski’s meeting with a space-man. (Later the Baileys would withdraw theirtestimony, saying they had seen nothing outof the ordinary.)

Williamson went on to write a series ofbooks both about his contacts and about histheories about the role space people havep l a yed in the human past and present. Su c hbooks as Other To n g u e s — Other Fl e s h ( 1 9 5 3 ) ,Se c ret Places of the Li o n (1958), and Road in theSk y (1959) anticipated themes that Erich vo nDäniken and others would popularize in the1970s during the “ancient astro n a u t s” craze .Williamson split with Adamski after the latterurged him not to publicize his psychic con-tacts, since Adamski decried such methods ofcommunications to his followers, even whilep r i vately practicing them. But Wi l l i a m s o n

d e l ved ever deeper into the occult and pursuedhis own attempts at space communication byvarious means. In 1955, he and Richard Mi l l e rformed the Telonic Re s e a rch Center to estab-lish radio and other contacts with extraterre s-trials, though within months he and Mi l l e rp a rted amid much mutual re c r i m i n a t i o n .

The following year he joined up with theBrotherhood of the Seven Rays, a band of psy-chics and contactees (including Dorothy Mar-tin, better known as Sister Thedra), and spenta year at its colony in a remote area of Peru,convinced that cataclysmic Earth changeswere soon to occur. When they did not,Williamson and everyone except Martin re-turned to the United States. There William-son resumed writing books, one of them athinly disguised anti-Semitic work titledUFOs Confidential! (1958). In 1958, he wenton a world tour and, in 1961, he lectured inJapan, where he was treated as something of a

Williamson, George Hunt 269

George Hunt Williamson (left), who received regular radio messages from extraterrestrials in the early 1950s (ForteanPicture Library)

celebrity. His last book, which he wrote underthe pseudonym “Brother Philip,” was pub-lished the same year. Soon, however, William-son—now calling himself Michel d’Obren-ovic—retired from a public career and was solittle heard from that many thought himdead.

During his heyday, critics accused William-son of a range of shortcomings and base moti-vations, among them bigotry, paranoia, andcharlatanism. His shrillest attackers, associ-ated with James W. Moseley’s Saucer News,debunked Williamson’s assertions about hisacademic background (far from being aPh.D., as he said he was, he did not have evenan undergraduate degree), and one reviewernoted similarities between the supposedlynonfictional Road in the Sky and a science-fic-tion series by Isaac Asimov. After his death,however, scientist and UFO historian MichaelD. Swords acquired the bulk of Williamson’scollection, which includes a massive amountof private correspondence and other material.Based on his reading of it, Swords concludesthat for all his exaggeration and credential-inflation, Williams was essentially honest. Inhis estimation Williamson “actually believedall the stuff—the wild, amazing, impossible-to-believe stuff—that he wrote about. . . .Williamson is not easy to explain and cannotbe deposited into some conveniently labeledbox” (Swords, 1993).

See Also: Adamski, George; Affa; Contactees; SisterThedra

Further ReadingBrother Philip [pseud. of George Hunt Williamson],

1961. Secret of the Andes. Clarksburg, WV:Saucerian Books.

Griffin, John, 1989. Visitants. Santa Barbara, CA:self-published.

Ibn Aharon, Y. N. [pseud. of Yonah Fortner], 1960.Review of Road in the Sky. Saucer News 7, 2(June): 6.


Moseley, James W., and Michael G. Mann, 1959.“Screwing the Lid down on ‘Doctor’Williamson.” Saucer News 6, 2 (February/March): 3–5.

Swords, Michael D., 1993. “UFOs and the Amish.”International UFO Reporter 18, 5 (September/October): 12–13.


———, 1958. Secret Places of the Lion. Amherst,WI: Amherst Press.

———, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: NevilleSpearman.

Williamson, George Hunt, and Alfred C. Bailey,1954. The Saucers Speak! A Documentary Report ofInterstellar Communication by Radiotelegraphy.Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.

Williamson, George Hunt, and John Mc C oy, 1958.U F Os Confidential! The Meaning behind theMost Closely Gu a rded Se c ret of All Ti m e . C o r p u sChristi, TX: Essene Pre s s .

WilsonDuring the spring of 1897, American new s-papers re p o rted frequently outlandish ac-counts of mysterious “airships,” dirigible- orcigar-shaped stru c t u res whose origins we re(and still are) shrouded in mystery. So m epeople speculated that they housed Ma rt i a nvisitors, and indeed some spectacular hoaxe sp l a yed to that belief. The more common the-o ry, howe ve r, held that an enterprising Amer-ican had invented advanced aircraft and wasflying it around the country with a crew ofa e ronauts. Stories carried in the press re-p o rted meetings with the enigmatic inve n t o r,though most we re contradictory and dubi-ous. Historians of aviation have ignored thisepisode, and today only ufologists have exam-ined it care f u l l y, holding that the airship scarewas an early UFO wave. Among the more cu-rious accounts to be published in the press ofthe period we re a series of ostensibly re l a t e dincidents, all but one of which occurred inTexas, involving an aeronaut identified as“Wi l s o n . ”

Someone who may have been Wilson ap-pears first in an alleged encounter nearGreenville, Texas, late on the evening of April16, according to a letter C. G. Williams pub-lished in the Dallas Morning News on thenineteenth. Williams reportedly saw an “im-mense cigar-shaped vessel” as he was taking a

270 Wilson

walk. Three crew members stepped outside,two to work on the structure, the third to chatwith the witness. The stranger told Williamsthat he had built the ship after many years ofexperiment and error “at a little town in theinterior of New York.”

The May 16 issue of the same newspapercarried a letter forwarded by Dr. D. H.Tucker. Tucker said that a young man whosubsequently drowned in a flood in Missis-sippi had written the original, recounting anexperience that occurred on April 19 in theLake Charles, Louisiana, area. While riding inhis buggy, he spotted an airship approaching.A high-pitched whistle from the vesselspooked his horses, and he was thrown to theground. When the ship landed, two menrushed from it to help him to his feet and toextend their apologies. One introduced him-self as “Mr. Wilson,” though the witnessdoubted that was his real name. Wilson statedthat he and his companion, Scott Warren, hadinvented a fleet of ships. They were now seek-ing to demonstrate that long-distance airshiptravel was safe and economical. The youngman was invited to tour the vehicle, where hemet two other crew members.

That same day, at around 11 P.M., at Beau-mont, Texas, according to an account pub-lished in the Houston Daily Post of April 21,lights in a neighbor’s pasture caught the eyesof J. R. Ligon and his son Charley. They ob-served “four men moving around a large darkobject” that they recognized, as they ap-proached it, as an airship. Its crew asked forwater and accompanied the two to the house,where they filled their buckets. “I accostedone of the men,” the elder Ligon reported,“and he told me his name was Wilson. . . .They were returning from a trip out on theGulf and were now headed toward Iowa,where the airship was built.” It was one of fivethat had been constructed there. The Ligonsaccompanied them back to the ship, a hugestructure 136 feet long and 20 feet wide, withfour large wings and propellers attached tobow and stern. Wilson explained it was pow-ered by “electricity.”

On April 25 the New Orleans Daily Pi c a -y u n e carried an interv i ew with a visitor, RabbiA. Levy of Beaumont. Levi recalled that “a b o u t10 days ago,” on hearing that an airship hadlanded late that night on a farm just outsidet own, he hastened to the site. T h e re sat an air-ship some 150 feet long with 100-foot wings.“I spoke to one of the men when he went intothe farmer’s house, and shook hands withhim,” Levy claimed. “Yes, I did hear him sayw h e re it was built, but I can’t remember thename of the place, or the name of the inve n t o r.He said that they had been traveling a gre a tdeal, and we re testing the machine. I was dodumbfounded that I could not frame an intel-ligent question to ask.” He did re m e m b e r,though, that “e l e c t r i c i t y” powe red the craft.

At Uvalde, three hundred miles southwe s tof Beaumont, twe n t y - t h ree hours after theL i g o n s’s alleged encounter, Sheriff H. W. Ba y-lor witnessed an airship landing near his home.Baylor saw three crew members and spokewith one, a Mr. Wilson, a native of Go s h e n ,New Yo rk. The aeronaut recalled an old friend,Captain C. C. Akers, whom he said he hadk n own in Fo rt Wo rth. Now, he understood,Akers lived in the area. Baylor replied that hek n ew Akers, who was employed as a customsofficer in Eagle Pass but who frequently visitedUvalde. After asking the sheriff to give his bestto Akers, Wilson and his crew flew away. T h eHouston Daily Po s t , which re p o rted the storyin its April 21 issue, mentioned the sighting,the same night as Ba y l o r’s alleged encounterwith Wilson, of an airship passing just nort hof the Baylor residence. Contacted by the Ga l -veston Daily Ne w s ( April 28), Akers confir m e dthat twenty years earlier he had known “a manby the name of Wilson from New Yo rks t a t e . . . . He was of a mechanical turn of mindand was then working on aerial navigation andsomething that would astonish the world.”

At midnight on April 22, east of Josserand(seventy-five miles northwest of Beaumont), a“whirring noise” awoke farmer Frank Nichols,according to the Houston Daily Post (April26). On investigating, he spotted a large, bril-liantly lighted airship in his cornfield. Two

Wilson 271

crew members asked if they could draw waterfrom his well. Afterward, they invited himinto the craft, which had a six- or eight-mancrew. One told him that “highly condensedelectricity” powered it. It was one of five builtin a small Iowa town.

The following evening an airship landed atKo u n t ze, twenty miles nort h west of Be a u-mont. Onlookers talked with its pilots, Wi l s o nand Jackson, who said it would take a few daysto complete necessary repairs. The Ho u s t o nDaily Po s t ( April 25) assured readers that any-one who wanted to see the marvelous machine“may do so by coming to Ko u n t ze any timeb e f o re Monday night.” This is the one Wi l s o ns t o ry that was an obvious practical joke.

On April 30, the Daily Post carried a letterfrom H. C. Legrone of Deadwood, 130 milesnorth of Beaumont. Legrone wrote that aftersomething disturbed his horses on the eveningof April 28, he stepped outside to observe anapproaching airship. It descended on a nearbyfield. He related,

Its crew was composed of five men, three ofwhom entertained me, while the other twotook rubber bags and went for a supply ofwater at my well, 100 yards off. They informedme that this was one of five ships that had beentraveling the country over recently, and thatthis individual ship was the same one recentlylanded near Beaumont . . . after having trav-eled pretty well all over the Northwest. Theystated that these ships were put up in an inte-rior town in Illinois. They were rather reticentabout giving out information in regards to theship, manufacture, etc., since they had not yetsecured everything by patent.

W h a t e ver the airships may or may noth a ve been, they we re nobody’s inve n t i o n s ,and the name of the mysterious Mr. Wilson isnot to be found in any history of aviation.Put bluntly, the stories make no sense. T h e ycould not have happened in any way inwhich the verb “happened” is ordinarily un-derstood. In light of the numerous hoaxe s ,journalistic and other, the Wilson stories,h owe ver intriguing, must be viewed with afair degree of suspicion. Nonetheless, occult-oriented writers such as John A. Keel arguethat the seemingly normal American pilotsre p o rted in 1897 press accounts we re actuallysupernatural entities—Keel calls them ultra-t e r restrials—in disguise. Ac c o rding to Ke e l ,the ultraterrestrials staged encounters “in re l-a t i vely remote places,” contacting a few wit-nesses and passing on bogus tales “w h i c hwould discredit not only them but the wholem y s t e ry. Knowing how we think and how wes e a rch for consistencies, the ultraterre s t r i a l swe re careful to sow inconsistencies in theirw a k e” (Keel, 1970).

See Also: Keel, John Alva; Smith; UltraterrestrialsFurther ReadingBullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A


Chariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas AirshipMystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing.

Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The Great Airship Mystery: AUFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead, andCompany.


272 Wilson

XenoIn the early morning hours of January 30,1965, while walking along a beach near Wat-sonville, California, Sid Padrick saw a flyingsaucer descend and hover a foot or two abovethe sand. A voice speaking from the craft as-sured him that he was not in danger. When adoor opened, Padrick entered and soon met ahuman-looking figure in a two-piece uniform.The figure, speaking in unaccented English,introduced himself as Xeno. He took Padrickon a tour of the craft, during which he saweight other crew members, one a “very pretty”young woman. They paid little attention toPadrick, and all his communication was withXeno.

Xeno and his companions were light-skinned and resembled human beings exceptfor unusually sharp chins and noses. Xeno ex-plained that the ship and its crew came from aplanet behind a planet visible from Earth.Their own planet, however, was always hid-den from earthly view. They lived in a com-munal society without war, disease, or crime.They also had a religion that worshipped theSupreme Deity. During the tour Padrick wasshown a “consultation room” used for worshipand invited to go inside. After he prayedthere, Padrick experienced a kind of religiousawakening.

During their interaction, he noticed thatwhenever he would ask Xeno a question,Xeno would hesitate for as long as half aminute before answering. Patrick speculatedthat he was getting telepathic instructions onhow to reply. He was shown a photograph of acity on Xeno’s planet. Through a telescopelikedevice he observed a cigar-shaped mother shipwhich had brought the smaller craft throughspace.

Padrick was told that Xeno’s people werehere only to explore. They had no desire forcontact because of earthlings’ hostility andgenerally primitive attitudes. After about twohours, Padrick left the craft with a promisethat he would meet the space people againsoon.

On February 4, Padrick informed Hamil-ton Air Force Base of his experience. A U.S.Air Force officer, Major D. B. Reeder, inter-viewed him four days later, and the two wentto the encounter site. Though the officer in-terviewed several locals who said Padrick wastrustworthy, the officer did not believe his tes-timony and urged Project Blue Book, the U.S.Air Force’s UFO-investigative group, to takeno further action.

Nonetheless, after seeing the story in a SanFrancisco newspaper, L. D. Cody, the civiliandirector of aerospace education at Hamilton,

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requested a full briefing from Reeder. Laterthat month, Cody personally interviewedPadrick and his family. In his estimationPadrick “seemed sincere.” He thought Padrickhad either had the experience or dreamed it(Cody, 1967).

After accounts of Padrick’s alleged experi-ence were published in the press, he was be-sieged by letters and calls from UFO buffs.One pointed out that “Xeno”—heretoforePadrick had spelled the name phonetically as“Zeno”—is Greek for “stranger.”

Following the initial publicity, Padrick dida few lectures and spoke at several contacteeconferences, sticking to his basic story with-out elaboration, but then dropped out ofsight. In 1970, local newspapers reported thata friend was suing Padrick, who had borrowedone thousand dollars to write a book detailinghis experience but had not repaid it or even

been able to produce evidence that a manu-script existed. Padrick insisted that a thirdperson had borrowed the manuscript andnever returned it. The San Jose MunicipalCourt decreed that Padrick had to make goodon the loan.

From some accounts Padrick had furt h e ralien contacts after the Ja n u a ry 1965 inci-dent, but he has never spoken about them inp u b l i c .

See Also: ContacteesFurther ReadingCody, L. D., 1967. Letter to James E. McDonald

(August 25).“Contactee Loses Court Case,” 1971. UFO Investi -

gator (April): 1.“The Padrick ‘Space Contact,’” 1965. Little Listening

Post 12, 3 (August/September/October): 2–5.“Watsonville’s Weird Story—A Ride on a Space-

ship,” 1965. San Francisco News Call Bulletin(February 12).

274 Xeno

Yada di Shi’iteYada di Shi’ite lived five-hundred thousandyears ago, a member of the ancient civilizationof Yu, located in the Himalayas, or so he toldSan Diego medium Mark Probert, throughwhom he channeled from the 1940s untilProbert’s death in 1969. Yada di Shi’ite wasone of several entities who composed theInner Circle.

Probert, a man with little formal educa-tion, entered the metaphysical realm when hestarted talking in his sleep. His wife, Irene,took note of what he was saying. Soon theepisode became known to a local man, veteranoccultist N. Meade Layne. Layne took overProbert’s spiritual education, and soon Yada diShi’ite and others were speaking through themedium. The others included Ramon Natalli,in life a lawyer and a friend of Galileo; Profes-sor Alfred Luntz, a nineteenth-century Angli-can clergyman; and Charles Lingford, in life adancer and artist.

Through Probert’s Inner Circle KethraE’Da Foundation and Layne’s better-knownBorderland Sciences Research Associates, thechannelings of Yada di Shi’ite and associ-ates—eventually their number expanded toeleven—found an international audience. Inthe early age of flying saucers, the late 1940sand early 1950s, the Circle’s pronouncements

on the subject were particularly influential,and they founded the basis of Layne’s TheEther Ship and Its Solution (1950), which waswidely read in fringe circles and is still an in-fluence on latter-day occult saucer theoristssuch as John A. Keel.

See Also: Channeling; Keel, John AlvaFurther ReadingBarker, Gray, 1956. They Knew Too Much about Fly -

ing Saucers. New York: University Books.Layne, N. Meade, The Ether Ship and Its Solution.

Vista, CA: Borderland Sciences Re s e a rch Asso-c i a t e s .

YamskiOn April 24, 1965, just a day after the deathof George Adamski, a flying saucer allegedlylanded near the Devonshire village of Scori-ton. Three humanlike beings clad in space-suits emerged. One, who looked like a youthof thirteen or fourteen, identified himself as“Yamski” to the sole witness, a groundskeeperand handyman named Ernest Arthur Bryant.Yamski, who spoke in Eastern European–inflected English, expressed the wish that“Des” or “Les” could be there. Bryant wasgiven a brief tour of the craft and a promise offurther contacts.

Some of Adamski’s partisans had been ex-pecting him to reincarnate and return to

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Earth. In fact, his associate and onetime co-author Desmond Leslie openly predicted it inan obituary he wrote for England’s FlyingSaucer Review. Bryant, who claimed never tohave heard of this famous contactee, produceda sketch of Yamski, who bore some resem-blance to a youthful Adamski. Subsequently,Bryant brought forth physical evidence thathe said the space people had given him.

In 1967, Eileen Buckle, who had investi-gated the case, wrote about it in a thick bookthat essentially endorsed the case, notwith-standing growing evidence that Bryant had ahard time telling the truth even about themost mundane aspects of his life. Bryant diedjust after Buckle’s book was published. Britishufologist Norman Oliver, who interviewedBryant’s wife around that time, was told thatBryant’s story was bogus. He had based it onhis considerable reading of UFO and occultliterature and his extensive knowledge ofAdamski’s claims. Oliver exposed the manydubious elements of the case in a self-pub-lished monograph.

See Also: Adamski, George; ContacteesFurther ReadingBuckle, Eileen, 1967. The Scoriton Mystery. London:

Neville Spearman.Leslie, Desmond, 1965. “Obituary: George Adam-

ski.” Flying Saucer Review 11, 4 (July/August):18–19.

Oliver, Norman, 1968. Sequel to Scoriton. London:self-published.

Y’hovaAccording to the “extraterrestrialism” theoriesof Yonah Fortner (who wrote under the pseu-donym Y. N. ibn Aharon), visitors from other

worlds landed on Earth and interacted withits most advanced ancient civilizations, no-tably those of the Chaldeans and the At-lanteans. The Chaldeans, who possessed anadvanced technology, were especially close toaliens, even intermarrying with one group, theElohim. Another group was the Titans, whohelped the Chaldeans vanquish the malevo-lent alien race known as the Serpent People.Eventually, warfare among alien races brokeout on the Earth’s surface. In the midst of thisconflict, one alien showed up around 1340B.C. Shaday Elili Athunu, otherwise knownas Y’hova, befriended a local malcontentnamed Abraham, whom he promised to pro-tect if he, his family, and his people followedhim. Y’hova is known to humans as God.

Fortner stated that the “God of Israelshould not be confused with the general runof space visitors because he was either uniqueor very nearly unique in his decision to makea career among the people of earth. . . . [He]is a very august and ancient being . . . whocomes from a higher order of being, a dimen-sion beyond all known dimensions” (Stein-berg, 1977).

Fortner outlined his theories in a series ofarticles published in Saucer News between1957 and 1960. His sources, he insisted, wererare and arcane Middle Eastern documents,but when challenged, he was unable to provethat they existed.

Further ReadingIbn Aharon, Y. N. [pseud. of Yonah Fortner], 1960.

“A Note on the Evolution of Extraterrestrialism.”Saucer News 7, 4 (December): 6–9.

Steinberg, Gene, 1977. “Dr. Yonah Aharon—Origi-nator of the Ancient Astronaut Theory.” UFOReport 4, 2 (June): 26–27, 74–78.

276 Y’hova

ZaggaZagga hails from the planet Zakton at the farside of the Milky Way galaxy. Zakton is someseventy-five thousand light years beyondGemini. One of the twelve members of theGalactic Council, he was sent to Saturn. Fromthere he transited to Earth, entering the bodyof a boy at the instant of birth. Zagga claimsthat on his home planet children are con-ceived not by sexual intercourse but by purethought. People do not have names. He wasgiven the appellation “Zagga” only after hevolunteered for the Earth mission. In lettersto saucerian writer John W. Dean, Zagga at-tested to the authenticity of George Adamski’sclaim to have attended an interplanetary con-ference on Saturn in March 1962.

According to Dean, Zagga was “a fine look-ing young man of about twenty-five years ofage” in 1961 when Dean met him at BuckNelson’s contactee convention in Missouri.Zagga told Dean, “I had known the one youcall Jesus before and after his incarnation onearth. I know Him as a great friend” (Dean,1964). Dean said he knew Zagga’s earthlyname and address but was not to reveal them.

See Also: Adamski, George; ContacteesFurther ReadingDean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip -


ZandarkIn the fall of 1973, an anonymous woman re-ceived psychic communications from Zan-dark, a “member of the United Cosmic Coun-cil; a Commander in Chief in Charge ofDirecting Technical Transmissions Via MentalTelepathy of the Combination of Medium-istic Telepathy under the Direction of theConfederation of Cosmic Space Beings”(Keel, 1975). Zandark’s people are here tobring peace, and they have been here a longtime. They built the Sphinx, the pyramids,and other classic ancient structures.



ZoltonIn a registered letter sent to U.S. Air Force In-telligence on November 20, 1953, an uniden-tified woman mailed a recently channeledmessage from an Ashtar associate namedZolton, “Commander from the center of theSector System of Vela.” Zolton sought to alertthe authorities in Washington to the spacepeople’s purpose.

He warned the Pentagon that visiting ex-traterrestrials knew of “destructive plans for-

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mulated for offensive and defensive war” andwere prepared to stop them by cripplingearthly weapons technology without hurtingany person or thing. The visitors would nothesitate, however, to “control minds . . . in

278 Zolton

order to secure this solar system. This is afriendly warning” (Wilkins, 1955).

See Also: AshtarFurther ReadingWilkins, Harold T., 1955. Flying Saucers Uncensored.

New York: Citadel Press.

“A,” 1Abducted! (Lorenzen and

Lorenzen), 2Abduction (Mack), 5Abductions, xii, xiii, 1–6,

184–185from automobiles, 35–36Buff Ledge, 52–53calf-rustling aliens, 55–57of cars, 20of celebrities, 124of children, 26, 53, 139,

212–213dual reference experience,

88–90, 192, 221,258–259

early contactee movement,72

extraterrestrials among us,96–97

Hill, Betty and Barney, 2,3(fig.), 66

humans on UFOs, 207hybrid entities, 126–127imaginal beings, 129increasing reports of, 66–67by insectoids, 130Malaysian Bunians, 53–54medical examinations during,

169men in black, 171missing time, 15

physical evidence of, 17–18pregnancies, 126by reptoids, 212–213time travelers, 244–245unaware abductees, 18Walton’s five-day

disappearance, 261–266witnesses to, 204–205

Aboard a Flying Saucer(Bethurum), 43

Abraham, 7Abram, 7“Active imagination,” 7Adama, 7, 58Adamski, George, 8–10, 9(fig.),

71(fig.), 150, 229Allingham’s Martian, 19contacted extraterrestrials,

165–166early contactee movement, 70EBEs, 94as extraterrestrial, 11extraterrestrials among us,

95–96Space Brothers, 187traveling with Ramu,

210–211Venusian contact, 195–196Villanueva’s visitors, 258Wilcox’s Martians, 268–269Yamski as reincarnation of,

275–276

Aenstrians, 10–11Aerial Phenomena Research

Organization (APRO),82, 263

Aetherius, 11–12Aetherius Society, 12Aetherius Speaks to Earth (King),

12Affa, 12–13Agents, 13Agharta: The Subterranean World

(Dickhoff ), 14–15, 209Agharti, 13–15Ahab, 15Aho, Wayne S., 76Akon, 15Alamogordo, New Mexico, 105Alana, 36Alan’s Message: To Men of Earth

(Fry), 105Alien diners, 16–17Alien DNA, 17–18, 25Aliens and the dead, 18Alla-An, Jyoti, 170Allan, Christopher, 19Allingham, Cedric, 19Allingham’s Martian, 19Alpert, Richard. See Baba Ram

DassAlpha Zoo Loo, 19–20Altisi, Jackie, 61Alyn, 20–21

Index

279

Ameboids, 21Amnesia associated with

abductions, 1, 4Amun, Scott, 211–212“Anchor” (pseud.). See Grevler,

AnnAncient Three, 208Anderson, Dean, 239Anderson, Harry, 102Anderson, Rodger I., 60–61Andolo, 21Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-

leeka, 21–22Angel of the Dark, 22Angels, 22, 40, 107, 217, 221,

242Angelucci, Orfeo, 22–23,

22(fig.)Animals

bird aliens, 44cetaceans, 58channeling of, 36–37dolphins, 238Kappa, 139–140, 140(fig.)mutilation of, 55–57, 173,

227mystical animals, 146octopus aliens, 191reptoids, 56, 144–145,

212–214, 213(fig.), 259Sasquatch, 217–219talking mongoose, 107–111Venusian puppies, 154See also Insectoids; Reptoids

Anka, Darryl, 39–40, 211Anoah, 23–24Antarctica, 207–208Anthon, 24Anti-Semitism, 117–118, 123,

153, 210, 269Antron, 24Anunnaki, 24–25Apol, Mr., 25Appelle, Stuart, 6Applewhite, Marshall Herff,

246–248APRO. See Aerial Phenomena

Research OrganizationArgentina, 82, 83Arising Sun’s Interplanetary

Class of Thee Elohim,242

Arizona, 36, 134, 199, 200, 227Arna and Parz, 26Arnold, Kenneth, 70, 82, 94Artemis, 26–27Arthea, 36Ascended Masters, 27, 59–61,

201Ascensions, 28Ashtar, 27–29, 30, 70, 94, 145,

178, 201, 255, 277–278Asmitor, 29–30Association of Love and Light,

211Athena, 30, 201Atlantis, xvi, 31–34, 31(fig.),

182–183channeling people from, 209destruction of, 47extraterrestrials settling, 146Jessup’s “little people,” 135as part of Lemuria, 156Root Races, 216Shaver mystery, 225as site of Satanism, 114The Source, 234

Atlantis: The Antediluvian World(Donnelly), 31(fig.), 32

Aura Rhanes, 22, 34, 43–44, 96,150

Aurora Encounter (film), 35Aurora Martian, 34–35Aurora (planet), 47Ausso, 35–36Australia as site of occurrence,

204–205Automatic writing, 12, 113Avinash, 36Ayala, 36–37Ayres, Toraya (Carly), 36–37,

227–228Azelia, 37–38

Baba Ram Dass, 94Back, 39Bacon, Francis, 32Bailey, Alfred, 268Bailey, Betty, 268Ballard, Guy Warren, 69, 122,

183, 229Barclay, John, 233–234Barker, Gray, 83, 141, 170, 257Bartholomew, 39

Bashar, 39–40, 211Basterfield, Keith, 205Bauer, Henry H., xiBaxter, Marla. See Weber,

ConstanceBeasts, Men and Gods

(Ossendowski), 13Beckley, Timothy Green, 153Behind the Flying Saucers

(Scully), 63, 82, 195Being of Light, 40Beirne, Mary, 164Bell, Art, 244Bell, Fred, 221Bellringer, Patrick J. (pseud.),

222–223Be n d e r, Albert K., 141–142, 170Berlitz, Charles, 42, 85Bermuda Triangle, xii, 14, 33,

41–42, 92, 104The Bermuda Triangle (Berlitz),

42The Bermuda Triangle Mystery—

Solved (Kusche), 42Bernard, Raymond (pseud.). See

Siegmeister, WalterBethurum, Truman, 22, 34,

43–44, 43(fig.), 70, 96,150, 229, 231

Bigfoot. See SasquatchBird aliens, 44Birmingham, Frederick William,

44–45Birmingham’s ark, 44–45Blavatsky, Helene Petrovna, 32,

69, 122, 156, 215(fig.),216

Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM),162–165

Blodget, Charlotte, 195Blowing Cave, 45–47Blue John Caves, 165Bo. See Applewhite, Marshall

HerffBolivia, 227Bonnie, 47The Book of Knowledge: The Keys

of Enoch (Hurtak), 173The Book of the Damned (Fort),

69Boone, Dan, 257Bord, Janet, xiii, 99

280 Index

Borderland Sciences ResearchAssociates, 208, 275

Boys from Topside, 47–48Brady, Enid, 76–77Brazil, 64, 140Brodie, Steve, 49Brodie’s deros, 48–50Brodu, Jean-Louis, 162Brookesmith, Peter, 198(fig.)Brotherhood of the Seven Rays,

231, 269Brown, Courtney, 50–51Brown, Michael F., 61, 174Brown Mountain lights, 187Browning, Frederick, 134Brown’s Martians, 50–51Bryant, Alice, 22Bryant, Ernest Art h u r,

2 7 5 – 2 7 6Buckle, Eileen, 276Bucky, 51–52Buff Ledge abduction, 52–53Bullard, Thomas E., 2, 4, 56Bunians, 53–54Bush, George, 214Burden, Brian, 142BVM. See Blessed Virgin MaryByrd, Richard E., xvi, 151Byrne, John, 101

Calf-rustling aliens, 55–57California as site of occurrence,

195–196, 226, 273Campbell, Lady Archibald,

103Campbell, Steuart, 19Canada, 200Canadian government, 47–48Captive extraterrestrials, 57Carey, Ken, 211Carpenter, John S., 212–214Carrington, Hereward, 107Cataclysmic events, 27–29, 30,

31, 33–34, 47Cayce, Edgar, 32–33, 234CE3. See Close encounters of

the third kindCetaceans, 58Chaldeans, 276Chalker, Bill, 17, 18, 44Chamberlin, Richard, 209Chaneques, 58–59

Channeling, xii, xiii, xv–xvi,23–24, 59–61

abraham, 7through alien implants, 24,

125–126alien women, 24ancient civilizations, 275Andolo, 21animals, 227Anoah, 23–24Ashtar and Ashtar

Command, 201, 244Atlanteans, 32–33biblical figures, 7, 12cetaceans, 58Germane, 211God-figures, 73, 75, 93–94,

117–118, 119, 211,241–242, 266

group energies and entities,111, 154–155, 170, 174,207, 234

Higher Being, 88for instructional purposes, 161intelligences from beyond,

130Metatron, 173–174military as witnesses, 12–13multiple entities, 79–81Nostradamus, 188–189from other planets, 130–131,

145, 146–147, 191, 200philosophical and

technological, 47–48for prophetic purposes, 21,

26–27, 27–29, 32–33,39–40, 211–212

“pure” channeling, 228Ramtha, 209–210reincarnated beings, 158,

161, 222Seth, 221Star People, 237–238Van Tassel, 256Venusians, 76–77

Chapman, Robert, 19Chief Joseph, 61, 61(fig.)Childers, Lee, 202–203Children, 212

as abductees, 26, 53, 139,212–213

close encounters, 133–134

as contactees, 26, 67, 134, 143fairies and, 73–75, 101

Chorvinsky, Mark, 115–117Christianity, 113, 221

Elvis as Jesus, 92–93Marian apparitions, 162–165Master plans, 80–81reaction to Ashtar, 28See also Demons and

Demonology; God-figuresChristopher, 61Chung Fu, 61–62Church Universal and

Triumphant, 153–154Churchward, James, xvi, 156Circle of Inner Truth, 62C i rcle of Power Foundation, 241Civilizations, lost. See Atlantis;

Blowing Cave; Hollowearth; Lemuria

Clamar, Aphrodite, 2Clarion (planet), 21–22, 43Clark, Jerome, 55–56, 95,

198(fig.)Close encounters of the third

kind (CE3), xv, xvi,62–67

Aenstrians, 10–11alien diners, 16–17Angelucci, Orfeo, 23bird aliens, 44Birmingham’s ark, 44–45calf-rustling aliens, 55–57disappearing aliens, 245giant beings, 175Hill, Barney and Betty, 2Jahrmin and Jana, 133–134Lethbridge’s aeronauts,

157–158miniature pilots, 177Mothman, 178–179Nordics, 187–188octopus aliens, 191reptoids, 212–214Shaw’s Martians, 226–227sheep-killing aliens, 227shopping for aliens, 233–234space travel, 21–22Villanueva’s visitors, 257–258Wilcox’s Martians, 267–268See also Contactees; Fairies;

Martians; Men in black

Index 281

Cocoon people, 67–68Cody, L. D., 273–274Cole, Yvonne, 94Collins, Brian, 101Columbus, Christopher, 261Colver, Mervin “Beaver,” 228The Coming of Seth (Roberts),

221The Coming of the Fairies

(Doyle), 74Communication, 64–65

from other planets, 150–151spoken, 158, 177–178,

195–196telepathic, 17, 39, 90, 187,

196–197, 229–230, 241,277

written, 12, 113, 249See also Telephone calls from

extraterrestrialsCommunion: A True Story

(Strieber), xii, 4–5, 17,96–97, 238

Conspiracy theories, 118, 121,123, 153, 210

Constable, Tre vor James, 21,7 1

Contactees, 1, 15, 68–72,134–135, 144–145,234–235, 268–270

Adamski, George, 8–10agents, 13angels, 242Angelucci, Orfeo, 22–23,

22(fig.)children, 123early movement, 105–106giant aliens, 194–195godlike figures, 112–113Grim Reaper, 115–116Heaven’s Gate, 246–248hoaxes, 184lifesaving experiences,

111–112from other planets, 141–142recollection under hypnosis,

136–137, 241repeat experiences, 195tape recording, 177–178Venusians, 51–52, 87–88,

105, 149–150Warminster Mystery, 10–12

See also Abductions;Adamski, George; Closeencounters of the thirdkind; Flying saucers;Meier, Eduard “Billy”;Radio messages; Sprinkle,Ronald Leo; Williamson,George Hunt

Contacts OVNI Cergy-Pontoise(Prevost), 130

Cookes, Grace, 266C o o p e r, Milton William, 95, 121Cosmic awareness, 72–73,

79–81, 88Cosmic Awareness

Communications, 73Cosmic language, 1Cottingley fairies, 73–75The Council, 75Cox, Norma, 123Creighton, Gordon, 136Crenshaw, Dennis G., 153Critias (Plato), 31Crombie, R. Ogilvie, 146Curry, 75–76Cyclopeans, 76Cymatrili, 76–77

“Dagousset, Henri,” 250DAL Universe, 220Dalis, Allen, 264Dancing in the Light (Maclaine),

209von Däniken, Erich, 269Darkness over Tibet (Illion), 14Darr, Lorraine, 159–160Darrah, Adele, 28Dash, Mike, 236Davenport, Marc, 244–245David of Landa, 79–81David-Neel, Alexandra, 245Davies, Peter, 19Davis, Isabel L., 83, 255Dead extraterrestrials, 81–87,

84(fig.), 120, 194–195Dean, John W., 22, 277Death, xiii

dead extraterrestrials, 81–87,84(fig.), 120, 194–195

fourth dimension, 104–105Grim Reaper, 115–116,

115–117

Lee, Gloria, 133suicides, xiii, 30, 246–248

DeLong, Maris, 145Demons and demonology, 71,

143, 170–172, 214, 221,222–223, 24. See alsoSatanism

Denton, Sherman, 87Denton, William, 87Denton’s Martians and

Venusians, 87Department of Interplanetary

Affairs, 33Derenberger, Woodrew, 253DERN Universe, 220Deros, 45–46, 48–49Devas, 36–37The Devil’s Triangle

(documentary), 42Diane, 87–88Dickhoff, Robert Ernst, 14–15Disch, Thomas M., 238Divine Fire, 88D’Light, Joy, 144DNA, 17–18, 25Docker, Beth, 203Donnelly, Ignatius, 32Doran, Jerry, 238Doraty, Judy, 56Doreal, Maurice, 183Doty, Richard, 120Dove, Lonzo, 172Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 73–74Drake, W. R., 161–162Druffel, Ann, 136, 217Drugs, psychedelic, 29–30Dual reference, 88–90, 192,

221, 258–259Dugja, 90Duncan, James, 19Durby, William, 72–73A Dweller on Two Planets

(Oliver), 181–182

The Earth Chronicles (Stitchin),24

Earth Coincidence ControlOffice, 91–92

Earths in the Solar World(Swedenborg), 68

EBEs. See Extraterrestrialbiological entities

282 Index

Eddy, Mary Baker, 261Ekker, Doris, 117Elder Race, 92, 208Ellis, Richard, 33–34Elvis as Jesus, 92–93Emenegger, Robert, 119, 120Emmanuel, 93–94Escape from Destruction

(Bernard), 113–114Eternal life theories, 7The Ether Ship and Its Solution

(Layne), 275Eunethia, 94–95Evans, Hilary, 34, 252Evans-Wentz, W. Y., 99Extraterrestrial biological entities

(EBEs), 57, 94–95Extraterrestrial Earth Mission,

36Extraterrestrials among us,

95–97

Fabares, Shelley, 209Fairies encountered, xii, xiii,

99–103Chaneques, 58–59Cottingley fairies, 73–75Jessup’s “little people,” 135Jinns, 135–136Kappa, 139–140Malaysian Bunians, 53–54White’s little people,

266–267See also Ultraterrestrials

Fairies: Real Encounters withLittle People (Bord), xiii

Fairy captures, 103–104The Fairy Faith in Celtic

Countries (Evans-Wentz),99

Fairy Tale: A True Story (film),75

Farewell, Good Brothers(documentary), 173

Farrell, Mike, 209Fatima, Our Lady of, 162–163Fellowship of the Inner Light,

234Ferguson, William, 143Ferreira, Antonio Carlos, 37–38Fields, Ralph B., 179–181Fire in the Sky (film), 264

Fletcher, Candy, 241Fletcher, Rey, 241Flournoy, Theodore, 69, 185Flying Saucer from Mars

(Allingham), 19Flying saucers. See SpaceshipsFlying Saucers and the Three Men

(Bender), 141The Flying Saucers Are Real

(Keyhoe), 63Flying Saucers Have Landed

(Leslie and Adamski), 8Fodor, Nandor, 108, 110Fontaine, Franck, 130Fontes, Olavo T., 64Food, alien, 64–65Ford, Richard, 248Fort, Charles, 69, 142Fortner, Yonah, 276Fossilized aliens, 104Fourth dimension, 104–105Frank and Frances, 105Franklin, Benjamin, 261Frederick, Jennings, 256–257Friedman, Stanton T., 84Friend, Robert, 13From India to the Planet Mars

(Flournoy), 69, 185From Outer Space to You

(Menger), 172Fry, Daniel William, 105–106Fuller, Curtis, 224Fuller, John G., 2

Gabriel, 107Gaddis, Vincent H., 14, 42Gaia, 36Gandhi, Mahatma, 261Gardner, Edward, 73–74Gardner, Marshall B., 122GeBauer, Leo, 82Gef, 107–111Geller, Uri, 234–235, 235(fig.)Gentzel, Charles Boyd, 119Germane, 111, 160, 211Giannini, F. Amadeo, 151Giant Rock Interplanetary

Spacecraft Convention,166, 255

Gill, William Booth, 63Gilson, Cy, 262, 264Girvan, Waveney, 19

Gnosticism, 210Goblin Universe, 111God-figures, 73, 75, 93–94,

113, 117–118, 119, 211,241–242, 242, 266

Godfrey, Alan, 136–137,137(fig.)

Godfrey, Cinda, 92–93Goldberg, Bruce, 244Good, Timothy, 134–135, 165Gordon, 111–112Gray Face, 112–113Gray-skinned aliens, 2, 15, 50,

56, 67–68, 79, 112–113,203(fig.), 261–266

Great Mother, 113–114Great White Brotherhood, 23,

27, 114–115Greater Nibiruan Council,

24–25, 115Green, Gabriel, 178Green-skinned aliens, 37Grevler, Ann, 1Grey, Margot, 40Griffiths, Frances, 73–75Grim Reaper, 115–117Grise, Allan, 159Gross, Germana, 39Grosso, Michael, 129, 203Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn,

117–118

Haeckel, Ernst, 155–156Halley, Edmond, 122Hallucinations, 205Hamilton, Alex, 55Hamilton, William, 47, 167Hansen, Myrna, 56Hanson, Nuria, 111–112Harris, Melvin, 110Hatonn. See Gyeorgos Ceres

HatonnHawaii as site of occurrence,

202, 242Haydon, S. E., 35Heard, Gerald, 166Heaven’s Gate, xiii, 246–248Hefferlin, W. C. and Gladys,

207–209Hewes, Hayden, 35, 246–247Hicks, Esther, 7Hierarchal Board, 119

Index 283

Higdon, E. Carl, Jr., 35–36Higher Being, 88Hill, Barney and Betty, 2,

3(fig.), 66Hill, James, 154Hilton, James, 13Hind, Cynthia, 15, 67, 169Hingley, Jean, 176–177Hoaxes, xvi, 184

Adamski, George, 8–10alien autopsy film, xii, 85Allingham’s Martian, 19Bethurum, Truman, 43controversy over Aura

Rhanes, 34Cottingley fairies, 73–75dead extraterrestrials, 81–83Fontaine abduction, 130fourth dimension, 104–105Holloman aliens, 120Menger and Weber, 172–173Shaw’s Martians, 226–227Ummo, 249–252unconfirmed hoaxes,

177–178, 234use of ventriloquism, 110Vadig, 253–254Vegetable Man, 257Yamski, 276

Hodson, Geoffrey, 74Holiday, F. W., 111Holloman aliens, 119–121Hollow earth, xii, xvi, 121–123

Agharti, 13–15Atlantis, 33Blowing Cave, 45–47land beyond the Pole,

151–153Mount Lassen, 179–181Mount Shasta, 181–184See also Atlantis; Lemuria;

Shaver mysteryThe Hollow Earth (Bernard), xvi,

123The Hollow Globe (Sherman),

122Honey, C. A., 10, 96Honor, 123–124Hood, Hedy, 133Hopkins, Budd, xiii, 2–3, 5–6,

124–125, 126, 238–239Hopkins’s Martians, 125

Horsley, Peter, 134–135How to Develop Your ESP Power

(Roberts), 221Howard, Dana, 87–88Howe, Linda Moulton, 56, 120Hubbard, Harold W., 253Hufford, David J., 193Human-alien hybrids. See

Hybrid beingsHumphrey, Hubert, 10Hurtak, James, 84, 173Hutson, John, 12Hweig, 125–126Hybrid beings, 26, 96, 126–127

Azelia, 37–38as motive for abduction, 4nonhuman hybrids,

212–214, 222Nordics as, 188reptoids, 212–214See also Pregnancy; Sexual

contactHynek, J. Allen, xv, 64, 65Hyperborea, 216Hypnosis, xii, 191

aliens and the dead, 18Buff Ledge abduction, 53channeling during, 39, 79,

234, 244dual reference, 88–90recalling abduction

experience, 4, 24, 66,112–113, 136, 228, 241

remembering reptoids, 214,259

used on abductees, 1–2Hyslop, James, 233

I AM Activity. See Ballard, GuyWarren

I Rode a Flying Saucer! (VanTassel), 70, 255

Ibn Aharon, Y. N. (pseud.). SeeFortner, Yonah

Icke, David, 214Idaho as site of occurrence, 199,

228Illion, Theodore, 14Imaginal beings, 129Imagining Atlantis (Ellis), 33–34Impersonations of

extraterrestrials, 28

Inner Light Consciousness, 234The Inner World (Culmer), 122Insectoids, 130, 184–185Insects, 166Inside the Space Ships (Adamski),

8, 196Intelligences du Dehors, 130Intelligences from Beyond, 130Intergalactic councils, 21, 61International Flying Saucer

Bureau, 141–142Internet information, xii, 33Interplanetary Connections, 40Interplanetary Parliament,

11–12The Interrupted Journey (Fuller),

2Intruders (Hopkins), 4, 124Invisible Horizons (Gaddis), 42Invisible Residents (Sanderson),

42, 192Ireland as site of occurrence,

103–104, 164Irving, James, 107–111Ishkomar, 130–131Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky), 122

J. W., 133Jacobs, David M., xiii, 5–6, 13,

18, 96, 126, 188Jadoo (Keel), 143Jahrmin and Jana, 133–134Jamaludin, Ahmad, 53–54James, William, 221Janus, 134–135Jefferson, Thomas, 261Jehovah, 232Jerhoam, 135Jessup, Morris Ketchum, 135Jessup’s “little people,” 135Jesus, 12, 24, 92–93, 154, 241,

261, 277. See alsoSa n a n d a

Jewish mysticism, 173–174Jews, 234–235Jinns, 135–136John XXIII, 10Jonerson, Ellen, 102Jordan Pena, Jose Luis, 250, 251Joseph, 136–137, 137(fig.)A Journey to the Earth’s Interior

(Gardner), 122

284 Index

Juliana, Queen of Holland, 10Jung, C. G., 23, 203–204Jupiter, 22, 239

Kafton-Minkel, Walter,225–226

Kaiser, Elaine, 241Kannenberg, Ida M., 125–126Kantarians, 139Kappa, 139–140, 140(fig.)Karen, 140Karmic Board, 140–141Katchongva, Chief Dan, 199Kazik, 141–142Keach, Marian (pseud.). See

Martin, DorothyKeel, John A., 142–143, 275

alien telephone calls, 25hybridization, 4hysterical pregnancies, xvii,

126men in black, 171occult entities, 66, 71personal encounters with

ultraterrestrials, 194Texas airships, 272Vadig hoax, 253

Keely, John, 101Kellett, Mary, 263Kennedy, John F., 10Kerin, Dermot, 115Keyhoe, Donald E., 48Khauga, 143Khoury, Peter, 17–18Kidnapping. See AbductionsKihief, 143–144Kinder, Gary, 168King, George, 12King Leo, 144–145King of the World, 14Kingdoms within Earth (Cox),

123Kirk, Robert, 99Klarer, Elizabeth, 15Klass, Philip J., 5, 263, 264Klein, Donald F., 238Klimo, Jon, 154–155Knight, J. Z., 161, 209–210Knowles, Herbert B., 12Korff, Kal, 168Korsholm, Celeste, 200Korsholm, Jananda, 133–134

Korton, 28, 30, 145Kronin, 145Kuiper, Gerard, 166Kuran, 145–146Kurmos, 146Kusche, Larry, 42Kwan Ti Laslo, 146–147

Laan-Deeka and Sharanna,149–150

Lady of Pluto, 150–151Lael, Ralph, 187Lake Titicaca, Peru, 231Land beyond the Pole, 151–153Landa, xiii, xiv, 79–81Lanello, 153–154Lanser, Edward, 183Larsen, Julius, 12Laskon, 154Laughead, Charles and Lillian,

229–232Lawson, Alvin H., 3Layne, N. Meade, 69–70, 143,

275Lazaris, 154–155Le Plongeon, Augustus, 156Leander, John, 194Leary, Timothy, 94Lee, Gloria, 61, 119, 133Lemuria, xvi, 7, 155–157,

182–184Atlantis and, 33channeling people from, 209destruction of, 47Jessup’s “little people,” 135purported locations of, 173,

202queen of, 90Root Races, 216Shaver mystery, 223–226as site of Satanism, 114See also Atlantis; Hollow

earthLemuria: Lost Continent of the

Pacific (Lewis), 156, 182LePar, William, 75Leslie, Desmond, 8, 258, 276Lethbridge aeronauts, 157–158Lever, Marshall, 61–62Lewis, H. Spencer, 122, 156,

182Li Sung, 158

Lie-detector tests. See Polygraphexaminations

Life after Life (Moody), 40Light, heavenly, 40Ligon, J. R., 271Lilly, John, 91Limbo of the Lost (Spencer), 42Lincoln, Abraham, 261Linn-Erri, 158–159Lleget, Marius, 250–251London, England, 135Lorenzen, Coral, 2, 82, 263,

265–266Lorenzen, Jim, 2, 82, 263,

265–266Lost civilizations. See Atlantis;

Blowing Cave; Hollowearth; Lemuria

Lost Horizon (Hilton), 13Loveland Frogman, 213(fig.)Lundahl, Arthur, 12–13Luno, 159–160Lyrans, 160

Macdonald, Keith, xiii, xiv, xv,79–81

Mack, John E., xii–xiii, 5, 72,89

Maclaine, Shirley, 209MacLeod, Melissa, 217Mafu, 161Magee, Judith, 205Magonia, 161–162Malaysia, 53–54Maldek (planet), 24Marcoux, Charles A., 45–47Marian apparitions, 162–165Mark, 165–166Mars, visits to, 21–22Marshall, George C., 94Martian bees, 166Martians, 143

as Adamic man, 232–233Allingham’s Martian, 19Aurora Martian, 34–35Brown’s Martians, 50–51communication through

writing, 249Denton’s Martians and

Venusians, 87early contactee movement,

68–69

Index 285

Hopkins’s Martians, 125Mince-pie Martians,

175–177Monka, 28, 30, 177–178Muller’s Martians, 185as root race, 14–15Shaw’s Martians, 226–227Smead’s Martians, 233Snake People, 208Wilcox’s Martians, 267–268

Martin, Dorothy, 217, 229, 269Martins, Joao, 64Mary, 166–167Mary, Blessed Virgin. See

Marian apparitionsMassari, Thomas, 221Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, 220Matthews, Arthur Henry, 105Maui, Hawaii, 202Mayer, Harry, 166–167McCarthy, John J., 263McGraw, Walter, 109McHale, John, 164McLean, Ken, 24McLoughlin, Mary, 164Me-leelah, 169–170Media

radio messages, 12–13,157–158, 177–178, 255

telephone calls fromextraterrestrials, 10–11,25, 79–81, 145

television and newspaperreporting, xii, xiii

Meier, Eduard “Billy,” 71–72,167–169, 188, 220–221

Melchizedek Order of the WhiteBrotherhood, 23

Melora, 170Melton, J. Gordon, 69, 210Memories of Tomorrow

(Woodrew), 192Men in black (MIB), 25,

141–142, 170–172, 197,203, 245, 254

Menger, Connie. See Weber,Constance

Menger, Howard, 20–21,20(fig.), 172–173, 187

Merk, 173Mersch, 173Metatron, 173–174

Meton (planet), 15Mexico as site of occurrence,

163–164, 212, 257–258MIB. See Men in BlackMichael, 174–175, 242Michigan giant, 174Migrants, 175Military involvement

Bender’s men in black, 141Boys from Topside, 47–48captive extraterrestrials, 57dead extraterrestrials, 81–85EBEs, 94–95Holloman aliens, 119–121land beyond the Pole,

151–152men in black, 171Padrick’s Xeno, 273–274witnesses to channeling,

12–13Zolton, 277–278

Miller, Dick, 177–178, 269Mince-pie Martians, 175–177Miniature pilots, 177Ministry of Universal Wisdom,

28Minnesota, 245Miranda (planet), 26–27Missing time, 1–3Missing Time (Hopkins), 3, 124Mission Rama, 196Missouri as site of occurrence,

16, 125Mohammed, 261Monka, 28, 30, 177–178Monteleone, Thomas F.,

253–254Montgomery, Ruth, 88, 261Moody, Charles, 266Moody, Raymond A., 40Moore, Mary-Margaret, 39Moore, Patrick, 19Moore, William L., 57, 84Moseley, James W., 43Moses, 261Motels, aliens staying in,

1 6 – 1 7Mothman, 4, 143, 178–179The Mothman Pro p h e c i e s ( Keel), 4Mount Lassen, 179–181Mount Shasta, 33, 156,

181–184, 182(fig.)

as entrance to hollow earth,122

inhabitants of, 47Lemurian queen residing at,

90Martin, Dorothy, and, 229,

232Mr. X, 184Mu. See LemuriaMU the Mantis Being, 184–185Muller, Catherine Elise, 69, 185Muller’s Martians, 185My Saturnian Lover (Baxter),

172

The Narrative of Arthur GordonPym (Poe), 122

Native religions, 199Nazi sympathizers, 123, 153Near-death experiences, 40Neasham, Robert, 12–13Nebel, Long John, 50, 51,

71(fig.), 172, 203,256(fig.)

Neff, Grant, 262Nelson, Arlene, 228Nelson, Buck, 51–52Nettles, Bonnie Lu, 246–248Nevada as site of occurrence, 34New Age movements, xii,

92–93, 102–103, 161,209–210, 221

New Mexico as site ofoccurrence, 57, 65, 82,83, 84–85, 85, 86(fig.),94, 105, 119–121, 195,266

Newbrough, John Ballough, 69,229

Newfoundland as site ofoccurrence, 102

Newton, Silas, 82Noma, 187Nordics, 187–188, 266Norman, Paul, 205North Pole, 151–153Nostradamus, 188–189,

189(fig.)Nyman, Joseph, 88–90

Oahspe (Newbrough), 28–29,69, 229

286 Index

O’Barski, George, 67Observers, multiple, xvi

Adamski, George, 8Allingham’s Martian, 19Buff Ledge abduction, 52–53Hill, Barney and Betty, 2

Octopus aliens, 191Office of Naval Intelligence, 12Ogatta, 191–192Ohio as site of occurrence,

178–179OINTS, 42, 192Old Hag, 192–194Oleson’s giants, 194–195Oliver, Frederick Spencer,

181–184Oliver, John, 135Oliver, Norman, 276Olliana Olliana Alliano, 195Oregon as site of occurrence, 15,

102Oreon (planet), 22Ortenheim, Bjorn, 201–202Orthon, 70, 195–196Ossendowski, Ferdinand, 13–14Other Intelligences. See OINTsOther Tongues—Other Flesh

(Williamson), 157, 175,269

Ottawa Flying Saucer Club, 48Otto, John, 230Our Haunted Planet (Keel), 25Out-of-body experiences, 26,

40, 87, 143, 159, 200,238

Owen, A. R. G., 200Owen, Iris, 200Oxalc, 196–197Oz Factor, 197–198

Padrick, Sid, 273–274Paladin, David, 139Palmer, Ray, 46, 151, 207–208,

223, 224, 226Pancakes, 64–65“Pardo, Antonio,” 250–251Partise, Joyce, 219Parz, 26Paschal, Francie. See Steiger,

Francie PaschalPassport to Magonia (Vallee),

102, 161–162

Paul 2, 199Peep. See Nettles, Bonnie LuPfeifer, George J., 263Pflock, Karl T., 254The Phantom of the Poles (Reed),

122Philip, 200Phoenix Project, 117Photographs, 8, 73–75,

167–168, 250, 251, 254Picasso, Fabio, 76, 139–140Planetary Council, 200,

200–201Planetary Light Association, 23Plato, 31Pleiadeans, 71–72, 167–168,

169, 187–188, 200,220–221

Pluto, 150–151Poe, Edgar Allan, 122POL. See Power of LightPolygraph examinations, 35–36,

43, 97, 105, 172, 261, 263Poppen, Nicholas von, 83Portla, 28, 201Portugal, 162–163Possession by extraterrestrials,

29–30Power of Light (POL), 201–203Pregnancy

impregnation byextraterrestrials, 4, 15, 96,126, 212

See also Hybrid beings; Sexualcontact

Presley, Elvis, 92–93Preston, Clyde, 112–113Prevost, Jean-Pierre, 130Price, Harry, 110Price, Thomas W., 245Prince Neosom, 202–203Priority of All Saints, 231Probert, Mark, 69–70, 275Project Alert, 30Project Blue Book, 13–14,

63–65, 171, 273Project Magnet, 47–48Prophecies, 188–189, 195

Atlantis, 32–33cataclysmic events, 130–131,

169of extraterrestrials, 11

of human future, 91Second Coming, 113Martin, Dorothy, and failed,

229–232telepathic communication,

26–27Wilcox’s Martians, 267–268

Prophet, Mark L., 153–154Psychic experiments, 87, 200Psychic manifestations,

245–246, 259Psychic projections. See

PsychoterrestrialsPsychological issues, 184

causes of abduction stories,3–4

imaginal beings, 129Jung on Orfeo Angelucci, 23nightmares, 192–194research, xvsanity of experients, xiv–xv,

35–36, 268Psychoterrestrials, 203–204Puddy, Maureen, 204–205Puddy’s abduction, 204–205Puharich, Andrija, 191Pursel, Jach, 154–155

R. D., 207Ra, 207Radio messages, 12–13,

157–158, 177–178, 255Rahm, Peter, 99–100Rainbow City, 207–209Rainbow City and the Inner

Earth People (Barton), 209Ramtha, 154, 161, 209–210Ramu, 196, 210–211Randles, Jenny, 171, 197–198,

198(fig.)Raphael, 211Ratliff, Buffard, 104Raydia, 211Reed, William, 122Reeder, D. B., 273Reeves, Kathy, 245Reincarnated beings, 23, 24,

61–62, 153–154, 158,199, 208

Renata, 211–212Renaud, Robert P., 158–159Reptoid child, 212

Index 287

Reptoids, 56, 144–145, 145,212–214, 213(fig.), 259

The Republic (Plato), 31–32Restaurants, aliens in, 16–17Revelation: The Divine Fire

(Steiger), 29Reyes, Luis Ramirez, 212Rhode Island as site of

occurrence, 241Rhodes, John, 214Ribera, Antonio, 250Rice, Ted, 259Ring, Kenneth, 40, 129Road in the Sky (Williamson),

157, 269, 270Robbins, Dianne, 7, 58Roberts, Jane, 221Robinson, John J., 49Rocky Mountain Conference on

UFO Investigation,xiv–xv, 24, 72, 236

Rogo, D. Scott, 164–165Rohre, Joseph, 57Rojcewicz, Peter M., 7, 197Rolfe, Jessica (pseud.), 145–146Roman, Sanaya, 242Root races, 216Roper poll, 6Rosas, Lester, 149–150Rosicrucians, 114–115, 183Rosing, Christopher, 129Roswell, New Mexico, 84–85The Roswell Incident (Moore), 85Rowe, Kelvin, 150–151Royal, Lyssa, 211Royal Order of Tibet, 8Rueckert, Carla, 207Ruwa, Zimbabwe, 67

Sagan, Carl, xi, 184Sagrada Familia, Brazil, 76Saint Michael, 217San Antonio, Antonio, 250Sananda, 28, 117–118, 119,

154, 217, 229, 231, 232Sanderson, Ivan T., 42, 192Sandler, Allan, 119Santana, Carlos, 173, 174(fig.)Sasquatch, 217–219Satanism, 113–114. See also

Demons and demonologySatonians, 220

Saturn, 20–21, 172, 210, 239Scarberry, Linda, 179Scarberry, Roger, 178Schattler, Philip L., 155–157Schiff, Steve, 85Schirmer, Herbert, 2Schmidt, Reinhold, 184Schroeder, John E., 16, 17Schultz, Dave, 173, 195Schwartz, Stephen A., 217Schwarz, Berthold Eric, 268Scott-Elliot, W., 156Scully, Frank, 82, 195Second Coming, 112–113Secret Chiefs, 220The Secret Common-Wealth

(Kirk), 99The Secret Doctrine (Blavatsky),

122, 156Secret of the Ages: UFOs from

inside the Earth (Trench),225

The Secret of the Saucers(Angelucci), 23(fig.)

Secret Places of the Lion(Williamson), 157, 269

Secret School (Strieber), 240Sedona, Arizona, 36, 134, 200,

227Seewaldt, David, 212–213Semjase, 167–168, 220–221Seth, 154, 221The Seth Material (Roberts), 221Sewall, Mary, 245Sexual contact with aliens, 124

Aura Rhanes, 34, 43evidence of, 17–18hysterical pregnancies, 126with jinns, 136with Pleiadeans, 221producing offspring, 37–38,

64reptoids, 214Weber’s Saturnian lover,

20–21See also Hybrid beings;

PregnancyShaari, 222Shambhala, 13Shan, 222–223Shan-Chea satellite, 21Shangri-La, 13–15, 14(fig.)

Shartle, Paul, 119–120Shaver, Richard Sharpe, 48–49,

123, 156, 223–226Shaver mystery, 14, 45, 48–50,

207, 223–226Shaw, H. G., 226–227Shaw’s Martians, 226–227Sheaffer, Robert, 102Shearer, Carolyn, 154Sheep-killing alien, 227Shell, Robert, 29–30Sherman, M. L., 122Shiva, 36–37, 227–228Shockley, Paul, 73Short, Robert, 28Shoush, Tawani, 151–153Shovar, 228Shuttlewood, Arthur, 10–11Shuttlewood, Graham, 11Siegmeister, Walter, xvi, 123Silence Group, 9–10Simon, Benjamin, 2Simonton, Joe, 64Simpson, Dorothy, 16Sinat Schirah, 228Sister Thedra, 229–232Sitchin, Zecharia, 24–25, 115Sky people, 232–233Slade, Henry, 104Smead’s Martians, 233Smith, 233–234Smith, Helene (pseud.). See

Muller, Catherine EliseSmith, Wilbert B., 47–48Snake People, 208Sneide, Ole J., 70Socorro, New Mexico, 65Solar Cross Foundation, 220Solem, Paul, 199Solomon, Paul, 234Source, 234Space Brothers, 159, 187–188,

210–211, 254Space travel

early contactee movement,68–69

out-of-body experiences,1 4 3

Standing Horse’s travels,21–22

with Venusians, 149–150,159–160, 242–243

288 Index

Spaceships, xvi, 62–64abductions by, 1–6Adamski, George, and,

8 – 1 0aliens from, 239Angelucci, Orfeo, and, 23Birmingham’s ark, 44–45blueprints for, 133cigar-shaped spacecraft, 26contact with, 39–40, 154,

157–158dead extraterrestrials, 81–84,

82disc-shaped, 124early contactee movement,

70EBEs, 95failure to appear, 199hoaxes, 249–252humans on UFOs, 207landings in Texas, 270–271manned craft, 275–276Martians in, 19, 226–227pancake-shaped, 67, 106(fig.)from Saturn, 210See also Abductions; Close

encounters of the thirdkind

Sparrow, Margaret, 200Spaulding, William H., 263Spears, Terry, 115SPECTRA, 234–235Spence, Lewis, 32Spencer, John Wallace, 42Spooner, Camille, 226Springheel Jack, 235–236Sprinkle, Ronald Leo, 36, 72,

79, 228, 236, 244St. Louis, Missouri, 16Stalnaker, Lydia, 24Stan. See Sinat SchirahStanding Horse, Frank Buck,

21–22, 154Star People, 96, 143–144,

237–238The Star People (Steiger and

Steiger), 237Starr, Jelaila, 115Starseed transmissions, 211, 237Steen, Claude E., 57Steiger, Brad, 29, 88, 96, 131,

143–144, 237–238, 242

Steiger, Francie Paschal,143–144

Steinman, William, 57Stellar Community of

Enlightened Ecosystems,238

Stevens, Wendelle C., 168, 221Stirling, Allan Alexander, 94Stockholm Syndrome, 89Stonebrooke, Pamela, 214Stranges, Frank E., 254Strieber, Whitley, xii, 4–5,

96–97, 238–239Stringfield, Leonard H., 83–84Subterranean kingdoms. See

Hollow earthSuicides, xiii, 30, 246–248Sumerian writings, 25Sunar and Treena, 239Sunderland, Gaynor, 26Swan, Frances, 12Swedenborg, Emanuel, 68–69Swords, Michael D., 4, 270Sydney, Australia, 17–18Symmes, John Cleves, xvi, 122

Tabar, 241Taken (Turner), 67Tawa, 241Taylor, Charles, 41–42Tecu, 241–242Teed, Cyrus, 122Telephone calls from

extraterrestrials, 10–11,25, 79–81, 145

Telonic Research Center, 269Telos, 47Teros, 45–46The Terror That Comes in the

Night (Hufford), 193Tessman, Diane, 244Texas as site of occurrence,

34–35, 233–234Thayer, Velma, 210Thee Elohim, 242Theosophists, 104, 114–115,

122, 133, 215(fig.), 229They Knew Too Much about

Flying Saucers (Barker),141, 170

Thompson, Samuel Eaton,242–243

Thompson’s Venusians,242–243

Thorner, W. E., 101The Threat (Jacobs), 96Tibus, 244Timaeus (Plato), 31Time travelers, 244–245Tin-can aliens, 245Toews, Edmoana, 111–112Toronto Society for Psychical

Research, 200Torrent, Argentina, 76Torres, Penny, 161Townsend, James, 245Transformation (Strieber), 238Traum, Artie, 101Tree-stump aliens, 245Trench, Brinsley le Poer, 225,

232Trigano, Lyonel, 44Tulpa, 245–246Turner, Harry Joe, 19–20Turner, Karla, 67–68, 214Turrell, Thelma B., 30The Two, 246–248

UFO and the Bible (Jessup), 135The UFO Experience (Hynek),

62UFO Experience Support

Association, 17The UFO Incident (film),

204(fig.)UFO Project, 236UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous

Game (Klass), 5UFOs Confidential! (Williamson

and McCoy), 269Ulkt, 249Ultraterrestrials, 25–26, 245Ummo, 249–252Unaware abductees, 18Unconscious, role in paranormal

experience, xivThe Under-People (Norman),

225Unholy Six, 252Unveiled Mysteries (Ballard), 183Uranus, 12

Vadig, 253–254Val Thor, 254

Index 289

Valdar, 255Vallee, Jacques, 66, 102,

161–162, 251Van Tassel, George W., 27–29,

70, 201, 255–256,256(fig.), 257

Vaughan, Alan, 158Vegetable Man, 256–257Venudo, 257Venus, visits to, 21–22,

149–150Venusians, 1

Adamski’s contact, 8,195–196

Agharti, 15channeling, 76–77as Christians, 254contactees, 51–52, 87–88,

105, 149–150dead extraterrestrials, 82Denton’s Martians and

Venusians, 87reincarnated angel, 199Thompson’s Venusians,

242–243traveling with, 149–150,

242–243Venusian puppies, 154visiting Lemuria, 173Weber as, 21, 172–173See also VIVenus

Villanueva Medina, Salvador,257–258

Villanueva’s visitors, 257–258Villas-Boas, Antonio, 64VIVenus, 258–259Volmo, 259Volpe, Anthony and Lynn,

26–27

Wales as site of occurrence, 26,157–158, 170

Walk-ins, 36, 88, 261Walton, Duane, 262–263Walton, Travis, 2, 261–266Walton’s abduction, 261–266Wanderers, 95, 266Wardrop, Dennis, 117Warminster mystery, 10–11The Warminster Mystery

(Shuttlewood), 10–11Watson, Ron and Paula, 56Webb, Walter N., 52–53, 268Weber, Constance, 20–21,

20(fig.), 172–173Weiss, Jann, 23Wettlaufer, Brianna, 28Whales. See CetaceansWhen Prophecy Fails (Festinger,

Riecken, and Schachter),229, 230

White, William Allen,2 6 6 – 2 6 7

White Eagle, 266The White Sands Incident (Fry),

105White’s little people, 266–267Why We Are Here (Lee), 133Wight, George D., 45–47Wilcox, Gary T., 65–66,

267–268Wilcox’s Martians, 65–66,

267–268Williams, Edward, 100–101Williamson, George Hunt, 199,

268–270, 269(fig.)Adamski, George, and, 8communication by automatic

writing, 12–13early contactee movement,

70EBEs, 94e x t r a t e r restrials among us,

9 5

Lemuria, 157and Martin’s failed

prophecies, 231migrants, 175subversive aliens on Earth,

252Venusians visiting Lemuria,

173Wilson, 270–272Wisconsin as site of occurrence,

64, 239With Mystics and Magicians in

Tibet (David-Neel),245–246

Witnessed (Hopkins), 124Woodrew, Greta, 191Woods, William, 170Worlds beyond the Poles

(Giannini), 151Wright, Elsie, 73–75Wyoming as site of occurrence,

35–36

Xeno, 273–274

Yada di Shi’ite, 275Yamski, 275–276Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, 174Yeats, W. B., 103–104Y’hova, 276Young, June, 242Young, Kenny, 57

Zagga, 277Zamora, Lonnie, 65Zandark, 277Ziff-Davis publications, 156Zinsstag, Lou, 95, 196Zollner, Johann F. C., 104Zolton, 277–278Zundel, Ernst, 123

290 Index

extraterrestrial encyclopedia

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