EXTRAORDINARY

ENCOUNTERS

EXTRAORDINARY
ENCOUNTERS
An Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrials
and Otherworldly Beings
Jerome Clark

B
Santa Barbara, California
Denver, Colorado
Oxford, England

Copyright 2000 by Jerome Clark

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

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Clark, Jerome.
Extraordinary encounters : an encyclopedia of extraterrestrials and
otherworldly 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 encountersEncyclopedias. I. Title.
BF2050.C57 2000
001.942'03dc21
00-011350
CIP
06

05

04

03

02

01

00

10

ABC-CLIO, Inc.
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This book is printed on acid-free paper I.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

To Dakota Dave Hull and John Sherman,

for the many years of friendship, laughs, andalwaysgood music

Contents

Introduction, xi
EXTRAORDINARY ENCOUNTERS:
AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS
AND OTHERWORLDLY BEINGS
Angel of the Dark, 22
Angelucci, Orfeo (19121993), 22
Anoah, 23
Anthon, 24
Antron, 24
Anunnaki, 24
Apol, Mr., 25
Arna and Parz, 26
Artemis, 26
Ascended Masters, 27
Ashtar, 27
Asmitor, 29
Athena, 30
Atlantis, 31
Aura Rhanes, 34
Aurora Martian, 34
Ausso, 35
Avinash, 36
Ayala, 36
Azelia, 37
Back, 39
Bartholomew, 39

A, 1
Abductions by UFOs, 1
Abraham, 7
Abram, 7
Adama, 7
Adamski, George (18911965), 8
Aenstrians, 10
Aetherius, 11
Affa, 12
Agents, 13
Agharti, 13
Ahab, 15
Akon, 15
Alien diners, 16
Alien DNA, 17
Aliens and the dead, 18
Allinghams Martian, 19
Alpha Zoo Loo, 19
Alyn, 20
Ameboids, 21
Andolo, 21
Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka, 21
vii

viii

Contents

Bashar, 39
Being of Light, 40
Bermuda Triangle, 41
Bethurum, Truman (18981969), 43
Bird aliens, 44
Birminghams ark, 44
Blowing Cave, 45
Bonnie, 47
Boys from Topside, 47
Brodies deros, 48
Browns Martians, 50
Bucky, 51
Buff Ledge abduction, 52
Bunians, 53
Calf-rustling aliens, 55
Captive extraterrestrials, 57
Cetaceans, 58
Chaneques, 58
Channeling, 59
Chief Joseph, 61
Christopher, 61
Chung Fu, 61
Close encounters of the third kind, 62
Cocoon people, 67
Contactees, 68
Cosmic Awareness, 72
Cottingley fairies, 73
The Council, 75
Curry, 75
Cyclopeans, 76
Cymatrili, 76
David of Landa, 79
Dead extraterrestrials, 81
Dentonss Martians and Venusians, 87
Diane, 87
Divine Fire, 88
Dual reference, 88
Dugja, 90
Earth Coincidence Control Office, 91
Elder Race, 92
Elvis as Jesus, 92
Emmanuel, 93
Eunethia, 94
Extraterrestrial biological entities, 94
Extraterrestrials among us, 95
Fairies encountered, 99
Fairy captures, 103
Fossilized aliens, 104

Fourth dimension, 104

Frank and Frances, 105
Fry, Daniel William (19081922), 105
Gabriel, 107
Gef, 107
Germane, 111
Goblin Universe, 111
Gordon, 111
Gray Face, 112
Great Mother, 113
Great White Brotherhood, 114
Greater Nibiruan Council, 115
Grim Reaper, 115
Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn, 117
Hierarchal Board, 119
Holloman aliens, 119
Hollow earth, 121
Honor, 123
Hopkins, Budd (1931 ), 124
Hopkinss Martians, 125
Hweig, 125
Hybrid beings, 126
Imaginal beings, 129
Insectoids, 130
Intelligences from Beyond (Intelligences du
Dehors), 130
Ishkomar, 130
J. W., 133
Jahrmin and Jana, 133
Janus, 134
Jerhoam, 135
Jessups little people, 135
Jinns, 135
Joseph, 136
Kantarians, 139
Kappa, 139
Karen, 140
Karmic Board, 140
Kazik, 141
Keel, John Alva (1930 ), 142
Khauga, 143
Kihief, 143
King Leo, 144
Korton, 145
Kronin, 145
Kuran, 145
Kurmos, 146
Kwan Ti Laslo, 146

Contents

Laan-Deeka and Sharanna, 149

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

Oxalc, 196
Oz Factor, 197
Paul 2, 199
Philip, 200
Planetary Council, 200
Portla, 201
Power of Light (POL), 201
Prince Neosom, 202
Psychoterrestrials, 203
Puddys abduction, 204
R. D., 207
Ra, 207
Rainbow City, 207
Ramtha, 209
Ramu, 210
Raphael, 211
Raydia, 211
Renata, 211
Reptoid child, 212
Reptoids, 212
Root Races, 216
Saint Michael, 217
Sananda, 217
Sasquatch, 217
Satonians, 220
Secret Chiefs, 220
Semjase, 220
Seth, 221
Shaari, 222
Shan, 222
Shaver mystery, 223
Shaws Martians, 226
Sheep-killing alien, 227
Shiva, 227
Shovar, 228
Sinat Schirah (Stan), 228
Sister Thedra, 229
Sky people, 232
Smeads Martians, 233
Smith, 233
Source, 234
SPECTRA, 234
Springheel Jack, 235
Sprinkle, Ronald Leo (1930 ), 236
Star People, 237
Stellar Community of Enlightened
Ecosystems, 238
Strieber, Whitley (1945 ), 238

ix

Contents

Sunar and Treena, 239

Tabar, 241
Tawa, 241
Tecu, 241
Thee Elohim, 242
Thompsons Venusians, 242
Tibus, 244
Time travelers, 244
Tin-can aliens, 245
Tree-stump aliens, 245
Tulpa, 245
The Two, 246
Ulkt, 249
Ultraterrestrials, 249
Ummo, 249
Unholy Six, 252
Vadig, 253
Val Thor, 254
Valdar, 255
Van Tassel, George W. (19101978), 255

Vegetable Man, 256

Venudo, 257
Villanuevas visitors, 257
VIVenus, 258
Volmo, 259
Walk-ins, 261
Waltons abduction, 261
Wanderers, 266
White Eagle, 266
Whites little people, 266
Wilcoxs Martians, 267
Williamson, George Hunt (19261986), 268
Wilson, 270
Xeno, 273
Yada di Shiite, 275
Yamski, 275
Yhova, 276
Zagga, 277
Zandark, 277
Zolton, 277

Index, 279

Introduction

to keep in mind these wise words from scientist and author Henry H. Bauer: Foolish
ideas do not make a foolif they did, we
could all rightly be called fools.
Most of us believe in at least the hypothetical existence of other-than-human beings,
whether we think of them as manifestations of
the divine or as advanced extraterrestrials. At
the same time most of us do not think of
these beings as intelligences we are likely to
encounter in quotidian reality. God and the
angels are in heaven, spiritual entities who
exist as objects of faith. Extraterrestrials,
though not gods, exist in much the same
way, as beings who science fiction writers and
scientists such as the late Carl Sagan theorize
may be out there somewhere in deep space,
though so far away that no direct evidence
supports the proposition. When devout individuals report feeling the presence of God,
they usually describe a subjective state that the
nonbeliever does not feel compelled to take
literally.
Of course we know there was a time when
our ancestors were certain that otherworldly
beings of all sorts walked the world. Gods
communicated openly with humans. One
could summon up their presence or encounter
them spontaneously. Fairies and other supernatural entities haunted the landscape as

Extraordinary encounters have been reported

for as long as human beings have been
around, and they are richly documented in
the worlds folklore and mythology. A full accounting of traditions of otherworldly belief
would easily fill many fat volumes. This book,
however, is not about traditions but about experiences, or perceived experiences, of otherworldly forces as claimed by a wide range of
individuals over the past two centuries (with
the rare look farther back if the occasion calls
for it). In other words, it is about things that
people, many of them living, say happened to
them, things far outside mainstream notions
about what it is possible to experience, but, at
the same time, things that seem deeply real to
at least the sincere experients (that is, those
persons who have had the experiences). Not
everyone, of course, is telling the truth, and
when there is reason to be suspicious of the
testimony, that consideration is noted.
Mostly, though, I let the stories tell themselves; I have left my own observations and
conclusions in this introduction. Though
much of the material is outlandish by any definition, I have made a conscious effort to relate it straightforwardly, and I hope readers
will take it in the same spirit. No single person on this earth is guiltless of believing something that isnt so. As I wrote this book, I tried
xi

xii

Introduction

things that existed not just in supernatural belief but in actual experience. We also know
that our poor, benighted ancestors knew no
better. Superstitious, fearful, deeply credulous, they mistook shadows and dreams for
denizens of realms that had no reality beyond
the one ignorance and foolishness assigned it.
Finally, most of us are aware, even if only
dimly so, that a handful of people in our own
enlightened time make more or less public
claims that they have personally interacted
with supernormal beings. Such persons are
thoroughly marginalized, treated as eccentric
and novel, as different from the rest of us; if
they are not lying outright, we suspect, they
are suffering from a mental disturbance of
some kind. And we may well be right, at least
in some cases. As for the rest, we could not be
more mistaken.
As it happens, reports of human interaction with ostensible otherworldly beings continue pretty much unabated into the present.
They are far more common than one would
think. The proof is as close as an Internet
search, through which the inquirer will
quickly learn that material on the subject exists in staggering quantity. A considerable portion of it is about channeling (in which an individual is the passive recipient of messages
from the otherworld, usually speaking in the
voice of an intelligence from elsewhere) from
a wide assortment of entities: nebulous energy
sources, soul clusters, extraterrestrials, ascended masters, interdimensional beings, discarnate Atlanteans and Lemurians, nature
spirits, even whales and dolphins. Besides
these purely psychic connections with the
otherworld, there are many who report direct
physical meetings with beings from outer
space, other dimensions, the hollow earth,
and other fantastic places. Not all of these
ideas are new, of course. The hollow earth and
its inhabitants were a popular fringe subject in
nineteenth-century America, and in the latter
half of that century, spiritualist mediums
sometimes communicated with Martians or
even experienced out-of-body journeys to the
red planet. In 1896 and 1897, during what

today would be called a nationwide wave of

unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings,
American newspapers printed accounts of
landings of strange craft occupied by nonhuman crews of giants, dwarfs, or monsters presumed to be visiting extraterrestrials.
But in the UFO agethat is, the period
from 1947 to the present, when reports of
anomalous aerial phenomena became widely
known and their implications much discusseda small army of contactees, recounting physical or psychic meetings with
angelic space people, has marched onto the
world stage to preach a new cosmic gospel. In
a secular context, UFO witnesses with no discernible occult orientation or metaphysical
agenda have told fantastic tales of close encounters with incommunicative or taciturn
humanoids. Some witnesses even relate, under
hypnosis or through conscious recall, traumatic episodes in which humanoids took
them against their will into apparent spacecraft. The early 1970s, the period when most
observers date the beginning of the New Age
movement, saw a boom in channelingagain
nothing new (spirits have spoken through humans forever) but jarring and shocking to rationalists and materialists. The same decade
spawned such popular occult fads as the
Bermuda Triangle and ancient astronauts
(prehistoric or early extraterrestrial visitors),
based on the notion of otherworldly influencesbenign, malevolent, or indifferent
on human life.
As cable television became ubiquitous, television documentaries or pseudodocumentaries (some, such as a notorious Fox Network
broadcast purporting to show an autopsy performed on a dead extraterrestrial, were thinly
concealed hoaxes) served to fill programming
needs and proved to be among cables most
popular offerings. Books alleging real-life encounters with aliens, such as Whitley
Striebers Communion: A True Story (1987),
fueled interest and speculation. In the 1990s
Pulitzer Prizewinning Harvard University
psychiatrist John E. Mack, who had hypnotized a number of persons who thought they

Introduction

may have encountered UFO beings, championed the ideawhich not surprisingly generated furious controversy and even a failed effort to have him removed from his jobthat
well-intentioned extradimensional intelligences are helping an unprepared humanity to
enter a new age of spiritual wisdom and ecological stewardship. Mack, along with other
prominent investigators of the abduction phenomenon such as Budd Hopkins and David
M. Jacobs, pointed to the results of a 1992
Roper poll as evidence that as many as 3.7
million Americans have been abducteda
conclusion many critics, including some who
are open-minded about or even sympathetic
to the abduction phenomenon, would dispute. Still, there seemed no doubt, based on
the experiences of investigators who have
found themselves inundated with reports, that
thousands of otherwise seemingly normal individuals believe themselves to be abductees.
The abduction phenomenon is undoubtedly the most recent manifestation of the otherworldly-beings tradition, but older beliefs
and experiences, though eclipsed, continue.
Even into the 1990s, encounters with fairies
which extraterrestrial humanoids were supposed to have supplanted in the imaginations
of the superstitious and impressionable, according to any number of skeptical commentatorswere noted on occasion. At least one
recent book from a reputable publisherJanet
Bords Fairies: Real Encounters with Little People (1997)argued that such things are a genuine aspect of a universe so complex that we
cannot begin to understand it. The Blessed
Virgin Mary appeared, as usual, all over the
world, as did other sorts of divine entities.
The world, of course, goes on with its business as if none of this were true, taking serious
(as opposed to tabloid) note only when belief
in otherworldly beings goes horrendously
wrong and thirty-nine cult members commit
suicide while awaiting the arrival of a spaceship following a comet. The March 1997
mass death in San Diego of the faithful of
Heavens Gate (a contactee-oriented group
that, in various incarnations, had existed since

xiii

the early 1970s) sparked big headlines even in

such august media as the New York Times and
the Washington Post. In the wake of the
tragedy came all the predictable lamentations
about alienation and irrationality in a world
that more and more seems to have lost its
bearings. But the San Diego incident, although hardly unprecedented (history records
numerous episodes of group suicides committed in the name of otherworldly powers), was
anomalous in one important sense: few who
hold such extraordinary beliefs, including the
conviction that they personally interact with
beings from other realms, harm themselves or
others. In fact, most incorporate their experiences into lives so seemingly ordinary that
their neighbors, unless told directly (which
they usually are not), suspect nothing.
In the late 1970s, when I lived in a North
Shore suburb of Chicago, I met a likable, generous-hearted family man named Keith Macdonald. Macdonald recounted a UFO sighting (also witnessed by his family) after which
he felt that something had taken place that he
could not consciously recall. Under hypnosis,
he described what would later be judged a
rather ordinary abduction experience: grayskinned beings took him into the UFO and
subjected him to a physical examination
against his wishes. The experience, if that is
what it was, frightened him severely. For a
time I lost touch with Keith. When I next saw
him, he told me he had been hearing mental
voices and channeling messages from a planet
called Landa, populated by wise, spiritually
committed beings who looked like Greek
gods and goddesses. Keith had learned that he
was originally from that planet but had gone
through many earthly incarnations so that he
could lead the Earth as it entered a period of
turmoil and destruction before the ships from
Landa arrived to save the elect. Over the years
I monitored Keiths emerging beliefs and sat
in on a fewto me unimpressivechanneling sessions during which the all-wise David,
his father on Landa, spoke on a level of verbal
and intellectual sophistication that exactly
matched Keiths.

xiv

Introduction

Though I never for a moment believed in

the literal reality of those of Landa, as they
called themselves in their characteristically
stilted syntax, I was struck by a number of
things. One was the almost staggering complexity of the cosmos Keith had conjured up
in his imaginationthe only place that I
could believe such a cosmos existed, with its
many worlds, peoples, religions, politics, enmities, and alliances. None of it, I should add,
was anything somebody could not have made
up, consciously or unconsciously. But all of it
would have done credit to a gifted writer of
science fiction. Though he possessed a keen
native intelligence, Keith was neither a writer
nor a reader. He did, however, have some previously existing interestnot profound or
particularly well informed, in my observationin UFOs, the paranormal, and the occult. As I listened to him over many hours, I
began to feel as if somehow in his waking life
Keith had tapped into the creative potential
most of us experience in our dreams. As we
doze off to sleep and dream, images begin to
well up out of the unconscious; in no more
than a moment we may find ourselves inundated with psychic materials sufficient to fill a
fat Victorian novel. When our eyes open in
the morning, all of that, alas, is gone. Keith
had the capacity, it seemed to me, not only to
live inside his dreams but to keep them stable
and evolving.
Only once, when asked outright, did I acknowledge my skepticism. The confession was
moot because Keith had inferred as much from
my noncommittal responses to his typically excited revelations about the latest from the Landanians. He had no doubtwell, maybe 98
percent of the time he had no doubtthat he
was in the middle of something real in the
most fundamental sense of the word. He also
understood that he had no proof that would
satisfy those who, like me, found the Landanians word insufficient. Therefore, he continually implored the Landanians to provide him
that proof, and in turn they regaled him with a
series of prophecies, often about explosive
world events (bloody uprisings, devastating

earthquakes), none of which came true; then,

as if to add insult to injury, their rationalizations for the failure of the prophecies to be fulfilled bordered on, and sometimes surpassed,
the comical. The prophecies and promises continued in a steady stream until Keiths premature death in 1999, and his closest friend told
me that even at the end, Keiths faith had not
faltered.
Perhaps the most amazing aspect was
Keiths manifest sanity, which he never lost
through the many ups and downs of his interactions with the Landanians (not to mention
the literally crippling health problems he suffered at the same time). He workedas a
garage mechanic in a Waukegan, Illinois, car
dealershipuntil he was physically incapable
of doing so any longer. He was a good husband to his wife, a good father to his two
boys, and a good friend to those who were
lucky enough to claim him as a friend in turn.
His children, in their teens at the initiation of
Keiths adventures with Landa, and his wife
vividly recalled the original UFO sighting
they too had experienced and Keiths conviction that, after they had gone to bed and he
had continued watching the object, something had happened. Still, they did not believe
much in Landa, and his older son told me
once of his certainty that his fathers communications were psychological in origin. Yet
they loved him, and only those very close to
him had any idea that at any given moment a
good portion of Keiths attention was focused
on a world far, far away from the small suburban town where he spent much of his adult
life.
In 1985, I flew in a private plane with
Keith and two others (both, incidentally, convinced of the literal truth of Keiths messages)
to the Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO
Investigation, held every summer on the campus of the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
The title is something of a misnomer; only a
relative few who attend can be called investigators. The emphasis is on experience not
just with UFOs but with the space people
who fly them. The bulk of the attendeesthe

Introduction

number ranges from a few dozen to as many

as two hundred from year to yearare in regular contact with benevolent extraterrestrials.
The aliens communicate through channeling,
automatic writing (in which information is
dictated to an individual from allegedly unearthly beings), dreams, visions, or voices in
the head, or they are perceived as if physical
entities. (I use this last phrase deliberately; on
close questioning, the individuals involved
usually turn out to have a fairly elastic definition of the infinitive to see in all its permutations.) Few of the contactees assembled in
Laramie matched the stereotype of the flamboyant charlatan or nut case. A fewsuch as
a young Japanese woman whom space friends
had guided to the United States in pursuit of
her mission for themhad traveled some distance. Except for the small detail of their associations with extraterrestrials, most were decent, ordinary local folk. The majority were
from the small towns, ranches, and farms of
the Great Plains, the sort of people to whom
the phrase salt of the earth is often applied.
Among his own at last, Keith could not
have been happier. If he noticed that no one
else spoke of Landa and its impossible-tooverlook plans for the Earths future, or that
every other contactee had his or her special
space friends, all with their own individual
hard-to-overlook plans for the Earths future,
he never said a word about it to me.
Of course, nothing is as simple as we
would like it to be, and as I look back on the
episode, I realize that I will never know why
those of Landa called on Keith. Not that I
had any difficulty understanding who they
were. However tangled some of the details,
there was no mistaking their underlying banality or their all-too-apparent shallow earthiness, with their Greek togas, pretentiously
fractured English, and (yes) Roman Catholic
faith. They themselves were not that interesting; what made them worthy of attention and
reflection was this curious paradox: to the
man who had (unwittingly) created them,
they had a nearly certain independent reality;
to virtually any independent observer, there

xv

could be no question of who had brought

them (for whatever reason) into the world
and to whom they owed what passed for an
existence.
Yet Keith was not crazy. Nor, according to
psychological surveys of other space communicants who attend the Laramie conferences,
are his fellows. The evidence from this and
other psychological inventories tells us that we
can be mentally well and yet hold beliefs
and, more dramatically, have vivid experiencesthat are far outside the mainstream,
far outside our conventional understanding of
the possible. In a book-length survey of outof-ordinary perceptions, three well-regarded
psychologists observe, Notwithstanding the
presence of anomalous experiences in case
studies of disturbed individuals, surveys of
nonclinical samples have found little relationship between these experiences and psychopathology (Cardena, Lynn, and Krippner,
2000, 4). The authors stress that psychotherapists must understand the difference if they
are to treat their clients effectively. Psychological research into extraordinary encounters of
the sort with which this book is concerned is
in its infancy.
Still, to anyone who looks carefully at the
testimony regarding otherworldly contacts, it
becomes apparent that such phenomena do
not arise from a single cause. There is, for example, little in common between the average
channeler and the average witness to a close
encounter of the third kind (a UFO sighting
in which, according to a classification system
defined by the late astronomer and ufologist J.
Allen Hynek, the presence of animated creatures is reported [1972, 138]). Typically,
channelers have had a long history of occult
interests before they begin communicating
with supernatural entities holding forth on familiar metaphysical doctrines. Close-encounter witnesses, on the other hand, fit the profile
of witnesses to less exotic UFO sightings; in
other words, they are pretty much indistinguishable from their fellow citizens.
Consequently, channelers look more like
candidates for subjective experience, and in-

xvi

Introduction

deed to every indication channeling is just

that. It is not veridical (that is, independently
witnessed or otherwise shown not to be a subjective experience); no channeling entity can
prove its existence, and the information provided through the channeling process is susceptible to neither verification nor falsification. The authority of the channeling entity
rests solely on its self-identification. If you believe he, she, or it is a discarnate Atlantean,
space alien, or ascended master, you will believe what he, she, or it has to say. If you
choose not to believe any of that, the channeling entity will prove helpless to get you to
change your mind. Experiences such as close
encounters, conversely, may be veridical in the
sense that on occasion they involve multipleor, more rarely, independentobservers. In the case of multiply witnessed close encounters, subjective explanations are applied
only with difficulty. An investigator in search
of an explanation has limited choices, usually
three: (1) the claimants made up the story; (2)
they naively misperceived what were in fact
conventional stimuli; or (3) they underwent
an extraordinary experience that defies current
understanding.
Between the extremes is a broad range of
nonexperiential material, a modern folklore in
which the world and the cosmos are reinvented on the basis of believed-in but undocumented (and often, to those who care about
such things, certifiably false) allegations. Most
persons who circulate such stuff are sincere,
but some of those who feed the stuff to them
are not. Hoaxers provide documents, such as
the supposed diary attesting to Adm. Richard
E. Byrds voyage into the hollow earth
through a hole at the North Pole, that believers cite to prove their cases. Most observers
believe James Churchwards famous (or notorious) books on the alleged lost continent of
Mu are literary hoaxesChurchward was
never able to produce the ancient documents
on which he asserted he had based his work
but earnest occultists and New Agers cite his
books as overwhelming evidence that Mu

(more often called Lemuria) was a real place.

Of course, embellishments grow on top of
embellishments, and every legend of a place, a
world, or a realm that is home to otherworldly
beings evolves and has its own rich history.
Atlantis, for example, began as an advanced
civilization for its time, but by our time its
people had come to be seen as advanced even
beyond us, the creators of fantastic technologies and even the recipient of knowledge from
extraterrestrial sources. The hollow earth of
John Cleves Symmes (17791829) is not the
hollow earth of Walter Siegmeister (a.k.a.
Raymond W. Bernard, 19011965), any
more than the imagination of one century is
the imagination of the century that follows it.
Flying saucers were not part of Symmess
world; consequently, they did not exist in his
hollow earth. By the time Siegmeister wrote
The Hollow Earth (1964), no alternative-reality book could lack flying saucers.
It is entirely likely that nothing in the book
you are about to read will tell you anything
about actual extraordinary encounters and
otherworldly beings. If such exist, however, it
is not beyond the range of possibility that
somewhere amid the noise of folklore, belief,
superstition, credulity, out-of-control thinking, and out-of-ordinary perception a signal
may be sounding. If so, it is a faint one, indeed. The world has always been overrun with
otherworldly experiences, some of which certainly appear to resist glib accounting; yet so
far it has proved exasperatingly tricky to establish that otherworldly experiences are also otherworldly events. The otherworld, perhaps,
can happen to any of us at any time, but we
may not live in itat least if we know whats
good for usin the way that we live enclosed
within the four walls of the physical structure
in which we read these words. It is not wise to
pass through a world of physical laws while
distracted by all-encompassing dreams. Even
so, there is still a nobility to dreaming. There is
also an undying appeal to the sort of romantic
impatience that imagines new worlds bigger
and more wondrous than our own, then

Introduction

brings these worlds and their marvelous inhabitants into our own. If extraordinary encounters are occurring only with otherwise hidden
sides of ourselves, they are stillor surely all
the more soworth having.
Jerome Clark

xvii

References
Cardena, Etzel, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley Krippner, eds., 2000. Varieties of Anomalous Experience:
Examining the Scientific Evidence. Washington,
DC: American Psychological Association.
Hynek, J. Allen, 1972. The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, p.138. Chicago: Henry Regnery
Company.

EXTRAORDINARY
ENCOUNTERS

ception. They also learned Cosmic Languagewhich is expressed simply by symbols

of various forms and colors, so that meanings
are the same in any language (Anchor, 1958).
Grevler had other space adventures. One
was a visit to a depopulated, destroyed planet,
the dreary result of science gone amok.

A is the pseudonym Ann Grevler (a writer

who uses the pen name Anchor) gives the
Venusian whom she allegedly encountered
while driving through South Africas Eastern
Transvaal on an unspecified day in the 1950s.
Grevler, a flying-saucer enthusiast sympathetic
to the contactee movement (contactees are individuals who claim to be in regular communication with kindly, advanced extraterrestrials),
met A when her car inexplicably stopped on a
rural highway. As she was looking under the
hood, she became aware of a buzzing sound in
her ears and looked up to see a smiling spaceman standing not far away. Then a spaceship
flew toward her and landed, and she and A
stepped into it. With A and another spaceman,
B, Grevler flew into space. They approached
what Grevler describes as a positively huge
Mother Ship, which tinier ships, similar to the
one they were aboard, were entering.
Once inside the mother ship, Grevler and
her friends went to the Temple, visited by returning crews to thank the Creator for a safe
voyage. Subsequently, either in the mother
ship or in the smaller scout craft (her account
is vague on this detail), she visited Venus and
saw beautiful buildings and a kind of university. At the latter, students were taught universal knowledge and trained in extrasensory per-

See Also: Contactees

Further Reading
Anchor [pseud. of Ann Grevler], 1958. Transvaal
Episode: A UFO Lands in Africa. Corpus Christi,
TX: Essene Press.

Abductions by UFOs
Since the mid-1960s a number of individuals
around the world have reported encounters in
which humanoid beings took them against
their willusually from their homes or vehiclesinto apparent spacecraft and subjected
them to medical and other procedures. As
often as not, witnesses spoke of experiencing
amnesia, aware at first only of unexplained
missing time (a much-used phrase that has
become almost synonymous with abduction)
consisting of a few minutes to a few hours.
Later, memory would return, sometimes
spontaneously, sometimes in dreams, and
often (and most controversially) through hypnotic regression.
1

Abductions by UFOs

In the first case to come to the attention of

ufologists, a Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
couple, Barney and Betty Hill, experienced a
close encounter with a UFO on the night of
September 1920 while traveling through the
White Mountains. At one point, Barney Hill
stopped the car and stepped out with a pair of
binoculars; through them he saw humanlike
figures inside the craft. One was staring directly at him. Terrified, the couple fled, all the
while hearing beeping or buzzing sounds.
Once back home, the Hills eventually realized
that at least two hours seemed missing from
their conscious recall. In November Betty had
a series of unusually vivid dreams in which beings forced her and her husband into a UFO.
She and Barney were separated, and Betty underwent a medical examination with a grayskinned humanoid, whom she understood to
be the leader. In January they sought out
Boston psychiatrist Benjamin Simon in an effort to deal with the continuing anxiety they
felt about the incident. Dr. Simon had them
hypnotized, and under hypnosis they separately recounted an abduction episode. Subsequently, the story appeared in a Boston newspaper, 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 in
Ashland, Nebraska, in the early morning
hours of December 3, 1967, when police officer Herbert Schirmer saw a hovering UFO a
short distance from him. He originally believed that the sighting had lasted no more
than ten minutes, but when he later realized
that a half hour had passed, he got nervous,
experienced sleeplessness, and heard a buzzing
sound inside his head. Later under hypnosis
Schirmer related an onboard experience with
short, gray-skinned humanoids with catlike
eyes.
During a wave of UFO sightings in October 1973, two Pascagoula, Mississippi, fishermen claimed that robotlike entities had
floated them into a UFO. The story received
enormous publicity, as did an even more spectacular incident in November 1975, when a

forestry worker from Snowflake, Arizona, disappeared after six colleagues saw a beam of
light from a UFO hit him and knock him to
the ground. Travis Walton returned five days
later with fragmentary memories of seeing
two kinds of UFO beings, little gray men and
humanlike (but not human) entities. A few
other stories, now being called abductions as
opposed to kidnappings, saw print in the
UFO literature but were little noticed elsewhere. The first book on the larger phenomenon of UFO abductions (as opposed to a
single case, such as the Hillss), Jim and Coral
Lorenzens book Abducted! was published in
1977.
From the Hill incident on, critics focused
on the use of hypnosis to elicit recall,
pointing out that confabulation under hypnosis is a well-documented psychological
phenomenon, most dramatically manifesting
in memories of past lives. As early as 1977
three California investigators attempted to
demonstrate that volunteers under hypnosis,
instructed to imagine UFO abductions, told
stories indistinguishable from those related
by real abductees. Other investigators and
observers disputed these conclusions, pointing to methodological and logical problems
in the experiment, and subsequent efforts by
other researchers to replicate it failed. One
later study indicated that nearly one-third of
abductees consciously remembered their experiences; their testimony, folklorist Thomas
E. Bullard concluded, was indistinguishable
from corresponding accounts emerging under
hypnotic regression. Still, hypnosis and its vagaries would play a large and continuing role
in the controversy surrounding the abduction
phenomenon.
In the late 1970s Budd Hopkins, a New
York City artist and sculptor, working with
psychologist and hypnotist Aphrodite Clamar,
began to investigate the abduction reports.
Through Hopkinss work new dimensions of
the phenomenon emerged, including not just
little gray humanoids that would come to
dominate abduction reports but also experiences that began in childhood and recurred

Abductions by UFOs

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

throughout abductees lifetimes. Some bore

scars, the causes of which were mysterious
until hypnosis revealed them to have been the
result of alien medical procedures. A number
claimed that their abductors had placed implants, usually through the nose or ear, inside
their bodies. Hopkins and his colleagues took
their cases to mental health professionals,
whose tests of abductees suggested that they
were psychologically normal.
In his much-read book Missing Time
(1981) Hopkins argued for a literal interpreta-

tion of abduction stories. In other words, he

held that extraterrestrials were literally taking
human beings and doing things to them without their consent. Other ufologists disagreed.
Ufologist Alvin H. Lawson, who had overseen
the earlier imaginary-abduction experiment,
offered his own exotic hypothesis that abductees were suffering imaginary experiences
in which they relived the trauma associated
with their births. More modestly, others proposed more conventional psychological explanations, such as hallucinations and confabula-

4 Abductions by UFOs

tion. Few observers believed that conscious

hoaxing played much of a role in abductionreporting. Unlike contactees, abductees seldom had any background in occultism or esoteric interests, and hardly any sought profit or
publicity. To every indication they believed
that they had undergone frightening, bizarre
experiences. Some psychological studies
found that abductees often evinced all the
symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder of
the sort ordinarily associated with victims of
crime, personal assault, or other threatening
terrors.
In 1987 Thomas E. Bullard, author of an
Indiana University Ph.D. dissertation on the
relationship of UFOs to folklore, released a
two-volume study of all abduction accounts
then known, some three hundred. Through a
searching examination of the narratives,
Bullard concluded that a real phenomenon of
strikingly consistent features existed, that abductions were not simply an assortment of
random fantasies. He noted patterns that had
escaped even the most attentive investigators,
including doorway amnesiathe curious
failure of abductees to remember the moment
of entry or departure from the UFO. Besides
establishing the uniform nature of hypnotic
and non-hypnotic testimony, Bullard determined that the phenomenons features remained stable from investigator to investigator, thus casting doubt on a favorite skeptical
argument concerning investigator influence
on the story. Beyond that, Bullard wrote, it
was difficult to say more, except that something goes on, a marvelous phenomenon rich
enough to interest a host of scholars, humanists, psychologists and sociologists alike as well
as perhaps physical scientists, and to hold that
interest irrespective of the actual nature of the
phenomenon (Bullard, 1987).
Hopkinss next book, Intruders (1987), introduced fresh features that would figure
largely in all subsequent discussions. From his
latest investigations he had come to suspect a
reason for alien abductions: the creation of a
race of hybrid beings to replenish the extraterrestrials apparently exhausted genetic stock.

Female abductees would find themselves pregnant, sometimes inexplicably; then, following
subsequent abductions involving vaginal penetration by a suction device, they would discover that those pregnancies had been suddenly terminated. In later abductions they
would be shown babies or small children with
both human and alien features. The abductors
would explain that these were the womens
children. Hopkins also uncovered a pattern of
cases of sexual intercourse between male abductees and more-or-less human alien women
(perhaps adult hybrids).
Other investigators began finding similar
cases. Hybrids were a new wrinkle, significantly augmenting the already considerable
peculiarity of the abduction phenomenon. As
long ago as 1975, in his book The Mothman
Prophecies, investigator John A. Keel noted, in
passing, a pattern of what he called hysterical
pregnancies in young women who had had
close encounters. Even so, the reports met
with skepticism among scientifically sophisticated ufologists, for example, Michael D.
Swords, who said that such hybridization is
biologically impossible. Other critics argued
that mass abductions for such purposes would
not be necessary; once the basic reproductive
materials were collected, they could easily be
duplicated. Most damning of all, independent
inquiries by physician-ufologists found no evidence of mysteriously ended pregnancies in
colleagues experiences or in the pediatric literature. Still the reports continue.
Another significant development in 1987
was the publication of Communion by Whitley Strieber, heretofore known as a novelist
specializing in horror and futuristic themes,
now a self-identified abductee with a series of
strange adventures in his past. The grayskinned, big-eyed alien on the best-selling
books cover triggered a flood of memories
among many who saw it. Even ufologists who
had been abduction literalists grew puzzled,
then uneasy, at the apparent quantity of recovered abduction recollections. Strieber also
was the first to express a kind of New Age
view of the abduction phenomenon, now seen

Abductions by UFOs

not as an entirely negative experience (as

Hopkins and others held it to be) but as an
initiation, however painful, into an expanded,
enlightened view of large cosmic realities.
What to Hopkins were intruders to Strieber
were visitors. Communion was only the first
of a series of books Strieber would write recounting ever more exotic experiences with
aliens possessing vast paranormal powers.
By now UFO abductions were no longer
the property of abductees and ufologists. They
had expanded into popular culture, and the
gray alien became a staple in cartoons, advertisements, television shows, and more.
Alarmed at the spread of what they regarded
as a popular delusion, skeptics and debunkers
sought to discredit the phenomenon. In 1988
the first book-length attack on the phenomenon, its claimants, and its advocates, Philip J.
Klasss UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous Game,
lambasted its subject as the product of delusion and deceit.
Though the phenomenon itself remained
elusive, psychologists understood that at least
those who claimed to have experienced it
could be studied. Using standard psychological tests, they documented the essential psychological normality of the average abductee.
They also found that, contrary to one popular
theory, abductees were not prone to fantasy or
imaginative flights so intense that they could
be mistaken for reality. Little if anything
seemed to distinguish abductees from their
neighbors.
The phenomenons most notable champion, Harvard University psychiatrist John E.
Mack, became a lightning rod in the controversy. To his colleagues, who went so far as to
try to have him removed from his professional
position, he was a good scholar gone bad. To
New Ageoriented saucerians on the other
hand, Mack was almost something of a
prophet. His controversial book Abduction
(1994) argued for a benevolent interpretation
of abducting aliens, paranormal and interdimensional intelligences who, in Macks view,
are here to teach usparticularly those of us
who live in the industrial Westto embrace

Dr. John E. Mack, Harvard University psychiatrist, 1993

(Dennis Stacy/Fortean Picture Library)

other realities and to take better care of each

other and the world we live in. Mack wedded
the contactee message to the abduction experience, to the consternation of Hopkins, Jacobs, and others who refused to draw larger
metaphysical inferences from the abduction
experience. Jacobs, if anything, went to the
opposite extreme. A history professor at Temple University, Jacobs worked with abductees
whose testimony, usually under hypnosis, led
him to the radical hypothesis that the abducting extraterrestrials are creating a population
of hybrids to replace the human race at some
point in the not-distant future.
From their interactions with their readers
and other members of the public, Hopkins and
Jacobs came to suspect that the abduction experience, far from rare, was ubiquitous. Hopkins, for example, wrote as early as 1981 that
there may be tens of thousands of Americans
whose encounters have never been revealed
(Hopkins, 1981). In 1991 he and Jacobs were
given funding for a survey to be conducted by

6 Abductions by UFOs

the Roper Organization. Using five indicator

questions, they sought evidence for possible abduction experiences among those surveyed.
Pollsters interviewed 5,947 adult Americans. In
their reading of the results, Hopkins and Jacobs
deduced that the incidence of abduction experiences appears to be on the order of at least
2% of the population (Unusual Personal Expe riences, 1992). That comes to 3.7 million abductees. Critics rejected this assertion, arguing
that the study contained too many methodological flaws to mean much. Three social scientists, all with backgrounds in ufology, examined the poll and came to a wholly different
conclusion: For the present we have no reliable and valid estimate of the prevalence of the
UFO abduction phenomenon (Hall, Rodeghier, and Johnson, 1992).
In a study of the various theories advanced
to explain UFO abductions, psychologist Stuart Appelle observed that all testable, more or
less conventional hypotheses (confabulation,
fantasy proneness, false memory, sleep hallucination, and the like) stand on shaky empirical
ground. On the other hand, literalistic interpretations suffer from an absence of anything
like solid, veridical evidence. All that can be
said with certainty is that abduction experiences have the feeling of reality to those who
undergo them. Most do not fall into an easily
identifiable psychological category. They appear to be reasonably consistent in their core
features, and some cases involve multiple witnesses. These last cases, in Appelles view,
may provide the greatest challenge to prosaic
explanations (Appelle, 1995/1996).
See Also: Alien DNA; Aliens and the dead; Cocoon
people; Contactees; Dual reference; Gray Face;
Hopkins, Budd; Hybrid beings; Insectoids; Keel,
John A.; MU the Mantis Being; Nordics; Puddys
abduction; Reptoids; Strieber, Whitley; Waltons
abduction
Further Reading
Appelle, Stuart, 1995/1996. The Abduction Experience: A Critical Evaluation of Theory and Evidence. Journal of UFO Studies 6 (new series):
2978.
Appelle, Stuart, Steven Jay Lynn, and Leonard Newman, 2000. Alien Abduction Experiences. In

Etzel Cardena, Steven Jay Lynn, and Stanley

Krippner, eds. Varieties of Anomalous Experience:
Examining the Scientific Evidence, 253282. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Bullard, Thomas E., 1987. UFO Abductions: The
Measure of a Mystery. Volume 1: Comparative Study
of Abduction Reports. Volume 2: Catalogue of Cases.
Mount Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.
, 1989. Hypnosis and UFO Abductions: A
Troubled Relationship. Journal of UFO Studies 1
(new series): 340.
, 1991. Folkloric Dimensions of the UFO
Phenomenon. Journal of UFO Studies 3 (new series): 157.
, 2000. Abductions under Fire: A Review of
Recent Abduction Literature. Journal of UFO
Studies 7 (new series): 81106.
Clark, Jerome, 2000. From Mermaids to Little Gray
Men: The Prehistory of the UFO Abduction Phenomenon. The Anomalist 8 (Spring): 1131.
Fuller, John G., 1966. The Interrupted Journey: Two
Lost 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 (new
series): 131135.
Hopkins, Budd, 1981. Missing Time: A Documented
Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard
Marek Publishers.
, 1987. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at
Copley Woods. New York: Random House.
Jacobs, David M., 1992. Secret Life: Firsthand Ac counts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
, 1998. The Threat. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.
Klass, Philip J., 1988. UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous
Game. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Lawson, Alvin H., 1980. Hypnosis of Imaginary
Abductees. In Curtis G. Fuller, ed. Proceedings
of the First International UFO Congress, 195238.
New York: Warner Books.
Lorenzen, Jim, and Coral Lorenzen, 1977. Abducted!
Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space. New
York: Berkley Medallion.
Mack, John E., 1994. Abduction: Human Encounters
with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribners Sons.
Strieber, Whitley, 1987. Communion: A True Story.
New York: Beach Tree/William Morrow.
Swords, Michael D., 1988. Extraterrestrial Hybridization Unlikely. MUFON UFO Journal 247:
610.

Adama
Unusual Personal Experiences: An Analysis of the Data
from Three National Surveys Conducted by the
Roper Organization, 1992. Las Vegas, NV:
Bigelow Holding Corporation.

Abraham
Channeler Esther Hicks heard from abraham
in the early 1980s. She renders the name in
lowercase because abraham is not an individual but a collection of highly evolved entities
speaking in one voice. In 1986 she and her
husband, Jerry, confided their experiences
with abraham to business associates, who
soon were peppering them with financial and
personal questions they wanted abraham to
answer. When the Hickses saw how satisfied
their friends were with the results, they decided to take abraham to a larger public.
Today the couple conduct workshops, put out
a newsletter, and lecture widely out of their
San Antonio, Texas, headquarters.
Abraham teaches that each of us is a physical extension of an essence that begins in the
spiritual realm. Each is here because he or she
has chosen to be so, and we are here to exercise freedom and experience joy. The universe
is benevolent, and it gives us the potential to
realize all of our dreams. There is no such
thing as death; all of us live forever.
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
A Synopsis of Abraham-Hickss Teachings. http://
www.abraham-hicks.com/bio.html.

Abram
Folklorist Peter M. Rojcewicz relates the experiences of a young university student to whom
he gives the pseudonym Polly Bromberger. In
the early 1980s Bromberger conjured up a
spirit guidea personal archetype, she
sometimes called itand gave it the name
Abram. With long, unkempt hair and wearing
a white robe and sandals, Abram looked biblical. He came more clearly into focus after
Bromberger had undergone a period of meditation and reflection.

A student of the great psychologist and

philosopher C. G. Jung, Bromberger used a
process she learned from Jung's writings
active imaginationto bring Abram into
her life. In time she came to feel that he had a
kind of independent existence. She told Rojcewicz that sometimes I feel he can be a force
opening me on purpose to make me stretch
myself, and work myself, and sometimes I get
frustrated with it. On the whole, however,
she was convinced that Abram was a positive
influence in her life.
Further Reading
Rojcewicz, Peter M., 1984. The Boundaries of Ortho doxy: A Folkloric Look at the UFO Phenomenon.
Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia.

Adama
Adama, who channels through Dianne Robbins, is an Ascended Master and High Priest
of Telos, the great Lemurian city now located
under Mount Shasta in northern California.
Because of his pure thoughts, Adama, like the
million other persons who live in the city, is
able to live for hundreds of years. He is currently more than six hundred years old. He is
a descendant of the Lemurians who fled inside
the mountain when Lemuria and all else on
Earths surface were destroyed in a nuclear
holocaust. Only twenty-five thousand Lemurians escaped in time.
Since then the Lemurians consciousness
has evolved significantly. Besides attending to
their spiritual betterment, the Lemurians
have fought off marauding extraterrestrials
who are causing harm to surface dwellers.
We are all part of Gods grand plan for the
Universe, Adama says, and WE ARE NOW
MERGING OUR THOUGHTS INTO ONE
THOUGHT FOR THE ENTIRE HUMAN
RACE. Soon we will all be on the same wave

band of consciousness, broadcasting our love

and light to all in the cosmos and letting the
cosmos know that we are ready to join with
them in one grand FEDERATION OF PLANETS (Adama, 1995).

Adamski, George
See Also: Lemuria; Mount Shasta
Further Reading
Adama, 1995. http://www.salemctr.com/newage/
center36.html.

Adamski, George (18911965)

Though largely forgotten today, George
Adamski was once an international occult
celebrity, perhaps the most famous of all flying-saucer contactees. His claimed meeting
with a Venusian in the California desert in
November 1952 electrified esoterically inclined saucer buffs. In three books published
between 1953 and 1961 he recounted his
trips into space along with extensive encounters with benevolent Venusians, Martians, and
Saturnians. In 1962 he boarded a spaceship
and flew to Saturn to attend an interplanetary
conference. By 1965, when he died, many of
his most devoted followers had broken their
connection with him, convinced either that
he was lying or that evil space people were
misleading him.
Born in Poland, Adamski emigrated with
his parents to upstate New York when he was
one or two years old. In the early 1920s he
moved to California, where he eventually established a role for himself on the local occult scene as head of the Royal Order of
Tibet, a metaphysical school based on channeled teachings from Tibetan lamas. When
flying saucers became an object of popular
interest in the late 1940s, Adamski produced
photographs of alleged spacecraft; some of
the pictures were said to have been taken
through his six-inch telescope. Published in
the popular occult and paranormal digest
Fate in 1950 and 1951, the photos along
with accompanying text afforded Adamski
his first wide exposure. On November 20,
1952, as six others (including contactee and
fringe archaeologist George Hunt Williamson) watched from a distance, Adamski observed the landing of a saucer and the emergence of the beautiful, blond-haired Orthon,
a visitor from Venus, who expressed concern
about the human races warlike ways. (In

later years Adamski would tell confidants

that his first contacts with extraterrestrials
occurred in his childhood, but he never said
as much publicly.) Three weeks later Orthon
returned in his scout craft over Adamskis
Palomar Gardens residence and allowed the
ship to be photographed. The resulting pictures would generate enormous controversy
and, for many, virtually define the image of a
flying saucer as a domed disc with a threeball landing gear.
A fifty-four-page account of Adamskis
early contacts was added to an already existing
manuscript (on supposed space visitations
throughout history) by Irish occultist
Desmond Leslie and published in 1953 as Fly ing Saucers Have Landed. Two years later, in
Inside the Space Ships, Adamski expanded his
claims to encompass further interactions with
extraterrestrials, both on Earth and aboard
saucers. According to Adamski, the Space
Brothers, as he called them, had come to
help the human race out of its backward, violent ways, which were leading inexorably to
nuclear war. They espoused a benign occult
philosophy much like the one Adamski had
taught for many years.
Though revered by many, Adamski also
had bitter critics, none more so than conservative ufologists who dismissed his stories as
absurd and feared that he was bringing
ridicule to all of UFO research. Some ufologists actively investigated his claims and uncovered discrepancies and other evidence of
untruthfulness. One found, for example, that
the weather on a particular day on which
Adamski claimed contact was not as he had
described it. Most photo analysts concluded
that the pictures of spacecraft were in fact of
small models. On one occasion skeptical ufologists proved that one Adamski allegation was
unambiguously false. Adamski had reported
that as he was traveling to Iowa to give a lecture, the train suddenly stopped en route.
When he stepped out to take a short walk,
space people met him and flew him to his destination. From interviews with the train crew,
investigators learned that the train had made

Adamski, George

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

no such stop. In these circumstances Adamski

tended to blame his accusers of being agents
of a sinister Silence Group trying to destroy
the space peoples good works. But in later
years, following his death, several individuals

disclosed that Adamski had acknowledged to

them that his stories were not true.
By 1959 Adamskis renown was such that
he was able to embark on a worldwide tour,
first to New Zealand and Australia, then to

10

Aenstrians

Europe. In May of that same year, Queen Juliana of Holland received him, igniting fierce
commentary in the press and a riot at the
University of Zurich when Adamski
attempted to give a lecture in Switzerland.
Adamski charged that the studentsand indeed most of his criticswere agents of a sinister Silence Group, which sought to frustrate
the moral reforms and technological advances
advocated by the space people and their terrestrial allies. Though the reality of Adamskis
audience with Queen Juliana was never in
doubt, other purported meetings with notables, including President John F. Kennedy,
Pope John XXIII, and Vice President Hubert
H. Humphrey, that figure in the Adamski legend almost certainly did not occur outside
Adamskis imagination.
In the early 1960s, after Adamski openly
embraced psychic approaches of which he
had, till then, been outspokenly critical, some
of his followers started to question his sincerity, especially when he began doing psychic
consultations for profit. His associate C. A.
Honey circulated damning evidence that
Adamski was recycling his 1930s-era Tibetanmasters teachings and putting them in the
mouths of space people. When Adamski
claimed that he had flown to Saturn, the story
only fueled growing doubts even among devoted followers.
His career in decline, his credibility never
lower, Adamski went on a final lecture tour
through New York and Rhode Island in
March 1965. For the preceding month, his financial resources exhausted, he had been living with Nelson and Madeleine Rodeffer in
Maryland. He died of a heart attack at their
home on the evening of April 23.
See Also: Contactees; Orthon; Ramu; Williamson,
George Hunt; Yamski
Further Reading
Adamski, 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 2730th, 1962. Vista, CA: Science of Life.

Bennett, Colin, 2000. Breakout of the Fictions:

George Adamskis 1959 World Tour. The Anom alist 8 (Spring): 3984.
Ellwood, Robert S., 1995. Spiritualism and UFO
Religion in New Zealand: The International
Transmission of Modern Spiritual Movements.
In James R. Lewis, ed. The Gods Have Landed:
New Religions from Other Worlds, 167186. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earths Encounters
with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.
Heiden, Richard W., 1984. Review of Zinsstag and
Goods George AdamskiThe Untold Story. The
A.P.R.O. Bulletin 32, 5 (August): 45.
Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski, 1953. Flying
Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book
Centre.
Moseley, James W., ed., 1957. Special Adamski Ex pos Issue. Saucer News 27 (October).
Zinsstag, Lou, 1990. UFO . . . George Adamski:
Their Man on Earth. Tucson, AZ: UFO Photo
Archives.
Zinsstag, Lou, and Timothy Good, 1983. George
AdamskiThe Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent,
England: Ceti Publications.

Aenstrians
For a time in the mid to late 1960s, Warminster, Wiltshire, was the focus of a series of mysterious sightings of UFOs and hearings of apparently related sounds. The excitement
produced what was called the Warminster
mystery, which was also the title of a popular
book by Arthur Shuttlewood, a reporter for the
Warminster Journal. Shuttlewood, who led sky
watches and became the leading publicist of
the phenomena, also reported receiving phone
calls from self-identified extraterrestrials, as well
as a personal visit from one. The aliens said
they were from a planet named Aenstria.
The first calls came in early September
1965. The calls continued for a period of
seven weeks, according to Shuttlewood. The
callers were three Aenstrians: Caellsan (the
senior spacecraft commander), Selorik (an interpreter), and Traellison (the queen of Aenstria). In each case they phoned from a public
booth in a particular district in the city,
though Shuttlewood wrote that he never
heard the sound of coins dropping before the
voices began to speak.

Aetherius

The messages were standard contactee fare.

Earth is in trouble because of atomic weapons
and environmental pollution. Human beings
the product of special creation, not evolutionary
processesshould return to simpler, more spiritual ways. The Aenstrians lived long lives and
suffered few illnesses. Traellison, for example,
was 450 years old, a fairly young age on her
home planet. The Aenstrians were communicating with Shuttlewood so that he could pass
on their information to Earths councils.
On May 24, 1967, Shuttlewoods The
Warminster Mystery was published. In it he relegated the story of the Aenstrianss phone calls
to an appendix, where he suggested that they
were no more than an interesting hoax. On the
afternoon of the twenty-sixth, the phone rang
at the Shuttlewood residence. It was an Aenstrian named Karne, expressing displeasure at
what the author had said of his colleagues
trustworthiness. Shuttlewood responded that
if Karne wanted to prove he was who he
claimed to be, he should pay a personal visit.
Karne took up the challenge and showed up at
Shuttlewoods door seven seconds later.
Karne, who spent a total of nine minutes
with the journalist, looked like an ordinary man
in most ways, except for an apparent absence of
pupils in his eyes, which were covered by thick
glasses. He also had blue blotches on his cheekbones and lips. He also had a manner that unnerved Shuttlewood, who felt that the ostensible extraterrestrial had powers that, if provoked,
could instantly destroy him. Karne said that
Traellison, Caellsan, and Selorik had returned
to their home cantel (planet). He spoke of an
imminent war in the Middle Eastthe Six-Day
War erupted the following Juneand of further UFO appearances, this time of crossshaped craft, in the fall. He said a Third World
War was almost inevitable at some point in the
not-distant future. If it was fought with nuclear
weapons, he hinted, extraterrestrials would intervene in some unspecified fashion. A new
order, in which earthlings would be trained to
become cosmic citizens, would be put in place.
I noticed that Karne sometimes had difficulty with his breathing, Shuttlewood wrote.

11

From time to time, as I shot questions at

him . . . he glanced at the pale gold disc on his
wrist. He replied to certain queries immediately, shaking his head in the negative over
others, after looking at his watch (Shuttlewood, 1978). At one point Shuttlewood
asked if George Adamskis contact claims were
genuine. Karne replied sternly that he could
not answer that question, though he hinted
that the late California contactee was not of
earthly origin. At the conclusion of the meeting, Shuttlewood gripped Karnes wrist and
left thumb in what he intended as a gesture of
good will, but the visitor winced in pain. Earlier, at the commencement of their meeting,
Karne had not responded to Shuttlewoods
outstretched hand.
Shuttlewood watched him walk, turning
stiffly to wave farewell, then continue up the
street. From the waist up, Shuttlewood
wrote, his bearing was smart, military, almost
arrogantly proud. From the waist down, however, his movements were slow and deliberate.
His legs seemed weighted, feet slightly dragging; yet to a casual onlooker he would have
been dismissed as an old gardener type or oldfashioned and hard-worked farm laborer
(Shuttlewood, 1978).
The next day Shuttlewoods sixteen-yearold son, Graham, saw a man who looked like
Karne at a Warminster park. He was looking
upward as military jets flew by, shaking his
head in disapproval. His left hand was bandaged as if it had been recently injured. That
was the last either saw of Karne.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees
Further Reading
Dewey, Stephen, 1997. Arthur Shuttlewood and the
Warminster Mystery. Strange Magazine 18
(Summer): 1621, 5658.
Shuttlewood, Arthur, 1967. The Warminster Mystery.
London: Neville Spearman.
, 1978. UFO Prophecy. New York: Global
Communications.

Aetherius
Aetherius is one of the Cosmic Masters who
preside at the Interplanetary Parliament on

12

Affa

Saturn. In 1954 Aetherius made his presence

known psychically to George King, a London
man with longstanding occult interests. Soon
King was channeling other space people, including Jesus. By January he had gone public
with the cosmic gospelessentially earthbound occult doctrines ascribed to philosophical extraterrestrialsand soon was issuing a
mimeographed bulletin titled Aetherius Speaks
to Earth (later Cosmic Voice). In August 1956
King established the Aetherius Society, among
the most successful and enduring contactee
groups. King died on July 12, 1997, in Los
Angeles, where he had been living for many
years.
In the theology of the Aetherius Society,
good and evil extraterrestrials are engaged in
constant warfare. From time to time, during
crisis situations, the Cosmic Brotherhood will
place its spaceships above Earth and direct
positive energy downward. Society members
receive the energy and make sure that it
reaches its targets. Over a three and a half year
period, beginning in 1958, King climbed no
fewer than eighteen mountains at the behest
of the space people.
The society maintains headquarters in
London and Los Angeles, as well as chapters
all over the world.
See Also: Channeling; Contactees
Further Reading
Aetherius 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: Abbeville
Press.
Saliba, John A., 1995. Religious Dimensions of
UFO Phenomena. In James R. Lewis, ed. The
Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other
Worlds, 1564. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Wallis, Roy, 1974. The Aetherius Society: A Case
Study of a Mystagogic Congregation. Sociologi cal Review 22: 2744.

Affa
Affa first appeared in 1952 among the extraterrestrials who communicated to a small
Prescott, Arizona, occult group headed by

George Hunt Williamson. Affa, identified as

being from the planet Uranus, first spoke
through automatic writing, then later allegedly by radio, warning of threats to Earth
by evil humans and menacing aliens from the
Orion Solar Systems.
Affa later surfaced in automatic-writing
communications to Frances Swan of Eliot,
Maine, beginning in 1954. Mrs. Swans Affa,
like Williamsons, did his communicating
from a giant Uranian spaceship. Affa urged
Swan to alert the United States Navy so that it
could receive his radio messages. Swan told
her neighbor, retired navy Adm. Herbert B.
Knowles, about Affas request. Knowles, a
UFO enthusiast, sat in on a writing session
and addressed questions to Affa. Impressed by
the answers, he wrote the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), which on June 8 sent two
officers to Swans house. They also asked questions of Affa, who promised a radio transmission at 2 P.M. on June 10. When none came,
ONI lost interest and turned the letters over
to the navys Bureau of Aeronautics. John
Hutson, a security officer, was curious enough
to fly up to Eliot for two days in late July. On
his return he spoke with an FBI agent, but the
agency chose not to pursue the matter.
In the summer of 1959 navy Commander
Julius Larsen, an ONI liaison officer to the
CIAs Photographic Intelligence Center in
Washington, DC, stumbled upon a file on the
incident. Larsen, a navy pilot who harbored a
private fascination with spiritualism, called on
Swan and Knowles. At one point Larsen tried
automatic writing and believed he had communicated with Affa, though Swan insisted he
had not contacted her Affa.
Back in Washington Larsen talked with
Center Director Arthur Lundahl and Lundahls assistant, Lt. Cmdr. Robert Neasham, a
navy officer. In their presence Larsen entered a
trance state and supposedly contacted Affa
while Lundahl and Neasham peppered him
with questions. At one point, challenged to
prove his existence, Affa replied, Go to the
window. Lundahl saw nothing but clouds,
though Neasham seemed convinced that a

Agharti 13

spaceship was hiding in them. Neasham

would also claim that radar operators at
Washington National Airport told him that
that particular portion of the sky was mysteriously blocked out. No independent evidence supported that allegation.
Neasham notified Major Robert Friend,
head of the air forces UFO-investigative
agency, Project Blue Book. For Friends benefit Larsen even related telepathic messages
from Affa and other space people, but the
aliens refused his request for a flyover. Friend
wrote a memo on the episode and sent it to
his superiors. Nothing further was done. The
incident remained buried in Pentagon, FBI,
and CIA files until the early 1970s, when
Friend shared his notes with UFO historian
David M. Jacobs. Subsequently, some exaggerated accounts of the episode were published in the UFO literature, a few even
claiming that the CIA itself had communicated with extraterrestrials.
See Also: Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Emenegger, Robert, 1974. UFOs Past, Present and
Future. New York: Ballantine Books.
Fitzgerald, Randall, 1979. Messages: The Case History of a Contactee. Second Look 1, 12 (October): 1218, 2829.
Jacobs, David M., 1975. The UFO Controversy in
America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Williamson, George Hunt, and Alfred C. Bailey,
1954. The Saucers Speak! A Documentary Report of
Interstellar Communications by Radiotelegraphy.
Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.

Agents
Agents are human beings whom extraterrestrials have contacted and who have agreed to
help the space people in their benevolent mission to Earth. George Hunt Williamson wrote
that agents, who come from all social and economic backgrounds, sometimes have a
strange, far-away, glassy look in their eyes.
Their necks may throb or jump spasmodically,
indicating that they are receiving telepathic instructions. The Agents conduct a variety of
tasks. They introduce persons who are of potential use to them to each other, recommend

books, ask provocative questions, and in other

ways, subtle or obvious, get people thinking
about space visitors and spiritual reform. They
also minister to the needy and have a particular interest in orphaned children.
Extraterrestrials get in touch with Agents in
assorted ways. Sometimes it is through a car or
ham radio, sometimes via thought waves, on
occasion by direct, physical encounter.
See Also: Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongue
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

Agharti
Agharti is a subterranean kingdom, which allegedly exists in Tibet or Mongolia. It is, depending on whom one believes, a paradisiacal
realm or a sinister lair of sorcerers and other
evildoersmostly, however, the former. The
legend of Agharti seems loosely based on the
Buddhist realm of Shambhala, a city of adepts
and mystics said to be located in a hidden valley (called Shangri-La in James Hiltons
popular novel Lost Horizon [1933] and in the
movie of the same name). Shambhala first appeared in a 1922 Polish book, soon afterward
translated into English as the best-seller Beasts,
Men and Gods.
The author, Ferdinand Ossendowski
(18761945), fled Russia in the wake of the
Bolshevik revolution. An anti-Communist,
Ossendowski participated in the White Russian government, that nations short-lived experiment in democracy between the overthrow of the tsar and the triumph of the
Communists. He wandered through Mongolia, itself torn by political unrest and bloody
conflict. There he learned, he said, of a mysterious King of the World. A lama in the
town of Narabanchi took him into a temple
in which there was a throne. Ossendowski was
told that in 1890 horsemen had ridden into
town and instructed all the local lamas to
come to the temple. One of the horsemen sat
on the throne, at which point all present fell
to their knees as they recognized the man who

14

Agharti

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

had been long ago described in the sacred

bulls of the Dalai Lama, Tashi Lama, and
Bodgo Khan. He was the man to whom the
whole world belongs and who has penetrated
into all the mysteries of Nature. He pronounced a short Tibetan prayer, blessed all his
hearers and afterwards made predictions for
the coming half century. This was thirty years
ago and in the interim all his prophecies are
being fulfilled (Ossendowski, 1922). The
King of the World lived in an underground
realm called Agharti.
Whether this King of the World, or even
the authors supposed informant, ever existed,
he and his kingdom soon entered occult lore.
In Darkness over Tibet (1935) Theodore Illion
recounted his allegedly true adventures in an
underground city in a distant valley. At first
he thought he had entered a utopia, but soon
he realized that the inhabitants, for all their

advanced spiritual knowledge and supernatural powers, were cannibals. Illion wrote that
his reported experiences proved the existence
of Agharti. In 1946 Vincent H. Gaddis, a regular contributor to Amazing Stories who later
achieved a degree of fame as the inventor of
the concept of the Bermuda Triangle, picked
up on the theme, depicting Agharti as a city of
evil that was linked to tunnels all over the
world. He incorporated Agharti into the
Shaver mystery, the subject of a series of tales
Amazing Stories was running about an alleged
underground realm populated by deros, demonic entities in possession of a fantastic Atlantean technology, which they used to torment surface humans.
In a variant of the legend, Robert Ernst
Dickhoffs Agharta: The Subterranean World
(1951) contended that two and a half million
years ago Martians landed at Antarctica, then

Akon

a tropical region, and created the first humans. Then reptoid (that is, biped reptilian)
Venusians attacked, forcing the Martians and
their human associates to create two huge underground cities, connected by tunnels of vast
length, in order to protect themselves. One of
these cities was Shambhala, under Tibet, and
the other Agharta, under Chinas Tzangpo
Valley. Eventually, the Venusians conquered
Agharta, sending their evil minions into the
world until 1948, when the Martian/human
alliance reclaimed the city and slew its ruler,
the King of the World, and many of his
troops.
There is no real-life Central Asian tradition
of Agharti, though Chinese and Tibetan
equivalents to Western fairy lore spoke of magical caves, on the other side of which the traveler would find a beautiful land and lovely but
ultimately treacherous supernatural beings.
See Also: Reptoids
Further Reading
Dickhoff, Robert Ernst, 1965. Agharta. New York:
Fieldcrest.
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Ossendowski, Ferdinand, 1922. Beasts, Men and
Gods. New York: Dutton.

Ahab
On a camping trip through eastern Oregon in
the summer of 1975, a young married couple
identified as Darryl and Toni M. stopped
along the banks of the Owyhee River to cool
their truck. They spotted an odd object
parked on a nearby hillside. The next thing
they knew, it was two hours later, and their
truck started as if it had long since cooled off.
Later, under hypnosis, they recounted the experience of wandering into the UFO in a
trance state. Hairless humanoids with slits for
eyes, mouth, and nose, with gray, wrinkled
skin assured them via telepathy that they
meant no harm. As Toni watched, the aliens,
who communicated with each other with a
buzzing bee sound, subjected Darryl to an

15

apparent physical examination by light beam.

Sometime later Toni awoke to find a figure
with a skull-like face and a small mouth
standing at the foot of her bed. He spoke to
her, but all she could remember was that he
had told her his name was Ahab.
Further Reading
Hartman, Terry A., 1979. Another Abduction by
Extraterrestrials. MUFON UFO Journal 141
(November): 34.

Akon
Akon appeared to Elizabeth Klarer on April 6,
1956, when his spaceship landed in the Drakensberg Mountains of Natal, South Africa.
She was flown to a waiting mother ship,
where she met other friendly space people and
learned that they came from the beautiful
planet Meton in the orbit of Alpha Centauri
four light years away. The Metonites, she
learned, are vegetarians who live in a utopian
society without conflict or disease. They are
also a passionate people, and in due course, as
the contacts continued, Klarer and Akon became lovers. She bore him a son, Ayling, during a four-month stay on Meton.
Klarer became well known in saucer and occult circles in South Africa and Europe where
she lectured from time to time. She distributed
photographs of Akons spacecraft and showed
inquirers a ring she said he had given her.
Though many dismissed her stories and evidence as bogus, her friend Cynthia Hind, a
well-known ufologist from Zimbabwe, believed her to be sincere and has helped keep her
name and story alive. On the occasion of her
death in February 1994, Hind wrote, Elizabeth Klarer died in comparative poverty. . . .
Her incredible story brought her some fame (or
more accurately, notoriety!) but certainly no
riches (Hind, 1994).
Further Reading
Hind, Cynthia, 1982. UFOsAfrican 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): 1011.

16

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

Alien diners
An alien family ate at a restaurant and stayed
overnight in a motel in suburban St. Louis in
May 1970, according to ufologist John E.
Schroeder, who interviewed employees and
heard a strange and comic tale. Dorothy
Simpson, a front desk clerk at the motel and a
fellow member of the UFO Study Group of
Greater St. Louis, tipped Schroeder off to the
incident soon after its occurrence.
Simpson was examining billing documents
at her desk at 10:30 A.M. on May 15 when a
whistling sigh sounded. She looked up, and
on the other side of the desk stood four tiny
people, apparently members of a family: a
couple and their two children. All looked
strikingly alike. All were youthful in appearance, and the children were nearly the height
of the ostensible parents. They were so short
that they barely reached the level of the desk.
They were all expensively dressed, the males
in tailored suits, the females in pastel peach
dresses. Their hair did not look real. Odd as it
seemed, Simpson suspected that they were
wearing wigs.
In a falsetto voice the man said, Do you
have a room to stay? Do you have a room to
stay? She told him what the charges would
be, but he seemed not to understand what she
had said. He turned to his female companion
as if expecting her to clarify matters, but she
remained silent. An uncomfortable period of
silence followed, broken finally when the man
reached into his pocket and pulled out a thick
wad of bills, many of large denomination.
The bills were so crisp and new that Simpson
wondered if they were counterfeit, but some
quick informal testing suggested they were
not. She took two twenty-dollar bills from the
stack and gave the rest back.
Because the man was too small to reach up
to fill out the reservation form, Simpson said
she 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 his

face with his companions. According to
Schroeder, whose composite description
comes from his interviews with Simpson and
other motel employees who saw them, they
were wide at eye level, their faces thinned
abruptly to their chins. Their eyes were large,
dark and slightly slanted. . . . Their noses had
practically no bridges and two slits for nostrils, and their mouths were tiny and lipless
no wider than their nostrils. All look uniformly pale. (Color descriptions varied from
pearl to pale pink to light grey.)
And where are you from? Simpson asked.
At that the mans arm shot upward as if pointing to the sky, and he said, We come from up
there. Up there. The woman pushed his arm
down and spoke for the first time. She said
they were from Hammond, Indiana, and she
gave a street address. The man signed the register but did it so awkwardly that Simpson
thought he seemed not to know how to use a
pen. The woman wanted to know where they
could eat. Simpson indicated the direction of
the motel restaurant.
Meanwhile, the bellhop came over to store
their bags while they ate. At the managers insistence Simpson checked the Indiana address
and learned that both the name and the address were bogus. The bellhop checked the
parking lot for a car with an Indiana license
plate but found none.
The hostess who led the strange family to a
table in the restaurant noticed that the chins
of even the adults barely reached the top of
the table. The man read aloud from the menu
and kept asking odd questions about where
milk, vegetables, and other common foods
come from. The woman ordered peas and
milk for herself and the children, and for the
man peas, a small steak, and water. Their eating was similarly peculiar. Each picked up a
single pea with a knife, brought it to his or her
tiny mouth, and inhaled it with a sucking
sound. The father was unable to get even a
small piece of steak through his slit of a
mouth. They stopped eating all at the same
time. The man produced a twenty-dollar bill

Alien DNA 17

and gave it to the waitress, who went to get

change; when she returned, they were gone.
When the bellhop saw them, he retrieved
their baggage and stepped into the elevator to
lead them to their room. When the elevator
door opened, though, the family recoiled in
fright and confusion. The bellhop had to assure them that there was no danger. After letting them into the room, he turned on the
lights. Suddenly the man began shouting at
him that the light would hurt the childrens
eyes. Suddenly frightened himself, the bellhop
fled without waitingone suspects futilely, in
any casefor a tip.
The bellhop, the manager, and Simpson
vowed to watch for the little peoples departure in the morning, but they were never seen
again, though the front door was the only
door they could pass through without setting
off a security alarm. The alarms were checked,
and nothing was amiss. Schroeder interviewed
all five employees who had interacted with the
family. All seemed sincerely bewildered by the
curious series of events.
See Also: Extraterrestrials among us
Further Reading
Schroeder, John E., 1987. The Strangers among
Us. The UFO Enigma 7, 7 (June): 36.

Alien DNA
Physical evidence of abduction experiences is
hard to come by, and physical evidence of actual aliens is all but nonexistent. A case from
Australia may be an exception. Biochemists
were able to analyze, with curious results, a
strand of what was reported to be the hair of
an alien woman.
The events that led to the analysis began
on the night of July 12, 1988, when Peter
Khoury, a Sydney resident of Lebanese background, was awakened suddenly when he
sensed that something had grabbed his ankles.
A numbness crept up his body from the feet,
and soon his entire body except for his eyes
was paralyzed. To his right he spotted three or
four small hooded figures with wrinkled,
shiny black faces. Through telepathy they as-

sured him he would not be harmed. Khoury

then saw two other figures on his left. These
two, he later told investigator Bill Chalker,
were thin, tall with big black eyes and a narrow chin. They were gold-yellow in color.
One of these beings shoved a needle into the
left side of his forehead, and he passed out.
The next day he showed the puncture
wound to his fiance. Later he showed it to
his doctor, who thought he had walked into a
nail. When Khoury told him what had happened, the physician laughed at him. He
found that this was a typical response and
grew despondent and anxious, worried about
the strange nature of the experience, about
the future, about his inability to communicate with anyone who would listen to him.
Eventually, his fiance found a copy of Whitley Striebers Communion (1987), detailing
the authors personal abduction experiences.
In time he heard about and joined a local
UFO group but left it still unsatisfied. In
April 1993 he founded the UFO Experience
Support Association.
On July 23, 1992, Khoury had a second,
even stranger encounter. He was suffering from
the effects of an assault by three men at his job,
and as a consequence he was on strong medication and mostly bed-ridden. On the morning in
question, he managed with considerable difficulty to drive his wifehe was now married
to the train station so that she could get to
work. Once home he crawled back into bed and
passed out, only to awaken a few minutes later.
He was sitting straight up and staring at two
nude women sitting on the bed.
They were strange-looking, with a weird,
glassy-eyed expression. One looked generally
Asian, something like an East Indian; the
other was blond, with eyes two or three times
larger than normal. Their cheekbones seemed
abnormally high. The dark woman was watching her companion closely, as if the blond were
demonstrating something to her. The blond
pulled Khoury toward her breasts, apparently
initiating a sex act. He tried to resist, but she
was too strong for him. As he struggled, he bit
her nipple so hard that he bit it off. He could

18

Aliens and the dead

feel it in his throat. The woman only looked at

him in puzzlement. She did not act as if she
were in pain, and there was no blood. At that
point the two vanished.
The nipple was caught in his throat, causing him to cough persistently for hours. Eventually, he was able to swallow it. In the meantime, feeling pain in his genital region, he
examined his penis. There he found two hairs
wrapped tightly around it. He had no idea
how they had gotten there, unless they had
been placed on his penis as he was sleeping.
As he untangled them, he felt enormous pain.
He preserved the strandsone about twelve
centimeters long, the other about sixin a
plastic bag.
Though many abductees have reported sexual experiences with aliens (or, as some researchers think, alien/human hybrids), none
have come out of the experience with a supposed part of an alien body.
In 1999 Chalker, a chemist by profession
and a well-regarded UFO investigator by avocation, brought the strands to a group of biochemists for analysis. The analysis reads in
part:
The blonde hair provides for a strange and unusual DNA sequence, showing five consistent
substitutions from a human consensus . . .
which could not easily have come from anyone
else in the Sydney area except by the rarest of
chances; is not apparently due to any sort of
laboratory contamination; and is found only in
a few other people throughout the whole
world. . . .
While it may not be impossible for him to
have had sexual contact with some fairskinned, nearly albino female from the Sydney area, such an explanation is ruled out by
the DNA evidence, which fits only a Chinese
Mongoloid as a donor of the hair. Furthermore, while it might be possible to find a few
Chinese in Sydney with the same DNA as
seen in just 4% of Taiwanese women, it
would not be plausible to find a Chinese
woman here with thin, almost clear hair, having the same rare DNA. Finally, that thin
blonde hair could not plausibly represent a

chemically-bleached Chinese (including the

root) because then its DNA could not easily
have been extracted.
The most probable donor of the hair must
therefore be as the young man claims: a tall
blonde female who does not need much color
in her hair or skin as a form of protection
against the sun, perhaps because she does not
require it. Could this young man really have
provided, by chance, a hair sample which contains DNA from one of the rarest human lineages known . . . that lies further from the
mainstream than any other except for African
Pygmies and aboriginals? (Chalker, 1999).
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Hybrid beings;
Strieber, Whitley
Further Reading
Chalker, Bill, 1999. Strange Evidence. Interna tional UFO Reporter 24, 1 (Spring): 316, 31.
Strieber, Whitley, 1987. Communion: A True Story.
New York: Beach Tree/William Morrow.

Aliens and the dead

In the view of UFO-abduction investigator
David M. Jacobs, aliens sometimes take on
the form of deceased relatives in the interest of
keeping their activities secret.
He recounts the experience of a woman to
whom he gives the pseudonym Lily Martinson. Vacationing with her mother in the Virgin Islands in 1987, Martinson woke up in
her hotel room to observe the apparition of
her dead brother watching her from the foot
of the bed. The experience comforted her.
Later, however, when Jacobs put her under
hypnosis, Martinson saw the individual she
had thought was her brother as, in Jacobss
words, a person without clothes, small, thin,
no hair, and large eyes. He calls such individuals as Martinson unaware abductees.
Unaware abductees explain their strange experiences in ways acceptable to society, interpreting the entities they see as ghosts, angels,
demons, or even animals.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs
Further Reading
Jacobs, David M., 1998. The Threat. New York:
Simon and Schuster.

Alpha Zoo Loo 19

Allinghams Martian
According to Flying Saucer from Mars (1954),
Englishman and author Cedric Allingham
witnessed the landing of an extraterrestrial
spacecraft while vacationing in Scotland in
February 1954. A tall man, human in all ways
except for an unusually broad forehead,
stepped out of the vehicle. The occupant, who
indicated that he was from Mars, spoke in a
friendly fashion, saying that he had earlier visited Venus and the moon. He asked if earthlings would soon visit the latter world, and
when Allingham replied yes, the Martian
acted concerned. He wanted to know if a war
would soon erupt on Earth. After this conversation, which occurred mostly by gestures, the
Martian reentered his craft and flew away,
though not before Allingham had photographed him (from the back) and his ship.
The book asserted that a man named James
Duncan had witnessed the entire encounter.
A year earlier George Adamski had published his account of a meeting with the
Venusian Orthon in the southern California
desert. Allinghams tale thrilled British saucerians, who now felt they had their own contact. Waveney Girvan, who had published the
British edition of Adamski and Desmond
Leslies book, wrote, If Allingham is telling
the truth, his account following so soon upon
Adamskis amounts to final proof of the existence of flying saucers (Girvan, 1956).
Allingham proved strangely elusive, however, making only one public appearance. He
showed up in the company of a virulently antiUFO science writer and media personality
Patrick Moore. That, plus the failure of inquirers to find the alleged witness to Allinghams
contact, should have warned British saucerians
that all was not well with the story told by their
native Adamski. In 1956 Allinghams publisheralso the publisher of Moores books
released a statement asserting that the contactee
had died of tuberculosis in a Swiss sanitarium.
In a book on British UFOs published thirteen years later, journalist Robert Chapman
reported that he had found no evidence that a
Cedric Allingham had ever existed. In his

judgment, Flying Saucer from Mars amounted

to probably the biggest UFO leg-pull ever
perpetrated in Britain (Chapman, 1969). It
was an open secret among Moores friends
that he and a friend, Peter Davies (the Martian in the photograph), had written the book
as a spoof on those gullible enough to believe
Adamskis contact tales. Moore, well known as
a practical joker, once had regaled a contactee
magazine with letters, written under an assortment of absurd pseudonyms (including
L. Puller), claiming scientific confirmation
of the contactee cosmos.
Eventually word of Moore and Daviess involvement trickled down to British ufologists.
Two of them, Christopher Allan and Steuart
Campbell, interviewed Davies who admitted
the hoax and added that he had rewritten the
original manuscript to disguise Moores distinctive literary style. After the hoax was exposed for the first time in print in the London
ufology journal Magonia, Moore professed to
be outraged, threatened legal retaliation, and
then retreated into telling silence.
See Also: Adamski, George; Browns Martians; Dentonss Martians and Venusians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Mullers Martians; Orthon; Shaws
Martians; Smeads Martians; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Allan, Christopher, and Steuart Campbell, 1986.
Flying Saucer from Moores? Magonia 23
(July): 1518.
Allingham, Cedric [pseud. of Patrick Moore and
Peter Davies], 1954. London: Frederick Muller.
Chapman, Robert, 1969. Unidentified Flying Objects.
London: Arthur Barker.
Girvan, Waveney, 1956. Flying Saucers and Common
Sense. New York: Citadel Press.
Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski, 1953. Flying
Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book
Centre.
News Briefs, 1956/1957. Saucer News 4,1 (December/January): 12.
Tory, Peter, 1986. I See No Hoax, Says Patrick.
The [London] Star (July 28).

Alpha Zoo Loo

Trucker Harry Joe Turner allegedly met an
alien named Alpha Zoo Loo during a fright-

20

Alyn

ening encounter on a Virginia highway. The

first incident reportedly took place on the
night of August 28, 1979, when a UFO hovered over his truck. Even though the truck
was moving at seventy miles per hour, an alien
figure opened the door, and a terrified Turner
fired several pistol shots at it, without apparent effect. Turner blacked out, returning to
consciousness in the Fredericksburg warehouse that had been his destination.
Turner noted other anomalies. His odometer indicated that he had traveled seventeen
miles though he knew that Winchester, his
starting point, and Fredericksburg were
eighty miles apart. An odd, filmy substance
covered the truck, and parts of his CB and
AM/FM antennae were missing, as if they
had been melted or cut off. He also complained of a burning sensation in his eyes.
While trying to enter his truck to resume his
journey, Turner passed out and was taken to a
hospital. After a short stay he was released
and, on returning home, suddenly remembered that the UFO had lifted both him and
the truck inside it.
Turner also recalled that the craft carried a
crew of white-clad, humanlike beings who
wore caps. When they took the caps off,
Turner could see a series of numbers stamped,
or otherwise impressed, on their heads. They
spoke in a squeaky, high-pitched tone. Only
when one of them, Alpha Zoo Loo, slowed his
speech could Turner understand it.
As they traveled through space, Alpha Zoo
Loo asked Turner questions about his truck.
Eventually they arrived at a planet two and a
half light years beyond Alpha Centauri, where
dome-covered cities dotted an otherwise devastated landscape. Turner had the impression
that the civilization had experienced a nuclear
war in its not-distant past.
Back on Earth, Turner later claimed other
contacts with Alpha Zoo Loo and assorted
aliens. His erratic behavior, however, undercut
his credibility, leading friends, family members, and onlookers to wonder about his psychological stability. Investigators also learned
of Turners reputation for yarn-spinning.

Further Reading
Hendry, Allan, 1980. Abducted! Four Startling Stories of 1979. Frontiers of Science 2, 4 (July/August): 2531, 36.
Whiting, Fred, 1980. The Abduction of Harry Joe
Turner. MUFON UFO Journal 145 (March):
37.

Alyn
Alyn is the name Constance Weber, who
wrote under the name Marla Baxter, gives
Howard Menger in her book My Saturnian
Lover (1958). Weber/Baxter relates that after
being widowed, she devoted herself to an interest in flying saucers. In the summer of
1956, she joined a group headed by Alyn R.,
who was said to have had contacts with people from other worlds. Alyn eventually reveals his secret to her: I am not of this world!
I am a volunteer to Earth from the planet Saturn. On Saturn, he tells her, he was the spiritual teacher Sol da Naro. In the meantime, on
Earth, the two become lovers. She writes, My

Howard and Connie Menger (August C. Roberts/Fortean

Picutre Library)

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

Saturnian lover did wonderful things for

me. . . . My body seemed to grow more softly
contoured through this pygmalion transformation as the Saturnian sculptor, by his
unique artistry, molded me by his every electric touch and caress. At the end of the book,
she learns that in a previous incarnation she
had been Marla, a Venusian beauty in love
with Sol da Naro.
During the time period covered by the
book, Howard Menger, a sort of East Coast
counterpart to Californias George Adamski,
left his wife, Rose, for Connie Weber. At
one point during their affair, but before
Menger had ended his marriage, four disillusioned followers accused Weber of impersonating a spacewoman who was supposed
to be granting them an audience in an unlighted room. The couple survived the scandal, however, and were married in due
course. Eventually, they moved to Florida,
where they live now.
See Also: Adamski, George
Further Reading
Baxter, Marla [pseud. of Constance Weber Menger],
1958. My Saturnian Lover. New York: Vantage
Press.
Very Sincere Fellow Howard Menger Returns to
Long John Program, 1957. CSI News Letter 21
(November 1): 1416.

Ameboids
A professional woman writing under the
pseudonym Lisa Oakman claims that from
childhood into her early twenties she experienced many encounters with nonhuman beings. Most were generally humanlike in appearance, but the most exotic she calls
ameboids.
The ameboids were horrible and nightmarish entities, shaped like amoebas, with
the colors of bruises. They attached their wet
snouts to the fleshy areas of her body, sucked,
and left round, red marks in their wake. Some
seemed to be taking energy, others blood.
They would come into her bedroom at night,
and she was too terrified to resist them. She
lay paralyzed while they did their work, and

she did not resume activityin this case,

screaminguntil they were gone.
Further Reading
Oakman, Lisa [pseud.], 1999. UFO Beings, Folklore, and Mythology: Personal Experiences. In ternational UFO Reporter 24, 4 (Winter): 712.

Andolo
Andolo was a being channeled by contactee
Trevor James Constable. Andolo, a member of
the Council of Seven Lights, a kind of cosmic
governing board consisting of wise space people, communicated from a vast extraterrestrial
satellite, Shan-Chea, in orbit around Earth.
In the mid-1950s, concerned about mysterious disappearances of airplanes and their
crews, Constable asked Andolo if he and his
associates ever abducted or killed human beings in this way. Andolo assured him that the
Universal plan kept them from causing a
physical death wittingly under any circumstance. He warned, however, that dark ones
did not recognize these laws. They would steal
earthly aircraft in order to learn about earthly
technology, and they may desire the entities
[persons] in the airplane for purposes of their
own, regarding which I shall presently tell you
nothing (James, 1958).
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
James, Trevor [pseud. of Trevor James Constable],
1958. They Live in the Sky. Los Angeles: New Age
Publishing Company.

Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka

Chief Frank Buck Standing Horse, an Ottawa
Indian from Oklahoma, met Andra-o-leeka
and Mondra-o-leeka onboard a spaceship that
took him to several planets in July 1959. The
ship, called Vea-o-mus, landed around 10 P.M.
on the evening of the twelfth. Piloted by
Andra-o-leeka, the ship took off again, this
time going to Mars, then to Venus. After a
short stay there, a female pilot, Mondra-oleeka, a Venusian, relieved Andra-o-leeka, and
the ship went on to Clarion, a planet hidden
on the other side of the sun. (Clarion first ap-

22

Angel of the Dark

pears in contactee stories after Truman Bethurum reported meeting a scow [a small spacecraft] and its pilot, the beautiful Aura Rhanes,
who hailed from that planet.) After a short
stop on Clarion, Vea-o-mus took a two-hour
journey to a planet called Oreon (as opposed
to Orion, a constellation). Standing Horse
stayed there for two days.
Oreon, he reported, was a beautiful planet,
so lovely that as a man of the gospel he wondered if he were in heaven. Heaven is a long
way from here, he was told (Dean, 1964).
While there, he ate well, mostly fish as well as
fresh fruit from giant plants.
Several years later on December 22, 1962,
Standing Horse entered a spacecraft near Bakersfield, California, and was taken to Jupiter
where he saw a magnificent building made of
marble. He witnessed the dancing of five
tribes of Indians. In a Jupiter city, at the
Church of the Open Door, he heard a concert
in which Handels The Messiah was sung. At
one point he saw a screen that recorded scenes
from Earth. According to Standing Horse, the
people of Jupiter are better-looking versions
of earthlings, with the races living together in
harmony.
The chief was returned to Earth three days
later, on the evening of Christmas Day. His
hosts drove him back to a Hollywood bus station in a car without wheels and powered by
electromagnetic energy. Two cops were arresting two men on the corner, Standing
Horse wrote to John W. Dean, and were they
dumbfounded when they saw the car come
down and let me out!
Standing Horse claimed to have met Mondra-o-leeka one more time on the streets of
Cedko, California, on October 11, 1962.

Dark, who sometimes calls herself an Angel

of the Divine Plan. The angel stands nearly
three stories tall. Large, matte-dark feathers
with iridescent tips cover her. She wraps her
wings around herself like a cloak and wears a
wooden bird mask from which a long, sharp
beak extends.
She is here to take away all those feelings
and fears that impede spiritual progress. Her
bird mask symbolizes her connection with the
vulture, which removes carrion, and the eagle,
which soars toward the light. I cleanse the
shadow side into perfection, she says.
Further Reading
Bryant, Alice, and Linda Seebach, 1997. Opening to
the Infinite: Human Multidimensional Potential.
Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower Press.

Angelucci, Orfeo (19121993)

Orfeo Angelucci was among the most interesting of the early contactees. Unlike many of
his contemporaries, he was generally deemed

See Also: Aura Rhanes; Bucky; Contactees

Further Reading
Dean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip tures. New York: Vantage Press.

Angel of the Dark

On several occasions, New Age writer Alice
Bryant has encountered the Angel of the

UFO contactee Orfeo Angelucci (Fortean Picture Library)

Anoah 23

sincere, even by skeptics who tended to see

him as something of a religious visionary in a
flying-saucer context rather than as a cynical
exploiter of the credulous. Angelucci's initial
contact allegedly occurred on May 24, 1952,
in Burbank, California. Driving home from
work at an aircraft factory, he saw a saucer,
which emitted two small globes. The globes
approached him, and a masculine voice assured him that he had nothing to fear. Angelucci saw a crystal cup materialize, and he
drank a delicious, healing liquid from it. A
screen appeared before him, showing a striking-looking man and woman who seemed to
read his mind. Another visionary experience,
initiated like the first time by a dulling of
consciousness (Angelucci, 1955), occurred
two months later. On August 2, he had a
physical encounter with space people for the
first time.
Angelucci soon went public with his experiences, warning that a world war was imminent. From the ruins of the world, a New
Age of Earth would arise. He also related
that after six months of unusual psychological symptoms, as well as vivid dreams of a
hauntingly beautiful, half-familiar world, he
was transported to a beautiful otherworld.
He learned that he had lived there in another
life, when he was known as Neptune. Angelucci wrote two books on his experiences
and became a prominent figure on the contactee circuit. With the passing of the initial
wave of enthusiasm about contactees, Angelucci became little more than a distant
memory of saucerdoms heady early days. His
death in Los Angeles on July 24, 1993, was
little noted.
In his time, however, his claims attracted
the attention of the celebrated psychologist
and philosopher C. G. Jung, who wrote about
them in one of his last books. Jung observed,
The individuation process, the central problem of modern psychology, is plainly depicted
. . . in an unconscious, symbolic form . . . although the author with his somewhat primitive mentality has taken it quite literally as a
concrete happening (Jung, 1959).

The cover of The Secret of the Saucers by Orfeo

Angelucci (Fortean Picture Library)

See Also: Contactees

Further Reading
Angelucci, 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.

Anoah
Anoah, associated with the Melchizedek
Order of the White Brotherhood, consisting
of wise extraterrestrial and spiritual entities,
channeled through Austin, Texas, psychic
medium Jann Weiss in the 1980s. The Planetary Light Association, which at its peak had
some 3,200 members around the world, distributed books and tapes of these channeling
sessions. It also held workshops at which enthusiasts listened to Anoah discuss the transi-

24

Anthon

tion from an old age to a new age of expanded

consciousness and cosmic awareness.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Ached, Fretter, 1963. Melchizedek: Truth Principles.
Phoenix, AZ: Lockhart Research Foundation.
Weiss, Jann, 1986. Reflections by Anoah. Austin, TX:
Planetary Light Association.

Anthon
At the contactee-oriented Rocky Mountain
Conference on UFO Investigation held in
Laramie, Wyoming, in May 1982, Ken
McLean read a statement from a Mr. Watanabe, who claimed to be an extraterrestrial living in a human body. His true name was Anthon, and he was in his third earthly
incarnation. The first was during the Revolutionary War, he said. He was one of 150,000
incarnate beings living on our planet and
observing our activities. These beings telepathically communicated their findings to
space people both on the surface of our planet
and in our upper atmosphere.
According to Anthon, we are now entering
the end of an age that began with Jesus appearance, though Anthon believes Jesus was
not the Son of God but the only human
being to have incarnated through enough lifetimes and enough karmic experiences to transcend death. . . . He is in charge of the transition into a New Age which will occur
sometime in the near future.
Anthon claimed that many incarnate beings do not know their true identity; thus they
have to be awakened to it.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky
Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.
Laramie: School of Extended Studies, University
of Wyoming.

Antron
Driving along a section of highway between
Jacksonville and Callahan, Florida, one August night in 1974, businesswoman Lydia

Stalnaker saw a bright, flashing light just

above some nearby treetops. A suffocating
sensation enfolded her, and she lost consciousness. When she awoke, she was still behind the wheel, but on a different road. Soon
she learned that three hours, for which she
could not account, had passed. Under hypnosis in May 1975, she recalled being taken
into a spacecraft, where aliens told her that
another woman would be placed inside her
body. She saw the woman sitting on the other
side of a table from her. Stalnakers head was
placed inside some kind of mechanical device,
and she passed out. When she revived, a
spaceman told her she was now one of them.
He escorted her out of the ship, and she returned to her car.
Subsequently, Stalnaker claimed, she found
that she had extraordinary psychic gifts that
allowed her to read other peoples minds and
to practice paranormal healing. Before long
Stalnaker was channeling the alien woman,
who called herself Antron. Antron reported
that she was from a star galaxy. She had
come to prepare earthlings for a great cataclysm. We want to take the good people with
us to recolonize elsewhere, she said (Beckley,
1989).
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Beckley, 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 UFO
Abductees. New York: Walker and Company.

Anunnaki
Ancient-astronaut theorist Zecharia Sitchin,
author of a series of books under the rubric
The Earth Chronicles, argues that a race of humanlike beings, the Anunnaki, live on the
planet Nibiru (also known as Maldek), the alleged twelfth planet of our solar system.
Though unknown to astronomers, Nibiru, on
an elliptical orbit, circles our sun every 3,600
years. According to Sitchin, Nibiru will be in
our immediate planetary space in the near fu-

Apol, Mr.

ture and will be detected between Mars and

Jupiter. When that happens, the Anunnaki
will make their presence known by appearing
on Earth.
Sitchins ideas are based on his reading of
ancient Sumerian documents. In his view
they confirm that the Anunnakia Sumerian termcreated humans in their image,
via genetic engineering with the DNA of native anthropoids, after their arrival some
four-hundred thousand five-hundred years
ago. These original earthlings were created so
that they could work as slaves in the Anunnakis terrestrial gold mines; the extraterrestrials needed the gold to preserve the atmosphere of their home world. Many thousands
of years later, they returned to give the
Sumerians and Egyptians their respective
civilizations and actually lived among these
people for a thousand years. One visitor
from Nibiru, Enki, reportedly saved the
human race. When a hostile alien, Enlil,
tried to keep the Anunnaki from warning
humans that the passing near Earth of
Nibiru would cause an immense tidal wave,
which would sweep over Earth and destroy
its inhabitants, Enki resisted. He told Noah,
of biblical fame, about the coming deluge,
and Noah set to work on his ark, thus ensuring the survival of earthly life.
The Anunnaki supposedly live a very long
time because one year to them is the number
of earthly years it takes their planet to go
around the sun. Their technology is so advanced that they developed space flight half a
million years ago. They are also able to revive
the dead.
One critic has written, Clearly, Sitchin is a
smart man. He weaves a complicated tale
from the bits and pieces of evidence that survive from ancient Sumeria to the present day.
Just as clearly, Sitchin is capable of academic
transgressions (fracturing quotes, ignoring
dissenting facts) . . . and flights of intellectual
fancy. . . . Worst of all, he is almost utterly innocent of astronomy and other assorted fields
of modern science (Hafernik, 1996).
See Also: Greater Nibiruan Council

25

Further Reading
Hafernik, Rob, 1996. Sitchins 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 idor/8148/zchron.html
Sitchin, Zecharia, 1976. The Twelfth Planet. New
York: Stein and Day.
, 1980. The Stairway to Heaven. New York:
St. Martins Press.
, 1985. The Wars of Gods and Men. New
York: Avon Books.

Apol, Mr.
In the mid to late 1960s, while researching
material for a series of books, occult journalist John A. Keel allegedly received a series of phone calls from Mr. Apol, a badly
confused, interdimensional entity. Apol did
not know where he was in time, often confusing past and future, and traveling
through both involuntarily. According to
Keel, he and all his fellow entities . . .
[played] out their little games because they
were programmed to do so (Keel, 1975).
In the fashion of psychic vampires, they
lived off the energies of contactees and
other experients of the paranormal. Keel believed Apol to be an ultraterrestrial as opposed to an extraterrestrial, because in
Keels view such entities come from other
realities rather than other planets.
Though Keel did not meet Apol himself, a
Long Island woman saw him pull up to her
house in a black Cadillac, a vehicle favored by
the enigmatic men in black, earthly agents for
unearthly intelligences. Keel reported that the
woman thought Apol looked Hawaiian.
When he introduced himself, he shook her
hand. His own hand was as cold as ice.
Keel dedicated his book Our Haunted Planet
(1971) to Mr. Apol, wherever you are.
See Also: Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Time travelers; Ultraterrestrials
Further Reading
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.

26

Arna and Parz

Arna and Parz

Between 1976 and 1980 a family at Oakenholt in northern Wales underwent a complex
series of extraordinary experiences. Perhaps
the first event involved six-year-old Gaynor
Sunderland, who, while playing in a field one
summer afternoon, spotted a cigar-shaped
craft resting on the ground. She saw a man in
a spacesuit walking in front of the object,
using a gunlike device to burn holes into the
ground. Apparently caught by surprise, the
being stared at her, and Gaynor had the impression that he was probing her mind. An
angry-looking woman appeared alongside
him, and Gaynor felt the same sensation of
mind-intrusion. Hearing noises from within
the craft, the woman returned to the spacecraft, and the young girl took the opportunity
to flee. Many other bizarre UFO incidents involving all five Sunderland children as well as
their parents took place subsequently.
In February 1979 Gaynor glimpsed two
smiling beings who had appeared in some
nearby bushes and then vanished when she
turned away. On June 24 she encountered the
same alien couple in a sort of out-of-body experience. Lying in bed at 11 P.M., she saw the
ceiling open into a tunnel, sucking her in toward a distant light. Once she reached the end
of the journey, the couplenow accompanied
by a small boygreeted her. The woman was
named Arna, the man Parz. They gave her a
tour of their world, showing her a stream as
well as some vegetation unlike anything on
Earth. Their manner was courteous but not
particularly warm. When Arna touched
Gaynors hand, the visitor witnessed a great
city 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 via
telepathy and promised another meeting.
Gaynor returned to the tunnel and ended up
in her bed.
A few weeks later, in August, Arna reappeared to display images of a destroyed Earth.
She asked Gaynor for her assistance in directing an energy being back to its proper residence. Gaynor, her brother Darren, and her

parents walked to a field and meditated until

they sensed that the intruder was gone.
On the night of September 14, Arna and
Parz appeared and took Gaynor into their
spacecraft. Besides the couple she knew, there
were three others. One looked so close to
being purely human that Gaynor wondered if
the young woman, who looked to be about
nineteen years of age, was some kind of hybrid. Gaynor noticed a picture on the wall of
a male being like Parz, only older. He was
standing by a globe of a planet that clearly was
not Earth. The ship flew into space. Half an
hour later Arna and Parz told her that it had
reached its destination, which turned out to
be a kind of zoo full of bizarre creatures, all of
them in twos. The animals were not in cages
and had a great deal of space in which to wander. Finally, the sights were too unsettling for
Gaynor, and her hosts permitted her to return
to the ship. Before they parted, however,
Gaynor learned that Arna and Parz were
about 3500 of your years old (Randles and
Whetnall, 1981).
Gaynor sensed somehow that she had not
really been in space. What she had experienced were vivid mental images that the aliens
had beamed into her brain. At the same time,
she was certain that she had not dreamed any
of this; it was much too real and had none of
the distinguishing characteristics of dreams.
See Also: Hybrid beings
Further Reading
Randles, Jenny, and Paul Whetnall, 1981. Alien Con tact: Window on Another World. London: Neville
Spearman.

Artemis
Artemis hails from the planet Miranda, located in an uncharted region of the Milky
Way galaxy. He and the thirteen thousand beings on his team orbit Earth in a giant space
platform, focusing their attention on most of
the North American continent. Other spaceships from other places attend to the rest of
Earth. Artemis, who channeled through Anthony and Lynn Volpe in 1981, said that he

Ashtar

seeks to raise humanitys collective vibration.

Coming cataclysms will radically alter the
population and surface of the planet. Certain
chosen earthlings who are advanced spiritually
will be taken up just before the disasters. Others will be left on the surface for a time as they
help suffering Earth people. Eventually, spiritually unenlightened but otherwise harmless
persons will be taken up and resettled on uninhabited planets, while the truly evil will be
left on Earth. Most, though not all, will perish. All of this, Artemis said in 1981, will happen sooner than most people think (Beckley, 1989).
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO
Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ:
Inner Light Publications.

Ascended Masters
Ascended Masters are human beings who
achieved pure spiritual enlightenment before
their deaths. Along with that enlightenment,
they attained mystical powers that set them
apart from their fellows. When their physical
bodies died (ascended), they continued to
oversee the affairs of humanity. They channel
wisdom to those who will listen to them.
One source observes, It is important for
students and people to come to realize that all
Ascended Beings are Real, Tangible Beings.
Their Bodies are not physical but They can
make them as tangible as our physical bodies
are (Ascended Masters). The Great White
Brotherhood, a spiritual council that exists in
the supernatural realm, consists of Ascended
Masters.
Further Reading
Ascended Masters. http://www.ascension-research.
org/masters.html.

Ashtar
Ashtar is among the most popular and most
powerfully positioned of all channeling entities. As (according to most contactees who
have dealings with him) head of the Ashtar
Command he is, in the words of his sponsor

27

Lord Michael, Supreme Director in charge of

all of the Spiritual program for Earth. From
his giant starship in Earths general vicinity he
gives orders to millions of extraterrestrial and
inter-dimensional beings who are trying to reform and enlighten earthlings. His home is in
the etheric realm, which means that to visit
our physical universe he must descend the vibratory scale, or we would not be able to hear
or perceive him at all. He explains his mission
thus:
We have come to fulfill the destiny of this
planet, which is to experience a short period of
cleansing and then to usher in a NEW
GOLDEN AGE OF LIGHT. We are here to lift
off the surface, . . . during this period of cleansing, those souls who are walking in the Light on
the Earth. . . . The souls of Light are you people
of Earth who have lived according to universal
truths and have put the concerns of others before your own. . . . The short period of cleansing the planet is IMMINENTEVEN THE
MIDNIGHT HOUR! (Tuella, 1989).
Officially, Ashtar came into the world on
July 18, 1952, when George W. Van Tassel, an
early and influential contactee from southern
California, took a telepathic message from
Portla, 712th projection, 16th wave, realms
of Schare (pronounced Share-ee). Portla pronounced, Approaching your solar system is a
ventla [spaceship] with our chief aboard, commander of the station Schare in charge of the
first four sectors. . . . We are waiting here at
72,000 miles above you to welcome our chief,
who will be entering this solar system for the
first time. Soon the chief spoke, introducing
himself withAshtar, commandant quadra
sector, patrol section Schare, all projections,
all waves. He addressed an emerging concern
among occultists of the period: that the hydrogen bomb, then in development, would
set off a chain reaction that would destroy the
planet. Ashtar warned that if scientists did not
stop their work on the device immediately,
we shall eliminate all projects connected with
such (Van Tassel, 1952).
Though Van Tassel would claim contacts
with many other curiously named other-

28

Ashtar

worldly entities, only Ashtar would make a

wider mark in the contactee subculture. Before
long other channelers were receiving material
from Ashtar as well as his associates, such as
Sananda (Jesus), Korton, Soltec, Athena,
Monka, and others. So many Ashtar channelings occurred that soon Ashtar was warning
some communicants that evil astral entities
were impersonating him. He was also forced to
deny allegations that he was some form of
giant mechanical brain (Constable, 1958). In
the 1970s and beyond, as fundamental Christians began writing books on UFOs, Ashtar
was represented as a servant of Satan.
Though to nearly all who experienced him,
Ashtar existed only as a disembodied voice, a
very few claimed to have seen him. One
woman, Adele Darrah, even alleged that she
saw him before she had ever heard of an
Ashtar. One night in the early 1960s, after she
had gone to bed, Darrah found herself suddenly awake and in her downstairs living
room, where a striking-looking stranger stood
in front of the fireplace. He was tall, slim, and
erect and was wearing a uniform with a high
collar. His eyebrows were slim and delicate,
the nose was thin, the mouth was rather
straight, the lips thin, she reported. His eyes
were brilliant and penetrating, almondshaped with a slight oriental appearance.
When she introduced herself, he smiled and
indicated that he already knew her name.
Then he squared his shoulders and announced, I am Ashtar. Everything that followed faded from her memory, and only a few
years later, Darrah claimed, would she learn
that others knew such an entity.
Typically, however, contactees and channelers report seeing Ashtar in psychic perception or in out-of-body journeys to his starship. Perhaps not surprisingly, descriptions
vary, some calling him dark, others fair, some
estimating his height at less than six feet, others at more than seven.
In the 1980s and 1990s, more and more of
the messages from Ashtar and his associates
focused on the Ascension, the removal of
Lightworkersthose doing the Commands

work on Earth, many if not all of them extraterrestrials in earlier incarnationsfrom

Earth just prior to the Cleansing (the natural
and other catastrophes that will afflict Earth,
killing millions, before the space people land).
The failure of either the Ascension or the
Cleansing to take place discouraged many followers. In a channeling in the 1990s, Ashtar
explained that, in fact, the Lightworkers had
effected huge changes, which, though now invisible, will become apparent in due course.
In the meantime, according to Ashtar associate Soltec, the human race will continue to be
educated subtly through dreams, popular culture, and growing numbers of spacecraft
sightings. Unfortunately, there will be many
ones who will confuse us with negative ET
encounters. Indeed, the greys will take advantage of the opportunity to confuse the populace and attempt to tarnish our image. Ones
must be made aware of the distinction between the ships of Light and the ships of abduction (Soltec, n.d.).
In 2000, Brianna Wettlaufer of Van Tassels
organization, the Ministry of Universal Wisdom (Van Tassel himself died in 1978), put
out a statement that sought to separate Ashtar
from the Ashtar Command. Van Tassel, it was
said, communicated only with Ashtar; the
Ashtar Command, on the other hand, was a
concept promulgated by another early contactee, Robert Short. He and Van Tassel had
been friends but parted company when Short
decided to make Ashtars communications
commercial and mainstream, in order for
personal notoriety, not for a truth to the public. Wettlaufer insisted that Ashtar is not a
metaphysical philosopher or rambler and
moreover, he cannot be reached via channeling (though Van Tassels own method of communication seemed indistinguishable from
channeling to most observers). The statement
goes on, The Ashtar of Ashtar Command is a
real personality . . . a clone of the original
Ashtar, and is dangerous . . . a disobedient
angel (Wettlaufer, 2000).
The name Ashtar may owe its inspiration
to a nineteenth-century work, Oahspe, the

Asmitor

product of alleged angelic dictation to New

York occultist John Ballou Newbrough. In
this complex alternative history of Earth and
the universe, ashars are guardian angels who
sail the cosmos in etheric ships. Oahspe had a
wide readership among devotees of the early
contactee movement.
See Also: Athena; Contactees; Korton; Monka;
Portla; Sananda; Van Tassel, George W.
Further Reading
Alnor, 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 Age
Publishing Company.
King, Beti, 1976. Diary from Outer Space. Mojave,
CA: self-published.
, 1976. A Psychics True Story. Mojave, CA:
self-published.
Soltec, n.d. Ashtar Command and Popular Culture.
http://www.eagleswings.com/au/soltec1.html
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 Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.
Wettlaufer, Brianna, 2000. A Brief Background between Ashtar and Ashtar Command. http://www.
georgevantassel.com/Pages/005.1ashtar.html

Asmitor
In Revelation: The Divine Fire (1973) Brad
Steiger reports a story related to him by
Robert Shell of Roanoke, Virginia, concerning a malevolent entity that attached itself to a
young man experimenting with psychedelic
drugs. The being called itself Asmitor even
as it explained that this was not precisely its
name, but the closest approximation that the
human voice could manage to pronounce.
Shell said that he met Mark while both
were living in an apartment building in Richmond, Virginia, in 1969. Shell and a friend
were pursuing an interest in ritual magic.
Mark, then eighteen years old, expressed no
interest in such things; his interests were in
electronics and occasional use of hallucinogens. Thus, Shell was surprised and skeptical

29

when Mark began speaking of contact he was

beginning to experience with what he called
an entity that gave him certain things in exchange for periodic occupation of his physical
body. Around this time Shell and his wife observed poltergeistlike manifestations in their
apartment.
These experiences led Shell to be more
open-minded about Marks claims. Mark confided that the entity was a multidimensional
energy being. It extended across the entire
universe, though by force of will it could
focus on a particular place for purposes of
communication. It never explained why it
sought such contacts, but Mark came to sense
that it had a deep interestagain for reasons
it would not clearly divulgein this level of
reality. As time went by, Mark came to see the
entity, now calling itself Asmitor, as evil and
deceitful. It also would not let him alone and
more or less possessed him.
Before that happened, however, Shell accepted Marks endorsement of Asmitors essentially benign intentions and asked for a
personal contact. One night he underwent a
frightening experience in which he awoke
with a crushing sensation on his chest, which
he interpreted as a visitation from Asmitor,
though the sensations he describes are classic
characteristics of sleep paralysis. The next day
Mark, passing on Asmitors words, told Shell
that Asmitor had found himShellunfit
for contact.
Asmitor claimed to be in conflict with another entity, with the climactic battle imminent. The other entity was just as malevolent
as Asmitor, but the two were deadly enemies,
their conflict having been set up, for inscrutable reasons, by a higher ruling force.
Mark was to create a landmarka specific,
easily accessible point for it to hold onto
consisting of a pentagram with symbols
drawn around it.
Though Asmitor had promised Mark complete physical protection, the young man
learned otherwise when he was arrested for
possession of LSD and marijuana and sentenced to jail. After serving three months, he

30

Athena

was released. By this time Shell had moved to

another city and out of direct contact with
Mark, though the two exchanged some letters
and talked on the phone on occasion. Mark
expressed growing desperation about his
plight. He was certain now that he could escape Asmitors grip only by destroying himself. Thus, Shell said, It came as a shock, but
not really a surprise, to hear from a mutual
friend . . . that on April 1, 1970, Mark had
committed suicide.
Shell noted that not long afterward, while
perusing a book of medieval magic, he came
upon the name Asmitor, though he could not
tell Steiger exactly where. I am convinced
that Mark had never read this book, he remarked, and I am also convinced that Mark
did not simply make up this name. Steiger,
on the other hand, suspected that the tragic
episode came out of paranoid schizophrenia,
or some other illness.
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Athena
In Project Alert, a self-published monograph,
an Indiana contactee known as Tuieta provides
a transcript of a three-day conference held at
the Tectonic base that is on planet Earth.
The gathering brought together specific commanders . . . under the immediate supervision,
guidance, and counsel of Commander Ashtar. Among the speakers, who included such
familiar figures in the Ashtar Command as
Korton, Monka, and Soltec, was the heretofore obscure Commander Athena. Athena
spoke of the role of Earth women in the coming period of great tribulation. During this
crisis many people would not survive. The
woman most likely to get through the catastrophic Earth changes, according to Athena,
was one who recognized the importance of
providing for loved ones and providing for
those that need nurturing and counsel.
Athena is described as a small, reddish-goldhaired, beautiful woman with deep blue eyes.

Maren Jensen as space commander Athena in the 1978

1979 ABC TV series Battlestar Galactica (Photofest)

She exudes great love and great compassion

and tremendous strength. Her name, coincidentally or otherwise, is the same as that of the
Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, and warfare. Athena was also the name of a space commander in the television series Battlestar Galac tica, which aired on ABC in 1978 and 1979.
According to the late Thelma B. Turrell
(who was also known as Tuella, a name given
her by the Ashtar Command), Athena is the
twin flame of Ashtar. He has said to me that
he could turn over the whole command to her
and no one would even miss him (Beckley,
1989).
See Also: Ashtar; Contactees; Korton; Monka
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO
Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ:
Inner Light Publications.
Tuieta, 1986. Project Alert. Fort Wayne, IN: Portals
of Light.

Atlantis 31

Atlantis
Atlantis, the fabled lost continent, almost certainly never existed in the real world, but it has
long captured the imaginations of human beings. A vast literaturescholars estimate conservatively that more than two thousand books
address the subjecthas tackled Atlantis from
a wide range of perspectives. Some writers
have sought to establish, with what most
scholars hold to be inconclusive results, that
the legend arose from the mythologizing of a
real event, though almost every theorist has
proposed a different one. Most writing, however, has taken an alternative-history approach,
paying little heed to mainstream archaeology,
history, and science, while taking Atlantis into
the 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 in
his earlier work The Republic, Plato wrote
these works as dialogues among four wise
men, including Platos teacher Socrates. In the
course of a long discourse on philosophical issues of various kinds, Critias, a historian and

Platos great-grandfather, tells of a story that

he ascribes to his grandfather, who heard it
from his father. Around 600 B.C., while traveling in Europe, Solon (a historical figure remembered for his legal and poetic genius)
learned of a great civilization that existed nine
thousand years earlier. It was located in the
Atlantic Ocean beyond the Pillars of Hercules
(the present-day Straits of Gibraltar) on an island larger than North Africa and Asia combined. According to Solons informant, an
Egyptian priest, Atlantis had grown arrogant
and warlike. It ruled many other islands and
parts of what is now Europe. But when it attacked Athens and other Greek city-states,
those communities joined forces to repel the
invaders and drive them back to Atlantis, freeing other islands from Atlantiss tyranny in the
process. But when the battle was brought to
Atlantiss own shores, cataclysmic earthquakes
and floods destroyed the island continent over
a single night and day. The Greek soldiers
died along with the Atlanteans, and Atlantis
sank to the bottom of the ocean, to rise no
more.

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

32

Atlantis

That is not all the dialogues have to say,

however. Most of the discussion, much of it
intricately detailed, describes a civilization
that was nearly perfect before pride corrupted
it. Atlantis is supposed to be the place of
model governance. In its prime it operated by
the principles set forth in The Republic.
No other ancient document contains an independent treatment of Atlantis. All references to the lost continent cite Plato as the
source. Some accept Platos account as historical, while others see it as an allegory never
meant to be taken literally. Platos own student Aristotle took the latter view.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as European explorers found their way
to the Americas, several writers, most prominently Sir Francis Bacon (15511626), revived the myth of Atlantis and theorized that
its remains could be found in the New World.
That would be only the beginning of a new
round of speculation. At one time or another, a modern chronicler of the legend observes, Atlantis has been located in the Arctic,
Nigeria, the Caucasus, the Crimea, North
Africa, the Sahara, Malta, Spain, central
France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the North
Sea, the Bahamas, and various other locations
in North and South America (Ellis, 1998).
Among the most influential books ever
written on the subject, Atlantis: The Antedilu vian World (1882) was the creation of a former Minnesota congressman named Ignatius
Donnelly (18311901). Donnelly surveyed
what he presented as evidence from such disciplines as archaeology, geology, biology, linguistics, history, and folklore to argue vigorously for the proposition that Atlantis not
only existed but was the place where human
beings became civilized. Atlantis sent its people all over the world and seeded the earth.
The great gods and goddesses of the ancient
world were based on the leaders and heroes of
Atlantis; worldwide legends of a mighty deluge owe their origins to dim memories of the
catastrophe that overwhelmed Atlantis. The
historical civilization influenced most directly
by Atlantis was ancient Egypt.

These revelations sparked international

interest, and Donnellys book went through
many printings. For a time even some reputable scientists were willing to consider the
possibility that the legend was true, after all.
Indeed, Donnelly was elected to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Before long, however, as critics exposed
the books errors, exaggerations, and assorted
scholarly shortcomings, belief in Atlantis
moved to the occult fringes, to be championed by the likes of Theosophy founder Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and other philosophers of the esoteric. Before the end of the
nineteenth century, a growing body of occult
literature attested that Atlantis was advanced, not just by the standards of their
time, but by modern times as well; it possessed a super science that, among other
marvelous accomplishments, had invented
airplanes and television.
The Scottish folklorist and occultist Lewis
Spence, who took a relatively more conservative approach, wrote five books on Atlantis
between 1924 and 1943, citing Donnelly and
his methodology as his principal inspiration.
Bowing to the consensus view of historians
and archaeologists, who held that human beings were living in caves nine thousand years
before Platos time, Spence held that Atlantis
had existed nine hundred years before Plato.
Meanwhile, allegations, rumors, and outright
hoaxes of archaeological discoveries of Atlantean artifacts filled the popular press and
kept the mystery alive.
The much-circulated channelings of Edgar
Cayce (18771945), called the sleeping
prophet because of the state of consciousness
in which he vocalized his psychic readings,
often concerned Atlantis. Many who came to
him for psychic guidance learned that they had
been Atlanteans in previous lives. In Cayces
comprehensive re-envisioning of the lost continent, Atlantis was essentially where Plato had
placed it: between the Gulf of Mexico and the
Mediterranean. Unlike Platos, Cayces Atlantis
was as advanced as mid-twentieth-century
America, and in a number of ways more ad-

Atlantis

vanced. The Atlanteans, according to Cayce, at

first were spiritual beings. They eventually
evolved into flesh-and-blood ones. Their society came undone when civil war erupted. A
combination of natural disasters and the misuse of Atlantean technology caused the continent to break apart and sink under the ocean
waters. But by the late 1960s, Cayce predicted,
the western part of Atlantis would reemerge in
the vicinity of Bimini, in the Bahamas. When
the time came, more than two decades after
Cayces death, several expeditions searched for
Atlantean ruins in the area, at one point trumpeting what proved to be natural undersea
rock formations as roadways and architectural
artifacts.
Atlantis has been thoroughly absorbed
into fringe belief, theory, and practice. In the
age of flying saucers, some writers tied UFOs
to an extraterrestrial technology that the Atlanteans knew because of their frequent interactions with friendly space people. Hollowearth enthusiasts believed that Atlantean
machinery and even Atlanteans themselves
could be found inside certain cavern entrances around the world. New Age channelers communicated with hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of disembodied Atlanteans. A
century of occult lore holds that Atlanteans
and Lemurians (from Lemuria, the Pacific
equivalent of Atlantis) maintain colonies inside Mount Shasta on the California-Oregon
border.
With the rise of the Internet, web sites devoted to Atlantis and related materials have
proliferated. One such site, run by the
Hawaii-based Department of Interplanetary
Affairs, provides a densely detailed overview
of the Atlantis myth as it had evolved by the
end of the twentieth century. In this version,
Atlantis was literally a golden civilization in
which gold was so plentiful that it was as
common as steel is today in construction and
infrastructure. The Atlanteans traveled
around the globe in fantastic flying ships.
These same ships took them to other planets,
including Mars, where they left evidence of
their presence in a gigantic structure (the

33

Mars face) and a number of pyramids on

the Martian surface. The moon was also a
colony of Atlantis. Modern-day astronauts
found ruins of walls and roads there but were
silenced by a government determined to keep
the truth about Atlantis from the public.
The Department of Interplanetary Affairs
describes Atlanteans as living lives of leisure
and prosperity, while a national work force of
robots, androids, and humanoids from genetic engineering did the empires heavy lifting. Atlantean science then fostered some
bizarre genetic creationsthey discovered
ways to cross-breed species to create mermaids
and mermen, Cyclops, unicorns and other
creatures. That same genetic engineering
gave Atlanteans huge size and great strength.
It all came crashing down, in both a literal
and figurative sense, when the population
surrendered itself to the pursuit of hedonistic
pleasures; in the meantime, evil Atlantean
scientists cracked the secret of mind control
and tried to dominate the world and even the
solar system. In due course the abuse of both
psychic and material technology led to the
geophysical cataclysms that destroyed the
continent.
But that was not all. According to the Department of Interplanetary Affairs, Atlantiss
problems generated a world war that spread
into space. Atomic blasts decimated the moon
colony. Antimatter rays vaporized nearly all of
Atlantiss buildings and cities. It is said, the
department reports, that one of these antimatter rays is still operating in the Bermuda
Triangle and has been causing planes and
ships to disappear. Today that ray is out of
control (Omar, 1996).
For all the allure of the Atlantis legend,
nothing of substance has come to light in the
nearly twenty-five centuries that separate us
from Platos account to lead reasonable people
to conclude that such a lost continent ever
graced the Atlantic Ocean. In Imagining At lantis (1998) Richard Ellis writes, Platos description of Atlantis was of a rich and powerful society that was swallowed up by the sea in
a great cataclysm, and every remnant of it de-

34

Aura Rhanes

stroyed. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, it has

managed to survive for more than two millennia. But unlike Homers epic poems, Platos
talerarely considered an important part of
his voluminous outputhas not only survived as a demonstration of the storytellers
art, but also has become a part of our own
mythology.
See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Channelings; Hollow
earth; Lemuria; Mount Shasta; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Cayce, 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 Antediluvian
World. 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/historygold.htm
Spence, Lewis, 1924. The P roblem of Atlantis. London: Rider.
Steiner, Rudolf, 1968. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of
Earth and Man. West Nyack, NY: Paperback Li brary.

Aura Rhanes
Heavy-equipment operator Truman Bethurum encountered the beautiful Aura Rhanes,
captain of a scow (spaceship) from the idyllic planet Clarion, on the other side of the
moon, in the early morning hours of July 28,
1952, in the Nevada desert. When male crew
members ushered him inside the craft, parked
in an area known locally as Mormon Mesa,
Bethurum saw Aura Rhanes for the first time.
She was small, had an olive complexion, and
wore a black and red beret. The two engaged
in an extended conversation, during which
they asked each other about their respective
worlds. The spacewoman spoke, Bethurum
would write, in a swinging, rhythmic tone of
voice (Bethurum, 1954). When daylight
came, Bethurum was asked to leave, but they
were to meet again. There were eleven meetings between July and November alone. Only
on the occasion of the third meeting, on Au-

gust 18, did she reveal her name. Once he

spotted her walking down a street in Las
Vegas, but she refused to speak with him, apparently not wanting to be recognized.
Bethurum participated actively in the
1950s contact movement. Most outside observers believed him to be a hoaxer. His wife,
Mary, apparently felt otherwise. She divorced
him in 1956 on the grounds that he was having sexual relations with Aura Rhanes. As with
many other contactees from that period, it is
impossible to judge just what Bethurum believed or did not believe about his reported interactions with extraterrestrials. A privately
kept scrapbook published after his death carried a poem titled Third Visit to Mormon
Mesa Aug 18 1952 commemorating the
meeting in which Aura Rhanes let him touch
her to convince him of her physical reality.
Other items in the scrapbook consist of clippings about himself and of materials lending
support to his story. Though a skeptic of contact claims, British writer Hilary Evans remarks that we still have no yardstick whereby
we can separate contactees into genuine and
fake, and until we can establish some such
criteria, we must provisionally extend the benefit of the doubt even to poor old Truman
Bethurum and cute little Aura Rhanes from
the far side of the Sun (Evans, 1987).
See Also: Bethurum, Truman; Contactees
Further Reading
Bethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer.
Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.
, 1982. Personal Scrapbook. Scotia, NY: Arcturus Book Service.
Evans, Hilary, 1987. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians.
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:
Aquarian Press.

Aurora Martian
An article in the April 19, 1897, edition of the
Dallas Morning News told an extraordinary
story in a very few words. Datelined Aurora,
forty-five miles northwest of Dallas, it related
that a mysterious airship had crashed into a
local windmill at 6 A.M. two days earlier. On
colliding, it went to pieces with a terrific ex-

Ausso 35

plosion, scattering debris over several acres of

ground, wrecking the windmill and tower and
destroying [windmill owner Judge J. S. Proctors] flower garden, correspondent S. E.
Haydon wrote. Haydon went on to report
that citizens who rushed to the scene found
the body of a badly disfigured being whom
one observer identified as a Martian. The
story concluded with the news that the funeral would occur the next day.
The story appeared in the midst of a wave
of what today would be called UFO sightings,
which had begun in northern California in
November 1896 and moved eastward by the
following spring, when newspapers all over
America were full of strange and often fanciful
stories. The Morning News carried no followup, suggesting it did not take the tale seriously
enough to dispatch one of its own reporters to
the site. In any event, it wasnt the only wild
airship yarn the paper was carrying. The day
before it printed the Aurora story, it recounted
a Kaufman County sighting of a Chinese flying dragon. . . . The legs were the propellers.
At Farmersville, the paper stated, the occupants of an airship sang Nearer My God to
Thee and distributed temperance tracts.
The episode of the Aurora Martian was forgotten until the 1960s, when public fascination with UFOs led to research into the phenomenons early history. In 1966 a Houston
Post writer revived the Aurora story, which he
apparently took at face value. Investigators
went to the tiny town and spoke with elderly
residents. Most, if they remembered the
episode at all, dismissed it as a joke. One said
that Haydon had concocted the tale to draw
attention to the town, which in the 1890s was
suffering a serious decline in its fortunes.
Still, rumors persisted that a grave in the
Aurora cemetery housed an unknown occupant, perhaps the Martian. As late as 1973,
ufologist Hayden Hewes was trying to persuade local people to let him exhume the
grave, a notion that Auroras residents vehemently rejected. Confusing matters further,
two elderly residents were now claiming that
they had known persons who saw the wreck-

age. Analysis of metal samples allegedly of the

airship, however, proved it was an aluminum
alloy of fairly recent vintage.
There is no reason to believe that a Martian
died in Aurora, Texas, late in the nineteenth
century. Still, the legend inspired the 1985
film Aurora Encounter, a low-budget ET set in
the Old West, and it remains one of Texass
more exotic folktales.
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Browns Martians;
Dead extraterrestrials; Dentonss Martians and
Venusians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga; Martian
bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Mullers Martians; Shaws Martians; Smeads Martians;
Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Chariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas Airship
Mystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing.
Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The G reat Airship Mystery: A
UFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company.
Masquelette, Frank, 1966. Claims Made of UFO
Evidence. 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 in
the West. Magonia 43 (July): 311.

Ausso
Ausso is an extraterrestrial allegedly encountered by Wyoming elk hunter E. Carl Higdon, Jr., on October 25, 1974. Five hours
after he called for help, authorities found Higdon inside his pickup in an area inaccessible
to all but four-wheel-drive vehicles. Taken to a
nearby hospital, the shaken and disoriented
Higdon claimed to have encountered a
strange being named Ausso who flew him in a
spaceship to another world where he was
taken to a mushroom-shaped tower. While inside the tower, Higdon saw what looked like
normal human beings, who paid no attention
to him. Ausso explained that he was a
hunter/explorer, and he and his people were
visiting Earth to collect animals for breeding
purposes and for food. Soon Higdon was
flown back to Earth and put back in his truck.
Polygraph tests given Higdon in 1975 and
1976 produced ambiguous results, but psychological inventories suggested that he did

36

Avinash

not suffer from mental illness. Higdon did

not seek to exploit his alleged experience and
soon returned to private life. University of
Wyoming psychologist and ufologist R. Leo
Sprinkle, who investigated the incident,
judged Higdon sincere, even if it had proved
impossible to establish the validity of the
UFO experience (Sprinkle, 1979).
Further Reading
Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.
Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFO
Abductees. New York: Walker and Company.
Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1979. Investigation of the Alleged
UFO Experience of Carl Higdon. In Richard F.
Haines, ed. UFO Phenomena and the Behavioral
Scientist, 225357. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow
Press.

occupied them, the humans would take on

their names. Other members who later came
into the group, now calling itself Extraterrestrial Earth Mission, experienced the same (to
outsiders) bewildering change of names and
identities.
Extraterrestrial Earth Mission became an
international movement. Outside the United
States, it was particularly successful in Australia. The organizations headquarters are
now in Hawaii.
See Also: Walk-ins
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Avinash

Ayala

On March 3, 1986, an extraterrestrial spirit

entered the body of a man identified only as
John. Till then, John, a channeler from Bellevue, Washington, had been communicating
with another entity, Elihu. However, on this
date the space being Avinash took control of
Johns consciousness. Soon thereafter, Avinash
moved to Hawaii with another walk-in (a person under the control of a spirit or other-intelligence that has claimed his or her body), a
woman named Alezsha. In due course, a third
walk-in, Ashtridia, joined them. Avinash,
however, did the channeling, teaching a doctrine that said essentially that conscious could
affect reality; thus, both personal and societal
reality can be altered if one rearranges ones
perceptions.
Overseen by an immense extradimensional
spaceship, the three moved to the popular
New Age community, Sedona, Arizona, where
Avinash met Arthea, and the two became a
couple. They were brought together, they believed, by divine guidance. The walk-in group
expanded to a dozen members in 1987, but as
most members eventually moved away, only
three remained by the end of the year. Those
three, Avinash, Arthea, and Alana, began to
host new occupying entities that would manifest for a time, then depart. While the entities

Ayala is a deva, a divine energy, who claims

to represent the animal kingdom and, beyond that, All That Is. She appeared first
on February 2, 1994, to two Sedona, Arizona, New Age women, both of them channelers. Subsequently, she directed other
devas, including Shiva and Gaia, who communicated psychically on the subject of
human-animal relations.
Ayala made her presence known when two
psychics, Toraya (Carly) Ayres and a woman
identified only as Sarafina, happened to be engaged in a discussion of nature spirits. Suddenly, Sarafina started shivering and breathing
oddly. Then she lapsed into a trance, during
which she voiced animal-like sounds. Soon
Ayala was speaking through her, proposing
that she and the two women work together on
a project. The project required Ayres to be at
her computer at three oclock each afternoon
to write down the messages as they came
forth. When Ayres protested that this was not
a good time for her in terms of her job responsibilities, Ayala insisted that that was the
only time the communication could be effected, owing to the vagaries of planetary vibrations. She said, We will meet you in your
dreamtime, and you will be more aware of
what your role is in the inter-planetary con-

Azelia 37

nection with All That Is. . . . There is an energy that needs to form. We have to contact
all the devas, and it is not always up to us just
which time we can do this.
For the next two days Ayala communicated
with Ayres before relinquishing her spot to
another entity, Shiva, the blood, the muscle,
fur, bone, and spirit of animals. Ayala told
Ayres that animals are evolving spirits just as
human beings are. Once love and trust had
existed between people and animals. Then the
ice ages came, and animals became wild, and
humans began using them for food. Then humans started mistreating animals in all kinds
of other ways, and they also abused nature
generally. Even so, after enduring thousands
of years of cruelty, animals continue to love
humans, whether in this dimension or any
other. Humans and animals will be reconciled during this time of transition, when people are beginning the process that will take
them out of the thirdphysicaldimension
into higher dimensions.
In the meantime, Ayala urged human beings to communicate through meditation
with animal devas. For example, someone
having trouble with ants should visualize the
ant deva and express a polite request, first
stressing reverence for ants and all they do for
the world, then asking the ants to leave the
building. If human beings interact with animals in this fashion, there will be no need for
environment-damaging poisons or needless
slaughter of wild creatures.
See Also: Shiva
Further Reading
Ayres, Toraya, 1997. Messages from the Animal
Kingdom. http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/animal-kingdom-ayres.html

Azelia
Azelia is allegedly the half-extraterrestrial offspring of a Brazilian man and an alien being
with whom he was forced to undergo sexual
intercourse.
Just after returning home from work
around 3 A.M. on June 18, 1979, night

watchman Antonio Carlos Ferreira of Mirasol, Sao Paulo, was startled to see a UFO land
outside his house. Three humanoids entered
and paralyzed him with red lights that emanated from boxes they carried on their
chests. 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, looking at the distant Earth through a porthole.
Approximately twelve different aliens, of two
different but seemingly related types, occupied the same room. One group consisted of
green-skinned humanoids with smooth dark
hair, thin lips and noses, big eyes, and pointed
ears. The others looked somewhat similar except they had brown skin, thick lips, and red,
crinkly hair. All stood four feet tall and were
clad in white uniforms and gloves. A green
being seemed to be in charge.
Ferreira was taken into another room,
which was dimly lit, and made to lie on a
couch. A naked female walked in and approached him as the other beings tried to remove his clothing over the abductees resistance. The woman, about a foot taller than the
others, was essentially human, with a larger
than usual head, thin lips, chocolate skin, and
narrow nose. Her breath was foul. Ferreira inferred that the beings wanted him to engage
in sex with the woman, a notion he found repellent. Only after the humanoids subdued
him with a sharp-smelling chemical were they
able to disrobe him. Even then, he continued
to fight, until one of his arms was placed in a
device and the other numbed with an injection. The beings spread an oily liquid all over
him, and intercourse followed. At the conclusion of the act, oil was spread over him again,
and they removed him from the apparatus
and redressed him.
The beings, who addressed him via telepathy but spoke an incomprehensible language to each other, explained that they had
conducted an experiment. He would father a
male child. At some point, after three unspecified signals had been given, they would re-

38

Azelia

turn to show him his offspring. After giving

him an unpleasant-tasting liquid to quell his
appetite, they took him to the disc that had
brought him to the mother ship and flew him
home. Ferreira suffered from a variety of small
punctures and wounds, and for the next
twenty days he had a burning sensation in his
eyes.
There were other incidents. In one he was
shown the child. In another, on board a UFO,

he saw the child with its mother. On March

30, 1983, one being came to his workplace to
inform himnotwithstanding what they had
told him earlierthat the child was a girl.
Her name was Azelia.
Further Reading
Granchi, Irene, 1984. Abduction at Mirasol. Flying
Saucer Review 30, 1 (October): 1422.
Marsland. Robert, 1983. Two Claimed Abductions
in Brazil. The APRO Bulletin (November): 12.

Back

was speaking through her. For the first year of

their association, Moore feared that Bartholomew was a dramatic delusion. But over time
she became convinced of his wisdom and
prophetic talents. She came to think of him as
the energy vortex or the higher and wiser
level of energy (Moore, 1984).
During the New Age boom of the 1980s,
Bartholomewknown for his gentle, kind
mannerwas something of a channeling superstar; his messages of comfort and self-love
were taken to heart. He addressed a wide range
of subjects, from sex and AIDS to prayer and
ego surrender. Before his popularity waned, he
was the subject of two books by Moore.

In the 1970s, a middle-aged Italian woman,

Germana Grosso, told a Turin newspaper
about her two decades of contact with an
alien race that calls itself Back. She became
aware of its existence twenty years earlier,
when a Tibetan lamas telepathic messages explained to her how she could communicate
with extraterrestrials. Soon the Back were
showing her scenes of themselves and their
lovely home planet, Lioaki. Grosso saw
them as images on a sort of mental television
screen. They also informed her that they have
bases on Earth: under the Atlantic Ocean, in
the Gobi Desert, and in a valley in northern
Italy. Earth is nearing disaster, and the Back
are here not to interfere but to warn those
who will listen.

See Also: Channeling

Further Reading
Moore, Mary-Margaret, 1984. I Come as a Brother: A
Remembrance of Illusions. Taos, NM: High Mesa
Press.
, 1987. From the Heart of a Gentle Brother.
Taos, NM: High Mesa Press.

Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, 1989. Psychic and UFO
Revelations in the Last Days. New Brunswick, NJ:
Inner Light Publications.

Bashar

Bartholomew

After two close encounters with large, triangle-shaped UFOs over the course of one week
in 1973, Californian Darryl Ankathe
brother of singer and composer Paul Anka
began reading UFO literature in search of answers. Through his reading about UFOs, he

The channeling entity Bartholomew first spoke

through Mary-Margaret Moore in the mid1970s. She was visiting friends in Socorro,
New Mexico, and undergoing hypnosis in an
effort to relieve back pain. Suddenly, somebody
39

40

Being of Light

was led to paranormal subjects such as psychic

phenomena, channeling, and spirit communication. In 1983, Anka sat in with a channeler
and spent several months absorbing information from discarnate sources. The entity offered to teach whoever might be interested in
learning how to channel, and Anka decided to
take a course from the channeler. Midway
through the course, Anka first heard from
Bashar, who said he was the pilot of the
spaceship Anka had seen a decade earlier.
Bashar claimed to have come from a planet
where all communication is done through
telepathy. The people there do not have names
as such. He called himself BasharArabic for
commanderfor Ankas convenience.
After a period of telepathic communication
with Bashar, Anka started to channelin
other words, to speak with his (or Bashars)
voice so that others could hear. In due course,
Anka has become an internationally known
channeler who has taken Bashar (as well as another entity, Anima) to a variety of nations on
several continents. Bashar has told Anka that
he and his people live on the planet Essassani,
five hundred light years from Earth but in a
different dimension. Bashar was speaking not
just for himself but collectively expressing his
societys sentiments.
I have no way of proving Bashars existence to anyone, Anka concedes. The most
important thing is that the information, wherever its coming from, had made a difference in
many peoples lives, including my own (Anka,
n.d.). Ankas organization, Interplanetary
Connections, coordinates the channeling efforts and circulates tapes of their recordings.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Anka, Darryl, 1990. Bashar: Blue Print for Change, A
Message for Our Future. Simi Valley, CA: New Solutions Publishing.
A Message from Darryl Anka, n.d. http://www.
bashartapes.com/about/message2.html

Being of Light
In his best-selling Life after Life (1976) Raymond A. Moody writes of near-death experi-

ences in which persons undergo visionary encounters of what seems to be a kind of heavenly realm. In out-of-body states, according to
testimony Moody collected, percipients observe a brilliant light at the end of a tunnellike passage. A telepathic message from the
light asks the observer something like, Are
you prepared to die? or What have you
done with your life? Immediately afterward,
the dying person experiences a life review in
which significant events are rapidly played out
either in order of their occurrence or all at
once in, as Moody puts it, a display of visual
imagery . . . incredibly vivid and real.
The percipient feels great love and warmth
emanating from this being, who is usually interpreted as a divine figure from the individuals own religious tradition. Some see it as
God or Christ, others as an angel. All, however, feel that the being is an emissary, or a
guide.
Moody characterized the meeting with the
being of light as perhaps the most incredible
common element in the accounts. Other researchers who followed in Moodys wake,
however, only ambiguously replicated this
particular finding. Kenneth Ring, Margot
Grey, and others found fewer such encounters
in their own samples of people who had undergone near-death experiences. Many neardeath accounts described the observation of
an overwhelmingly loving, beautiful light surrounding them and suffusing the landscape,
but only a small minority of reports had that
light as a being. A typical expression of the
light was more like one offered by an Englishwoman who encountered it while her heart
stopped as she was anesthetized during dental
surgery: The light is brighter than anything
possible to imagine. There are no words to describe it, its a heavenly light (Grey, 1985).
Frequently, percipients encounter recognizable figures, usually either Christ or deceased
friends and relatives.
Further Reading
Grey, Margot, 1985. Return from Death: An Explo ration of the Near-Death Experience. Boston, MA:
Arkana.

Bermuda Triangle
Moody, Raymond A., Jr., 1976. Life after Life: The
Investigation of a PhenomenonSurvival of Bodily
Death. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books.
Ring, Kenneth, 1980. Life at Death: A Scientific In vestigation of the Near-Death Experience. New
York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan.
Rogo, D. Scott, 1989. The Return from Silence: A
Study of Near-Death Experiences. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian
Press.

Bermuda Triangle
The three points of the Bermuda Triangle are
Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico. In modern
legend, the Triangle is more than an arbitrary
geometric shape; its three points comprise the
boundaries of a passage into a mysterious otherworld. In the Bermuda Triangle, the laws of
nature are suspended, and ships, planes, and
people disappear without a trace.
A key event in the genesis of the legend was
a real-life tragedy off the coast of Florida on

41

December 5, 1945. That afternoon, five

Avenger torpedo bombers flew out of the
Naval Air Station at Fort Lauderdale. Flight
19, consisting of fourteen men (thirteen of
them students in the last stage of training),
headed on an eastern course toward the Bahamas, intending to participate in a practice
bombing at Hens and Chickens Shoals, fiftysix miles away. After completing that part of
the mission, the aircraft were to proceed to
the east for another sixty-seven miles, turn
north for seventy-three miles, then head westsouthwest for the remaining one hundred
twenty miles back to their home base. Heading the missionthe only nonstudentwas
the relatively inexperienced Lt. Charles Taylor, who did not know the area well.
By late afternoon, the planes were lost. Taylor thought they were flying over the Keys off
Floridas south coast, and he made a fatal misjudgment: he flew north. If he and his men
had been over the Keys, of course, they would

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

42

Bermuda Triangle

have arrived over land and to safety. Because

they were over the Bahamas, however, flying
northward only put them over the ocean.
With weather conditions deteriorating rapidly, their radio contact with land, already
sporadic, grew ever more difficult. Meanwhile, amid growing alarm about the planes
situation, a Dumbo flying boata large rescue aircraft built for flight over large bodies of
waterwas dispatched from a seaplane base
in Miami and sent on a blind search. Soon
other planes joined it and flew through the
ever more turbulent weather. One of them, a
Martin Mariner, also disappeared.
None of the missing craft were ever found.
The navys investigation determined that Taylors confusion about his location, coupled
with dangerous air and sea conditions, caused
the planes under his command to run out of
gas, crash, and get chewed up by the immense
waves the storm had summoned. At 7:50 that
evening, a ships crew saw a plane explode. A
search for survivors and bodies was unsuccessful, though the vessel passed through a large
oil slick from the craft. The navy believed that
the Mariner, a notoriously dangerous aircraft
that was sometimes called a flying gas
bomb, had blown up.
If the facts seemed relatively straightforward, the legend that would grow in the wake
of Flight 19s disappearance would be far
more convoluted and fantastic. Flight 19s
transformation from aviation tragedy to paranormal mystery would begin in September
1950, when Associated Press writer E.V.W.
Jones wrote a story about what he called the
limbo of the lost, an area bordered by
Florida, Bermuda, and Puerto Rico, where
strange things happened. None, he wrote, was
stranger than the unexplained fate of five
Avengers and one Mariner on the evening of
December 5, 1945.
Soon books and magazines dealing with
UFOs and other anomalous phenomena
and even mainstream publications such as The
American Legion Magazinewere picking up
the stories, which grew in the telling. The
term Bermuda Triangle was the invention of

longtime Fortean and paranormal writer Vincent H. Gaddis; his article on the subject in
the February 1964 issue of Argosy was titled
The Deadly Bermuda Triangle. The next
year he incorporated it into a popular book,
Invisible Horizons, on true mysteries of the
seas. In Invisible Residents (1970) Ivan T.
Sanderson pointed to the Bermuda Triangle
and comparable places on Earth as evidence
that OINTSOther Intelligenceslive
under the oceans, sometimes snatching
planes, ships, and their unlucky crews.
By the 1970s, the groundwork had been
laid for a popular craze. The 1970 release of a
low-budget documentary, The Devils Triangle,
stirred interest outside the core audience of
paranormal enthusiasts. Four years later,
Charles Berlitzs The Bermuda Triangle, a
compilation of lore that had already quietly
circulated for years, became a major bestseller. That same year two paperbacks, The
Devils Triangle by Richard Winer and Limbo
of the Lost by John Wallace Spencer, fueled
public fascination and speculation. But the
next year, in 1975, Larry Kusches in-depth
inquiry into the incidents that underlay the
legend, The Bermuda Triangle Mystery
Solved, undercut the myth-making by documenting the prosaic explanations that would
have been apparent if the pro-Triangle writers
had done original research and not simply
rewritten each others books. The silence of
the writers whom Kusche criticized effectively
ended the discussion.
See Also: OINTS
Further Reading
Begg, 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: Doubleday and Company.
Eckert, Allan W., 1962. The Mystery of the Lost
Patrol. The American Legion Magazine (April):
1223, 3941.
Gaddis, Vincent H., 1965. Invisible Horizons: True
Mysteries of the Sea. Philadelphia, PA: Chilton
Books.
Kusche, Larry, 1975. The Bermuda Triangle Mys terySolved. New York: Harper and Row, Publishers.

Bethurum, Truman 43
, 1980. The Disappearance of Flight 19. New
York: Harper and Row, Publishers.
Sand, George X., 1952. Sea Mystery at Our Back
Door. Fate 5, 7 (October): 1117.
Sanderson, Ivan T., 1970. Invisible Residents: A Dis quisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and the
Possibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters of
This Earth. New York: World Publishing Company.

Bethurum, Truman (18981969)

Truman Bethurum was one of the stars of the
1950s contactee movement. In a 1953 issue of
Saucers magazine, Bethurum reported that in
the early morning hours of July 28, 1952, he
met eight little men of Latin appearance and
was led to a nearby flying saucer. There he
met the captain, a beautiful woman named
Aura Rhanes from Clarion, a planet never visible to humans because it is always on the
other side of the moon. Clarion, Bethurum
was informed, is a peaceful, utopian world;
fear of nuclear war on Earth had led the Clarionites to visit and observe earthlings at first

UFO contactee Truman Bethurum (Fortean Picture

Library)

Cover of Aboard a Flying Saucer by Truman Bethurum

(Fortean Picture Library)

hand. Bethurum claimed further contacts. In

the mid-1950s, Bethurum established a communelike Sanctuary of Thought in Prescott,
Arizona. He was a regular at the Giant Rock
Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention and
other contactee venues. He remained active
on the circuit until his death in Landers, California, on May 21, 1969.
Two early chroniclers of the contactee subculture found themselves favorably and very
deeply impressed with Mr. Bethurums
unimaginative sincerity (Reeve and Reeve,
1957). Another apparent believer was Mary
Bethurum, his first wife, who divorced him
on the grounds that he was engaged in a sexual relationship with Aura Rhanes. More cynical observers, such as Saucer News editor
James W. Moseley, judged Bethurum to be a
liar, motivated by a desire to enrich himself at
believers expense. Bethurum refused to undergo polygraph examination to verify his
story, and when asked to submit, for scientific
analysis, a letter said to have been composed
by Aura Rhanes, he declined, explaining that
paper on Clarion is made out of just the

44

Bird aliens

same kind of trees we have on earth (Davis,

1957).
See Also: Aura Rhanes; Contactees
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1970. The People of the
Planet Clarion. Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian
Books.
Bethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer.
Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.
, 1953. I Was Inside a Flying Saucer.
Saucers 1, 2: 45.
Davis, Isabel L., 1957. Meet the Extraterrestrial.
Fantastic Universe 8, 5 (November): 3159.
Moseley, James W., 1961. Recent News Stories:
1961 Giant Rock Convention Is Disappointing.
Saucer News 8, 4 (December): 1213.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

Bird aliens
A French businessman who insisted on
anonymity confided a strange tale to ufologist
Lyonel Trigano about a decidedly unsettling
encounter on a rural road in Var one dark,
rainy night in November 1962. As he
rounded a curve, he saw, some fifty to sixty
feet ahead of him, a group of figures standing
close to one another in the middle of the
highway. He slowed down, and as he did so,
the group jerkily broke into two parts.
My window was down, he related, and I
leaned my head out slightly to see what was
the matter; it was then that I saw beasts, some
kind of bizarre animals, with the heads of
birds, and covered in some sort of plumage,
which were hurling themselves from two sides
toward my car.
Shocked and frightened, he quickly rolled
up the window and accelerated. After moving
a few hundred feet to what he thought was a
safe distance, he looked back to see these
nightmarish beings flapping what looked to
be wings and heading toward a glowing, darkblue object hovering over a field on the other
side of the road. The UFO looked like two
upside-down plates placed over each other.
When the creatures or beings reached the
UFO, they were literally sucked into the underpart of the machine as if by a whirlwind.

A dull thudding sound followed, and the

UFO streaked away.
The witness told Trigano that he had said
little to others about the experience for fear of
being thought mad.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind; Mothman
Further Reading
Trigano, Lyonel, 1968. Strange Encounter in Var.
Flying Saucer Review 14, 6 (November/December): 18.

Birminghams ark
A bizarre experience is recorded in a fifteenpage document left by a nineteenth-century
Australian, Frederick William Birmingham,
who lived in Parramatta, New South Wales.
Birmingham was an engineer, surveyor, and
alderman for the city, today a suburb of Sydney. His tale is reminiscent in some ways of
the flying-saucer contactee tales that would
circulate decades later.
The document came into the hands of a
well-known Australian ufologist, Bill Chalker,
in 1975. Investigating its background, he
traced it to a teacher named Haywood, who
lived at the location where Birmingham
(whose existence and occupation Chalker was
able to verify) was dwelling when his encounter occurred. Haywood, apparently, later
gave it to another family, which had had the
manuscript in its possession since at least the
early 1940s and showed it to Chalker. Chalker
could find no evidence that it was a recent literary or historical hoax.
Birmingham wrote that on the evening of
July 25, 1868, I had a wonderful dream, a vision, while standing under the verandah of
the cottage he rented. Looking up into the sky,
he saw the Lord Bishop of Sydneys head in
the air looking intently upon me in a frowning
half laughing mood. As it passed in an easterly direction, it faded out, then reappeared
briefly twice more. I retraced the course the
head had taken and just in the spot where I
first saw the head I saw an Ark, he wrote. As
he stood and studied it, he said aloud to himself, Well, that is a beautiful vessel.

Blowing Cave 45

At that moment he heard a voice to his

right and just a little behind him. It said,
Thats a machine to go through the air. The
speaker was someone Birmingham thought of
as a spirit, looking like a neutral shade and
the shape of a man. The ark was brown in
color with faint, flitting shades of steel
blue . . . like . . . magnified scales on a large
fish. After a while Birmingham replied to
the spirit. He remarked that the ark looked
more like a ship meant for sailing on water;
in any event, he had never seen anything so
beautiful.
He accepted an invitation to board the vehicle. He found himself floating through the
air in the spirits company. When they reached
the upper part of the ark, they entered the
pilot house by walking down three steep
steps. Inside the barely furnished room was a
table situated two feet from the wall. Something like an oilskin covered the table. Birmingham stood at the rear end, and, not far
away, the spirit held papers in its hand. One
paper was covered with figures and formulae. After Birmingham asked if the papers
were for him, the spirit replied slowly and emphatically, It is absolutely necessary that you
should know these things, but you can study
them as you go on.
Birmingham, apparently not knowing
what to say, looked down at his hands. When
he raised his head, the spirit was gone. He
stood alone inside the strange ship. In his
manuscript he recorded this ambiguous conclusion to the encounter: So I fell, I suppose,
into my usual sleeping state, and waking next
morning deeply impressed with that vision of
the night.
The following January, at work on an engineering problem, Birmingham was surprised
to see a formula that he had first seen on the
paper the spirit had shown him. It had to do
with centrifugal pumps.
One day in 1873, at sunset, Birmingham
saw three small clouds suddenly appear. Two
screws extended from one. Between them, a
shape like two flat necks on a turtle-shaped
body came into view, then disappeared, only

to reappear soon afterward. Finally, the two

big . . . screws folded up like the arms of a
bear and lost their shape in the middle cloud
(Chalker, 1996).
The manuscript indicates that Birmingham
had become obsessed with the ark and its secrets. He died in 1893, however, without ever
being able to unlock them.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Chalker, Bill, 1996. The Oz Files: The Australian
UFO Story. Potts Point, New South Wales, Australia: Duffy and Snellgrove.
, 1992. UFOs in Australia and New Zealand
through 1959. In Jerome Clark. The Emergence
of a Phenomenon: UFOs from the Beginning
Through 1959The UFO Encyclopedia, Volume
Two, 333356. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.

Blowing Cave
One of the odder stories related to hollow
earth lore is set in Blowing Cave, near Cushman, Arkansas, where a man named George
D. Wight is said to have found a subterranean
civilization and proven the Shaver Mystery.
Though Wight disappeared, his story survives
in a diary he allegedly wrote.
In the 1950s, Wight was a UFO buff from
Michigan. Wight knew of Richard Shavers
claims, published in the 1940s in the ZiffDavis science-fiction magazines Amazing Sto ries and Fantastic Adventures, that the remnants of two advanced races, tero and dero
(good and evil respectively), lived in vast caverns under Earths surface. Though Wight was
skeptical of these claims, he had an interest in
cave-exploring that he indulged with David
L., for whose mimeographed saucer newsletter Wight contributed a regular column. They
did their spelunking with three other men. All
of them were acquainted with Charles A.
Marcoux, another columnist for the magazine. Unlike the others, Marcoux was an obsessed believer in Shaverian concepts, to the
extent that he gave occasional public lectures
on the subject. The spelunkers sometimes attended those lectures but considered his beliefs absurd.

46

Blowing Cave

In 1966, the group, now consisting of

twelve persons, went down to Arkansas to explore Blowing Cave on a week-long expedition. On their return, members wrote letters
to Ray Palmer, once editor of Amazing Stories
and Shavers principal promoter, claiming that
they had encountered intelligent beings
Shavers terosdeep inside the cavern. Palmer
did not reply. Apparently a few months later,
Wight went back and chose to stay with the
underearth people. He returned in 1967 to
give a written account to David L., who by
this time had left the UFO field and no longer
wanted to be publicly associated with it.
Wight asked L. to pass on the diary to Charles
Marcoux. Wight felt that in ridiculing his beliefs he had wronged him and wanted to provide him with the proof that Shaver was right.
He then returned to his tero friends and has
not been seen since.
David L., however, had long since lost
track of Marcoux, and it was not until thirteen years later that he came upon his name.
He tracked him down and handed him the
manuscript. Its effect on Marcoux was electrifying, and it set in motion the events that
would eventually lead to his premature death.
The manuscript related that while exploring Blowing Cave, the group spotted a light at
the end of a tunnel. As the spelunkers approached it, Wight noticed a narrow crevice,
just big enough for him to squeeze inside it.
There he found clearly artificial steps. He
called to his friends, and they climbed
through the opening. On the other side of it,
the opening expanded, and they were able to
walk upright. Suddenly, Wight wrote, we
came into a large tunnel/corridor, about
twenty feet wide and just as high. All the walls
and the floor were smooth, and the ceiling
had a curved dome shape. We know that this
was not a freak of nature, but manmade. We
had accidentally stumbled into the secret cavern world (Toronto, n.d.).
Soon they encountered blue-skinned but
otherwise humanlike individuals. The strangers
said that they had permitted the crew to find
the tunnel and enter it because they had instru-

ments that measured peoples emotions; the explorers were determined to have good intentions. They learned that the tunnels went on
for hundreds of miles and led to underearth
cities populated by entities that included serpentlike creatures and Sasquatchlike hairy
bipeds. Soon after their initial conversation,
Wight and his companions were taken to a
kind of elevator that led them to the underearthers place of residence, a city made of glass.
It turned out that their guides were Noahs direct descendants, who had found their way underground in the wake of the flood. There they
found supertechnology and the remains of an
advanced civilization, along with teros. Apparently at some point, Wights group met the
teros who had been there all along.
This was not the only trip the group took
to Blowing Cave. Unable to get anybody on
the surface to believe their story, Wight and
his friends vowed to return with conclusive
proof. During one expedition, they captured a
giant cave moth, preserved it in a bag, and
brought it up with them. When they opened
the bag, however, the sunlight disintegrated
the insect into a fine dust.
Not long afterward, Wight decided to stay
with the underearth people. According to one
source, all evidence of [his] ever existing
began to mysteriously disappear from the surface. Birth certificates, school records, computer records, bank records, etc., all seemed to
vanish, apparently the work of someone in a
very influential position (Untitled, n.d.).
Other members of the group made another
trip into the cave, where they saw their friend
for the last time. Wight returned once to the
surface to meet David L.
In 1980, Marcoux saw the manuscript and
read Wights words addressed to him: Yes,
Charles, all that you told us is true. . . . I owe
you a debt of gratitude, because the Teros
healed my crippled leg, instantly. I am grateful
for more than just that, and I have left these
notes and somewhere a map so that you, too,
can . . . visit with these people. . . . Maybe we
will meet here some day (Toronto, n.d.).
Marcoux set about organizing an expedition,

Boys from Topside 47

soliciting members in such small-circulation

hollow-earth publications as Shavertron and
The Hollow Hassle.
Marcoux and his wife moved to Cushman
in 1983. There, in November, as he was visiting the land around the cave, a swarm of bees
descended on him. The resulting shock and
trauma precipitated a heart attack, and he
died on the spot.
Some hollow-earth enthusiasts speculated
that sinister forces that wanted to keep the
caves a secret had caused the attack. Others
saw it as just a tragic accident. In any case,
Marcouxs death ended efforts to explore
Blowing Cave in search of underearthers.

rible event, human beings would come

together as one and fashion a utopian society
on a higher plane of vibrations (Beckley,
1993).
In Bonnies account the Lemurians came to
Earth two hundred thousand years ago from
the planet Aurora. Atlantis (in the Atlantic)
and Lemuria (in the Pacific) fought a war
against each other twenty-five thousand years
ago, but it was a natural catastrophe that
brought Lemuria to the ocean bottom ten
thousand years later. Atlantis was destroyed a
few centuries later when Atlantean scientists
conducted irresponsible experiments with
cosmic, energy-generating fire crystals.

See Also: Hollow earth; Shaver mystery

Further Reading
Toronto, Richard, n.d. The Shaver Mystery. http://
www.parascope.com/nb/articles/shaver/Mystery.
htm.
Untitled, n.d. http://www.rcbbs.com/docs/empire7.
txt.

See Also: Atlantis; Lemuria; Mount Shasta

Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1993. The Smoky God
and Other Inner Earth Mysteries. New Brunswick,
NJ: Inner Light Publications.

Bonnie
In 1977, William Hamilton, a California man
interested in UFOs, met a young, very pretty
blond girl with almond-shaped eyes and perfect small teeth. Bonnie, whom Hamilton
judged sincere and sane, told him she was
born in 1951 in the Lemurian city of Telos,
located inside an artificial domelike cavern a
mile beneath Mount Shasta on Californias
northern border.
Bonnie told him that she, her parents, her
two sisters, and her two cousins move freely
back and forth between our society and their
native city. They also travel to other subterranean Lemurian and Atlantean cities, via a
tube transit train system that travels as fast as
2,500 miles per hour. The Lemurians are also
able to fly into outer space in saucerlike vehicles, and they interact with visiting extraterrestrials. Telos has a population of one and a
half million who live a communal existence
without money. She warned Hamilton that by
the end of the century, Earths axis will shift.
The result will be massive devastation and
huge loss of life. On the other side of this ter-

Boys from Topside

Wilbert B. Smith (19101962), an engineer
who worked for Canadas Department of
Transport (DOT), believed himself to be in
contact with philosophically and scientifically
inclined extraterrestrials. He called them the
Boys from Topside.
It is unclear when these psychic messages
began, but it could have been as early as 1950.
Smith was at first circumspect about them,
though he was willing to acknowledge an interest in UFO investigation. In late 1950, he
secured access to use DOT laboratory and
field facilities during off-hours in an effort to
gather technical data about UFO sightings.
(According to one source, Smith was acting
under the guidance of space people all the
while, though he said nothing about them to
his superiors.) Smith hoped for a breakthrough sufficient to overthrow conventional
technology and put in its place a wholly new
one. He called his work Project Magnet, reflecting his conviction that flying saucers flew
along magnetic fields. In 1952 Smith participated in a small UFO study group put
together by the Canadian governments De-

48

Brodies deros

fense Research Board. The following year,

Smith released Project Magnets findings,
which wereperhaps not surprisinglythat
UFOs performed in ways that are difficult to
reconcile . . . with the capabilities of our technology; thus, we are forced to the conclusion that the vehicles are probably extra-terrestrial (Smith, 1953).
He urged his superiors to set up a monitoring station that would check for UFO activity
over a twenty-four-hour period. They agreed
to the proposal and provided a DOT-owned
hut on Shirleys Bay, some ten miles west of
Ottawa. The installation contained an ionospheric reactor, an electronic sound-measurement device, a gamma-ray detector, a
gravimeter, a magnetometer, and a radio. If a
passing UFO set off any of these, an alarm
would sound. Two government scientists and
two civilian astronomers worked with Smith.
This work was done on their own time, but
the flying saucer observatory garnered much
embarrassing publicity for the Canadian government. It was closed at the end of August
1954. Even so, Smith was privately assured
that he could continue UFO research so long
as it was not at the taxpayers expense; he was
also welcome to use government equipment.
Because of his credentials and his employer,
conservative ufologists who otherwise avoided
persons associated with contact claims welcomed Smith into their ranks, ignoring, as
much as possible, his private assertions about
the Boys from Topside. Through his own and
others psychic contacts, he conversed with extraterrestrials and attempted to learn from
them. In a letter to the prominent (and outspokenly anticontactee) ufologist Donald E.
Keyhoe on December 11, 1955, Smith wrote,
I have learned a great deal, but I am a small
child attempting to assimilate a college
course. Believe me, I have been shown
glimpses of a philosophy and technology almost beyond comprehension.
By now, Smith had largely abandoned
more conventional techniques of UFO investigating, and he was entirely focused on contactees, whom he quizzed intensely and whose

stories he compared before deciding on their

validity. At least some of them, he thought,
were telling the truth. He was gratified that
the space people were patient enough to put
up with his methods. In an article in Englands Flying Saucer Review, after he went
public with his extraterrestrial connections, he
declared, I began for the first time in my life
to realize the basic Oneness of the Universe
and all that is in it (Smith, 1958).
In 1956, Smith formed the contactee-oriented Ottawa Flying Saucer Club. When not
grilling contactees or taking direct messages
himself, he occupied himself with sky watches
in parks and rural areas with like-minded
friends. He lectured and wrote about his beliefs in saucer magazines, and he even spoke
openly with reporters. He died of intestinal
cancer on December 27, 1962.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Beckley, 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
Hes Talked to Them! Ottawa Citizen (April 14).
Flying Saucers Project Denied, 1953. New York
Times (November 14).
Gross, Loren E., 1982. UFOs: A History1950: Au gustDecember. Fremont, CA: self-published.
Nixon, Stuart, 1973. W. B. SmithThe Man behind Project Magnet. UFO Quarterly Review 1,
1 (January/March): 211.
Smith, Wilbert B., 1953. Project Magnet Report. Ottawa, Ontario: Department of Transport.
, 1954. Project Magnet, the Canadian Flying
Saucer Study. Ottawa, Ontario: self-published.
, 1958. The Philosophy of the Saucers. Fly ing Saucer Review 4, 3 (May/June): 1011.

Brodies deros
In the mythology of the Shaver mystery, the
creation of Richard Sharpe Shaver, deros are
cannibalistic, sadistic idiots who live in caves
underneath the earth. As the degenerated descendants of an advanced race of extraterrestrials that thousands of years ago colonized
our planet, they have access to the elders advanced technology. They use it, however, for
destructive and even perverted purposes on

Brodies deros 49

each other and, most of all, on surface humans, whom they sometimes kidnap for torture and other unpleasant purposes. The bulk
of the Shaver mystery material was published,
mostly as true, in two science-fiction magazines, Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adven tures, in the mid- to late 1940s.
Few other people claim to have encountered deros. The late John J. Robinson, a New
Jersey man with a longstanding interest in
UFOs and the paranormal, often told the
story of Steve Brodie, who had his own horrifying, and possibly ultimately fatal, dealings
with the deros.
According to Robinson, in 1944 he was
living on the third floor of a Jersey City
house. Directly beneath him on the second
floor was a reclusive individual, Steve Brodie,
who claimed to be an artist. Over time,
Robinson won his trust, and the two often
spoke. Among Brodies quirks was his aversion to meat; and more unusual, as Robinson
recalled, he seemed to be afraid that someone might be attempting to sneak up behind
him. When he walked on the street, he
walked in the middle of the street, apparently out of fear that someone might jump
out of an alley or a doorway. On several occasions, Robinson watched Brodie paint.
Sometimes the artist would enter a trancelike
state and create weird, otherworldly landscapes that looked nothing like the paintings
he did in ordinary consciousness. Asked
where these images came from, Brodie
replied, I dont know. I feel as if I paint
these pictures from memory. Its like I can
close my eyes and let it.
Once Brodie seemed startled when he saw
Robinson with an issue of Amazing Stories in
his coat pocket. Robinson, who was closely
following the Shaver mystery tales the magazine was running, launched into an explanation of Shavers claims. When he heard the
word dero, Brodie blanched. He writes of
the dero! he exclaimed. Robinson persuaded
Brodie to explain his remark. Reluctantly,
after securing assurances that Robinson would
not ridicule him, he related something that

had happened to him and a friend seven years

before.
The two had gone to a western state in
search of semiprecious stones. Local people
warned them to stay away from a certain
desert mesa because several individuals who
had gone there were never seen again. Disregarding these words of caution, the young
men repaired to the site and spent the next
few days energetically stone-hunting. Finally,
one day, hearing his companion shout, Brodie
looked up to see a figure in a black cowl
standing at the base of the mesa. Another figure joined the first. The first of them pointed
a rodlike device at Brodie, who abruptly felt
himself paralyzed. His friend began to run,
and the other figure pointed a rod at him. To
his horror the smell of burning human flesh
rose up in Brodies nostrils. He never saw his
friend again.
A third figure, holding what looked like
earphones, approached Brodie and then
walked past him. He felt something being
placed just beneath his ears just before he lost
consciousness. At this point in his narrative,
Robinson said, Steve showed me why he
wore his hair long at the back of his head. Behind each ear at the base of the parietal bones
of his skull were bare, seared, scarred patches
of skin upon which no hair could grow. Both
of these areas behind the ears were a little
smaller than the size of a silver dollar and were
perfectly circular. Steve said they were the
marks of a dero slave!
In the ordeal that followed, Brodie was
only intermittently conscious. On three or
four occasions, he awoke to find himself in a
cage with other human beings. They told him
that he was in the caves, and they were
under the control of the deros, who could
snatch any human being off the face of the
earth if they so chose. Each time it became evident that he was conscious, a black-cowled
figure would zap him back into oblivion.
Then one day he found himself walking
down a street in New York City with no idea
how he had gotten there. He was dressed in
his prospecting clothes. His personal items

50

Browns Martians

were still in his pockets, including a hundred

dollars in bills. Though to his awareness only
a day had passed, he soon learned that it was
two years later.
Brodie said that ever since he could not eat
meat. The very scent of it nearly made him ill.
Robinson had observed that Brodie was
not a reader, and he was certain that he had
not concocted a tale from reading the Shaver
series.
Not long afterward, business concerns
forced Robinson to move from his Jersey City
apartment. He fell out of contact with Brodie
for six months. When he came back for a
visit, Brodie was gone. Robinson talked with a
mutual acquaintance who had his own strange
story. He said he had seen Brodie on a train in
Arizona. When he had spoken to Brodie, he
had not responded or even acknowledged his
presence. He seemed to be in a stupor, the
man thought, though Robinson knew Brodie
was not a drinker. The train stopped at a small
town, and when the train resumed its journey,
Brodie was no longer on it. Robinson saw this
as evidence that the deros had reclaimed their
victim.
After relating this anecdote on Long John
Nebels popular radio talk show on New
Yorks WOR one night in March 1957,
Robinson went to work the next day and was
surprised when a business associate confided
his own experience. He said that maybe
Brodies experience explained something that
had happened to him in 1942, when he was
seventeen years old. He had been visiting his
friend Fred when they decided to go to a
haunted mine nearby. Supposedly, it had a
long history of accidents, disasters, and unexplained disappearances of miners. Undeterred,
the two climbed over a pile of debris to get to
one side of the entrance. There they were
shocked to observe a grotesque entity, four
and a half feet tall, with a bulky body. It let
out a soul-chilling scream and chased the boys
back to town. They took refuge in a movie
theater. Even so, they swore they could see
dark forms moving up and down the aisles as
if looking for them. That night they thought

they saw the figure sitting in a tree near the

house.
Later, Fred vanished without a trace.
Searchers came upon his bicycle near the
haunted mine, and nothing further was
learned of his fate. To this day, the man told
Robinson, I am afraid that whoever or whatever it was that got Fred will find me.
See Also: Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, and Joan Whritenour, 1968. New
UFO Breakthrough. New York: Award Books.

Browns Martians
Clairvoyant Courtney Brown reports that his
psychic probing of Mars has uncovered the
startling truth that Mars was, and is, inhabited. Brown came to this conclusion while
using psychic talents to explore the Cydonia
region of the planets surface, where some have
felt that enigmatic artifacts, including the socalled Martian Facean alleged structure said
to depict human featuresare situated.
The Martians now live underground. Millions of years ago, they lived on the surface
but were nearly driven to extinction when an
immense asteroid passed through the atmosphere and severely damaged it. The atmosphere continued to deteriorate until what little was left of it was sucked into space. Many
Martians died, but their race was preserved
when Graysthe gray-skinned humanoid
reported in UFO abduction casesintervened. They collected the Martian DNA and
stored it and genetically altered the surviving
inhabitants of the Red Planet. They put
them into underground cities, where they
live now.
The Martians problems are far from over,
however. The genetic alterations have not entirely worked, and their own technology has
not been able to overcome the existing shortcomings. More and more Martians are looking to Earth as their potential home. According to Brown, the Martians are much like
human beings in appearance but different
enough so that humans and Martians would

Bucky

never be confused. They have light skin, eyes

bigger than humans and no hair.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian; Dentonss Martians and
Venusians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga; Martian
bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Shaws Martians; Smeads Martians; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Brown, Courtney, 1996. Cosmic Voyage: Scientific Re mote Viewing, Extraterrestrials, and a Message for
Mankind. New York: Dutton Books.

Bucky
Buck Nelson, a sixty-five-year-old bachelor
who lived on a remote farm in the Ozark
Mountains of Missouri, met Bucky of Venus
on March 5, 1955. But his first sighting of
spaceships took place when three of them
hovered over his farm on July 3, 1954, and
one shot a beam of light at him, healing his
lumbago and restoring his eyesight to the degree that he no longer needed glasses. The following year on February 1, a saucer returned.
This time a voice, speaking in clear English,
came through a loudspeaker to ask if Nelson
were friendly. The voice went on to explain
that the saucers crew was from Venus. Nelson
glimpsed three human-looking, muscular
men inside the craft. Around midnight on
March 5, the three men, with their dog, 385pound Big Bo, entered Nelsons house and
conversed with him. All three men were nude,
carrying their clothes on their shoulders; before putting their uniforms back on, they explained that they wanted to assure Nelson
that except for their place of origin they were
normal men. One of them said his name was
Bucky.
Buckysometimes referred to in subsequent accounts as Little Bucky to distinguish him from the much older Bucksaid
he had been born nineteen years earlier on a
Colorado farm. In 1940, a Venusian spaceship
landed on the family property, and members
of the crew offered to fly the whole family to
their home planet for a visit. Only Bucky,
then four years old, wanted to go. The Venusians agreed to return one day when he was

51

old enough to make a mature decision on the

matter. They came back in 1953, and Bucky
accompanied them to Venus, where he had
resided for two years before Buck Nelson met
him. Besides Bucky, Nelsons visitors included
Bob Solomon, a two-hundred-year-old Venusian, and an old man who, his age notwithstanding, was a trainee learning how to fly a
spacecraft. After an hour the visitors left, but
not before telling Nelson that they would fly
him to other planets, Nelson wrote later, if I
would tell about it to the world (Nelson,
1956).
Around midnight on April 24, Bucky and
his friends arrived to take Nelson into space.
He and his dog, Teddy, went to Mars. There
Nelson ate a delicious meal and talked with
the friendly human inhabitants, and then the
ship went on to the Moon for another meal
and a good rest. He, Teddy, and Big Bo went
for a short walk before embarking for Venus.
During one brief stop they saw the ruler of
the region engaged in painting. He was clad,
like Nelson himself, in bib overalls. Venus,
like Mars and the Moon, turned out to be a
pleasant place without war or conflict, where
people lived in harmony under the Twelve
Laws of God (essentially the Ten Commandments and a couple of verses from the New
Testament). On Venus, the races were strictly
segregated. Nelson also was told that his own
parents were Venusians.
Bucky became a regular visitor at Nelsons
house. They spent Christmas 1956 together.
On another occasion, he brought a fully
cooked Venusian turkey with him. On yet another Christmas, Bucky took Nelson to his
home on Venus.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nelson
was a minor celebrity on the contactee scene.
At one point, he sold packets of hair reported
to be from Big Bo, who, he said, had been left
in his custody for a time. New York City radio
personality Long John Nebel, who met Nelson at the Fourth Interplanetary Spacecraft
Convention at Giant Rock, California, in
1957, said: It is my impression that Buck
Nelson has made very little money out of his

52

Buff Ledge abduction

wild, if somewhat crude, stories, but there are

those who believe in him, many for just that
reason. Frankly, I suspect that he would
change this aspect of his activities if he could
(Nebel, 1961).
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Dean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip tures. New York: Vantage Press.
Nebel, Long John, 1961. The Way Out World. Englewood 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): 45.

Buff Ledge abduction

The UFO abduction that reportedly occurred at Buff Ledge, north of Burlington,
Vermont, is unusual in that it involved two
persons who, though separated by years and
distance, provided strikingly similar accounts
to an investigator.
The incident took place at Buff Ledge
Camp, a since-closed girls camp. The two
witnesses have never been publicly identified,
but astronomer and ufologist Walter N.
Webb, who spent years probing the episode,
gives them the pseudonyms Michael Lapp
and Janet Cornell. On the evening of August
7, 1968, Lapp and Cornell, who worked as
counselors, were relaxing on an L-shaped
dock that jutted one hundred feet out into
Lake Champlain and which was largely concealed by the bluff from the view of others.
The camp was nearly deserted; most campers
and counselors were off on a trip elsewhere.
Lapp and Cornell witnessed the approach
of a bright light that soon resolved into a
white, glowing, cigar-shaped object. Soon
three smaller white lights emerged from the
bottom right side. As the last light came into
view, the cigar-shaped object sailed away. The
small UFOs executed various maneuvers
through the sky, moving close enough so that
the observers could see that they were domed
and disc-shaped. After five minutes, two of

them departed in opposite directions, to the

north and south, emitting sounds like thousands of tuning forks, as Lapp would put it.
The remaining UFO flew toward them, and
now it looked the size of a small house.
Abruptly it streaked upward, vanished, then
reappeared to plummet into the water about a
mile away.
Soon the UFO came back to the surface
and flew, at an altitude of fifteen feet above
the water, toward the witnesses again. It
stopped some sixty feet from them, and now
it was so near that Lapp could see right into
its transparent dome, where he was shocked
to observe two large-headed figures, short in
stature with big eyes and small mouths, who
were clad in gray or silver uniforms.
Turning to his companion, Lapp saw a
woman in an apparent trance. She did not act
as if she had heard him when he spoke to her.
At that point Lapp decided to try an experiment, and he addressed the entities. Who
were they, he asked, and why were they here?
To his surprise a voice with a feminine quality spoke inside his head to assure him they
meant no harm. Over the next few minutes,
as Lapp spoke his questions aloud, and the
alien woman replied telepathically, he was
told that the aliens had returned after the
first atomic bomb exploded and that they
were seeking some form of energy about
which the voice provided no details. They
were also engaged in war with others of their
race, characterizing these enemies as evil.
When Lapp asked where they came from, he
heard a name he could not pronounce or subsequently remember.
Finally, with the two beings disappearing
below the deck, the UFO positioned itself ten
feet above the witnesses heads. A beam shone
down on them, a kind of liquid light that
felt weirdly as if it were shining inside Lapps
head. He and Cornell fell down on the deck
as voices and machine sounds echoed.
The next thing they knew, it was dark.
They were lying on the deck as two girls atop
the bluff were shouting about a UFO. The

Bunians 53

object was ascending and shooting beams of

light toward the girls.
The following evening Lapp drove home to
tell his parents, who responded with skepticism, about his sighting. He also informed his
girlfriend, who was similarly unreceptive. He
did not discuss the incident with Cornell and
soon lost contact with her. In the years ahead,
he had dreams about being onboard the UFO
and developed an interest in mysticism and
religion. In 1978 he discussed his experience
with Webb, then an astronomer employed by
Bostons Hayden Planetarium.
Subsequently, Webb traced Cornell to Atlanta. She confirmed the sighting though all
she could recall of it was that a big light had
approached them, they had fallen down, and
some sort of mental block had ensued. Webb
had refrained from sharing the details Lapp
provided him; still, Cornells account matched
Lapps to the extent that her memory allowed.
Separately placed under hypnosis, the two
recounted an abduction experience. Lapp
remembered standing on the deck with
one of the humanoids looking into space and
observing Earth, Moon, stars, and the cigarshaped craft. Cornell was stretched on a table
in the lower level as two aliens conducted
what seemed to be a physical examination on
her. Lapp was put on a table next to hers and
lost consciousness. On recovering, he found
that the ship had entered a hangar that was
inside yet a larger one. He and an alien companion sailed on a beam of light through a
wall. An elevator took them to an enormous
domed room occupied by many humanoids,
who were watching something out of Lapps
line of vision. Taken into another room, he
had a vision of an unknown landscape occupied by distraught, weeping human beings.
He passed out. When he awoke, he seemed
to be falling through space, while a globe full
of television screens with his picture on each
appeared in front of him. He stepped
through one of the screens, and on the other
side of it, he and Cornell were back on the
dock.

Cornells story was less detailed than

Lapps. She remembered being suddenly
aboard the UFO and described the entities
nearly exactly as her companion had. Her recall of the vehicles interior matched Lapps.
Webb devoted five years to the investigation in an effort to substantiate anything that
could be substantiated. To his disappointment, he found no one, who had been at the
camp in August 1968, who could corroborate
the UFO sighting. Background checks and
psychological tests attested to Lapps and Cornells sincerity and honesty.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs
Further Reading
Webb, Walter N., 1994. Encounter at Buff Ledge: A
UFO Case History. Chicago: J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.

Bunians
Ahmad Jamaludin, a ufologist and veterinary
surgeon who lives in Malaysia, says that nothing precisely like the abduction phenomenon
known to his Western colleagues seems to be
occurring in his country, but there are traditions of kidnappings by what are called the
Bunian people. The Bunians are the
Malaysian version of fairies. Like fairies elsewhere, the Bunians exist not only in oral tradition, but also in what are alleged to be actual experiences.
One such incident is said to have taken
place in June 1982. A twelve-year-old girl,
Maswati Pilus, had gone one morning to the
river behind her house, intending to wash
clothes there. She encountered a small female
being whose sudden appearance had a strange
effect on the girls consciousness. She felt as if
only she and the being existed. There were no
other sounds or sights. The being offered to
take her to another land, and Maswati, who
felt no fear, found herself looking at a bright,
beautiful landscape. She sensed that time was
passing, but the events that occurred during
her experience were blurred and vague in her
memory.

54

Bunians

Meanwhile, her relatives were looking frantically for her. Two days later, they came upon
her in a location near her house where they
had already searched more than once. She was
unconscious but soon recovered.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Fairies encountered

Further Reading
Randles, Jenny, 1988. Abduction: Over 200 Docu mented UFO Kidnappings Investigated. London:
Robert Hale.

Calf-rustling aliens

them. The witnesses then noticed a calf

caught in the fence, with a cable . . . fastened
in a slip knot around her neck one end passing up to the vessel and tangled in wire. They
tried 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 s
butchered remains in a field where there was,
Hamilton said, no track of any kind on the
soft ground.
Appended to the published account was a
statement by some of the countys leading citizens who attested to Hamiltons truthfulness
and good character. The story was published
during a nationwide wave of sightings of mysterious airships (UFOs). Some newspapers
had speculated, seriously or otherwise, that
extraterrestrial visitors were flying the ships.
When Hamiltons story was rediscovered
decades later, after UFOs had entered popular
consciousness, it was widely published in the
UFO literature, which cited it as an example
of an early close encounter of the third kind.
In 1976, however, writer Jerome Clark collected testimony from an elderly woman who
had known the Hamilton family. She recalled
hearing the elder Hamilton tell his wife that
he and his friends from a local liars club, one
of them the newspaper editor, had made up
the story. Several years later UFO historian

On April 23, 1897, a Kansas newspaper, the

Yates Center Farmers Advocate, printed an affidavit attesting to an instance of interplanetary
calf-rustling. There were three witnesses, the
most prominent of whom was Alex Hamilton, a rancher from LeRoy, who soberly related the following:
We were awakened by a noise among the
cattle. . . . Upon going to the door I saw to my
utter amazement that an airship was slowly descending upon my cow lot about forty rods [six
hundred feet] from the house. Calling my tenant, Gid Heslip, and my son Wall, we seized
some axes and ran to the corral. Meanwhile the
ship had been gently descending until it was
not more than thirty feet above the ground and
we came within fifty yards of it. It consisted of a
great cigar-shaped portion, possibly three hundred feet long, with a carriage underneath. The
carriage was made of glass or some other transparent material. It was brightly lighted within
and everything was plainly visibleit was occupied by some of the strangest beings I ever saw.
There were two men, a woman, and three children. They were jabbering together but we
could not understand a syllable they said.

The occupants suddenly turned a searchlight on the trio, and the ship got closer to
55

56

Calf-rustling aliens

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

Thomas E. Bullard came upon a letter Hamilton had written to a Missouri paper, the
Atchison County Mail (May 7, 1897), cheerfully confessing that there was no truth to the
story.
Many years later, psychologist Susan Marie
Powers studied the claims of a woman who
claimed to have been abducted by extraterrestrials on a number of occasions. Once, while
aboard a UFO, the occupants would lasso a
cow, take it inside the craft, and extract blood
from it. I watched [as] the blood went into a
tube and then into a big tank, the woman reported. The cows eyes would glaze over.
Then I knew she was dead. We would fly back
and drop her in the pasture with the other
cows. The little people do not eat meat. They
take the blood home with them (Powers,
1994).
Another abductee, a Texas woman named
Judy Doraty, related under hypnosis her alleged observation of a levitation of a calf into
a UFO one night in 1973. The gray-skinned
humanoid crew cut up the animal while still

alive, apparently as part of its study of the effects of pollution on earthly creatures. Myrna
Hansen told a similar story under hypnosis, of
an abduction in New Mexico in 1980, during
which a calf was brought into a UFO and mutilated while still alive.
According to ufologist Linda Moulton
Howe, a rancher near Waco, Texas, came
upon two greenish humanoids with almond
eyes and big, egg-shaped heads as they were
carting away one of his calves. Terrified, he
fled the scene. When he had recovered his
nerve a couple of days later, he, his wife, and
his son went to the scene. There they found,
in Howes words, the calfs hide pulled back
over the skull and folded inside out on the
ground. . . . About a foot from the empty
hide was a complete calf backbone without
ribs (Howe, 1989).
In July 1983, Ron and Paula Watson, a
Missouri farm couple, spotted a landed UFO
in a pasture. A bipedal lizard-type creatureknown to ufologists as a reptoid
stood nearby. Through binoculars the Wat-

Captive extraterrestrials 57

sons watched as two other beings, whiteskinned humanoids in silver suits, ran their
fingers over a black cow, which, though alive,
was immobile as if paralyzed. Suddenly the
cow floated up the ramp into the UFO, which
then, weirdly, seemed to fade into the hill,
along with the three aliens.
See Also: Aurora Martian; Close encounters of the
third kind; Hopkinss Martians; Michigan giant;
Reptoids; Shaws Martians
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnolds Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.
Clark, Jerome, 1977. The Great Airship Hoax.
Fate 30, 2 (February): 9497.
Howe, Linda Moulton, 1989. An Alien Harvest: Fur ther Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and
Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms. Littleton,
CO: Linda Moulton Howe Publications.
Powers, Susan Marie, 1994. Thematic Content
Analyses of the Reports of UFO Abductees and
Close Encounter Witnesses: Indications of Repressed Sexual Abuse. Journal of UFO Studies 5
(n.s.): 3554.

Captive extraterrestrials
Along with rumors of dead extraterrestrials
supposedly found in or near crashed spacecraft, there is a persistent lore of aliens who
are held in captivity.
Ufologist William L. Moore claims to have
heard one such account from anonymous military and official sources said to be privy to
highly classified UFO secrets. In 1949, the
sources asserted, a male humanoid was discovered alive in the southwestern desert, the survivor of the crash of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. Authorities housed the being, called
EBE (ee-buh, after extraterrestrial biological
entity), at the atomic installation at Los
Alamos, New Mexico. An air force captain
was assigned the job of watching over the
being. Communication with the alien proved
impossible until a speech device was invented
and implanted into his throat, enabling him
to speak a kind of broken but understandable

English. EBE said he had been the equivalent

of a mechanic on the crashed craft. EBE died
of unknown causes in 1952.
Moores sources alleged that EBE later was
called EBE-1, because two other aliens
EBE-2 and EBE-3later fell into U.S. government hands. The three captives revealed
that nine alien races were visiting Earth. One
in particular, the little gray-skinned beings,
had been especially active. This group had
been monitoring human activities for twentyfive thousand years and had manipulated our
religious beliefs.
In his book UFO Crash at Aztec (1986),
William S. Steinman reports another alleged
1948 incident, this one involving a physician
from Bishop, California, named Claude E.
Steen, Sr. (Elsewhere in his book Steinman
gives the year as 1949 and spells the last name
Steene.) A member of a special military
unit contacted Steen and led him and his
nurse to a location where an alien was being
kept alive. It was in a chamber with a controlled environment. The being appeared to
be some kind of reptile. Its appearance so
upset the nurse that she said it looked like
something 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 Broadcasting, said he knew of three saucer crashes
in Montana. One of the occupants that had
survived, a three-foot-tall humanoid, was still
being kept alive in an incubator in California,
where efforts were being made to communicate with him. In April 2000, ufologist Kenny
Young conducted inquiries into these curious
claims, eventually learning that Rohrer was a
prankster with a sense of humor. Even though
the paper had treated his story seriously, its
audience understood that he was speaking
tongue in cheek.
See Also: Dead extraterrestrials; Extraterrestrial Biological Entities
Further Reading
Moore, William L., 1987. Personal communication
to Jerome Clark.

58

Cetaceans
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: Investigation of Strange 1952 Newspaper Article.
http://home.fuse.net/ufo/rohrer.html

Cetaceans
The Cetaceans are a One Group Mind consisting of the worlds whales and dolphins.
They channel through Rochester, New York,
psychic Dianne Robbins, who also receives
messages from Adama, a resident of the
Lemurian city Telos under Californias
Mount Shasta. The Cetaceans monitor events
on Earthin the ocean, on the land, and in
the skiesand keep human beings from
harmful extraterrestrials. They also seek to
protect the earth from pollution and other
destructive forces because human beings have
neglected their responsibilities as the
Guardians of Love that Earth needs as she
floats along her path through space (We
Are, n.d.). The human race, like the
Cetaceans themselves, came to Earth long
ago from other star systems with the specific
task of taking care of this planet. Unfortunately, memories of that distant event have
faded among humans, and the Cetaceans are
working with space intelligences to reawaken
humanitys sleeping consciousness.
If intruders enter Earths atmosphere and
violate cosmic ethical standards, the Cetaceans telepathically notify the Galactic
Command, with which they are in constant
contact. Often the Cetaceans will project their
consciousness into the commands spacecraft.
Earth will soon enter the Photon Belt,
which will have the effect of bringing humans
out of the darkness and into the light, restoring them to their cosmic destiny. We came
here especially for this time when the Earth
would be transiting into a higher dimensions, the Cetaceans say.
Channeling through a California-based
metaphysical group, the Council of Nine
from the planet Sirius B, this areas branch of
the Galactic Federation, put it this way:

Guardianship by the Cetaceans can best be

described by observing the use of their energies. Through the use of their rituals, their
sonar songs and their ocean travels, they vivify
the biosphere. Whale song has been found
throughout all the oceans of the world. It is
also found in, and resonates throughout, the
skies of the Earth. It exists even in the deepest
parts of Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. Because the energies of the Cetaceans
can be found both in the sky and in the water,
those great energies they bring forth in their
song create the resonance that sustains life
(Nidle and Essene, 1994).
See Also: Adama; Channeling
Further Reading
Nidle, Sheldon, and Virginia Essene, 1994. You Are Be coming a Galactic Human. Santa Clara, CA: Spiritual Education Endeavors Publishing Company.
We Are the Cetaceans, n.d. http://onelight.com/
ceta/cetabook/cetmonitor.htm

Chaneques
Traditional belief holds that little people
known as Chaneques live in the forests and
jungles of Mexico and Central America,
guarding the spirits of wild animals and sometimes causing harm to unlucky human beings.
The Chaneques are one variant of the beings
known under many names, including fairies
and elves. As with these traditions, Chaneque
lore consists not just of distant legends and
rumors but of claims of firsthand experiences.
Two English teachers from Mexico City investigated some of these claims in the early
1970s. In the state of Veracruz, they interviewed sixteen persons who had alleged encounters, either direct or through family
members (usually children), with these beings. One woman, for example, told them
that one day in March 1973, her son Ramiro,
three and a half years old, wandered from his
home in the village of La Tinaja. Searches
went on for six days without success. Finally,
the Chaneques informed a six-year-old neighbor that Ramiro was safe in a cave ten miles
away. When rescued at the designated place,
the boy was in excellent health, neither hun-

Channeling

gry nor thirsty. Though the entrance to the

cave was accessible only with difficulty, and
the searchers were scratched and bruised by
the time they got to him, the barefoot Ramiro
had no marks on him. He explained that
while playing by the river, he got lost. Five little men found him and fed him sweet food
and milk. He then fell asleep and woke up in
the cave, with one of the men still with him.
He and his companions, who came to the
cave on occasion, played together until the
rescue was accomplished.
Ricardo Gutierrez related that while walking through a forest one day in June 1970, his
six-year-old nephew, Arturo, who had been
accompanying him, abruptly vanished. When
the boy failed to reappear, the local authorities
arrested Gutierrez for murder. Thirty-three
days later, as the man awaited trial, a healthylooking, unconcerned Arturo entered his
house. Asked where he had been, he said he
had been living with the little men. They fed
him food and honey-flavored milk and played
games with him. The investigators interviewed local police, who confirmed the mysterious disappearance and the equally enigmatic reappearance.
Driving a six-ton truck between La Tinaja
and Tierra Blanca at 8 A.M. on May 22, 1973,
Manuel Angel Gonzalez suddenly saw five
small figures standing in the road in front of
him, holding their arms up in the air. He
slammed on the brakes barely in time to keep
from running into what he assumed were
small children. As he sat in his cab trying to
recover his wits, he had a chance to look more
closely at the figures. Now they looked like
adults, only two feet tall, perfectly proportioned, with light brown complexions and
black hair. He also realized that they had not
stepped out onto the road, but had materialized there.
After a time he stepped out of the truck
and approached the figures. His action apparently frightened them because they scattered
into the dense undergrowth and fled in the direction of a nearby mountain. When Gonzalez turned around to return to his vehicle, he

59

was dismayed to see blue flames consuming it.

Within half an hour it and its cargoasbestos
sheeting, sacked cement, and reinforcing
steelhad been reduced to fused metal and
ash.
The story made the Mexican newspapers.
Soon afterward, the two investigators interviewed Gonzalez and his boss, who confirmed
the trucks destruction, which neither could
explain; neither could the police officer who
was on the scene within an hour. Gonzalez
thought that the little men were not
Chaneques but space travelers from some
other planet, since Chaneques were not
known to cause pointless destruction.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind; Fairies
encountered
Further Reading
Pantoja Lopez, Ramon A., and Robert Freeman
Bound, 1974. Chaneques: Mexican Gnomes or
Interplanetary Visitors? Fate 27, 11 (November): 5157.

Channeling
Channeling is new in name only. It refers to
the process whereby disembodied entities
communicate ideas and information through
human beings who are either in full waking
consciousness or in an altered state. The communicating entities may be deceased persons,
gods, angels, extraterrestrials, extradimensional intelligences, ascended masters (mystical adepts who have transcended physical existence), nature spirits, and more. In earlier
times, channeling was called revelation, or
mediumship. Whatever the name, it is often
accompanied by visions of otherworldly entities or unearthly realms. Some channelers believe that through their consciousness alone,
they can travel through the universe and into
other dimensions.
In ancient times oracles and priests communicated with the gods. The resulting divine
messages formed the basis of religious and
mystical faiths. Such communications often
involved prophecies as well. In the JudeoChristian tradition, the Bible documents visions and messages recognizably related to the

60

Channeling

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

phenomenon of channeling. Channeling

seems ubiquitous in human experience. Historically prominent practitioners include Nostradamus, Emanuel Swedenborg, Helena
Petrovna Blavatsky (founder of the theosophical movement), and Anna Lee (founder of the
Quaker sect known as the Shakers). In the latter half of the nineteenth century, spiritualism
became the rage, and hundreds of mediums
claimed to be in contact with dead people
who, through the mediums, spoke with the
living. The communicators were not always
the deceased, however; in some cases space
people and other nonhuman intelligences
came through. Some mediums spoke of otherworldly journeys in their astral bodies.
After World War II, when flying saucers
entered the popular imagination, benevolent
extraterrestrial entities such as Ashtar and
Monkastarship commanders who came
here to oversee the transformation of the
human race into cosmic citizenshipchanneled through individuals who became

known as contactees. As the channeling

movement grew, reaching its peak in the
1970s and 1980s during the height of the
New Age movement, channelers created a vast
alternative-reality literature, fusing traditional
occultism with modern science and pseudoscience. Some channeling entities made predictions, often of some cataclysmic or otherwise seminal events, which inevitably went
unfulfilled. More typically, however, channeling consists of spiritual platitudes, self-help
suggestions, and unverifiable pronouncements
about the nature of spirit and cosmos.
To its critics, it is nothing more than a form
of automatism, automatic behavior over
which an individual denies any personal control (Alcock, 1996). Its sources are within, not
outside, the channelers psyche. Parapsychologist Rodger I. Anderson writes, It has been increasingly evident to researchers that automatism of whatever kind is neither a psychic
ability nor a pathway to higher knowledge. Appearances notwithstanding, it is only too clear

Chung Fu

in most cases that all the various elements that

go to make up the act of automatism are owed
solely to the automatist and his or her experience in . . . life (Anderson, 1988). On the
other hand, a skeptical but sympathetic observer, Brown University anthropologist
Michael F. Brown, defends channeling as, at its
best, a lively arena for the free play of the religious imagination. . . . It is likely to remain a
site of emotional and spiritual renewal in a culture that, perhaps more than any in human history, promotes the continuous reinvention of
the self (Brown, 1997).
See Also: Ascended Masters; Ashtar; Contactees;
Monka
Further Reading
Alcock, James E., 1996. Channeling. In Gordon
Stein, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal,
153160. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Anderson, Rodger I., 1988. Channeling. Parapsy chology Review 19, 5 (1988): 69.
Brown, Michael F., 1997. The Channeling Zone:
American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los
Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Riordan, Suzanne, 1990. Channeling. In J. Gordon Melton, Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly,
eds. New Age Encyclopedia, 97104. Detroit, MI:
Gale Research.

Christopher
Jackie Altisi, also known as Jackie White Star,
channels messages from a variety of otherworldly entities, including the spirit of martyred contactee Gloria Lee, who died in 1962
while fasting under the direction of space people. A principal communicator is Christopher,
an aide to the King of the Moon and
spokesman for the lunarian station of United
Cosmic Planets. According to Christopher,
the moon is a complete authority in itself,
but working with an interplanetary confederation. These messages are circulated through
the Star Light Fellowship, established in 1962.
See Also: J.W.
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Chung Fu
Sometime in the 1960s, Marshall Lever, then a
student at a Presbyterian seminary, began ex-

Chief Joseph
In life, Chief Joseph (18401894) led a group
of Nez Perce Indians and was admired in his
time by his people and whites, alike, for his wisdom and courage. According to a Reston, Virginia, channeler named John Cali, Joseph has
been communicating from beyond the grave
since 1992. Joseph delivers the familiar message
that Earth is going through physical and spiritual changes. Each individual must find the
God in him- or herself. Through Cali, Joseph
gives personal psychic readings to those seeking
guidance in their personal lives or metaphysical
odysseys. Josephs current messages are recorded
in an occasional e-newsletter, Sentinels of the Sky.
Further Reading
Who Are Chief Joseph and John Cali? http://www.
claimyourpower.com/sentinels/thechief.htm

61

Photograph of Chief Joseph by Edward Curtis (Corbis)

62

Close encounters of the third kind

perimenting with trance mediumship. In this

state he heard from Chung Fu, a spirit guide
who in his last physical incarnation was a student of Lao-Tzu in China. In 1970, Lever and
his wife, Quinta, established the Circle of
Inner Truth to facilitate Chung Fus teachings,
which focused on spiritual development as the
way to break out of the reincarnation cycle.
These efforts included such quotidian matters
as diet, health care, and psychological wellbeing, on which Chung Fu would offer guidance in sittings with individuals.
The Levers traveled widely, abandoning
any permanent residence, to work for Chung
Fu. Inner Circles took roots in several American cities, and one operated out of London.
Finally, Chung Fu was heard from no more,
and by the latter 1980s, the movement no
longer existed.
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Close encounters of the third kind

In The UFO Experience (1972), J. Allen
Hynek, a Northwestern University astronomer and former scientific consultant to
the U.S. Air Forces Project Blue Book, proposed a classification system for UFO sightings, including three varieties of close encounters. He defined close encounters of the third
kind as those in which the presence of animated creatures is reported. Prior to the
coining of the phrase (shortened to CE3),
ufologists had called these occupant reports.
The modern UFO phenomenon is two
centuries old. In the early nineteenth century
the first reports of arguably UFO-like phenomena were recorded in scientific journals,
newspaper accounts, and other sources,
though such stories were relatively rare until
late in the century, when alleged sightings of
mysterious airships filled American newspapers between November 1896 and May 1897.
Many were hoaxes, some concocted by the
press itself. Among them were claims that the

airships had landed. Reflecting a widely held

belief that an ingenious American inventor
had built the ships and that the occupants
were human, some reports even gave the inventor a name, Wilson. Other accounts, however, described grotesque aliens, sometimes
thought to be from Mars. Hoax probably is
too strong a word to characterize these tall
tales, which were apparently meant as jokes to
amuse a readership that was not fooled.
After 1947the year flying saucers and
unidentified flying objects entered popular
consciousnessa number of seemingly sincere individuals came forward to speak of encounters they had experienced in earlier
years, some reaching as far back as 1893,
when a man in the Australian state of New
South Wales told a newspaper that he had
seen a saucer-shaped structure land on his
farm. When he went to investigate, an oddly
dressed man stepped out of the craft holding
a device that resembled a torch (flashlight).
He aimed the device at the witness, who saw
a light shoot out from it and hit his hand.
He was knocked unconscious. When he
awoke, the object and occupant were gone.
For the rest of his life, he claimed, his hand
was paralyzed.
New Zealand newspapers of 1909 recorded
a local airship-sighting wave, including an incident in which a witness saw three figures in
a craft passing overhead. One shouted at him
in an unfamiliar language. In the United
States, early on the morning of February 29,
1916, according to a report in the Superior
Telegram that same day, workers along the
Lake Superior dock in Wisconsin saw a big
machine . . . 50 feet wide and 100 feet long
fly by at a high rate of speed about six hundred feet in the air. Workers said they had
seen three men inside the craft. This is the
first known, seemingly credible, CE3 to be
published at the time of its occurrence.
A newspaper referred to these mysterious
craft by the name flying saucers for the first
time on June 26, 1947, two days after private
pilot Kenneth Arnold saw nine discs maneuvering over the Cascade Mountains. This re-

Close encounters of the third kind 63

ported account ushered in the UFO age. The

same afternoon as Arnolds sighting, Oregon
farmer Bill Schuening claimed to have seen a
spherical object hovering five or six feet above
a field. Just beneath it were two little guys in
green suits with white helmets (McCune,
1987). They were no more than three feet tall.
A few seconds later they vanished. Schuening
did not see them enter the craft, which then
flew off toward the Cascades.
In the early UFO era, however, such reports, relatively rare but hardly nonexistent,
received little attention. In 1950, when the
first book with flying saucers in its title,
Donald E. Keyhoes paperback The Flying
Saucers Are Real, saw print, the occupants of
the vehiclesKeyhoe believed them to be
peaceable extraterrestrials who deliberately refrained from contactcould only be speculated about. Another book published that
same year, Frank Scullys Behind the Flying
Saucers, asserted that the U.S. government
had recovered crashed spacecraft, containing
the bodies of little men dressed in the style of
the 1890s and believed to be from Venus.
(Subsequent investigations determined that
two veteran confidence artists had concocted
these tales in order to peddle bogus oil-detection devices tied to advanced extraterrestrial
technology.) Scullys notorious book had the
effect of leading some early ufologistsas opposed to the saucerians who embraced the
contactee movementto shy away from any
reports of humanoids, whatever the source.
A significant proportion of the reports described the occupants as humanoids. The specific descriptions may have varied, but witnesses mostly testified that UFO occupants
had two arms, two legs, and generally humanlike head and facial features. Usually the beings were small. Sometimes they were
grotesque-looking. Sometimes they looked
like small humans. A minority were of normal
human height, and a few were said to be more
than that, seven or eight feet tall. Such reports
came from all over the world, including remote Third World locations where UFOs
were little known and the occupants were

sometimes taken to be American or Russian

pilots. A wave of humanoid and other encounters in France in the fall of 1954 received
international attention and caused even the
most cautious UFO researchers to reconsider
their bias against CE3 reports. In the summer
of 1955, the air forces Project Blue Book investigated a bizarre episode in which members
of a rural Kentucky family claimed to have
spent a night besieged by floating, big-eared
humanoid entities from a UFO.
CE3s were different from the contact
claims of George Adamski, Howard Menger,
George Van Tassel, and other 1950s contactees in some important ways. For one, the
beings seldom looked much like the goldenhaired, angelic spacemen and spacewomen
who figured in the contactees tales. For another, they had little if anything to say. Communication, if any (and there seldom was),
was brief, sometimes enigmatic, and always
devoid of inspirational content. Unlike contactees, CE3 witnesses fit the profile of witnesses to less exotic UFO phenomena; in
other words, they were ordinary citizens without a background in occultism and other esoteric pursuits, as contactees tended to be.
They also did not embark on lecture tours or
write books, as the more flamboyant contactees did.
A spectacular CE3 took place over Boianai,
Papua New Guinea, in late June 1959. The
best-known witness, the Rev. William Booth
Gill, was an Anglican missionary from Australia. On the evening of June 26, thirty-eight
persons observed a large, disc-shaped craft
with four legs hovering in the northwestern
sky. Gill estimated its apparent size to be that
of five full moons lined up end to end. At the
top of the UFO, behind a glass-covered cockpit, four humanlike figures, surrounded by illumination, moved back and forth, apparently working at an unknown task. The object
and its crew ascended into gathering clouds
after forty-five minutes. Other UFOs, though
not their occupants, were intermittently visible over the next three and a half hours.
Twenty five of the witnesses signed a state-

64

Close encounters of the third kind

ment attesting to what they had seen that

night. At 6 P.M. the next day, the original
UFO and its crew returned. At one point during the observation, Gill and others waved to
the occupants, who waved back. The objects
showed up for the last time the next night,
though no beings were visible.
Interviewed in 1973 by J. Allen Hynek, native witnesses stuck by the story. Gill, who left
the country in September 1959, stands by the
report even today. It remains among the most
impressive and puzzling of CE3s.
Far stranger and much harder to believe
was the testimony of a young Brazilian, Antonio Villas-Boas. Villas-Boas came to the attention of ufologists in November 1957, when he
wrote a letter to a journalist who had written
about UFOs. Soon afterward, the journalist,
Joao Martins, brought Villas-Boas to Rio de
Janeiro, where he and physician/ufologist
Olavo T. Fontes, of the National School of
Medicine of Brazil, interviewed and examined
him. The young man claimed that in the early
morning hours of October 16, occupants of a
UFO took him into the ship and left him
alone in a room. A naked, essentially humanlooking young woman soon joined him there,
eventually engaging with him in two sex acts.
Before leaving, she made a gesture that led
Villas-Boas to believe she would bear his child
on another world.
Martins and Fontes judged Villas-Boas to
be sane and sincere. His intelligence and refusal to speculate on the incident made a positive impression. In spite of this, Fontes
wrote, the very substance of his story becomes the heaviest argument against it
(Lorenzen and Lorenzen, 1967). In 1962 two
representatives of a Brazilian UFO group
went to Villas-Boass village to speak with
him. Though desiring no publicity, he spoke,
if reluctantly, about the experience. The investigators published an account of the interview
in an English-language version of their bulletin, but it attracted little notice. Fontess
1958 report circulated privately among a few
English-speaking ufologists, but because of its
sexual nature no one would publish it. For

Antonio Villas-Boas being medically examined following

his abduction by a UFO in Brazil, October 15, 1957
(Fortean Picture Library)

most ufologists, the Villas-Boas episode was

only a vague rumor, if that, until Englands
widely read Flying Saucer Review carried a series of articles on it, beginning in its January/February 1965 issue.
The Villas-Boas case anticipated an escalation of the strangeness quotient of the CE3
phenomenon. On April 18, 1961, Joe Simonton of rural Eagle River, Wisconsin, was eating lunch when, so he would assert, a flying
saucer landed on his driveway. He went outside just as a hatchway opened. A short, darkfeatured man, dressed in a black, two-piece
suit and wearing a tight-fitting cap on his
head, held a jug. From his gestures Simonton
inferred that he wanted the jug to be filled
with water. He complied. As he handed the
filled jug back to the man, he glanced inside
the ship and saw two other men. One was sitting in front of a flameless grill, cooking
something. When Simonton asked if they
were eating, the man with the jug handed him
four fresh pancakes, and then the flying
saucer departed. Simonton took a bite of one

Close encounters of the third kind

of the pancakes. It tasted like cardboard, he

thought.
The story of the Eagle River pancakes attracted national attention and a torrent of
ridicule. Even UFO groups disagreed on its
significance, some championing Simonton as a
nave, sincere witness to an extraordinary
event, while the conservative National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP) sneeringly dismissed the story as an
absurd contact claim. Even Project Blue Book
got drawn into the case, sending Dr. Hynek to
the site to interview Simonton and local people. Few of Simontons friends and acquaintances deemed him a hoaxer or even a man
with sufficient imagination to make up such
an outlandish tale. Still, laboratory analysis
found nothing out of the ordinary in the pancake sample it examined. In common with just
about everybody else who looked closely at the
claim, the air force ended up confused, stating
at one point that Simonton was a balanced
person of good mental health, and, at another, that he had suffered an hallucination
followed with delusion (Mallan, 1967). Separately, a lone witness and a nearby farm family
reported seeing a UFO over Simontons residence, in the first case, at the time of the supposed landing; in the second, the next evening.
Cases such as Villas-Boass and Simontons
suggested a degree of communication between witnesses and UFO beings. To some
ufologists, many never very enthusiastic about
CE3s to start with, that suggested the despised contactees, even if neither man acted
much like one. These ufologists were more
comfortable with a CE3 report from Socorro,
New Mexico, on April 24, 1964, from Lonnie
Zamora, a police officer of undisputed reliability. Around 6 P.M. Zamora spotted a small,
egg-shaped UFO resting in an isolated area on
the citys outskirts. Close to the object were
two small figures dressed in white coveralls,
apparently examining the craft. On seeing
Zamora, they ran behind the craft and disappeared. The flame-spewing UFO departed
with a roar. Police, Project Blue Book, and
civilian investigators found burn marks and

65

impressions at the site. Despite its hostility to

UFOs and its tendency to reach for sometimes far-fetched conventional explanations
for reports, Project Blue Book declared the
case an unknown. It has since become a
classic UFO incident, often cited by those
who argue for the anomalous nature of the
phenomenon.
If Zamoras experience seemed relatively
straightforward, Gary Wilcoxs claimed encounter of the same day and a few hours earlier appeared as bizarre as Villas-Boass and Simontons, though not much like either in any
other context. Wilcox, a young Newark Valley, New York, dairy farmer, asserted that he
had spoken with two short, spacesuit-clad
UFO occupants for two hours. They said that
they were part of a Martian expedition,
Wilcox said, engaged in Earth exploration.
Wilcoxs story did not come to light until a

Police Officer Lonnie Zamora, who saw a UFO land near

Socorro, New Mexico, April 24, 1964 (Fortean Picture
Library)

66

Close encounters of the third kind

few days later, since he had sought no publicity and discussed it only with friends and family members, who eventually leaked it to the
local press. Like Simonton, Wilcox had an
unimpeachable reputation among locals, and
psychological testing revealed no abnormalities. Wilcox made no subsequent attempt to
exploit his story. Though his testimony made
no senseeven in 1964 scientists had abandoned the hope of an inhabited Mars
Wilcox seemed neither crazy nor dishonest.
As comparable claims came to the fore,
some ufologists speculated that UFO occupants were lying to hide their true identity
and purpose. At the extreme this led theorists
such as John A. Keel and Jacques Vallee to
move beyond ufologys venerable extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) and into quasi-demonological speculation about earthbound elementals and other occult entities.

As if to compound the confusion, by the

mid-1960s ufologists were confronting a new
level of confrontation and contact between
humans and UFO beings. In 1965, under
hypnosis conducted by a Boston psychiatrist,
a New Hampshire couple, Barney and Betty
Hill, turned a consciously recalled CE3 (an
observation of figures aboard a hovering UFO
one night in September 1961) into an onboard experience, including medical examination by gray-skinned aliens and conversation
with the ships captain. All of this took place
during a two-hour period of which the Hills
had no conscious memory and for which they
had never been able to account; to them it
had always been a puzzling period of seemingly inexplicable amnesia. Missing time,
hypnotic regressions, gray aliens, and medical
examinations would play large roles in the
emerging abduction phenomenon.

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

Cocoon people

In time, such abduction reportsthe subject of a separate entrywould overwhelm

CE3s as historically understood. Nonabduction CE3s would diminish in number and, in
time, slow to a trickle, though they would not
entirely disappear.
One particularly well-documented incident reportedly occurred in the early morning hours of January 12, 1975, when seventy-two-year-old George OBarski was
driving home past New York Citys North
Hudson Park. He observed a glowing pancake-shaped object hovering above the park
ground. A door opened, a ladder emerged,
and about ten small figures, dressed in onepiece suits and helmets, climbed down to
collect soil and grass samples, which they
scooped up with little shovels (Hopkins,
1981). An extensive investigation by three
New Yorkbased ufologists uncovered a body
of apparent confirming testimony from an
assortment of witnesses.
In the most remarkable CE3 of the 1990s,
a large group of children at Ariel School,
Ruwa, Zimbabwe, while on recess on the
morning of September 16, 1994, reportedly
observed the landing of a UFO just beyond
the playground. They also saw one or two occupants, small figures (slightly more than
three feet tall) with large, slanted eyes and
long black hair. They were wearing tight black
suits. Though teachers were alerted while the
incident was in progress, none believed the
children and refused to go outside. Later, they
changed their minds as the children produced
remarkably uniform accounts and drawings.
A British Broadcasting Corporation journalist, accompanied by Zimbabwe ufologist Cynthia Hind, interviewed the witnesses within a
few days of the incident.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;
Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Menger, Howard;
Van Tassel, George W.; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Basterfield, Keith, 1997. UFOs: A Report on Aus tralian Encounters. Kew, Victoria, Australia: Reed
Books.
Bowen, Charles, ed., 1974. The Humanoids. London: Futura Publications.

67

Clark, Jerome, 1998. Close Encounters of the Third

Kind. In Jerome Clark. The UFO Encyclopedia:
The Phenomenon from the Beginning, 207239.
Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.
, 2000. The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis in
the Early UFO Age. In David M. Jacobs, ed.,
UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of
Knowledge, 122140. Lawrence: University Press
of Kansas.
Fuller, John G., 1966. The Interrupted Journey: Two
Lost Hours Aboard a Flying Saucer. New York:
Dial Press.
Hind, Cynthia, 1996. UFOs over Africa. Madison,
WI: Horus House Press.
Hopkins, Budd, 1981. Missing Time: A Documented
Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard
Marek Publishers.
Hynek, J. Allen, 1972. The UFO Experience: A Scien tific Inquiry. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
Hynek, J. Allen, and Jacques Vallee, 1975. The Edge
of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying
Objects. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.
Keyhoe, Donald E., 1950. The Flying Saucers Are
Real. New York: Fawcett Publishers.
Lorenzen, Coral, and Jim Lorenzen, 1967. Flying
Saucer Occupants. New York: Signet.
McCune, Hal, 1987. Man Sticks to His Report.
Pendleton East Oregonian (June 24).
Mallan, Lloyd, 1967. UFO Hoaxes and Hallucinations. Science and Mechanics 38, 3 (March):
4852, 8285.
Scully, Frank, 1950. Behind the Flying Saucers. New
York: Henry Holt and Company.

Cocoon people
In her book Taken (1994), the late psychologist and abductee Karla Turner recounts the
experiences of a woman identified only as Pat,
at the time a fifty-year-old divorcee living in
Florida. Her abduction experiences began in
1954 on the family farm near Floyds Knob,
Indiana. Over the years other experiences occurred. All of these were repressed in conscious memory until 1986, when they came
flooding into her thoughts. One memory
Pat could not put a specific time frame on
itconcerned cocoon people.
She found herself inside a large room with
soft white lighting. A gray-skinned humanoid
stood near her. I vaguely recall seeing a
human male there, she would tell Turner,
but not what he was doing. The room con-

68

Contactees

tained a number of boxes that looked like sarcophagi (stone coffins). Inside them she could
see what looked like human forms, alive but
not moving, covered with white misty stuff,
which somehow she knew kept them alive. In
a telepathic communication, the being asked
if she wanted to see yours. When she said
yes, the being showed her a container with a
human female inside.
Dont ask how I knew it was female, she
said. I just felt it. I saw a little bit of human
face through the mist, like a nose, mouth, eyes,
definitely human. I knew this was connected
with the 1954 visit, because I remembered
they told me they were making a new me.
When she and the others were resurrected or
reanimated, she thought, we will all be able to
see and talk with them here in the body. . . . If
I were to die now, I believe that my other
body will house my soul when Jesus says it is
time, and I, too, will come back.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs
Further Reading
Turner, Karla, 1994. Taken: Inside the Alien-Human
Abduction Agenda. Roland, AR: Kelt Works.

Contactees
Contactees are people who claim a regular,
ongoing relationship with benevolent extraterrestrials, sometimes called Space Brothers.
These aliensessentially angels in spacesuitsare nearly always human in appearance, except better looking than humans are.
They espouse an occult philosophy with recognizably terrestrial origins, notably in Theosophy. Contact occurs in a variety of fashions.
Much, perhaps most, of it is through channeling. Other psychic communications are effected through automatic writing, dreams, visions, or astral (out-of-body) travel. A third
group, the most controversial, alleges physical
contacts, including trips in flying saucers to
other worlds. Physical contactees frequently
offer evidence of their experiences in the
form of artifacts or photographs. Persons who
follow contactees and embrace their message
are sometimes called saucerians.

The contactee movement overlaps to a degree with the UFO movementufology

but the two differ in fundamental ways. To
saucerians, there are no unidentified flying objects. Flying saucers nature, origin, and purpose are known; they are here to educate humans to their larger cosmic destiny, to prepare
them for the coming Earth changes generated
by nuclear war, geological upheavals, polar
shifts, or combinations thereof. To ufologists,
UFOs are unknowns, probably of extraordinary origin, but fundamentally a phenomenon that will eventually yield its secrets to science via conventional investigative and
analytic procedures. Another way to express
the difference is to see saucerianism as a kind
of popular religious movement, ufology as a
popular (if often nave) attempt at scientific
inquiry. Traditionally, ufologists have functioned as the contactee movements fiercest
critics.
The contactee movement envisions a
densely populated cosmos with hosts of advanced, wise space people linked in a kind of
celestial United Nations, usually called the
Galactic Federation or something like it. A
minority of evil extraterrestrials opposes the
Federations benevolent mission. Both sides
have representatives on Earth, individuals
who pass as normal earthlings but who are in
fact aliens. Many were placed here generations
ago and have lived on this planet through
many incarnations, patiently waiting to be activated when the time of transitionwhich
will include mass landings of spaceships
comes.
There were contactees before there were
flying saucers. Perhaps the first of them was
the Swedish scientist and mystic Emanuel
Swedenborg (16881772). In Earths in the
Solar World (1758), Swedenborg wrote of his
astral travels to the moon and other planets.
Each of these worlds, Swedenborg asserted,
is inhabited, and he described, at length, the
people and civilizations there. In the nineteenth century, with the rise of the spiritualist movement, psychic communications with
extraterrestrials, most often Martians, were

Contactees 69

recorded on occasion. The most famous such

case became the subject of a pioneering book
in the emerging discipline of abnormal psychology, Theodore Flournoys From India to
the Planet Mars (1899). In various states of
altered consciousness, a woman given the
pseudonym Helene Smith (Catherine Elise
Muller) interacted with persons from the
Red Planet, which she also visited astrally.
She produced a Martian language that
Flournoy identified as an infantile travesty
of French (Flournoy, 1963).
Reflecting a belief popularized by American astronomer Percival Lowell, Smith/Muller
saw canals on the Martian surface. Her
story, like those of Swedenborg and the contactees of the saucer era, mirrored astronomical and other scientific theories of the period.
Within a few years, the notion of a Martian
canal system would be thoroughly debunked.
In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, it was
still vaguely possible, some astronomers
thought, that some neighboring planets (most
likely Mars and Venus) could harbor intelligent life. Perhaps not surprisingly, the aliens
in contact lore often hailed from our immediate vicinity. After space probes in the 1960s
established, beyond further rational discussion, that beyond Earth there are no planets
hospitable to life in this system, the extraterrestrials in contact claims were placed farther
out in the cosmos. Either that, or the Venus,
Mars, Saturn, and other solar planets said to
harbor advanced civilizations became etheric
counterparts, existing on a higher vibratory
rate and distinct from the lifeless worlds we
know.
Another influential early book was Oahspe
(1882), the product of automatic writing at
the guidance of angels, or so New York occultist John Ballou Newbrough asserted.
Written between January and December
1881, the book is a mystical account of the
cosmos, its history, and its inhabitants. The
book stayed in print for decades and was
widely read in contactee circles, where
asharsguardian angels who fly spirit ships
became extraterrestrials in spacecraft. Indeed,

the ubiquitous starship commander and channeling entity Ashtar may owe his name and
occupation to Newbroughs creation.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (18311891),
who founded Theosophy, wrote of a hierarchy
of ascended masters, including the Venusbased Lords of the Flame. In the 1930s the
flamboyant, fascist-oriented Guy Warren Ballard marketed a simplified, popular version of
Blavatskys doctrine. He spoke of his own
meeting with twelve Venusian masters in the
Teton mountains in Wyoming. Religious
studies scholar J. Gordon Melton identifies
Ballard (who died in 1939) and his I AM
movement as crucial to the development of
the later contactee movement. Not only did
Ballard become the first to actually build a religion on contact with extraterrestrials, he
writes, but his emphasis was placed upon frequent contact with the masters from whom he
received regular messages to the followers of
the world contactee movement. The movement took over the I AM [spiritual] hierarchy
and changed it into a space command hierarchy (Melton, 1995).
In The Book of the Damned (1919), the first
volume ever written on the subject that would
eventually be called ufology, Charles Fort
(18741932) speculated that strange lights
and constructions observed in the sky and
space during the previous century could be
evidence of visitation from other worlds. He
also advanced the possibly tongue-in-cheek
speculation that, perhaps, some human beings
were secretly in contact with the occupants of
such vehicles.
The first explicit contact in the context of a
UFO sighting occurred on the evening of October 9, 1946, over San Diego. Many residents had gone outside in anticipation of a
predicted meteor shower. Among them was
medium Mark Probert, who channeled cosmic philosophy from a group of discarnates,
including a 500,000-year-old Tibetan named
the Yada Di Shiite. He worked with occult
theorist N. Meade Layne, who the year before
had founded Borderland Sciences Research
Associates. Probert and many others wit-

70

Contactees

nessed something that, whatever else it may or

may not have been, was not a meteor. Observers would describe it as resembling a huge
bullet-shaped object with batlike wings and a
searchlight that it occasionally swept over the
ground. Dark, except for two red lights along
its side, it stayed in view for an hour and a
half, moving at both slow and fast speeds.
During the sighting, Probert phoned
Layne, who urged him to see if the crafts occupants were interested in a telepathic exchange. According to Probert, the experiment
succeeded. The crew members revealed themselves as peaceful people with lightweight, illuminated bodies. They had been trying to
contact earthlings for many years. Though
they were afraid to land openly, they would
meet with scientists in some isolated area or
on a mountaintop. They had mastered antigravity, and their ship was called the Kareeta.
The San Diego Union carried a humorous
piece on the sighting, including Proberts assertions, in its October 18 issue.
The UFO age began the next year with
private pilot Kenneth Arnolds June 24 sighting of nine shiny objects that the press would
soon call flying saucers. In the wake of
Arnolds report, many other people came forward to recount their own encounters with
unknown aerial phenomena. Among the
most outlandish claims to see print was one
told by Ole J. Sneide. In a letter to the San
Francisco Chronicle appearing in the July 3
issue, Sneide stated that the flying discs, also
known as flying saucers, were spaceships from
other planets. (This is one of the very earliest
public attempts to link the new public sensation with extraterrestrial visitors. Nearly all
other speculation held the saucers to be natural phenomena or advanced terrestrial aircraft. The association of flying saucers as
spaceships did not take widespread hold until
the early to mid-1950s.) Sneide also said the
saucers had a base on the dark side of the
moon. He knew as much because he regularly
teleported himself around the galaxy. A follow-up article in the Chronicle determined
that Sneide, a student of occultism, was seri-

ous. Though nothing more is known about

Sneide, he may have been something of a
contactee before the word and concept had
come into currency.
The contact movement, however, did not
emerge into cultural visibility until January
1952, when aircraft mechanic George W. Van
Tassel began holding open weekly meetings in
the high-desert country of southern California. At these gatherings Van Tassel would
channel messages from starship (ventla)
commanders, introducing, among others, the
destined-to-be ubiquitous Ashtar. That same
year, Van Tassel published I Rode a Flying
Saucer!, the first modern contactee book (albeit with a misleading title; it would not be
until the next year that Van Tassel would
claim his first physical contact and spaceshipboarding). The year 1952 saw a flurry of contact activity. In Prescott, Arizona, George
Hunt Williamson, his wife, Betty, and companions were communicating with Martians,
Uranians, and other extraterrestrials from the
solar system via ouija board, radio, and mental telepathy. In July, in the Nevada desert,
Truman Bethurum met the crew of a scow
from the planet Clarion, invisible to earthly
eyes because it is always on the opposite side
of the sun from Earth.
Though arguably Van Tassel was the most
influential of the first generation of contactees,
the most famous was George Adamski.
Adamski had a long history in California
going back to the 1930sas a kind of minor
guru. When flying saucers rose to prominence
in the late 1940s, Adamski produced photographs of spaceships in the atmosphere and
near the moon. On November 20, 1952, accompanied by six associates, including George
Hunt Williamson, he went out into the desert
to meet a landed saucer and its pilot, a blondhaired, angelic figure whom Adamski would
call Orthon. Adamski went on to write books,
lecture all over the world, and become the
single most controversial saucer personality of
the 1950s. Though despised by conservative
ufologists, who charged that his accounts of
meetings with Venusians, Martians, and Satur-

Contactees 71

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

nians amounted to bad science fiction, he was

also widely revered.
In August 1953, more than ten thousand
persons attended the Interplanetary Spacecraft
Convention at Van Tassels residence in Giant
Rock, California. The speakers were mostly
the new contactee stars. The movement was
growing rapidly, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. It also produced a small library of
books and newsletters. Over the course of the
next few years, other contactees rose to occult
celebrity. Many were physical contactees, but,
in time, channelers and automatic writers
most of whom did not seek publicity or
profitdominated the ranks.
Not everyone was willing to take the space
people at their word. Channeling contactee
Trevor James Constable warned that some of
them were demons in disguise. Some years
later, occult-oriented ufologist John A. Keel
wrote, The demons, devils, and false angels
were recognized as liars and plunderers by

early man. These same impostors now appear

as long-haired Venusians (Keel, 1970).
Christian fundamentalist authors of UFO
books expressed similar suspicions.
Adamskis death in April 1965 marked the
passing of the era of the physical contactees.
Even so, the most successful contactee of later
years was himself a physical contactee, Eduard
Billy Meier, a rural Swiss man with a background in the esoteric. Like Adamski and his
first-generation counterparts, Meier put forth
photographs, artifacts, and allegedly confirmatory testimony to back up his stories of inthe-flesh meetings with space people and of
rides in their spacecraft. Meiers extraterrestrials are from the Pleiades star system. But like
Adamskis Venusians, they are handsome and
beautiful, with blond hair and a generally
northern European appearance. Unlike Adamskis and just about everybody elses space people, Meiers have a specifically antireligious
message; the Pleiadeans, according to Meier,

72

Cosmic Awareness

believe only in the laws of nature. It is also

safe to say that unlike other contactees,
Meiera keen businessmanhas reaped a
significant, and continuing, financial reward
from his supposed experiences. He has also
been at the receiving end of criticism and debunking efforts. After divorcing him, his exwife told investigators that his claims are
without factual basis.
In the United States, a major force in the
movement has been the annual Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation, which
has taken up where the Giant Rock conventions (the last held in 1977) left off. Started in
1980 by R. Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist and
counselor at the University of Wyoming, it
meets once a year, usually in the summer, and
attracts contactees from all over, though most
are from ranches, farms, and small towns of
the Great Plains, underscoring the folk or
ground-level nature of the movement.
Contactees are different from abductees
whose experiences became known only in the
1960s and did not become a major part of the
UFO controversy until the 1980sin several
ways. A principal difference is that abductees
tend to fit the profile of ordinary citizens, in
other words, people without a background in
occultism; in that way, they are also like most
witnesses to UFOs. Abductees also report
being taken against their will, and many consider the experience traumatic. Most do not
claim to have attained superior wisdom from
the experience, and most assert that their
communications with their captors were devoid of messages of cosmic uplift. Yet in time
contactee-oriented writers and investigators
began to see abductions as contacts by other
means. Some abductees come to accept their
experiences as painful but necessary learning
experiences. Harvard University psychiatrist
John E. Mack, whose study of abduction reports has convinced him that the aliens have
benevolent intentions, has stated, If, in fact,
the alien beings are closer to the divine source
or anima mundi than human beings generally
seem to be . . . their presence among us, however cruel and traumatic in some instances,

may be part of a larger process that is bringing

us 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 Tassel, George W.; Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
York: Abelard-Schuman.
Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,
1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord, 1991. Life beyond
Planet Earth? Mans Contacts with Space People.
London: GraftonBooks.
Curran, Douglas, 1985. In Advance of the Landing:
Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: Abbeville
Press.
Flournoy, Theodore, 1963. From India to the Planet
Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism. Translated reprint of 1899 edition. New Hyde Park,
NY: University Books.
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.
Mack, John E., 1994. Abduction: Human Encounters
with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribners Sons.
Melton, J. Gordon, 1995. The Contactees: A Survey. In James R. Lewis, ed. The Gods Have
Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, 113.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
Stupple, David W., 1994. Historical Links Between
the Occult and Flying Saucers. Journal of UFO
Studies 5 (new series): 93108.

Cosmic Awareness
Cosmic Awareness first spoke in 1962
through a retired army officer, William
Durby, who harbored metaphysical interests.
When asked who or what it was, Cosmic
Awareness said it was a total mind that is not
any unity other than that of universality
(Melton, 1996). The following year an organization was formed around the communications in response to specific instructions from
Awareness to that effect.
After Duby died in 1967, the organization
split into seven factions, all at odds over which
heretofore-secret teachings should be made
public and which should be kept only among

Cottingley fairies 73

members. Out of the strife Cosmic Awareness

Communications, which had the strongest
links to the earliest group, emerged the
strongest. Based in Olympia, Washington, it
survives today and maintains a sometimes
controversial presence on the New Age scene.
Its head, Paul Shockley, continues to channel teachings from Awareness. His organization characterizes Awareness as the Force that
expressed Itself through Jesus of Nazareth, the
Buddha, Krishna, Mohammed and other
great avatars who served as Channels for
what is commonly known as God, and
which expresses Itself once again as the world
begins to enter the New Age of spiritual consciousness and awareness (Cosmic Awareness Communications, 1994).
Awareness teaches that the United States of
America came into being through intervention with the Founding Fathers. The motive
was to allow personal freedom, which would
accelerate the process of change through
which human beings must go to be reunited
with Awareness. The result will be a United
States of Awareness, where entities no longer
feel trapped by the physical plane, but may realize their true identity as being cosmic beings
of life, light and energy (Cosmic Awareness
Introduces Itself, n.d.).
Further Reading
Cosmic Awareness Communications, 1994. http://
net.info.nl/cosmic.html
Cosmic Awareness Introduces Itself to the World,
n.d. http://www.transactual.com/cac/intro.html
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of Ameri can Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale
Research.

Cottingley fairies
The Cottingley fairies came into being in
1917 as images on photographs produced by
two Yorkshire girls, Frances Griffiths, ten, and
her cousin Elsie Wright, thirteen. The incident began as a childish trick to settle a score
with adult authority figures but ended as one
of the more bizarre episodes in the history of
both photography and occultism. It would
take six decades for the truth to emerge.

Frances and her mother and Elsie and her

parents shared a house in Cottingley, near
Bradford, Yorkshire, while Francess father
served in World War I. When Frances fell into
a brook, one day, and came home soaking
wet, she explained that the mishap had occurred while she was playing with the fairies
who lived there. She was punished anyway.
Offended at her friends treatment, Elsie suggested that they borrow her fathers camera,
take pictures of fairies, persuade their parents
of the fairies authenticity, then later announce that they were fake. They would then
clinch their case by reminding their parents
that the adults had lied to them about Father
Christmas.
Knowing nothing of the scheme, of course,
Arthur Wright loaned his daughter his camera
and provided her with a single plate. An hour
later the girls returned from the brook and
told Wright that they had photographed a
fairy. He did not believe them, but when he
developed the picture, he saw four tiny,
winged women in front of Frances. The figures looked like paper cutouts, but the skeptical elders could not extract an admission from
the children. A month later, a reluctant
Wright gave Elsie access to the camera once
more. The result was a second picture, this
one of a gnome whom Elsie appeared to be
inviting to jump into her lap. Annoyed at
what he took to be a continuing joke, Wright
kept the camera out of his daughters hands
thereafter.
That would have been that; however, in
1920, Polly Wright, Elsies mother, attended a
lecture on fairy lore. Afterward, she brought
up the photographs to the speaker, who immediately asked if he could see prints. These
prints soon found their way into the hands of
Theosophist Edward Gardner, a believer in
fairies. The Wrights provided him with copies
of the originals, which Gardner showed to an
acquaintance knowledgeable in photography.
The expert stated, guardedly, that he could see
no evidence of fraud. Excited, Gardner discussed the pictures in a lecture that May, and
soon Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the revered au-

74

Cottingley fairies

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

thor of the Sherlock Holmes stories and then

an avid spiritualist, heard about the matter.
Doyle had Gardner take the pictures to the
Kodak laboratory in London, where two experts neither endorsed nor repudiated them.
In the summer, when Gardner met the
Wrights for the first time, he provided Elsie
with a modern camera. In short order, she and
Frances had three new fairy photographs.
Doyle wrote two articles for the popular
magazine The Strand (December 1920 and
March 1921 issues), declaring the pictures as
proof of the existence of fairies. Doyle endured a great deal of ridicule for his advocacy
of what many saw as a transparent hoax, but
that did not stop him from elaborating on the
matter in a revealingly titled book, The Com ing of the Fairies (1922). The year before, in
1921, a self-described clairvoyant named
Geoffrey Hodson, also a Theosophist, had accompanied the girls to the beck where the
fairies lived. He claimed to have observed

many of them, though the girls saw nothing

and attempts to photograph the entities came
to naught.
Two and a half decades later, Gardner
wrote a memoir of the episode. He was still
convinced of the authenticity of the Cottingley fairies. Occultists who championed the
pictures noted that the two girls, now grown
women, had never admitted to hoaxing, even
when prompted to do so. Still, their answers
tended to be more equivocal than their advocates seemed to understand; when they said,
for example, that these were photographs of
figments of our imaginations, the occultists
assumed they were talking about thought
formsparanormal projections from the
mind to photographic film. But in a 1975 interview for Woman magazine, the two old
women appeared to respond more positively
to the inevitable questions. The following
year, when asked by Yorkshire Television if
the photos were fakes, Francess response was

Curry

simpleOf course notspoken as if the

question were a foolish and impertinent one.
That, however, was the last time the
women would maintain the pretense. In
1982, The Unexplained, a British magazine,
revealed that the two had confessed. In early
1983, they provided a signed statement to
British Journal of Photography editor Geoffrey
Crawley, who then wrote a long, definitive account of the curious episode. The women did
not tell Crawley quite everything; they said
they wanted to keep some of the details to
themselves for a book they intended to write.
Neither lived long enough, however, to produce the proposed volume. In a final, curious
footnote, Frances insisted to her death that
though the pictures did not show real fairies,
she had seen real fairies in the beck when she
and Elsie were friends and playmates.
A well-reviewed 1997 film, Fairy Tale: A
True Story, dramatized the story, with Peter
OToole playing Doyle.
See Also: Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Clapham, Walter, 1975. There Were Fairies at the
Bottom of the Garden. Woman (October):
4243, 45.
Cooper, Joe, 1982. Cottingley: At Last the Truth.
The Unexplained 117: 22382340.
Crawley, Geoffrey, 1982, 1983. That Astonishing
Affair of the Cottingley Fairies. British Journal of
Photography Pt. I (December 14): 13751380;
Pt. II (December 31): 14061411, 14131414;
Pt. III (January 7): 915; Pt. IV (January 21):
6671; Pt. V (January 28): 9196; Pt. VI (February 4): 117121; Pt. VII (February 11):
142145, 153, 159; Pt. VIII (February 18):
170171; Pt. IX (April 1): 332338; Pt. X (April
8): 362366.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 1922. The Coming of the
Fairies. New York: George H. Doran Company.
Gardner, Edward L., 1945. Fairies: The Cottingley
Photographs and Their Sequel. London: Theosophical Publishing House.
Hitchens, Christopher, 1997. Fairy Tales Can
Come 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 Photographs: A Re-Appraisal of the Evidence. Folk lore 84 (Summer): 89103.

75

Smith, Paul, 1991. The Cottingley Fairies: The End

of a Legend. In Peter Narvaez, ed. The Good Peo ple: New Fairylore Essays, 371405. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky.

The Council
William LePar of North Canton, Ohio, channels the Council, a single voice speaking for
twelve souls communicating from the Celestial Level of the God-Made Heavenly Realms.
This, the Council says, is the only time in all
of history that human beings have been contacted in this way. Since the original, involuntary contact in the early 1970s, the Council
has generated hundreds of thousands of words
of discourse.
LePar heads the SOL Association for Research, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. It publishes a newsletter, tapes, videos,
and books and sponsors lectures and a lending 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

Curry
In a published letter to author and UFO abductee Whitley Strieber, an anonymous man
recounts an otherworldly encounter he experienced at the age of eight, while living on an
Indian reservation in South Dakota. The correspondent said he found himself inexplicably
outside the house in the middle of the night,
where he saw a smiling man who was somehow different, with larger than normal eyes
and a small amount of hair on his head. Instinctively, the boy knew the strangers name
was Curry, though later in life he learned that
curry is actually a sort of spice from India.
The stranger led the boy to an odd-looking
black car. Inside it was a man who looked to
be twenty years old or so. The man resembled
Curry, and somehow the boy understood that
he was to comfort him because the man was
frightened. The car ascended and flew rapidly to a remote location where there was a

76

Cyclopeans

crossroads. A ship or shuttle then took the

boy and his charge apparently into space, but
Striebers correspondent had no memory of
anything except being dropped off and seeing
Curry again. Now Curry was wearing a hood
that covered everything but his eyes.
This was only the first of a number of paranormal encounters the correspondent would
have over the years, though this one, apparently, was his last with Curry. He refers to
them as dreams, or experiences, depending
on how you want to look at it.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Strieber, Whitley
Further Reading
Strieber, Whitley, and Anne Strieber, eds., 1997. The
Communion Letters. New York: HarperPrism.

Cyclopeans
Argentine ufologist Fabio Picasso coined the
term Cyclopeans to characterize one-eyed
aliens whose alleged presence is the subject of
a handful of South American press accounts.
Picasso acknowledges that some accounts are
certain or likely hoaxes, and others have not
been well investigated. Nonetheless, as of
1992, he had found eleven such reports.
One such case is said to have occurred on
August 28, 1963, at Sagrada Familia, Brazil.
Three boys witnessed the sudden appearance
of a beam of light in their backyard. Inside
the light, a transparent, ball-shaped object
hovered. Inside it, four one-eyed entities,
three males and one female, clad in tight coveralls, were visible. One stepped out of the
UFO and floated in the air, communicating
first by gestures, then by telepathy, to the
children (the content of the message is not
specified). The being returned to the craft,
which then departed.
At Torrent, Argentina, in February 1965,
farm laborers, returning home late at night
from hunting, noticed five small figures.
When one of the hunters acted in a threatening matter, the shapes suddenly grew larger
until they were around eight feet tall. The beings chased the hunters to a house. Later, one
man escaped from the house with the one-

eyed entities in hot pursuit. One managed to

grab him with its hairy hands, but the man
broke loose and got away. Subsequently, the
others effected an escape by van.
Cyclopean beings can be classified into two
subtypes, Picasso writes. There are short Cyclopeans . . . and tall ones. . . . The latter beings
often behave aggressively (Picasso, 1992).
Further Reading
Picasso, Fabio, 1992. Infrequent Types of South
American Humanoids. Strange Magazine 9
(Spring/Summer): 3435, 55.

Cymatrili
Enid Brady was a spiritualist medium who led
a small church in Holly Hill, Florida. In the
early 1950s, she began to experience telepathic communications from the master
teachers of Venus. One of them was Cymatrili. He and his companions were based in a
giant ship in orbit above the southeastern
United States. Venusians look much like humans but are finer featured. Their civilization
is advanced, peaceful, and free of disease,
poverty, and conflict. Venusians live to be several hundred years old.
Brady was little noted outside contactee
circles until the summer of 1957, when a retired army major, Wayne S. Aho, took tape
recordings to Washington, DC, of Bradys
communications from Cymatrili, Huma
Matra, Mandall, and John (the latter two
ventlasaucerpilots). Aho visited the
Pentagon. He persuaded Defense Department personnel to listen to an hour and a
half s worth of the tapes. A spokesman pronounced the messages unimpressive and unconvincing (Pentagon, 1957). Aho later
played the tape for a United Press International reporter, who wrote a tongue-in-cheek
piece on the experience.
In other channelings, Bradys Venusians related that in 1955, Martians had landed at
Edwards Air Force Base in southern California and were taken into custody. Engineers
from the air force learned a great deal about
extraterrestrial technology from studying the

Cymatrili

saucer the Martians had arrived in, and that

technology was incorporated into later, flyingwing, experimental aircraft.
Bradys space informants also told her that
landings would begin in November 1957, and
that in 1962, Earth would enter a New Age
under the guidance of friendly extraterrestrials.

77

See Also: Channeling; Contactees

Further Reading
Bryant, Larry W., 1983. Enid Bradys E-T Contact
Legacy. MUFON UFO Journal 179 (January):
1213.
Pentagon Hears Voices from Venus but Fails to Be
Excited about Them, 1957. The Saucers Report
2, 3 (October/November): 89.

David of Landa

From then on David appeared in regular

channelings. During these channelings, Macdonald would lapse into a trance state and
speak in Davids voice. Afterward he could
not recall any of the content and would depend on Owen to explain what words had
passed through his mouth. When David
wished to communicate only with Macdonald, however, no trance was necessary. A
voice inside his head would speak, and
sometimes Macdonald would psychically perceive David and other people of Landa. Macdonald described the men as strikingly handsome, the women beautiful. All wore robes
and reminded Macdonald of Greek gods and
goddesses. Sometimes David came through
spontaneously when Macdonald was speaking
with Owen over the phone. At first, the channelingsa word Macdonald and Owen had
not heard until they attended a Wyoming
contactee conference sponsored by psychologist/contactee R. Leo Sprinklewere relatively infrequent. With the passing of time,
they occurred more often, on occasion, as
many as three or four times a week.
Other extraterrestrials soon were speaking
through Macdonald. There was Corinthian,
Davids wife. Others were Pauline, Lenoir,
Chieftain, and Isaiah. Some would not give
their names, insisting names were unimpor-

David of the planet Landa, a distant world

not recognized by conventional astronomy,
channeled through Keith Macdonald (d.
1999), a Grayslake, Illinois, car mechanic who
lived a quiet life outside the public spotlight.
Macdonald is typical of the sorts of persons
ufologist/occultist John A. Keel has called
silent contactees. Unlike the flamboyant figures who seek attention and audiences, Macdonald confided his experiences only with
family and trusted friends.
Macdonald became aware of David while
undergoing hypnotic regression directed by
his close friend Ron Owen. In 1974, Macdonald, his wife, and two sons saw what they
believed to be a UFO hovering over a field
across the street from their townhouse. Four
years later, reliving the experience through
hypnosis, he recalled being taken into the
object and undergoing a terrifying abduction
at the hands of gray-skinned humanoids.
Macdonald pursued recalling the experience
through further hypnosis sessions until one
session suddenly ended with his declaring
that they could go no further because
theyre hereright in the room with us!
(Clark, 1986). Then an entity who identified
himself as David began speaking through
Macdonald.
79

80

David of Landa

tant. David, however, did most of the communicating. Whenever a particular question
was asked, he would excuse himself and say he
had to clear the answer with higher authority.
After a pause, from a few seconds to a few
minutes, he would return either to answer the
question or to announce he was not permitted
to answer it. Other times, though rarely, the
entity with whom David had conferred, the
Master, would speak, always briefly. The Masters voice had an odd, eerie quality and a tone
of absolute authority.
Over many dozens of hours of channeling,
this story emerged:
Just before Moses was given the Ten Commandments, seven citizens of Landa were
elected by the Masters for a mission on Earth.
The leader of the Seven Select, also called the
Habanas or the Warriors of God, was Daniel
(pronounced Dan-yell), the son of David and
Corinthian. Once on Earth, the Habanass
souls occupied human bodies. With the passing of centuries, during which the Habanas
reincarnated repeatedly, other Habanas arrived, filling Earth with extraterrestrial agents
who with each life gained new knowledge that
would be useful when the day of reckoning
the cleansing of the human race and the final
showdown with the evil forces of the universecame. This climax would occur within
the lifetimes of most living people. In this life,
Daniel was Keith Macdonald.
David said, Keith has now graduated and
become a prophet. He is a prophet of Christ.
He is a prophet of God. The people of
Landa, devout Christians, practice a form of
Roman Catholicism. Raised a Protestant,
Macdonald knew little of Catholicism until
the Landanians contacted him.
According to a channeling from the Master
in 1985, soon there will be forty craft of
Landa truly visible to the eyes of all humans.
Three more craft shall come down to receive
Keith. This will be done to gain the attention
of the many, for Keith has a job. His first job
will be to be received by us of Landa, to be
taken there for forty days and nights. During
that time forty craft of Landa will travel to

every nation to show Keith has been received.

When the meeting is over, Keith will return to
meet with the leaders of the churches and the
nations. He will demand the release of the
Scrolls for all human beings to see and understand. The Master explained that earthlings
cannot now tell the difference between good
and evil because the Scrollssuppressed ancient religious documentshave not been
available to them.
The Scrolls contain the hidden history of
humanity, revealing all the truths that God,
Jesus, and Mary wanted humans to know but
were concealed because they did not suit the
purposes of earthly political leaders and
church authorities. Keith himself, the Master
asserted, had this knowledge within himself,
though it had not yet been released into his
conscious mind.
At the time of the Liftingwhich is what
the Landanians called the occasion that Macdonald would be taken aboard a spacecraft
(one of three that would appear in the same
empty field where evil aliens had kidnapped
him in 1974) and flown home to Landa
there would be thousands of witnesses. On
September 22, 1985, Macdonald encountered
the apparitional forms of David and
Corinthian, who informed him that an earthquake would devastate San Francisco soon.
Upset, he pleaded for the innocent lives that
would be lost, but his space friends/parents
soberly replied, It is inevitable. You must
pray for the souls of those who will be lost and
for those who will miss them.
Convinced that the earthquake would
occur any day, Macdonald waited gloomily
and anxiously. Nothing happened. But then
on the morning of October 7, as Macdonald
was letting the dog out, a blinding light shot
out of the sky and struck him in the face. He
took this to mean that the first of the three
Landanian craft that would carry him away
was in place.
The following day, while talking with
Owen on the phone, David took over. He said
that a physical, in-the-flesh meeting between
Keith and David would occur in two days in

Dead extraterrestrials

Keiths house. David and Corinthian did not

keep their appointment.
In the days and weeks that followed, Macdonald experienced a series of unusually vivid
dreams. One night he dreamed that he had
been accepted back into the military. To him
this symbolized his role as a Warrior of God
about to fight. Another night he dreamed
that he was on a college campus, knowing
where every building, every door, every room
was. He heard professors lecturing and knew
every word they were saying. He understood
that he had graduated to a level more advanced than college. In yet another dream, he
was gazing over a crowd of hundreds of people, seeing deep inside each and recognizing
each one as a fellow Warrior of God, brother
and sister Habanas who would be coming
together in the great events yet to occur as
Earth met its cosmic destiny. A voice inside
the dream told him that this was a reunion.
A blinding light cut through the dream, and
when Macdonald sat bolt upright in bed, it
continued to shine. It was so bright that he
had to put his arm over his face.
Strange, ominous events seemed to point
to the imminent Lifting. Twice on the evening
of October 23, as Macdonald and Owen were
talking, the phone suddenly disconnected,
each time with a peculiar squealing sound. It
happened just as they were discussing key
points about Landanian objectives. Macdonald saw odd lights both inside the house and
in the sky. Landanians appeared with increasing frequency, but only Macdonald could see
them. They were invisible to his wife. Macdonald tried to capture them on film, but all
that the resulting photographs showed was
the interior of the house, nothing more.
Early in December, the date of the San
Francisco earthquake that was to prefigure the
Lifting appeared before his eyes in brilliant
light: DECEMBER 22. He could not only see
the date but also experience the sensations of
being in the quake. As the days passed, the vision of the date recurred along with scenes of
devastation. When December 22 came and
went with no earthquake, David told Keith

81

that the real date was January 3; the twentysecond was the date on which the craft would
begin to show themselves. David said that
Macdonald should always remember, There
is more than one meaning to a sentence.
The failure of assorted prophecies never
entirely diminished Keith Macdonalds beliefa palpably sincere onethat people
from Landa were communicating with him.
He learned, however, to be cautious about
their predictions, including promises of inthe-flesh meetings prior to the Lifting. In the
years that followed, growing health problems
forced Macdonald into retirement. In his last
years, he spent considerable time in the hospital. During that period contacts occurred
more often in unusually lucid dreams than
they did via channeling.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Channeling; Contactees; Keel, John Alva; Sprinkle, Ronald Leo
Further Reading
Clark, Jerome, 1986. Waiting for the Space Brothers. Fate Pt. I. 39, 3 (March): 4754; Pt. II. 39,
4 (April): 8187; Pt. III. 39, 5 (May): 6876.
Owen, Ron, 2000. Private communication to
Jerome Clark (January 6).

Dead extraterrestrials
Claims that the bodies of extraterrestrials have
been found in the wreckage of spacecraft are
older than the postWorld War II UFO age.
As long ago as 1864, a French newspaper (La
Pays, June 17) reported the discovery, by two
American geologists, of a hollow, egg-shaped
rock. Inside it were various odd artifacts. They
also found the mummified remains of a tiny
humanoidabout three feet tallwith a bald
head and an elephantlike trunk growing out
of its forehead. On October 13, 1877, a
provincial paper in Argentina set the identical
tall tale in that country, adding the detail that
the discoverers had taken the body and artifacts to a local saloon to put on display.
In 1897, during a wave of UFO (or, in the
terminology of the time, airship) sightings,
ships crashed and Martians died in Illinois
and Texas. In the latter instance, the pilot was
reportedly buried in a cemetery in a small

82

Dead extraterrestrials

north Texas town. When the latter tale was revived in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hopeful investigators rushed to the scene, only to
learn eventually that no such corpse or grave
had ever existed outside the imagination of a
turn-of-the-century prankster.
Though it did not come to wider attention
until many years later, a killing of a tiny humanoid reportedly took place in 1913 near
Farmersville, Texas. Three young brothers
were chopping cotton on their farm when
they heard the family dogs barking and then
howling. On investigating, the boys saw the
dogs attacking a strange little man no more
than eighteen inches high and kind of a dark
green color, one witness, an old man, recalled
in a 1978 interview. His arms were hanging
down just beside him, like they was growed
down the side of him. He had on a kind of
hat that reminded me of a Mexican hat. . . .
Everything looked like a rubber suit including
the hat. The dogs tore him to pieces, leaving
human-looking organs and blood on the
ground. The peculiar tale was known within
the family for decades. Though he had a hard
time believing the story, the investigator
thought there was no question of the old
mans sincerity.
Rumors of dead aliens, however, did not
enter popular culture in any significant way
until 1947, after Kenneth Arnolds June 24
observation of nine discs over Mount Rainier,
Washington, brought flying saucers into
common currency. After initial theories that
tied the sightings to secret aviation experiments proved groundless, those who continued to take the reports seriously slowly began
to wonder if visitors from other planets were
responsible for the phenomenon. By 1949,
rumors of recovered extraterrestrial bodies
began to see print, notably in the entertainment industry newspaper Variety. Columnist
Frank Scully wrote that on three occasions the
previous year, beginning with an incident in
Aztec, New Mexico, in March, U.S. Air Force
personnel had recovered, at various desert
sites, the remains of crashed spacecraft and
bodies. He expanded these allegations into a

book destined for lasting notoriety, Behind the

Flying Saucers (1950). In it, he identified his
source as the pseudonymous Dr. Gee, said
to be a leading scientific expert on magnetism
(brought into the investigation of the recovery
because it was believed that the ships probably flew on magnetic lines of force). The
dead crews, human in every respect except for
their perfect teeth and unfashionable 1890sstyle clothes, were surmised to be of Venusian
origin. A subsequent expos in True magazine
revealed that Dr. Gee was veteran confidence artist Leo GeBauer. With his longtime
partner-in-crime, Silas Newton, GeBauer had
concocted the tale to sell bogus oil-detection
devices allegedly tied to advanced interplanetary technology.
As a result of the episode, even persons otherwise sympathetically disposed to the idea of
space visitation were deeply skeptical of
crash/retrieval claims. Still, the claims circulated in a significant body of saucer folklore,
only a little of which surfaced in the UFO literature. In 1952, Jim and Coral Lorenzen of
the newly formed Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization (APRO)which would prove
among the most influential and durable of all
UFO groupsspoke with an airman who
swore that four years earlier he and others
from a military-scientific team had been dispatched to a New Mexico crash site. There he
had seen a disc and learned that dead, little
men had been taken from its cabin. Not long
afterward, a young meteorologist told the
Lorenzens that in 1948, while visiting Wright
Air Development Center (soon to be renamed
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton,
Ohio, he had spoken with an old friend, an
air force man. The friend, in Coral Lorenzens
words, showed him space suits ranging from
three to about five and a half feet in height
and diagrams of a circular ship that bore a
strong resemblance to a flying saucer. He said
that people who laughed about flying saucers
were going to get a big jolt some daythese
suits had been taken off the bodies of men
who had apparently perished in the crash of
their saucer-shaped ships (Lorenzen, 1962).

Dead extraterrestrials 83

On May 7, 1955, a Caracas, Venezuela,

newspaper, El Universal, carried a sensational
story of an incident supposed to have taken
place almost exactly five years earlier. A man
claimed that while driving down a rural highway in Argentina, he spotted a flying saucer
that had landed on the side of the road. Curious, he stopped his car, approached the craft,
and eventually boarded it. Inside, he found
the bodies of three little men lying near an instrument panel. After touching one, he panicked and fled, to return the next day to see
UFOs hovering over the site. Where the original craft had been there was only a pile of
warm, gray ashes. Years later, a retrospective
investigation by Argentine ufologists determined that the witness had made up the
story.
More intriguing was an account given in
confidence to Isabel L. Davis, one of the most
intelligent, hard-headed, first-generation ufologists and a fierce critic of the more outlandish saucer tales. Davis never published the
account in her lifetime, but she found it intriguing, given that the informant, a medical
scientist, seemed serious and credible. Even
so, the scientists claim was a fantastic one. In
the late 1950s, she told Davis, she was directed to a secure, government-run facility
and ordered to examine body parts that she
quickly recognized as humanlike but not
human. Her superiors provided no explanations or further details, and when her work
was completed, they instructed her to tell nobody. As she remarked to Davis, she would
not have done so anyway, since no one would
have believed her.
Another talethis one circulated by saucer
personality and publisher Gray Barkerconcerned Nicholas von Poppen, an Estonian
refugee who had fled his native country when
Soviet troops overran it and slaughtered his
family. That much of the story seems true (the
real Von Poppen died in Los Angeles in
1976). Beyond that, however, Barker and
truth parted company. He took an unpublished science-fiction manuscript written by a
subscriber to his magazine The Saucerian and

transformed it into a true story. In the original, the writer/subscriber had taken a colorful,
real acquaintance, Von Poppen, and placed
him inside a fantasy in which Von Poppen
took photographs in New Mexico of a crashed
UFO and its occupants. Barker took this story
and embellished it further, then marketed it as
an account of an authentic incidentnot the
only hoax Barker would perpetrate on his impressionable readers.
In the 1970s, ufologist Leonard H. Stringfield, in the face of criticism and skepticism
from some colleagues, began collecting
crash/retrieval claims and rumors and publishing them in a series of monographs. None
amounted to much as evidence, though some
were undeniably interesting, such as the testimony of a Presbyterian pastor. This man
Stringfield protected the names of his informantsalleged that when he was a boy, he and
his father (also a clergyman) visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
During one visit, they got lost. In their search
for an exit, they accidentally entered a room
where a number of humanoid beings lay preserved under a glass-covered case. Before they
could fully grasp what they were seeing, they
were discovered. The father was pressured to
sign papers swearing him to silence.
In another alleged instance, said to have
taken place at a New Jersey air force base in
January 1978, a sergeantwho insisted on
anonymitytold Stringfield that in the early
morning hours a military policeman had shot
and killed a humanoid being that he had encountered while chasing a UFO in his car.
The body was then shipped off to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The sergeant eventually
provided an official-looking incident report,
with the names of witnesses and investigators
inked out. Stringfields informant talked and
acted in a manner that he and fellow ufologist
Richard Hall, who interviewed the man in
person on two occasions, deemed sincere, but,
despite a serious effort, they uncovered nothing that conclusively verified the claim.
Perhaps the most interesting of Stringfields
informants were several medical people who

84

Dead extraterrestrials

had performed autopsies on alien corpses.

One, a physician who served on the staff of a
major hospital (Stringfield, 1980), provided
a detailed account of an autopsy, in the early
1950s, of a humanoid reminiscent of the
gray-skinned, big-eyed entities that would figure in abduction lore in later years. Stringfield, who died in December 1994, never revealed the names of these individuals, so
independent investigation of their stories and
status proved impossible. Nor would his family provide investigators with Stringfields files.
None disputed Stringfields integrity, though
some questioned his judgment in taking such
extraordinary testimony at face value.
Lecturing in London on April 14, 1979,
American occultist and channeler James Hurtak declared that a flying saucer had crashed
as early as 1946. His source, he said, was a
colleague who had participated in the re-

trieval. The crash occurred near Great Falls,

Montana. The bodies were shipped to the
Edwards Air Force Base facility in California, Hurtak claimed. It was determined
that the green hue on the bodies was due to
the nature of the chemistry of the fuel system. After extensive studies the bodies were
put on ice and sealed in aluminum canisters
(Hurtak, 1979).
In the late 1970s, a Minnesota schoolteacher, William L. Moore, and a nuclear scientist and UFO lecturer, Stanton T. Friedman, got interested in an incident that to
most was an obscure footnote: a brief flurry of
excitement in early July 1947 over the supposed recovery of a flying disc near Roswell,
New Mexico. The story had hit the presses
only to be contradicted in a matter of a few
hours, when the U.S. Army Air Force announced 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 (Peregrine
Mendoza/Fortean Picture Library)

Dead extraterrestrials 85

misunderstanding about a downed weather

balloon. During his travels, Friedman met a
retired air force officer who, at the time, had
been stationed at Roswell Army Air Field; the
officer, Major Jesse A. Marcel, had been the
first uniformed officer on the site, and his observation and experience over the next few
days put into question the long-accepted balloon explanation. Friedman also interviewed a
woman who had worked at an Albuquerque
radio station. She vividly remembered how
the U.S. Air Force had squelched coverage of
the story. Both she and Marcel believed that
some kind of extraordinary event that had
badly rattled the military had happened.
Moores The Roswell Incident (1980),
written with Bermuda Triangle popularizer
Charles Berlitz, would be only the first of
many books to address the subject. As investigators spoke with a growing number of informants, military and civilian, they established that a cover-up, maintained in part by
the threatening of witnesses, had been put
into place and that the official story was not
the real story. Some witnesses even asserted
that the military had recovered bodies of little men at either the original crash site or
another, related one some miles away. In
time, the Roswell incident, as everyone
called it, was no longer an arcane fascination
of ufologists but a much-discussed item of
pop culture, influencing any number of television shows, documentaries, movies, jokes,
and more.
After years of denying that the air force had
covered up the Roswell incident, the General
Accounting Office, at the behest of New Mexico Congressman Steven Schiff, searched official archives for relevant documents, uncovering little of interest. Around the same time, in
1994, the U.S. Air Force declared that there
had indeed been a cover-up; it had been of
Project Mogul, a highly classified project in
which balloons were sent aloft to monitor
possible Soviet atomic tests over the horizon.
A Mogul balloon had come down near
Roswell, and the militarys effort to keep it a
secret sparked the legend of a UFO crash. In

the face of press and popular skepticism

(much of it focused on the explanations failure to account for reports of bodies) the U.S.
Air Force renewed its inquiries. On June 24,
1997, it contended that the supposedly alien
bodies were in fact anthropomorphic test
dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air
Force high altitude balloons for scientific research (The Roswell Report, 1997). The problem with this theory was that tests involving
such dummies did not occur until 1953, leaving the air force with the rationalizationunpersuasive to manythat the informants simply had their time mixed up.
Still, many ufologists, as much out of frustration as firm intellectual conviction, accepted the Mogul explanation, whatever its
imperfections. The Roswell incident had
spawned an industry and generated a huge
body of often confusing, contradictory (and
sometimes demonstrably false) testimony. It
even generated documents (most notably the
notorious and deeply suspect MJ-12 papers, purportedly from the supersecret project overseeing the UFO cover-up). On the
whole, it did not accomplish a great deal except to line the pockets of opportunists who
didnt much care about the truthwhich, in
any event, seemed irrecoverable so many
years past the original event. Roswell also inspired one of the most brazen hoaxes in UFO
history, the so-called alien autopsy film that
aired on the Fox Network in the mid-1990s,
purporting to show the dismemberment of
an extraterrestrial body by government scientists in 1947.
The failure of the Roswell story to come to
firm resolution after two decades of furious
controversy sobered many once-enthusiastic
or hopeful ufologists. But as long as questions
remain, the mystery will stay open to those
who are sufficiently determined to keep
thinkingor, perhaps, thinking wishfully
about it. And Roswell or no, rumors, tall tales,
andon rare occasiongenuinely intriguing
reports of dead extraterrestrials in our midst
are likely to entertain live humans for some
time to come.

86

Dead extraterrestrials

A photo from the U.S. Air Forces Roswell Report about the 1947 UFO incident at Roswell, New Mexico, released June
24, 1997, and intended to eliminate long-standing rumors. Air force personnel supposedly used stretchers and gurneys to
pick up these 200-pound dummies in the field and move them to the laboratory. (Associated Press/Air Force)

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Aurora Martian;

Fossilized aliens; Olesons giants
Further Reading
Barker, Gray, 1960. Chasing the Flying Saucers.
Flying Saucers (November): 2228.
Berlitz, Charles, and William L. Moore, 1980.
The Roswell Incident. New York: Grosset and
Dunlap.

Cahn, J. P., 1952. The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men. True (September): 1719,
102112.
Carey, Thomas J., and Donald R. Schmitt, 1999.
Mack Brazel Reconsidered. International UFO
Reporter 24, 4 (Winter): 1219.
Evans, Alex, 1978. Encounters with Little Men.
Fate 31, 11 (November): 8386.

Diane
General Accounting Office, 1995. Report to the Hon orable Steven H. Schiff, House of Representatives:
Results of a Search for Records Concerning the 1947
Crash Near Roswell, New Mexico. Washington,
DC: General Accounting Office.
Hurtak, James J., 1979. The Occupants of Crashed
Saucers. The UFO Register 10, 1 (December):
23.
Lorenzen, Coral E., 1962. The Great Flying Saucer
Hoax: The UFO Facts and Their Interpretation.
New York: William-Frederick Press.
Pflock, Karl T., 1994. Roswell in Perspective. Mount
Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.
, 2000. Whats Really Behind the Flying
Saucers? A New Twist on Aztec. The Anomalist 8
(Spring): 137161.
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 at
Roswell. New York: Avon Books.
The Roswell Report: Case Closed, 1997. Washington,
DC: Defense Department, Air Force, Headquarters.
The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New
Mexico Desert, 1995. Washington, DC: Headquarters, United States Air Force.
Scully, Frank, 1950. Behind the Flying Saucers. New
York: 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 Squirrels
Cage. In Hilary Evans with John Spencer, eds.
UFOs 19471987: The 40-Year Search for an Ex planation, 145155. London: Fortean Tomes.
Swords, Michael D., 1997. Roswell: Clashing Visions of the Possible. International UFO Reporter
22, 3 (Fall): 1113, 3335.

Dentonss Martians and Venusians

In America during the nineteenth century,
spiritualists and other psychics proliferated.
Among the most prominent were William
Denton and his son Sherman. They called
themselves psychometers, which meant that
they could discern any truth, however distant
in time and space, by touching a physical object or, if it were out of reach, at least focusing
on it. In this way they learned that Mars and
Venus were inhabited.
As the elder Denton put it, A telescope
only enables us to see; but the spiritual facul-

87

ties enable their possessors to hear, smell,

taste, and feel, and become for the time
being, almost inhabitants of the planet they
are examining.
In 1866, as the two men were standing out
in a field watching Venus rise in the evening
sky, the father asked the son to study the
planet and tell him what he saw. After a few
minutes, Sherman described trees, water that
was heavy but not wet, and animals that had
the features of both fish and muskrats.
Other experiments soon followed. Sherman left his body and traveled to Mars, where
he saw a thriving civilization consisting of a
race that looked much like humans. They
soar above traffic on their individual flycycles, he reported. They seem particularly
fond of air travel. As many as thirty people occupy some of the large flying conveyances.
The Martians also had a particular fondness
for aluminum, which they employed in building houses and machines.
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian;
Browns Martians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga;
Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians; Monka;
Mullers Martians; Shaws Martians; Smeads Martians; Thompsons Venusians; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1966. Strangers from the Skies. New
York: Award Books.

Diane
According to contactee Dana Howard, Diane
was a Venusian who began appearing to humans in 1939. She returned in 1955 and was
seen many times after that. Diane came in
the same miraculous manner as the Lady of
The Lourdes and Our Lady of Fatima,
Howard wrote. To all appearances She is a
physical being like ourselves, yet She is obviously created of substances not of this earth
(Howard, 1958).
Howard, who claimed to have visited
Venus, reported that on October 3, 1957, as
she was lecturing at the Womens Clubhouse
in Fontana, California, she felt a strange
warmth come over her. After the meeting, several audience members rushed up to her to say
that they had seen an apparition of a young

88

Divine Fire

woman transposed over Howards body. One

audience member, Eleanor Warner, described
the figure of a beautiful woman, very young,
with long golden hair, a very slim body, and
small waistline. She seemed to glow in the
golden light. Another witness, Trudy Allen,
was overcome by the transcendent beauty
that was shining forth.
In Howards account, Diane appeared to
her, in full view of twenty-seven witnesses, for
the first time on April 29, 1955, and identified herself as a Venusian. That same week
UFOs appeared on four occasions over Palm
Springs, California, Howards hometown.

were one; everything and everybody was at

once individual and universal. And finally, humans were entering, in Steigers summary, a
New Age, another progression in our evolution as spiritual beings. . . . We are moving toward a state of mystical consciousness wherein
every man shall be priest.

See Also: Contactees

Further Reading
Howard, Dana, 1958. The Drama behind the
Space Ships. Flying Saucer Review 4, 3
(May/June): 2123.

Dual reference is a term coined by Massachusetts ufologist Joseph Nyman. His hypnotic investigations of abductees have led him
to the discovery that many believe themselves
to be of alien origin. They have no conscious
memories of such a personal extraterrestrial
link, but under hypnosis they gradually come
to understand that the aliens who are abducting them are actually their own associates and
colleagues. They eventually grasp that before
their human selves were born, their alien
selves made the decision to send their consciousnesses into human fetal bodies. In the
very first years of their human lives, memories
of their homes on other worlds are lost, but
over the years, as they undergo abduction experiences, they learnthrough hypnotic recall of these experiencesof their true past
and their mission in this life and on this
planet. Sometimes, while the session is going
on, the hypnotist is able to speak directly with
the alien intelligence in the subjects body.
Similar notions are not uncommon among
contactees, many of whom are convinced that
they were extraterrestrials in an earlier lives
and are now here to help prepare humans for
the great geophysical and spiritual changes
that will be coming soon. Dual reference also
is somewhat comparable to the notion of
Walk-ins, popularized by occult writer Ruth
Montgomery, except that Walk-ins are not always (though they are sometimes) extraterrestrials. Moreover, they are so intellectually and
spiritually advanced that they only take up oc-

Divine Fire
In a book that would prove influential in
1970s New Age circles, Brad Steiger wrote of
what he called the Divine Fire. He believed
that a dramatic rise was occurring in visionary
experience, channeling, and other contact with
ostensible higher intelligences. Clergymen,
clerks, professors, public relations executives,
housewives, students, servicemen, and factory
workers have been demonstrating that Pentecost was not just a one-shot special designed to
excite the Apostles and their kibitzers in Jerusalem of A.D. 30, he said (Steiger, 1973).
According to Steiger, these extraordinary
experiences and communications were taking
a variety of forms, but the message was the
same in its essence as those given to prophets
five thousand years ago. He suggested that
the very repetition of a basic message may be
evidence of the vital relevancy and universality
of a cosmic truth. The messages came from
ostensible angels, extraterrestrials, divinities,
and the like, but all spoke of a Higher Being
from whom each individual could draw inspiration and wisdom. These messages stated
that all humans have the power within themselves to contact this Higher Being. All things

See Also: Channeling

Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Dual reference

Dual reference

cupancy of the bodies of grown adults, so as

not to waste valuable time.
Nyman writes, We strongly suspect that
the feeling of dual reference . . . is unconsciously present in all [abduction] experiencers (Nyman, 1989). Most investigators of
the abduction phenomenon disagree, and indeed when Nyman presented his ideas at a
1992 conference held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, some questioners accused him of leading his subjects into confabulation. They were particularly critical of his
practice of asking the subjects to recall memories of their lives in the womb. Among
Nymans defenders was Harvard University
psychologist John E. Mack, who was also engaged in extensive hypnotic probing of ostensible abductees.
In a book published two years later, Mack
told the story of a young man he identifies
only as Paul, one of an increasing group of
abductees . . . who have discovered that they
have a dual identity of an alien (they do not
use that word) and a human being. Paul
was convinced that he was on Earth to show
people how to love and accept lovethis
even before he found his alien identity
under hypnosis.
Paul had gone to another psychologist to
examine some of his lifes problems, including
a conviction that he had seen a weird humanoid creature. Hypnotized, he spoke of
other encounters with other strange beings,
including one when he was two or three years
old. The psychologist did not know what to
make of these stories, and he and Paul parted
company; Paul eventually found his way to
Mack.
With Mack, Paul explored an apparent
memory of a further encounter, this one when
he was six and a half. He spoke of seeing a
being inside his house and of sensing that the
two of them were linked in a way. They
went outside together, where they met two
groupsfour or five eachof humanoids.
Though they did not look human, Paul felt
comfortable, even joyful, to be in their company. They apparently felt the same; they

89

hugged him and gave every indication of feeling great affection for him. The whole experience felt like home. Subsequently he was
taken aboard a ship, an experience he sensed
he had undergone in other lives. One of the
beings told him that he was from their planet.
The alien spoke of human beings inability to
truly open up to another and of their hostility to the visiting extraterrestrials.
During the session Paul alternated between
his human and alien selves. In the latter, he
spoke of the nature of higher consciousness
and of humans destructive ways. He also expressed homesickness for the ship and the
planet from which he had come. He remembered earlier visits to Earth, including interactionsapparently tens of millions of years
agowith intelligent, gentle dinosaurs. In another instance, the ship on which he was travelingin earthling guisewith extraterrestrial companions rescued the surviving
occupants of a crashed craft that went down
in the desert after being shot down by men in
uniforms. Two of the crew died and had to
be abandoned in the face of advancing soldiers. Paul felt, in this instance, ashamed to be
human; yet, in a broader context, he felt certain that peace and love were slowly spreading over the Earth and that he had a role to
play in opening up human beings to larger,
benevolent cosmic truths.
According to Mack, Paul has learned powerful psychic healing powers from his ongoing
interactions with his extraterrestrial friends.
He has been given a great deal of information
on their unbelievable technology but has
been forbidden to share it (Mack, 1994a).
Mack rejects the theory that such attachments of abductee to abductor are analogous
to the so-called Stockholm Syndrome, in
which a hostage comes to identify with his or
her captor. There is, he says, little sense that
the alien identity is primarily a product of
identification with the aggressor. . . . Rather,
the dual identity appears to be a fundamental
dimension of the consciousness expansion or
opening that is an intrinsic aspect of the abduction phenomenon itself (Mack, 1994b).

90

Dugja
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees; Walk-ins
Further Reading
Mack, John E., 1994a. Abduction: Human Encoun ters with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribners
Sons.
, 1994b. Post Conference Note. In Andrea
Pritchard, 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 Cambridge
Press.
Nyman, Joseph, 1988. The Latent Encounter ExperienceA Composite Model. MUFON UFO
Journal 242 (June): 1012.
, 1989. The Familiar Entity and Dual Reference in the Latent Encounter. MUFON UFO
Journal 251 (March): 1012.
, 1994. Dual Reference in the UFO Encounter. In Andrea Pritchard, David E.
Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey, and Claudia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the
Abduction Study Conference, 142148. Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press.

Dugja
According to members of a small group called
Elan Vital (Vital Essence), the last queen of
the lost continent of Lemuria, Dugja (pronounced doo-ja), reigns as Spirit of the
Mountain. The mountain is Shasta, in far
northern California, the focus of many occult

beliefs and legends. Dugja materializes whenever her mood or the situation, calls for it.
One member claimed that in 1963, while
meditating on Mount Shastas Grey Butte, he
sensed an astral man, with thin hair, white
beard, and pink skin, warning him telepathically to turn back. When he ignored the threats
and entreaties, other astral entities joined with
the first one. Nonetheless, undaunted, the man
ended his meditation and continued his trek
up the mountain. Soon he encountered Dugja,
who greeted him warmly and invited him to
stay for a time. He returned to Shasta three
years later. Since then, he told reporter Emilie
A. Frank in the 1970s, he had visited the queen
on many occasions in both physical and outof-body states. I am also responsible for cleaning negative light forces around Mount Shasta
and elsewhere in the world, he said. These
light forces affect the population, and in order
to make the world a better place . . . I polarize
their negative influences. Eventually they will
all be pure. In the meantime, I make many astral trips to Mount Shasta in order to purify the
lights (Frank, 1998).
See Also: Lemuria; Mount Shasta
Further Reading
Frank, Emilie A., 1998. Mt. Shasta: Californias Mys tic Mountain. Hilt, CA: Photografix Publishing.

Earth Coincidence Control Office

the latter always the creation of the former, are

in conflict all through the universe. Waterbased beings from elsewhere are paying close
attention to developments on Earth and sending humans constant telepathic messages that
usually register, at least where humans are concerned, only on a subliminal level. These beings (the Earth Coincidence Control Office, in
Lillys phrasing) seek to influence human evolution in such a way that humans do not become enslaved to their technology. The other
intelligences that share our planetdolphins
and whalesare more psychically attuned to
these messages and receive them clearly. Lilly
holds that whales and dolphins quite naturally
go in the direction we call spiritual, in that they
get into meditative states quite simply and easily. . . . Dolphins have a highly developed consciousness, and a powerful connection to
higher realities (Lilly, 1972).
Beginning in the 1950s, Lilly had experimented with sensory deprivation. He would
place himself in a tank of water in a totally
dark, silent room. In due course he would undergo vivid hallucinations. To him these hallucinations became more real than reality. He
came to believe that through them he entered
other dimensions of existence and grew aware
that this dimension and others harbor innumerable varieties of intelligent entities.

Scientist John Lilly, best known for his pioneering researches into dolphins and into altered states of consciousness, was on an airliner approaching Los Angeles when he had
his first communication from an intelligence
he would come to call Earth Coincidence
Control Office. He received a psychic message
that said, We will now make a demonstration of our power over the solid-state control
systems upon the planet Earth. In thirty seconds, we will shut off all electronic equipment
in the Los Angeles airport. Your airplane will
be unable to land there and will have to be
shunted to another airport (Lilly, 1978). Sure
enough, the power blackout occurred, forcing
Lillys plane to land at Burbank; another plane
crashed.
In a visionary experience not long afterward, Lilly witnessed the future of the human
race. A solid-state intelligence, consisting of
all computers and electronic systems, will assume control of everything and become too
powerful for human beings to do anything
about. By the 2500s this intelligence will be in
communication with its counterparts elsewhere in the Milky Way.
Lilly believed himself to be in contact with
the water-basedas opposed to solid-state
entities in the universe. The two intelligences,
91

92

Elder Race
Further Reading
Lilly, John C., 1972. The Center of the Cyclone: An
Autobiography of Inner Space. New York: Julian
Press.
, 1978. The Scientist: A Novel Autobiography.
New York: J. B. Lippincott.

Elder Race
The Elder Race, also known as Els, was the
first extraterrestrial group ever to arrive on
Earth. They showed up one billion years ago
after already having colonized a considerable
portion of the galaxy. But on Earth, these beingsoriginally twelve feet tall, male and female (though not as we think of sex differentiation today [Williamson, 1959]), and many
one-eyedradically changed. Earth would be
the last planet in which they existed in physical bodies. During their stay on Earth, they
conquered matter, energy, space, and time,
becoming the legendary gods able to project via mental powers any amount of matter

in any degree of density or intensity to any

place on Earth at any time. In their underground city near Lake Titicaca, along what is
now the Peru-Bolivia border, they built a vast
control room, a kind of Earth Center.
In this and other underground realms, they
left vast libraries on which the history of the
universe is recorded on crystal devices encased
in magnetic fields. On occasion, a psychically
sensitive individual is able to tap into these
records.
Further Reading
Williamson, George Hunt, 1959. Road in the Sky.
London: Neville Spearman.

Elvis as Jesus
In a book published in 2000, Cinda Godfrey
concludes that Elvis Presley was the Messiahthe returned Jesus Christ. She writes
that she began her research in 1992, determined to disprove any connection between
the two, only to find mind-boggling evidence

Stephanie G. Pierce, Celebrity Spokesminister for the 24 Hour Church of Elvis, stands inside the churchs inner sanctum.
(Macduff Everton/CORBIS)

Emmanuel 93

that the prophecies throughout the [Bible] fit

both Elvis and Jesus like a glove.
Among the similarities: Both Jesus and
Elvis are called The King. Jesus was the
Rock; Elvis (at least according to Godfrey)
invented rock. Jesus was the Son, and Elvis
began his recording career on the Sun label.
The name numbers for Jesus and Elvis both
equal nine, she says. In fact, their namenumbers match exactly, letter for letter and
number for number: Jesus = 15363, Elvis =
53613. Their followers worshipped and
adored them. Both could heal and read
minds, and both had powerful enemies who
sought to stop them. Godfrey claims that
like Jesus, Elvis was Jewish.
She also notes that the Bible frequently
refers to the Voice of God on many occasions.
Is there any voice more spectacular than Elvis
Presleys? she asks. The Psalms even predict
that Presley one day would disappear: I am
shut up and I cannot come forth (Psalms
88:8) and How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide
thyself forever? (Psalms 89:46). Isaiah 4:2
states that when the Messiah comes, In that
day shall the branch [Messiah] of the Lord be
beautiful and glorious. Godfrey remarks,
Now, picture Elvis at his Aloha from Hawaii
concert, resplendent in his jeweled American
Eagle jumpsuit. Curiously enough, the eagle
is also a symbol for Christ (Godfrey, 2000).
According to Godfrey (as well as more
mainstream Presley biographers such as Peter
Guralnick), Presley had a religious vision in
the Arizona desert in March 1965. Just outside Flagstaff, as Presley was driving his bus
with his spiritual advisor Larry Geller sitting
next to him, he saw a cloud in a clear sky and
swore that he could see the face of the late Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in it. The image faded
as the clouds shape changed, so Presley imagined, into the face of Jesus. He pulled the bus
over to the side of the road and ran into the
desert, feeling a sense of deep spiritual transformation. Geller would claim that Presley
later wondered if maybe he was indeed Christ.
Godfrey contends that Elvis Aron Presleys
own name proves his godhood. El means

God, vis from powerthus God Power.

Presley derives from priestly. She goes on,
In fact, all three of Elvis major residences
contain the prophetic EL: Graceland, Tupelo
and Bel Air. Furthermore, according to the
Bible, since Jesus crucifixion, we are living in
the Dispensation of Gracethat 2,000 year
period of time when sins are pardoned by the
sacrificial death of Christ. The name of Elvis
Presleys mansion: GRACE-LAND! And,
she adds, did not Jesus say, I am Alpha and
Omega, the beginning and the ending, just
as Elvis said, I am and I was?
Godfrey goes outside Scripture to delve
into esoteric literature for further evidence,
citing among other sources the prophecies of
Nostradamus and Edgar Cayce. Noting one
occultist interpretation of the Great Pyramid
(not shared by Egyptologists), she writes that
the Great Pyramid was a monument to
Christ, allegedly known to the Egyptians as
Orion. The pyramids structure, read properly, foretells the return of Christ sometime
around 2000. Elvis Presley has been mentioned in connection with the name Orion on
many occasions, she observes, including
Gail Giorgios 1978 bestseller, Orion, about a
godlike singer who faked his death and disappeared (Godfrey, 2000).
Further Reading
Godfrey, Cinda, 2000. The Elvis-Jesus MysteryThe
Shocking Scriptural and Scientific Evidence That
Elvis Presley Could Be the Messiah Anticipated
throughout History. New Philadelphia, OH: Revelation Press.
Guralnick, Peter, 1999. Careless Love: The Unmaking
of Elvis Presley. Boston, MA: Back Bay Books.

Emmanuel
First seen clairvoyantly as a being of golden
light (Rodegast and Stanton, 1985), Emmanuel was a popular channeling entity during the New Age boom of the 1980s. Emmanuel, who spoke through Pat Rodegast, did
not ever explain exactly who or what he was,
insisting only that he was physically real but
hinting that he had a body that human beings
might not be comfortable seeing. He made a

94

Eunethia

particular impression on psychologist and

guru Baba Ram Dass (the former Richard
Alpert, who worked with Timothy Leary on
early LSD research and advocacy).
Emmanuel taught that the separation of
human beings from God was only temporary,
and it served a larger purpose. Through it,
human beings have gained the knowledge
they need to reunite with the divine and become cocreators with God.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Rodegast, Pat, and Judith Stanton, eds., 1985.
Emmanuels Book: A Manual for Living Com fortably in the Cosmos. New York: Some Friends
of Emmanuel.

Eunethia
Eunethia, who channels through Yvonne
Cole, commands the starship Venusia, serving
the Ashtar Command. She and her crew originally came from Venus but now live in a large
ship that orbits Earth. Their purpose is to observe and to teach humans. They are also here
to prepare humans for the great upheavals
that will soon occur in response to their long
abuse of the Earth.
According to Eunethia, more than fourteen
planetary species are involved in the Earth
project. When the call went out for volunteers to assist planet Earth, she says, the response came from all areas of the Universe.
Most interaction is in the form of telepathic
contact (Bryant and Seebach, 1991), though
relatively few humans are sufficiently developed in their psychic powers to communicate.
See Also: Ashtar
Further Reading
Bryant, Alice, and Linda Seebach, 1991. Healing
Shattered Reality: Understanding Contactee
Trauma. Tigard, OR: Wildflower Press.

Extraterrestrial biological entities

According to a body of modern folklore, the
United States government has established secret contact with space people, whom it calls
extraterrestrial biological entities, or EBEs

(ee-buhs). It also has retrieved the bodies of

dead EBEs from crashed UFOs such as the
one that came down near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July 1947.
Such rumors have been in circulation since
the earliest days of the UFO controversy,
which began with a sighting by private pilot
Kenneth Arnold of nine flying saucers over
Mount Rainier, Washington, on June 24,
1947. One of the first rumors alleged that a
giant spacecraft landed not far from Juneau,
Alaska, in mid-1948, and in the first interplanetary conference, President Harry Truman, along with his top aides and high-ranking military officers, met with its occupants,
who were friendly and humble. In the 1950s,
George Hunt Williamson, a contactee and
popular author of saucerian books, wrote that
a highly secret operation known as Project
NQ-707, headquartered at Edwards Air
Force Base in the California desert, had established radio contact with flying saucers and
was trying to get them to land at a rendezvous point near Salton Sea in Southern
California (Williamson, 1953). Williamsons
friend George Adamski insisted that the U.S.
government and space people regularly spoke
with one another. He would even claim that
in 1962 he boarded an alien spaceship at an
air force base on his way to a conference on
Saturn.
In 1956, Englands Flying Saucer Review
published startling revelations by a contributor identified only as a special correspondent. The correspondent asserted that a
highly placed American official had confided
to him that UFOs were known to contain
friendly space visitors who were trying to find
a way to breathe Earths atmosphere before
landing and declaring themselves. The magazine revealed nine years later that its unnamed
informant was one Rolf Alexander, M.D.,
and that the official was the late general and
diplomat George C. Marshall. It did not mention that Alexander was in fact an ex-convict
whose real name was Allan Alexander Stirling.
Alexander claimed vast psychokinetic powers that allowed him to break up clouds.

Extraterrestrials among us

A related rumor held that the government

did not dare to release its knowledge of extraterrestrial visitation for fear of panic. Therefore, it had embarked on an indoctrination
program through which, by judicious leaks
and UFO-themed movies and television
shows, the public would get used to the notion and therefore be able to handle the news
when it was time to deliver it.
In the early 1980s, a darker version of the
legend came to the fore. This time it was tied
to nightmarish conspiracy theories, in which a
malevolent secret government worked with
hostile aliens to enslave the worlds population.
Via abductions the aliens received certain biological materials they needed to survive, and
the secret government, in turn, got access to
advanced extraterrestrial technology. These
speculations were tied to traditional conspiracy
theories, sometimes with barely concealed
anti-Semitic overtones. One of the movements critics, Jerome Clark, coined the phrase
Dark Side to characterize it. One principal
Dark Sider, Milton William Cooper, claimed
to have read highly classified documents that
reported that alien technology made time
travel possible. Both the space people and the
secret government had learned that World War
III would erupt in 1995 and escalate into nuclear conflict in 1999, preparing Earth for the
Second Coming of Christ in 2011.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;
Contactees; Holloman aliens; Williamson, George
Hunt
Further Reading
Andrews, George C., 1986. Extra-Terrestrials Among
Us. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn Publications.
Clark, Jerome, 1998. Dark Side. In The UFO Ency clopedia, Second Edition: The Phenomenon from the
Beginning, 301319. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.
Cooper, Milton William, 1991. Behold a Pale Horse.
Sedona, AZ: Light Technology Publishing.
Ellis, Bill, 1991. Cattle Mutilation: Contemporary
Legends and Contemporary Mythologies. Con temporary Legend 1: 3980.
Lets Talk Space: Flying Saucers Are Real, 1956.
Flying Saucer Review 2, 1 (January): 25.
Report Tells of Top Brass Attending Saucer Landing, 1955. Flying Saucer News-Service Research
Bulletin 1, 9 (August 20): 3.

95

Rolf Alexander, M.D., and Thoughts on UFOs

by 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 us
According to flying-saucer contactees, humanlike beings from other planets walk the
streets of the Earth, undetected and unsuspected by oblivious earthlings.
George Hunt Williamson, for example, declared that the program to infiltrate Earth
began in the late nineteenth century. Space
visitors were actually deposited and left on our
world to mix, mate, and marry with us, he
wrote. The new ideas and theories first came
out in book form [in various scientific and occult texts], and this was the prelude to the appearance of spacecraft in the skies of Earth
(Williamson, 1953). In our time, the extraterrestrial agents, whom Williamson called the
Wanderers, have helped turn our attention to
science fiction and space travel, among other
things. In a subsequent book, Williamson
would argue that the Hopi and Navajo tribes
long ago came to Earth from Mars and Lucifer-Maldek (a destroyed planet whose remains comprise what we now call the asteroid
belt).
In February 1953 Williamsons friend
George Adamski met a Martian on the streets
of Los Angeles. The Martian told him, At
our work and in our leisure time, we mingle
with people here on Earth, never betraying
the secret that we are inhabitants of other
worlds (Adamski, 1955). Those who knew
Adamski took his claims of Earthbound extraterrestrials seriously because they believed that
on occasion they had seen these beings. Lou
Zinsstag was Adamskis most energetic European supporter, and she accompanied him
during much of a lecture tour he conducted
on the continent in 1959. Adamski confided
to her that Venusian menhe called them
boysregularly had been meeting with him
in his hotel rooms on mornings. One afternoon, Zinsstag recalled, she was sitting in a

96

Extraterrestrials among us

sidewalk caf outside Adamskis hotel when

she happened to notice a handsome young
man wearing sun glasses. She was unable to
place his nationality. Shortly thereafter,
Adamski, who had been resting in his room,
came outside, smiling broadly, his eyes
sparkling with pleasure. He was also smiling
at the young man, who smiled back. Adamski
was unable to keep his eyes off the man, who
eventually departed, greeting George and me
with a most friendly and prolonged smile
(Zinsstag, 1990). When Zinsstag asked
Adamski if this were one of the Venusian
boys, he said yes.
Another account comes from Adamski associate C. A. Honey, who recalled, I was
with Adamski in 1958 during a meeting
with three little people who he claimed had
come to Earth from Venus. I saw them and
talked with one of them but I dont know if
they were anything other than what I saw
little people (Honey, 1979). In an earlier
version of the story, Honey told of seeing a
small, blond woman in a roadside caf while
he and Adamski were on a trip to Oregon.
Noticing that Adamski appeared shocked,
Honey studied her carefully. From a distance, he said, she looked to be no more
than twelve years old, but up close she appeared middle-aged. She let me know she
was reading my thoughts (Honey, 1959).
The next day, when Honey told Adamski he
thought she was a spacewoman, Adamski
agreed and later asserted that space people
had informed him that she was the sister of
Kalna, a Venusian spacewoman friend of
Adamskis.
Another prominent 1950s contactee, Truman Bethurum, claimed to have encountered
his spacewoman friend Aura Rhanes on a
sidewalk in Las Vegas. When he greeted her,
she turned around but did not seem to want
to be recognized, for she shook her head and
just walked across the street and joined a
crowd waiting for a bus, according to Bethurum (Bethurum, 1954).
Much contactee doctrine concerning earthbound extraterrestrials focuses more on the

souls of these beings than on the particular

bodies they happen to inhabit. Within the
contactee underground, many people believe
they themselves were space people in previous
incarnations; a lifetime or lifetimes ago they
made the decision to be born as earthlings so
to work toward the changes that will prepare
humankind for membership in the Galactic
Federation. In the 1970s and 1980s, the concept of Star People, championed by writer
Brad Steiger, gained popularity in New Age
circles. Steiger wrote that Star People were ostensible humans but in fact reincarnated extraterrestrials; Star People shared certain physical and psychological features with each
other, and they also had experienced otherworldly realities all their lives, even if consciously they did not recognize their significance. Less benignly, some writers have
suggested that the menacing men in black
who threaten investigators and witnesses are
evil aliens.
In the era of UFO abductions some researchers reported that their female subjects
had undergone mysteriously terminated pregnancies, only to be abducted at a later date to
be shown an alien-human hybrid child who,
they were led to believe, was their own. These
hybrids had both human and alien features in
varying proportions. On occasion, abductees
would encounter the more human-looking
hybrids in real-life situations. David M. Jacobs, in The Threat (1998), proposed the
alarming theory that hybrids are being bred to
replace the human race at some point in the
not-distant future.
The abduction era also produced a story
told by a man whose credentials seem impeccable, a New York book editor and former
Washington correspondent for Newsweek.
There was also a confirmatory witness, the
mans wife. In January 1987, the publishing
house William Morrow had just released the
destined-to-be bestseller Communion, Whitley Striebers account of his personal abduction experiences. The editor, Bruce Lee,
claimed that just as the book was starting to
show up on the stalls, he and his wife ven-

Extraterrestrials among us

tured into Womraths bookstore on Manhattans Lexington Avenue. As he related to New

York writer Tracy Cochran, the two noticed a
very short couple, bundled up in winter
clothes, looking over a copy of Communion
and complaining about how Strieber had gotten things wrong. They spoke rapidly in
what sounded like educated Upper East Side
Jewish accents. When Lee introduced himself as a William Morrow employee and asked
politely what it was they did not like about
the book, the man ignored him, but the
woman communicated such complete
loathing, hatred that the Lees retreated in
shock (Conroy, 1989). They noticed that the
strange couple were wearing large tinted
glasses that did not entirely hide large dark,
almond-shaped eyes. Lee later tookand
passeda polygraph test.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;
Alien diners; Aura Rhanes; Bethurum, Truman;
Contactees; Hybrid beings; Men in black; Star
People; Strieber, Whitley; Wanderers; Williamson, George Hunt

97

Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
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 Striebers Communion. New York: William
Morrow.
Honey, C. A., 1959. Mail Bag: Belief Confirmed.
Flying Saucer Review 5, 2 (March/April): 3233.
, 1979. Report from the Readers. Fate 32,
5 (May): 113115.
Jacobs, David M., 1998. The Threat. New York:
Simon and Schuster.
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.
Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace 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 Photo
Archives.

Fairies encountered

One who did, however, was the well-regarded

W. Y. Evans-Wentz, an anthropologist of religion who had a Ph.D. from Oxford University. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Evans-Wentz traveled through the Celtic
regions of the British Isles as well as Brittany
(on Frances northwest coast). The result was a
folklore classic, The Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries (originally published in 1911).
Aside from its worth as a record of surviving
fairy beliefs and associated superstitions, it is
unique in its championing of an underlying
reality behind the tradition. Like the pioneering Rev. Robert Kirk, a Scottish clergyman
whose The Secret Common-Wealth (1691) preserved fairy lore in the Highlands, EvansWentz deduced that fairies live in an otherworld that overlaps with the human world.
He went so far as to claim that we can postulate scientifically, on the showing of the data
of psychical research, the existence of such invisible intelligences as gods, genii, daemons,
all kinds of true fairies, and disembodied
men.
Not all purported witnesses were the uneducated rural folk stereotypically associated
with fairy beliefs and encounters. A seventeenth-century Swedish clergyman, Peter
Rahm, gave this sworn statement to legal authorities:

Traditions of fairy folk can be found anywhere

in the world, but they are usually spoken of in
the past tense. What is less well known is that
such beliefs derive not just from distant folklore but from perceived experiences of a sort
that are still reported from time to time even
today. British anomalist Janet Bord writes,
Today the knowledge of and belief in fairies
has all but died out among country
people. . . . However[,] the changes that have
occurred this century have not resulted in the
complete extinction of the fairies: they have
survived, because people still see them (Bord,
1997). Though Victorian popular culture perpetrated the notion that fairies are gauzywinged creatures, the fairies of tradition have
no wings. Beyond that, they vary in appearance from region to region, though most are
small and humanlike, sometimes with brown
or green skin. They are of uncertain temperament and, thus, best avoided.
Collectors of folklorea notion and discipline that came into existence around 1800
came upon many firsthand accounts. These
can be found in any number of scholarly texts
on fairy lore. Though sometimes puzzled by
the apparent sincerity of their informants, few
folklorists were willing to take the leap of faith
required to embrace actual belief in fairies.
99

100

Fairies encountered

A man is pulled back before he enters a fairy circle. (Fortean Picture Library)

In the year 1660, when I and my wife had

gone to my farm, which is three quarters of a
mile from Ragunda parsonage, and we were
sitting there and talking awhile, late in the
evening, 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 fellow
was of small size, of a dark complexion, and
dressed in old gray clothes. My wife and I sat
awhile, and wondered at the man; for we were
aware that he was a Troll, and we had heard tell
that such like, called by the peasantry Vettar
[spirits], always used to keep in the farmhouses, when people left them in harvest-time.
But when he had urged his request four or five
times, and we thought on what evil the country folk say that they have at times suffered
from the Vettar, when they have chance to
swear at them, or with uncivil words bid them
to go to hell, I took the resolution to read some
prayers over my wife, and to bless her, and bid
her in Gods name go with him. She took in
haste some old linen with her, and went along
in the wind, and so she came to a room, on
one side of which was a little dark chamber, in
which 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 after
the same manner as other human beings. The
man then offered her food, and when she refused it, he thanked her, and accompanied her
out, and then she was carried along, in the
same way in the wind, and after a while came
again to the gate, just at 10 oclock. Meanwhile, a quantity of old pieces and clippings of
silver were laid on a shelf, in the sitting-room,
and my wife found them next day, when she
was putting the room in order. It is supposed
that they were laid there by the Vettar. That it
in truth so happened, I witness, by inscribing
my name. Ragunda, the 12th of April, 1671
(Keightley, 1878).

Another cleric, Edward Williams, a British

man from the next century, recalled a strange
experience from his youth. In 1757, he and
his fellow schoolchildren, playing in a field in
Wales, happened to notice seven or eight tiny
couples. Each was dressed in red, and each
held a white kerchief. They were about a hundred yards away. One of the figures suddenly

Fairies encountered

took after a child and nearly caught him. Up

close, the children got, in Williamss words, a
full and clear view of his ancient, swarthy,
grim complexion. During the chase another
of the male figures shouted at the pursuer in
an unknown language (Jones, 1979). Williams, who went on to become a prominent
man of the cloth, never forgot the incident
but was never able to explain it. I am forced
to classify it among my unknowables, he
wrote (Jones, 1979).
The inherent implausibility of fairies
notwithstanding, sightings have been recorded even in recent years. On August 10,
1977, while patrolling in the early morning
hours, a Hull, England, police constable came
upon a fog bank in a nearby field. When the
fog lifted, he saw three small figures dancing:
a man dressed in a sleeveless jerkin, with
tight-fitting trousers and two women clad in
bonnets, shawls and white dresseshardly
late twentieth-century clothing. Assuming
they were drunks, the officer got out of his car
and walked toward them, only to see them
vanish in front of his eyes. Many fairy accounts describe the beings love of dancing.
During World War II, for example, W. E.
Thorner, making his way with great difficulty
through a furious storm along a clifftop on
Hoy in the Orkney Islands, was startled to
come upon small creatures with long, dark,
bedraggled hair. They were dancing wildly,
seeming to throw themselves over the cliff
edge (Marwick, 1975).
An incident in County Carlow, Ireland, in
November 1959 claimed four witnesses. In
Dunroe, a man named John Byrne was using
a bulldozer to move a large bush when a man
no more than three feet tall abruptly dashed
out from underneath it. He fled across a field
and was lost to view after he jumped over a
fence. Three other men observed the peculiar
occurrence. As late as the early 1990s, fifteenyear-old Brian Collins, vacationing with his
parents in the Aran Islands off west Donegal,
was taking an early morning walk when he
spotted two men fishing in the sea from an
overlooking bank. Three and a half feet tall,

101

dressed in green, and wearing brown boots,

they were engaged in a laugh-punctuated conversation in Gaelic. Apparently aware of his
presence, they jumped off the bank and were
gone. As he looked for them, the youth found
a pipe that he thought was one of theirs. He
put it in a locked drawer, from which it subsequently disappeared. He saw the beings again,
and this time he tried to photograph and
tape-record them, but nothing of them developed on either film or tape.
A series of sightings in 1938, in West
Limerick, began when schoolboy John Keely
met a two-foot-tall man, dressed in red, on a
road. When Keely asked him where he was
from, the strange man snapped, Im from the
mountains, and its all equal to you what my
business is. The next day Keely and friends
returned to the scene. The friends hid in the
bushes while Keely approached a group of
fairies. One took his hand, and they walked
together for a short distance. The fairies ran
away, however, when they saw the boys in the
bushes. Other men and boys reported their
own encounters in the same area at the same
time, and the Dublin-based Irish Press carried
stories. The men had chased the fairies, but as
one witness put it, they jumped the ditches
as fast as a greyhound. . . . Though they
passed through hedges, ditches, and marshes,
they appeared neat and clean all the time.
Witnesses said the beings had hard, hairy
faces like men, and no ears (Barry, 1938).
On a casual walk along the shore of a
peninsula in Scotlands Western Highlands
one day in 1972, Artie Traum, an American
folk singer, heard unusual sounds. As he listened more carefully, he realized they were
voices, though he could see no one around.
They were singing run, man, run in a weird
harmony while fiddles and pipes played behind them. As the sounds grew ever louder,
Traum panicked and fled into a nearby
woods. Though he still saw nothing, he heard
crackling sounds and great motion as if he
were being pursued. As all this was happening, my head was swarming with thousands
of voices, thousands of words making no

102

Fairies encountered

sense. He found his way back to open air,

and the voices and the music ceased (Traum,
1972). Traums experience is like many recounted in the tradition. Fairies are reputed to
drive trespassers off their home turf and, also,
to love music. Both folk fiddlers and at least
one classical composer (Thomas Wood) claim
to have heard fairy music; a nineteenth-century Manx fiddler, William Cain, was not
alone in learning such a melody and incorporating it into his repertoire.
The American Indian tribes had their own
versions of fairy traditions, but the Europeans
who settled the North American continent
except for places where Celtic customs took
firm root, such as Newfoundlandfairly
quickly discarded their own. Nonetheless, occasional incidents in which fairylike figures
appeared, even if not identified by the witness
as such, have allegedly occurred. All of his life,
Harry Anderson remembered something that
had happened to him one summer night in
1919, when he was walking alone down a
rural road near Barron, Wisconsin. To his
considerable surprise, his solitary stroll was interrupted by the approach of twenty little
men trooping in single file under the bright
moonlight. They were heading in his direction. Everything about them was odd: they
were shirtless, bald, pale-faced, and dressed in
leather knee pants. Mumbling sounds came
out of their mouths; yet they did not seem to
be talking with each other. As they passed the
young man, they seemed oblivious of or indifferent to his presence. By now Anderson was
so unnerved that he continued on his way
without ever looking back.
In Canby, Oregon, one day in April 1950,
Ellen Jonerson was working on her lawn when
she happened to glance over at her neighbors
yard and saw a bizarre sight: a twelve-inch little man of stocky build with a tanned face; he
was clad in overalls and plaid shirt. He had
what looked like a skullcap on his head. Jonerson ran inside to make a quick call about it
to a friend. When she returned, the figure was
walking away with a waddling motion. He
passed under a parked car and was seen no

more. At no time did the idea that she was

seeing what some would call a fairy enter
Jonersons mind, and her report is generally
thought of as a UFO-related close encounter
of the third kind, though no UFO was seen.
Inevitably, some have called UFO encounters a modern form of fairy belief. Among the
first to do so was Jacques Vallee, author of
Passport to Magonia (1969).Vallee offered an
occult-oriented interpretation that speculated
that an incomprehensible otherworld has interacted with humankind for thousands of
years, producing manifestations that are filtered through human consciousness and expectation, thus changing to reflect different
times and cultures. (Kirk had concluded as
much in the late seventeenth century. Fairies,
of a middle nature between man and angel,
dress and speak like the people and country
under which they live [Sanderson, 1976].)
Vallee went so far as to declare flatlyif, as
critics charged, hyperbolicallythat the
modern, global belief in flying saucers and
their occupants is identical to an earlier belief
in the fairy-faith. The entities described as the
pilots of the craft are indistinguishable from
the elves, sylphs, and lutins. Debunkers such
as Robert Sheaffer have employed a different
sort of argument to the effect that flying
saucers and their occupants are as much a
delusion as fairies and fairyland. Neither approach, however, seems a wholly adequate
way of explaining the mysteries inherent in
such encounters, which paradoxically offer up
real-seeming encounters with things that almost certainly do not exist in the conventional understanding of the verb.
Fairies have found new life among New
Age visionaries and channelers and other explorers of the far edges of consciousness. One
writer remarks, There are two major differences between the old oral traditional or ancestral faery contacts and those of contemporary humanity removed from oral
tradition. . . . The first is that while our ancestors often sought to break away from the faery
realm, many modern contacts are intentional.
They are induced or encouraged by various

Fairy captures 103

means, ranging from nave New Age nuttiness

to expansions and willed changes of awareness
involving techniques handed down within the
old traditions, but developed and applied in a
modern way (Stewart, 1995). New Age
fairies are a gentler lot than their harsh counterparts in tradition. Fairies are now incorporated into such concerns as healing, gardening, Earth awareness, ritual magic, and
personal transformationmatters far removed from the often ill-tempered, impatient, anthrophobic concerns of traditional
fairies.
See Also: Chaneques; Close encounters of the third
kind; Cottingley fairies; Fairy captures; Magonia;
Whites little people
Further Reading
Barry, John, 1938. Fairies in Eire. The Living Age
355 (November): 265266.
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 Vallees Passport to
Magonia. UFO Investigator (June): 3.
Evans, Alex, 1978. Encounters with Little Men.
Fate 31, 11 (November): 8386.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., 1966. The Fairy-Faith in Celtic
Countries. New York: University Books.
Galde, Phyllis, 1993. I See by the Papers: More
Fairies Seen. Fate 46, 4 (April): 1415.
Jones, T. Gwynn, 1979. Welsh Folklore and Folk-Cus tom. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.
Keightley, Thomas, 1878. The Fairy Mythology. London: G. Bell.
MacManus, D. A., 1959. The Middle Kingdom: The
Faerie World of Ireland. London: Max Parrish.
Marwick, Ernest W., 1975. The Folklore of Orkney
and Shetland. London: B. T. Batsford.
Narvaez, Peter, ed., 1997. The Good People: New
Fairylore Essays. Lexington: University Press of
Kentucky.
Rojcewicz, Peter M., 1984. The Boundaries of Ortho doxy: A Folkloric Look at the UFO Phenomenon.
Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Sanderson, Stewart, ed., 1976. The Secret CommonWealth and A Short Treatise of Charms and Spels by
Robert Kirk. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.
Sheaffer, Robert, 1981. The UFO Verdict: Examining
the Evidence. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Stewart, R. J., 1995. The Living World of Faery.
Glastonbury, Somerset, England: Gothic Image
Publications.

Traum, Artie, 1972. Rollin and Tumblin: The

Cambridge Festival. Crawdaddy (November):
2022.
Vallee, Jacques, 1969. Passport to Magonia: From Folk lore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery.
Wilkins, Harold T., 1952. Pixie-Haunted Moor.
Fate 5, 5 (July/August): 110116.

Fairy captures
In 1907, Lady Archibald Campbell, a collector of traditional lore, interviewed a blind
man and his wife who lived in conditions of
great poverty in an Irish glen. The man told
her, in all apparent seriousness, that once he
had captured a small being he called a leprechaun. It was two feet tall, with dark but
clear skin and red hair. He was dressed in a
red cap, green clothes, and boots.
I gripped him close in my arms and took
him home, the old man related. I called to
the woman [his wife] to look at what I had
got. What doll is it that you have there? she
cried. A living one, I said, and put it on the
dresser. We feared to lose it; we kept the door
locked. It talked and muttered to itself queer
words. . . . It might have been near on a fortnight since we had the fairy, when I said to
the woman, Sure, if we show it in the great
city we will be made up [rich]. So we put it in
a cage. At night we would leave the cage door
open, and we would hear it stirring through
the house. . . . We fed it on bread and rice and
milk out of a cup at the end of a spoon.
At last the little being escaped, and after
that the familys fortunes, never much to
begin with, declined even further. The man
lost his sight, and the couple sank ever deeper
into poverty and despair.
A happier story recounts not so much the
capture of a fairy as the domestication of one.
Lady Gregory and W. B. Yeats heard it from
an old couple, the Kellehers, who lived in the
Wickland Mountains of Ireland. The Kellehers said the events had taken place years before, when they were newly married.
One winter day, Mr. Kelleher encountered
a fairy and, in some unspecified fashion, got
him to stay in the house for the next week or

104

Fossilized aliens

two. Dressed in a red cap and red clothes, the

fairy was about fifteen inches tall and seemed
friendly, though he kept silent. At night he
slept on the dresser. The Kellers told others of
their unusual guest, and sometimes when the
boys at the public-house were full of porter,
they used to come to the house to look at
him, and they would laugh to see him, but I
never let them hurt him. Kelleher fed him
bread and milk with a spoon. As the days
passed, the couple noticed, he seemed to age,
taking on a sort of wrinkled look.
The fairy left them one evening after another of its kind had appeared near the property. Mr. Kelleher thought it was a fairy
woman, dressed in gray. And that evening,
he related, when I was sitting beside the fire
with the Missus I told her about it, and the
little lad that was sitting on the dresser called
out, Thats Geoffrey-a-wee thats coming for
me, and he jumped down and went out of
the door and I never saw him. I thought it was
a girl I saw, but Geoffrey wouldnt be the
name of a girl, would it? He had never spoken
before that time.
See Also: Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Gregory, Lady, 1920. Visions and Beliefs in the West of
Ireland. New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Fossilized aliens
Writing in Flying Saucers magazine in 1970,
Buffard Ratliff, the head of a Kentucky UFO
group, reported the discovery of an extraterrestrial artifact: a fossilized spacecraft and its
tiny crew.
According to Ratliff, two years earlier
Melvin Gray of Louisville had been mowing
his lawn when he came upon an unusual
stone. He kept it and studied it for months,
eventually concluding that it was living proof
of a prehistoric space visit. Gray handed it over
to ufologist Ratliff, who also examined it at
length. From this examination he was able to
determine what the stone contained and what
events had precipitated its creation. It was, as
he would write, a fossilized craft containing

seven very small creatures. . . . Three . . . are

ape-like in appearance. The other four are humanoid. . . . All creatures are approximately
three inches in height, are vertebrates, and have
a physical build that indicates they were very
strong for their size. . . .
The [ape] creatures died in motion as if
they were frozen in their last physical action
as they met instant death. One . . . had obviously been critically injured and two of his
companions are trying to rescue him. . . . Two
of [the humanoids] are in a position for a
crash landing. . . . The third humanoid is sitting in what looks like a bucket seat with one
of his arms extended slightly forward and upward as though he was operating a control
lever or device to try to bring the spaceship
under control.

Ratliff contended that the crash had taken

place some four hundred million years ago.
The fossil survived and is a permanent record
to all mankind . . . that we had tiny alien
space visitors from out there long, long ago.
Further Reading
Ratliff, Buffard, 1970. A Fossilized Alien Spaceship
and Its Occupants. Flying Saucers (March): 67.

Fourth dimension
In occult speculation the fourth dimension
is a parallel universe that occupies the same
space as ours but at a different vibrational
level. Though its existence has never been
demonstrated scientifically, it has been used to
explain a variety of ostensibly mysterious phenomena, including disappearances in the
Bermuda Triangle, teleportation, clairvoyance, ghosts, monsters, UFOs, and more.
The concept came into the vocabulary of
occultism through Leipzig astronomer Johann
F. C. Zollner, a student of Theosophy. In the
1870s, Zollner worked with American
medium Henry Slade, who claimed the ability
to materialize or teleport objects during
seances. As Zollner saw it, such talents indicated that mediums can move things out of
our dimension into the fourth and back again.
Unfortunately for Zellners theory, Slade later

Fry, Daniel William

105

confessed that he produced the effects fraudulently. Later psychical researchers, however,
used variants of the fourth-dimensional idea
to explain the fate of the soul after death.
See Also: Bermuda Triangle
Further Reading
De 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 Research
Associates.

Frank and Frances

Strolling through his rural property near Quebec City, Quebec, one night in 1941, inventor
Arthur Henry Matthews encountered two
men, each six feet tall, blue-eyed, and goldenhaired. After introducing themselves as Venusians, they expressed interest in Matthewss
work with electrical genius Nikola Tesla.
Matthews was taken to a waiting spacecraft, a
giant saucer-shaped structure called Mother
Ship X-12, which housed twenty-four
smaller craft as well as living quarters for crew
members. At one point, the visitors showed
Matthews the control room. Contrary to his
expectations, it was bare except for a circular
table in the middle and four pilots, two men
and two women, each facing one of the four
directions. The Venusians explained that the
craft flew on mental power alone. In subsequent contacts, Matthews learned that one of
his hosts was the captain, who called himself
Frank. He also met Franks life companion,
introduced as Frances. Frank said the names
stood for Truth.
Further Reading
Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord, 1991. Life beyond
Planet Earth? Mans Contacts with Space People.
London: GraftonBooks.

Fry, Daniel William (19081922)

Daniel Fry was among the leaders of the early
contactee movement. He claimed to have had
his first contact with a flying saucera remote controlled cargo carrierin the New
Mexico desert on July 4, 1950, and to have

Daniel William Fry (Fortean Picture Library)

boarded it for half an hour. In that time he

was whisked to and from New York, all the
while conversing with the voice of Alan, a
spaceman communicating from a mother ship
nine hundred miles from Earth. When Fry
met Alan in the flesh eleven years later, the extraterrestrial turned out to have a purely
human appearance. Intelligent and articulate,
Fry was often described by his followers as a
scientist, though in fact he had been no
more than a missile mechanic and technician
at the White Sands Proving Ground prior to
his contactee career. He founded Understanding, Inc., a forum for the space peoples metaphysical and scientific teachings. After the
1950s, when the initial excitement generated
by the first contactees had waned, Fry became
less visible, though he remained quietly active
until his death in Alamogordo, New Mexico,
in 1992.
Fry recounted his early saucer adventures
in the widely read The White Sands Incident
and Alans Message: To Men of Earth, both published in 1954. That same year, he spoke at

106

Fry, Daniel William

the First Annual Flying Saucer Convention in

Los Angeles. At a press conference, a reporter
asked him if he would take a lie-detector test
to verify his claims. When Fry agreed, a local
television station arranged a polygraph examination. The examiner concluded that Fry was
being deceptive in his answers. Forever after,
Frys critics cited the allegedly failed test, as
well as a dubious Ph.D. from a London-based
diploma mill, to argue that he was no more
than a hoaxer. Still, Fry seemed to many to be
sincere about his metaphysical beliefs, perhaps
using fanciful saucer yarns as a way of attracting an audience.

A UFO supposedly photographed by Daniel Fry at Merlin,

Oregon, May 1964 (Fortean Picture Library)

See Also: Contactees

Further Reading
Fry, Daniel W., 1954. Alans Message: To Men of Earth.
Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.
. 1954. The White Sands Incident. Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.
. 1954. My Experience with the Lie Detector. Saucers 2, 3 (September): 68.
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, 1967. Information Sheet on Daniel Fry.
Washington, DC, August.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

Gabriel
In Christian and Islamic tradition, Gabriel is
one of the two mightiest angels. He is the
only angel mentioned in the Old Testament,
as the destroyer of Sodom and Gomorrah. He
is said to sit on Gods left hand and to preside
over Paradise. Mohammed credits Gabriel
with dictating the Koran to him. In more recent times, an entity named Gabriel, identifying himself as an archangel, channels through
a New York City man named Robert Baker.
Gabriel has spoken through Baker since
1990. His principal platform is the weekly
meeting of the Communion of Souls meditation group. Baker has a cable-access show,
Gabriel Speaks, on a New York television station every Monday afternoon. Gabriel, who
speaks of himself in the plural, says, We
come to you at this most important time in
the evolution of your planet, a time of unity
of Soul and Spirit in the physical body
through the Light and Power of your being.
We encourage you to stand in the Power of
One, as the individual Light that you are, to
create a new vision for your world, a new
Heaven on Earth through your individual expression of unconditional love for yourselves
and one another. We challenge you to act
upon life as creators rather than having life act
upon you (Gabriel Speaks, n.d.).
107

Further Reading
Davidson, Gustav, 1967. A Dictionary of Angels In cluding the Fallen Angels. New York: Free Press.
Gabriel Speaks, n.d. http://childrenoflight.com/
gabriel.htm

Gef
Gef is the central character in an episode that
psychical researcher Hereward Carrington
called preposterousa palpable absurdity
even while conceding that it baffled him. According to one of the most peculiar stories ever
told as true, Gef was a talking animala selfidentified mongoosewho plagued a family on
the Isle of Man between 1931 and 1938. Numerous investigators came to the site and, despite suspicions of trickery, left empty-handed.
Thirty years later, when located and interviewed, the one surviving member of the family
swore to Gef s authenticity.
In 1931, the Irving familyfather James,
mother Margaret, and twelve-year-old daughter Viorreylived on a small farm known as
Doarlish Cashen (Cashens Gap in English)
on the Isle of Man on the Irish Sea to the
northwest of England. Facing the sea and 750
feet above it, sat their two-story stone house.
Inside, the walls were lined with dark matchwood paneling set a few inches from the

108

Gef

Archangel Gabriel painted by Pietro Vannucci (Arte & Immagini srl/Corbis)

stone. This particular construction detail

would be crucial to what would follow.
One evening in September of that year, so
he would assert, James Irving heard a tapping
noise from the boarded-up attic. The next
morning, when he went into the attic, he
found a wood carving that he recognized as
his own. He had no idea how it got there, but
when he dropped it, he heard the same noise
that had sounded earlier. That evening there
were more sounds, only louder, followed by
apparent running. As Irving would tell researcher Nandor Fodor, We heard animal

sounds: barking, growling, hissing, spitting

and blowing (Carrington and Fodor, 1951).
Suddenly a crack shook the building so hard
that the pictures on the wall moved. Puzzled
and frightened, the family listened to gurgling
sounds that they presumed came from the unknown animal but which could as easily have
come from a baby learning to speak. A bark
with a pleading note in it came next. When
Irving made barking and meowing sounds
himself, apparently in an effort to determine
whether the animal was a dog or cat, the creature imitated him.

Gef 109

The sounds were high-pitched and appeared to be emanating from a very small
throat.
The knockings continued for the next few
weeks. Then one day, Irving asked his wife,
What in the name of God can he be? From
the walls a squeaky voice echoed, What in
the name of God can he be? These were the
first recognizable words from Gef, as the animal said it wanted to be called. As time
passed, Gef, whose voice was said to be two
octaves above a normal womans, appeared to
learn more and more words, accumulating a
vocabulary from listening to the family. He
also claimed to travel widely throughout the
island, overhearing others and learning from
them. He also brought news and gossip and
regaled family members with information
they otherwise would not have known and
sometimes did not want to know.
For his part, Gef would assert that for a
long time he had understood what people
were saying, but it was not until he took up
residence with the Irvings that he learned how
to speak words himself. When he was there,
he knew everything that went on in the
house. His favorite place, however, was in the
walls of Viorreys room.
Irvings first impulse was to kill Gef, who
frightened the family with his temper and his
penchant for throwing things such as stones.
First, he tried to poison him, then to shoot
him, but, in response, Gef caused property
damage and screeched out threats. According
to Irving, Gef said, If you are kind to me, I
will bring you good luck. If you are not kind,
I shall kill all your poultry. I can get them
wherever you put them. The family decided
to do its best to get along with its strange
guest.
Asked who he was, Gef first identified himself as a ghost in the form of a weasel but
later denied that he was a ghost or a poltergeist. He was highly temperamental, his behavior unpredictable, his speech often profane. The family left food out for him. He ate
the same food as the daughter, a detail that
skeptics would later remark on. In return, he

would provide the Irvings with dead rabbits

that would show up on the doorstep. The rabbits appeared to have been strangled rather
than bitten to death.
As Gef became known and feared throughout the island, someone suggested that he
might be a mongoose, though at that point no
one had ever seen him. Mongooses (mammals
ordinarily found in India) are not native to
the isle, but in 1914 a local farmer had imported them to kill rabbits. When asked if he
was a mongoose, Gef said he was. At other
times, though, he boasted, Thou wilt never
know 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 eighth
wonder of the world. I can split the atom.
Still, the idea took hold that Gef was a mongoose, and he took to calling himself one.
But if eyewitness testimony is to be believed, he could not have been a mongoose.
Those who saw him, according to investigator
Walter McGraw, said he had a bushy tail like
a squirrels, yellow to brownish fur, small ears
and a pushed-in face. His most-often described features were his front paws, which according to Irving were handlike with three
fingers and a thumb (McGraw, 1970). McGraw adds, he fitted the description of a
mongoose about as well as he did that of part
of the fifth dimension. Irving estimated that
he was no more than five or six inches long
and weighed no more than a pound to a
pound and a half. Sightings of him were always fleeting, and on rare occasion the Irvings
saw him in silhouette as a shadow in the wall.
Gef said he did not want to be seen because
he was terrified of being captured or killed. A
photograph Viorrey took of him at a distance
of five hundred feet showed little except a
furry blur.
By early 1932, news of Gef s doings had
spread past the isle. In a dispatch dated January 10, a Manchester Daily Dispatch reporter
wrote that on a visit to Doarlish Cashen he
had heard a voice I never imagined could
issue from a human throat, leaving him in a
state of considerable perplexity . . . The peo-

110 Gef

ple here at the farm . . . seem sane, honest and

responsible folk. . . . I find that others, too,
have had my strange experience (Wilkins,
1952). As the publicity spread, an American
promoter offered the family fifty thousand
dollars for the right to exhibit Gef commercially. He was refused. Other investigators
heard Gef s voice and witnessed apparent evidence of his activities, including stone-throwing and knowledge of events at a distance, but
none saw him. Others, such as psychical researcher Nandor Fodor, who spent some days
with the Irvings, could only collect testimony.
Gef tended to go into hiding when investigators showed up. In an amusing sidelight, after
one investigator, BBC journalist R. S. Lambert, declared that Gef might well exist, a
critic called him crazy. Lambert took him to
court and presented a sufficiently persuasive
case that he was awarded seven thousand
pounds in damages.
Beyond anecdotal testimony, evidence of
Gef s physical existence was slight. Harry
Price, the famous ghost hunter who later
wrote a book on the case, saw liquid dripping
from the wall and was told that this was Gef
urinating. Hair said to be from Gef turned
out to be from a dog curiously like the Irvings
sheepdog, Mona. The prints he allegedly allowed the Irvings to preserve in clay were not
at all like a mongooses or, for that matter, any
known animals.
Over time, so the Irvings related, Gef s visitations became rarer and rarer. By 1938 or so
he was heard from for the last time. By then
the whole outlandish affair had fallen into obscurity. It was too much even for the most
sensationalistic newspapers; and parapsychologists, who first took it to be an exotic poltergeist case, did not know what to make of it.
The only precedent for something like Gef
was a witchs familiar (an animal form in
which witches are sometimes said to appear),
and on the Isle of Man in the 1930s, belief in
witchcraft had largely passed.
Though investigators looked carefully for
it, only one caught the Irvings in anything
that looked like suspect activity. From the be-

ginning, skeptics wondered if Gef werent a

fiction created by skilled ventriloquism. Early
in the course of the episode, a reporter for the
Isle of Man Examiner thought he caught Viorrey making a squeaking sound, though her father insisted the sound was coming from the
other side of the room. Aside from this ambiguous episode, investigators on site expressed doubts that so complex a hoax could
be accomplished so simply, even if it were
physically possible, which struck them as almost out of the question. Locally, the Irvings
were regarded as reliable, honest people. If
they were hoaxers, their motives were clearly
not financial. They made practically no
money from their participation in the matter.
The Irvings eventually moved away from
Doarlish Cashen and dropped into obscurity.
Skeptical theories have focused on Viorreys role. In 1983, Melvin Harris speculated
that she had first tricked her parents with
ventriloquism. Later, even after they realized
that they had been fooled, her parents got
caught up in the hoax and played along with
it. Harris writes, Gef never had a personality
or existence independent of Viorrey. He
brought home rabbits, as did Viorrey. His favorite foods were also Viorreys favorites. He
shared her strong interests in mechanical
things.
In the late 1960s, after thirty years of silence, Viorrey was located and interviewed
somewhere in England (she insisted that her
place of residence be kept confidential). She
told Walter McGraw that she despised Gef,
who she thought had ruined her life. She said
that he had caused her pain and embarrassment, and, even at the time, she and her
mother had hated the publicity. It was not a
hoax, she said, and I wish it had never happened. . . . We were snubbed. . . . I had to
leave the Isle of Man, and I hope that no one
where I work now ever knows the story. Gef
has even kept me from getting married. How
could I ever tell a mans family about what
happened? She complained bitterly that Gef
made me meet people I didnt want to meet.
Then they said I was mental or a ventrilo-

Gordon

quist. Believe me, if I was that good I would

jolly well be making money from it now!
(McGraw, 1970).
Further Reading
Carrington, Hereward, and Nandor Fodor, 1951.
Haunted People: Story of the Poltergeist down the
Centuries. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company.
Harris, Melvin, 1983. The Mongoose That Talked
and Lost for Words. In Peter Brookesmith, ed.
Open Files, 1927. London: Orbis Publishing.
McGraw, Walter, 1970. GefThe Talking Mongoose . . . 30 Years Later. Fate 23, 7 (July):
7482.
Wilkins, Harold T., 1952. History of the Talking
Mongoose. Fate 5, 4 (June): 5869.

Germane
Germane channels through Lyssa Royal. He
is neither male nor female, and he does not
have a name; Germane is simply an identification of convenience. He is from a realm of
integration that does not have a clear-cut density/dimensional level. He is not even an entity as such but a kind of personification of a
group-consciousness energy. In the distant future, once human beings have been fully integrated spiritually, physically, emotionally, and
mentally, they will be like him.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
ET CivilizationsGermane, 1994. http://www.
lemuria.net/article-et-civilizations.html

Goblin Universe
Goblin Universe is a kind of catchall phrase
some people use to characterize the realm of
fantastic but, according to some, real entities
and creatures that seem out of place in our ordinary understanding of reality. The Goblin
Universe is said to house everything from
demons and fairies to ghosts, humanoids, and
monstrous beasts. It is an explicitly paranormal or occult concept, rejected by some
anomalists who insist that the objects of their
investigationswhether UFOs or unknown
animals such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness
monsterare simply so far undocumented aspects of this universe or planet.

111

To its proponents, however, the Goblin

Universe is a deeply mysterious, elusive place.
The late F. W. Holiday called it a hall of distorting mirrors. . . . It will not be ignored. Poltergeists often throw objects at utter skeptics.
Members of the Phantom Menagerie appear
in front of bored cops who want only to scribble their daily reports and go home. UFOs
swoop over cities like Washington, Rome and
London to thumb their noses at bureaucrats. . . . Like it or lump it, we are all in that
damned Hall of Mirrors (Holiday, 1986).
See Also: Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Holiday, F. W., 1986. The Goblin Universe. St. Paul,
MN: Llewellyn Publications.

Gordon
Gordon is the name of an ostensible extraterrestrial whom two Alaska women claim to
have encountered while traveling through
western Canada in October 1974. Their story
amounts to a UFO-age variant of the venerable legend of the vanishing hitchhiker.
Edmoana Toews of Anchorage and her
friend Nuria Hanson were returning from a
convention of the Coptic Christian Fellowship
of America in Kalamazoo, Michigan. On October 18, they were driving on the summit of
Steamboat Mountain in British Columbia
when they spotted two lights. One, three times
the apparent size of the moon, approached
them, then shot away to hover in the sky. The
other light resting on the mountainside,
looked, on closer examination, like a derby hat
with portholes. The two women pulled into an
abandoned driveway and watched the two objects for forty-five minutes. At one point, the
landed UFO rose and flew one hundred to one
hundred fifty feet before resettling on the
ground. During the sighting, a truck stopped,
and the driver emerged to look at the UFOs,
but the women would not approachone of a
number of actions (or inactions) they were
later unable to understand.
When they resumed their journey along an
icy, fog-covered highway, something seemed

112

Gray Face

to take control of the car, even managing

curves perfectly. But no matter what Toews
did, the vehicle traveled at no more than
twenty-five miles per hour. She and her friend
also became aware of a bright light shining
through the mist. It was coming from a white
cloud twenty to thirty feet above them. As
their trip went on, Toews was shocked to see
that no matter how far they went, the gas
gauge did not move.
Late that night, they stopped at a lodge at
Muncho Lake. It was closed, but they got out
of their car to stretch their legs. A young man,
dark-haired and bearded, stepped out of the
darkness. Though the temperature was barely
above zero, the man was dressed only in shirt,
pants, and shoes. The car was packed, and the
women insisted there was no room for him,
but he still persuaded them to drive him to
the next lodge, some eighty miles away, where
he said he worked. The space was so cramped
that he had to sit on Hansons lap. Strangely,
she could feel no weight. When she remarked
on it, he responded humorously but vaguely.
Toews asked his name. He leaned toward
her and stared into her eyes before saying,
Gordon. Both women thought he looked
familiar, but neither could place him. He was
pleasant and friendly in his manner. After the
UFO reappeared above trees along the highway, Gordon inquired about their views of life
in the universe and of angels. In time, Toews
understood why Gordon didnt seem to weigh
anything: he was hovering about two inches
in the air. She even covertly ran her hand
under him to make sure.
When they stopped for the night at an inn
in northern British Columbia, Gordon suddenly was no longer there. The women looked
and called for him, but he had not even left
tracks in the snow. They were sure that he had
stepped out of the car with them and that he
couldnt have been out of their sight for more
than a few seconds.
The inn was closed, so they stayed in the
lounge with a truck driver, who refused to believe that they could have come all the way
from Steamboat Mountainone hundred

sixty-five miles awayunder existing road

and weather conditions. The strangeness of
their situation did not hit them until the next
night, when they were staying at another
lodge. Toews suddenly realized that Gordon
reminded her of her husband, Jim, who had
the same hair color, eyes, mannerism, body
shape. And her husbands middle name was
Gordon.
The following morning they set off. At first
conditions were good, but soon a storm came
down. Weirdly, though, the road ahead of
them remained dry, even as snow fell and
swirled on either side. They looked up to see
the mysterious cloud they had observed earlier. Later, their car engine failed, and two
mysterious men who seemed to know things
about the women that strangers could not
have known helped them restart it. The cloud
left only as Toewss car got to Anchorage and
four blocks away from her house.
The women came to believe that Gordon
was either a spaceman or an angel. Eventually,
Joseph J. Brewer, Judge of the District Court
in Anchorage, heard of their experience and
interviewed them. He and Toews wrote an account of it in Fate, a popular magazine on the
paranormal and occult.
Further Reading
Toews, Edmoana, with Joseph J. Brewer, 1977. The
UFOs That Led Us Home. Fate Pt. I. 30, 6
(June): 3845; Pt. II. 30, 7 (July): 6365, 6869.

Gray Face
Gray Face was the name Clyde Preston, a
North Carolina truck driver, gave to one of a
number of extraterrestrials who visited him
over a nearly two-decade-long period. In
1993, under hypnosis, Preston recalled being
abducted into a UFO in the course of a (consciously remembered) close encounter with a
UFO while he was on a run to South Dakota.
While aboard the UFO, he encountered a humanoid being he calls Gray Face.
Even before the abduction memories surfaced, however, Preston underwent a series of
strange experiences that he believed were tied

Great Mother

to his close encounter. He suffered serious migraine headaches in the wake of that sighting.
They left only after he discussed his encounter
with a ufologist. Soon afterward, he developed
psychic abilities that would come and go erratically. They so disrupted his life that his wife,
fearing he had lost his sanity, left him. He underwent out-of-body episodes and found himself doing automatic writing at a furious pace.
These writings covered many subjects, from
Earths ancient history to future geological cataclysms. Much of the material had to do with
the Bible. The writing claimed that the Ten
Commandments were a kind of universal code
that must be deciphered, then obeyed.
One night in 1993, Preston awoke and
spotted a beam of light going through his
chest. He felt intense pain, then had the sensation that he was being pulled out of his
body. Two shadowy beings, reeking of evil and
menace, had him by the arms and were forcing him to a black abyss. This abyss, he
thought, was the entrance to hell. He began to
pray, and the next thing he knew, a beautiful
blue sky surrounded him. A soothing light,
emanating apparently from God, gave him a
feeling of peace and ecstasy. Though he did
not wish to return to his body, something told
him that he must do so, and he did. He lay
awake the rest of the night reflecting on all
that had happened to him, and in the morning he vowed to find a hypnotist who could
help him fill in the gaps in his memory.
While hypnotized, he recounted the 1977
abduction as well as others. These abductions
occurred in a foggy, dreamlike environment.
Besides Gray Face, there was White Face,
which looked like a carving of an Egyptian
deity. Another entity, this one especially
frightening, wore a mask with a face like a
Mayan or Aztec god. A week after the hypnosis session, this being appeared in Prestons
bedroom and removed the mask. Preston was
somewhat relieved to see that it resembled
Gray Face with slightly heavier features.
In each case, telepathic contact occurred,
but it was always one-sided, coming from the
aliens to Preston.

113

He also had two encounters, only an hour

apart, with Mr. Brown Robe, as he called a figure clad in such a garment. It had no facial features, but it was able to communicate mentally. It stressed the importance of Matthew 24
in the New Testament, the chapter in which
Jesus discusses the events that will take place
just prior to the Second Coming. Preston noticed that Mr. Brown Robe, Gray Face, and
the others never used the word God but did
talk of a universal intelligence. Still, he
linked his visitors with Bible figures. He believed Brown Robe, for example, to be a kind
of angel, Gray Face a Watcher from the Old
Testaments Daniel 4.
Prestons last abduction occurred one night
in 1995 when a group of gray-skinned, largeeyed humanoidsthe classic grays of abduction loretook him into a UFO, where
he was subjected to an apparent medical examination. On his return at 2:50 A.M., he
heard a mechanical voice speaking to him. It
said that the worlds governments not only
knew about the presence of extraterrestrials
but also had contact with them. The aliens
warned the governments about the dangers of
nuclear testing and environmental destruction. By their blundering, humans had unknowingly caused trouble with forces beyond
their comprehension. One consequence was
that Earths magnetism had been altered.
Prestons contacts ended with that experience. In retrospect, he concluded that the
aliens had not always told him the straight
truth, that much of what they told him was
not strictly accurate. He thought that some
had been agents of Satan, while others, such
as Gray Face and Mr. Brown Robe, had benign intentions.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs
Further Reading
Davis, Carolyn, 1998. The UFO Messenger. Fate
51, 11 (November): 2224.

Great Mother
In Escape from Destruction (1955), which was
later reprinted as Escape to the Inner Earth,

114 Great White Brotherhood

Raymond Bernardthe pseudonym of Walter Siegmeisterwrote of his association with

a Puerto Rican psychic known as Mayita,
whose body functions as an interplanetary
radio. From extraterrestrial sources, Mayita
learned that an atomic war would erupt on
Earth between 1965 and 1970 and that by
2000, the planets surface would be devoid of
any kind of life. Those few humans of sufficiently pure body and spirit would be lifted
from Earth and flown by flying saucers to a
safe haven on Mars. Mayitas principal contact
was the Great Mother, who lived on the
sunnot, she informed the psychic, the unendurably hot star we believe it to be. The
Great Mother, described as having a beautiful
face, long golden hair, and deep blue eyes, related to her the story of humankinds secret
past.
One hundred fifty thousand years ago, the
Great Mother, then living on Uranus, gave
birth, via parthenogenesis (self-fertilization),
to the first members of a race of superwomen.
For the next fifty thousand years they lived in
a utopian society. That ended when a mutant
named Lucifer came into the world. Lucifer
was a defective . . . sterile femalea man, in
other words. Filled with resentment, he eventually convinced himself of his superiority.
Using electromagnetic waves (sexual intercourse did not yet exist), he persuaded some
of his sisters to let him impregnate them so
that they would give birth to males as well as
females. Outraged that more mutants were
being brought into the world, the Great
Mother exiled Lucifer, his wives, and their
children to Saturn. On that planet, Lucifer
changed his name to Satan and used his male
aggressiveness and propensity for anger and
violence to institute harsh rule. His children
thrived, however. After another fifty thousand
years Lucifer/Satan turned his eyes on the one
planet the Great Mothers daughters had yet
to colonize: the Earth.
A fleet of spaceships landed on Earth, and
Satans reign began. Many of the immigrants
from Saturn settled in Lemuria and Atlantis,
finally destroying them both in the course of

nuclear conflict. After that, the human races

degeneration went on at an alarming pace.
War, cruelty, and suffering have continued
unabated over many centuries. Earths male
and female inhabitants commit the great
abomination of meat-eating, and they also engage in the loathsome practice of sexual intercourse. Men dominate women, even though
the latter are superior to the former, because
of sexual desire and painful, nonparthenogenetic birth. Even when they think they are
worshipping God, they are worshipping
Satan.
Only those human beings who abstain
from sex, meat, caffeine, alcohol, and tobacco
can hope to restore moral and intellectual
order to their existence. Flying saucers will
rescue them at the last moment. On their arrival on Mars, men and women will be separated and will live chaste, segregated lives. In
this new paradise, they will go beyond vegetarianism and learn to subsist on air and the
perfume of certain flowers.
In his book, Bernard urged readers to come
to San Francisco Island, off the coast of Brazil,
where he had gone to establish a utopian
colony. Coincidentally or otherwise, Mayita
was preaching a doctrine Bernard had advocated for the previous two decades. In it, sexual intercourse is vile and unclean, women are
superior, and men are a dangerous mutation.
Critic Walter Kafton-Minkel observes that
this story of our origins sounds much like a
mythology devised by a community of modern radical feminists (Kafton-Minkel, 1989).
See Also: Atlantis; Lemuria
Further Reading
Bernard, 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, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.

Great White Brotherhood

The Great White Brotherhood figures in such
schools of occultism as Theosophy and Rosi-

Grim Reaper 115

crucianism. The Brotherhood is thought to

consist of ascended masters who oversee the
spiritual and physical evolution of the human
race.

Greater Nibiruan Council

The Greater Nibiruan Council (GNC) is described as the main governing arm of the
Galactic Federation, comprising the smaller
Nibiruan Councils (NC) in the various dimensions of the universe. The GNCs responsibilities are many. It sponsors emissaries and
ambassadors from the many planetary civilizations and provides courts and oversight for
disputes. It also gives military protection to
threatened peoples and trains races for membership in the federation.
On an even larger scale the GNC oversees
the divine evolution of each planet and every
individual soul in the galaxy. It works with
every level of the spiritual hierarchy to ensure
that all work effectively together. It maintains
the galactic structure and interacts with other
galactic federations. These are only a few of its
many tasks, conducted with the assistance of
innumerable smaller, dimensional councils.
The oldest of these is the 9D Nibiruan Council, also known as The Ancient Ones and
the Pelegians. This council is headed by
Devin and his half-brother Jehowah, members
of the two royal houses of Aln and Avyon.
In the human dimensionthe thirdthe
3D Nibiruan Council (3DNC) began in
Kansas City, Missouri, in January 1997,
under the direction of channeler Jelaila Starr
and associates Terry Spears and Dermot
Kerin. A year and a half later, it relocated to
Los Angeles. Starr is its sole owner, and the
council functions as a tax-paying small business. According to Starr, the 3DNC represents the GNC on Earth and upholds its directives as they apply to this world. Other
responsibilities include providing the 9D
Tools of Integration to the people of Earth
along with support and training for using
them in the form of books, tapes, videos,
workshops, seminars, etc.; providing a living

example of the Ascension Tools in action

through their actions; relaying messages in the
form of updates and perspectives to the people of Earth for the purpose of education,
support and enlightenment; supporting the
work of other groups and individuals involved
in the ascension of earth and its people (The
Greater Nibiruan Council Section, 2000).
The concept of Nibirua comes from the
writings of ancient-astronaut theorist Zecharia Sitchin, from his reading of ancient
Sumerian literature. Sitchin, however, believes
Nibirua to be an inhabited but undetected
planet in our solar system. Its people, who
have an extraordinarily advanced technology,
created the human race in their image using
genetic engineering. Nibirua orbits Earth
every thirty-six hundred years. In Sitchins assessment, the planet is due to pass between
Mars and Jupiter in the near future, and the
Nibiruansknown as the Annunakiwill
visit us again.
Further Reading
The Greater Nibiruan Council Section, 2000.
http://www.nibiruancouncil.com/html/greater_
nibiruan_council_secti.html
Sitchin, Zecharia, 1976. The Twelfth Planet. New
York: Stein and Day.

Grim Reaper
The folkloric figure of the Grim Reaper is almost universally assumed to be wholly imaginary and symbolic. Anomalist Mark Chorvinsky, however, insists that apparently sincere,
sane persons have seen, in death or near-death
contexts, apparitional forms that match in
most or all particulars the robed, skeletal figure. Chorvinsky has collected a number of reports and published some representative accounts in his Strange Magazine.
One case came from a retired nurse who
years earlier had worked at a hospital in Houston. While running down the hallway on a
very hot day on her way to replacing another
nurse on duty, she passed a room and glanced
inside. She walked on past five other rooms
before what she had seen sank in and she returned to look more carefully. An old woman

116

Grim Reaper

The Vision of Death, an image of the Grim Reaper in an engraving by Gustave Dor (Fortean Picture Library)

lay in a bed while beside it stood a tall figure

in a monks robe, its head covered. Apparently
aware of the nurses presence, the figure
turned to look at her. She told Chorvinsky,

His face was a skull with tiny red fires for

eyes. His hands, skeletal, were patiently folded
over each other inside the dark sleeves. My
impression was [that] he was very patient,

Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn

waiting (Chorvinsky, 1997). A terrible death

smell, like something rotting in the sun, hung
in the air.
The nurse felt a literal freezing sensation
when the figure stared at her. She quickly retreated. By the time she got to her original
destination, the male nurse on duty saw that
she was cold. He wrapped her in blankets and
gave her hot chocolate. It was two hours,
however, before she felt herself able to speak
about what she had seen.
Another retired nurse claimed to have
seen the Grim Reaper on a number of occasions. Usually, she said, I just see a dark
figure, robed, standing near the nurses station, or perhaps in the hall. Very rarely, the
figure will be white. Ive never heard it speak,
but someone always dies within a few days of
its appearance.
A man identified only as A. L. told a story
with a different ending. Late one evening in
1974, he was sitting in his Yonkers, New
York, apartment while his three children slept
in their rooms. His wife was in their bathroom. When he happened to glance to his
right, he was startled to observe a blackhooded figure holding a scythe, its face a luminous white skull. It was staring at him as it
glided slowly backward and disappeared
through the door. Fearing that the Reaper had
come for someone, A. L. banged on the bathroom door. When he got no response, he entered and found his wife lying on the floor
next to an empty bottle of pills. With the assistance of his sister and her husband, who
lived close by, he was able to revive his wife
and take her to the hospital. The encounter
has left me with the feeling that the Reaper is
a special friend, he told Chorvinsky. He appeared to me and gave warning instead of taking someone.
Someone else claimed that the Grim Reaper
saved his life when he was eight years old.
Dennis Wardrop was skating on a pond when
the ice gave way under his feet, and he
plunged into the frigid water. He tried desperately to find a way out as his lungs filled with
the water. He felt something poking him and

117

grabbed onto it as it lifted him to safety. After

he wiped the water from his eyes, he was terrified to learn that he was holding the blunt end
of a long scythe in the hands of a tall, large figure with the face of a decomposing corpse. It
wore a black robe and a hood over its head. Inside the eye sockets were swirling whirlpools
of black and dimly glowing reds. An odor of
death permeated the air. Perhaps sensing his
fear, the figure assured him (whether telepathically or orally is not explained) that he would
be okay, that it was not yet his time. The boy
collapsed from exhaustion. When he revived
soon thereafter, the figure was gone, and he
felt curiously warm even though it was only
fourteen degrees above zero.
Chorvinsky writes, I have investigated
particularly intriguing cases in which the
Reaper has been seen by multiple witnesses.
And . . . I know of incidents in which the
Reaper was reported to have actually healed
injuries and assisted the ill and the dying.
Further Reading
Chorvinsky, Mark, 1997. Encounters with the
Grim Reaper. Strange Magazine 18 (Summer):
612.

Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn

Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonnusually addressed
and referred to simply as Hatonnspeaks
through Doris Ekker (known as Dharma).
George and Desiree Green and others associated with the Phoenix Project distribute Hatonns messages through a magazine called the
Phoenix Journal. Hatonn describes himself as
Commander in Chief, Earth Project Transition, Pleiades Sector Flight command, Intergalactic Federation Fleet-Ashtar Command;
Earth Representative to the Cosmic Council
and Intergalactic Federation Council on Earth
Transition (Who Is Hatonn?).
Hatonn denies that the process through
which he communicates is channeling. It is,
he says, more like radio transmission directly
from spaceship to contactee. We travel and
act, he says, in the direct service and under
Command of Esu Jesus Immanuel Sananda.

118

Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn

Sananda is aboard my Command Craft from

whence He will direct all evacuation and transition activities as regards the period you ones
call the End Prophecies of Armageddon.
In contrast to the benign words of most otherworldly beings who speak through contactees, Hatonn and his fellows preach a
fiercely expressed conspiracy theory with
openly anti-Semitic elements. For example:
Anarchy is something that the Jew promotes
relentlessly. While in complete control of the financial powers of the state, they promote internecine strife (Ecker, 1992). Hatonn also denies that the Holocaust ever occurred. Hatonn
refers to Jews who are working with the anti-

Christ, Satan, and the evil leaders of the New

World Order to control the world. The plotters
call it Plan 2000. The space people and their
earthly allies such as those in the Phoenix Project are working to thwart the conspiracy and to
create a new Earth after wars and natural disasters have reshaped the face of the planet.
See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Contactees; Sananda
Further Reading
Ecker, Don, 1992. Hatonns World. UFO 7, 4
(July/August): 3031.
Heard, Alex, 1999. Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in
End-Time America. New York: W. W. Norton and
Company.
Who Is Hatonn? http://www.fourwinds10.com/
information.html

Hierarchal Board
The Hierarchal Board communicates through
Pauline Sharpe (also known as Nada-Yolanda)
via channeling and automatic writing. The
board is the solar systems spiritual government, and its members include Sananda
(Jesus), who has orbited Earth in a spacecraft
since 1885. Right now he is in etheric form
but will enter the physical realm as the planet
is cleansed and transformed for the coming
New Age, due to arrive sometime around
2000. Sharpes organization is called MarkAge, commissioned by the Hierarchal Board
to implant a prototype of spiritual government on Earth, the I Am Nation. The I Am
Nation is a government of, for and by the I
Am Selves of all people on Earth. . . . It is not
a political government, but is a spiritual congregation of all souls who seek to serve God,
first and foremost, and the I Am Selves of all
people on Earth (Mark Age, n.d.).
Mark-Age came into being in 1960,
though communications from the board had
begun four years earlier through Charles Boyd
Gentzel. Over the years, several persons received the messages, but in time Sharpe became the organizations guiding personality. It
has published a large amount of channeled
material, including communications from
Gloria Lee, a 1950s-era contactee.

See Also: Channeling; Contactees; J. W.; Sananda

Further Reading
Mark-Age: Love in Action for the New Age.
http://www.islandnet.com/~arton/markage.html
One Thousand Keys to the Truth, 1976. Miami, FL:
Mark-Age MetaCenter.

Holloman aliens
A modern legend, widely circulated but never
verified, holds that aliens once landed at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico and
conferred with representatives of the government and military. The event is variously set
on April 1964 or May 1971.
The story emerged under curious circumstances. Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler,
two wealthy Los Angeles businessmen, had
gone to Norton Air Force Base in California
where they were to discuss the production of a
documentary film dealing with advanced research projects. The discussion soon expanded
to include other possible subjects, one dealing
with the air force and UFOs. Emenegger and
Sandler expressed interest in the UFO project,
and their contactsthe head of the bases
U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations
(AFOSI) and audio-visual director Paul Shartlebegan laying plans. They told the civilians that in May 1971 cameras at Holloman
AFB had recorded an extraordinary event. A

119

120

Holloman aliens

A government employee photographed a possible UFO as it hovered for fifteen minutes near Holloman Air Force Base, New
Mexico. (Bettmann/Corbis)

flying saucer had landed at the base, and three

beings had stepped outside.
Shartle, who claimed to have seen this
16mm film, said on national television in October 1988 that the beings were the size of humans but had gray complexions and large
noses. They wore tight-fitting suits and thin
headdresses that appeared to be communication devices, and in their hands they held a
translator (Howe, 1989). The Holloman
commander and other officers had met with
the aliens over the next several days.
Emenegger claims to have been taken to
Holloman and shown the buildings where the
saucer was stored and the meetings conducted. He and Sandler were promised thirtytwo hundred feet of the landing film, but they
never saw it because permission to view it,
much less reproduce it, was subsequently
withdrawn. They went on to make a UFO
documentary, and Emenegger wrote a paperback based on it. In it he mentions the Holloman incident but not as something that had
actually happened, merely as something that

could happen in the future. In a section of

photographs and illustrations, however, there
is a drawing clearly intended to be a Holloman alien, said only to be based on eyewitness descriptions (Emenegger, 1974).
In 1982, Colorado-based ufologist and
documentary filmmaker Linda Moulton
Howe met with Sergeant Richard Doty, an
AFOSI agent, at Kirtland Air Force Base in
New Mexico. Asked about the Holloman incident, Doty asserted that it had indeed occurred but on April 25, 1964, seven years earlier than Emenegger had been led to believe.
Doty showed her a document that purported
to detail the U.S. governments interaction
with aliens and its recovery of extraterrestrial
wreckage and bodies. He mentioned films,
one of them taken at Holloman. Despite repeated promises, Doty never produced any
film or other documentation for Howe. He
later emerged as a suspect in a notorious,
forged paper concerning a secret group, Majestic12, which supposedly studies alien remains and supervises the cover-up.

Hollow earth

In the 1980s, the legend grew as a rightwing conspiracy theorist named Milton
William Cooper claimed to have seen supersecret documents attesting to an agreement
between the U.S. government and malevolent
aliens. According to Cooper, the first Holloman meeting happened in 1954. Officials and
aliens agreed that in exchange for the freedom
to abduct humans without interference, the
extraterrestrials (from a dying planet that orbits Betelgeuse) would provide the government with advanced technology, so long as it
kept silent about it. Subsequently, Cooper
would write in a wild book allegedly documenting the sinister machinations of the secret government that the agreement broke
down; according to Cooper, aliens and government entered into conflict over who would
get to control and manipulate the human
race. Among other bizarre allegations, Cooper
stated that President Kennedy was assassi-

Books on the hollow-earth theory (Fortean Picture Library)

121

nated because he planned to expose the

scheme to the American people.
Further Reading
Brookesmith, 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 and
Human 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 earth
A long mythological tradition holds that supernatural beings dwell beneath our feet, either in caves and caverns or in the earths inte-

122

Hollow earth

rior. Some beliefs have it that the spirits of the

unsaved dead live on in gloom or torment beneath our feet. The most famous scientific
proponent of a hollow earth, Edmond Halley
(16561743), best remembered for the comet
named after him, argued that within the
earths sphere there were three other, smaller
ones, all harboring intelligent beings. Theories
about a hollow earth, while dismissed as physically impossible by scientists, continue on the
fringes into modern times.
John Cleeves Symmes (17791829) became a notorious figure in early American history as a vigorous publicist for the notion first
proposed by Halley, of an earth whose interior
consisted of concentric spheres. According to
Symmes, the interior could be entered
through four-thousand-mile-wide holes at either pole. Symmes hoped to lead an expedition into the earth, and he lectured widely, all
the while lobbying for funding. In the face of
national ridicule, he argued that the people of
the interior amounted to a vast new market
for American goods. Symmes inspired Edgar
Allan Poe to write the classic proto-sciencefiction novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym (1838). Symmess son Americus kept the
faith after his father had passed on. As late as
1878 he published a collection of the elder
Symmess writings and lectures.
The 1870s and 1880s saw a hollow-earth
revival with the publication of still other books
championing the notion, including M. L.
Shermans The Hollow Globe (1871), a channeled work, and Frederick Culmers The Inner
World (1886). Helena Blavatsky incorporated
the hollow earth into her two popular and influential occult texts Isis Unveiled (1877) and
The Secret Doctrine (1888). Another important
book, William Reeds The Phantom of the Poles,
was published in 1906, the first of a small library of hollow-earth volumes to be issued
through the twentieth century.
By the late nineteenth century, a religion
based on the hollow earth was formed by Cyrus
Teed (18391908), after a vision in which the
Mother of the Universe told him he would save
the world. He went on to lead a utopian com-

An illustration of the hollow earth from Phantoms of the

Poles by William Reed, 1906 (Fortean Picture Library)

munity in Fort Myers, Florida, devoted to Koreshanity. Koreshanity held that not only is the
earth hollow, humans live inside it, orbiting the
sun, which is at the center of the world. The
stars, planets, and moon are also within the
earths shell. Marshall B. Gardners book A Jour ney to the Earths Interior (1913) agreed with
Teeds views to the extent that Gardner was willing to acknowledge an interior sun, though it
was not the sun, and another race, not humans,
get their heat and light from it. This other-race
lives in a pleasant, tropical climate.
Other fringe thinkers, notably H. Spencer
Lewis and Guy Warren Ballard, wrote that
Mount Shasta in northern California is an entrance to the interior, where a colony of survivors from the lost continent Lemuria live
on. Ballard claimed to have personally met
super beings under the mountain, including
golden-haired, angelic Venusians such as those
George Adamski and later flying-saucer contactees would claim to know. Ballard, his wife
Edna, and their son Donald founded a popular Theosophy-based (and fascist) movement
around these experiences and doctrines. Ballard died in 1939, but his organization, the I
AM still exists.
In the 1940s the pages of the science-fiction pulps Amazing Stories and Fantastic Ad -

Honor

ventures carried the allegedly true, intensely

controversial experiences of Richard S. Shaver.
Shaver asserted that he had been inside vast
subterranean caverns, where remnants of an
advanced race that had once populated the
surface still lived. There were two groups, the
derossadistic idiots who used the ancients
advanced technology to harm surfacedwellersand the terosthe embattled minority of good guys who tried, mostly without
success, to stop the deros schemes.
When flying saucers and UFOs entered
popular consciousness in the years after World
War II, inevitably, speculation tied them to
inner-earthers. Flying Saucers, a magazine edited by Ray Palmer, who, as editor of Amaz ing, had championed what he called the
Shaver myster y, brought the concept of holes
in the poles and the notion of hollow earth
into its pages. Perhaps the most widely read
book in the literature, The Hollow Earth
(1964) by Raymond Bernard (the pseudonym
of Walter Siegmeister, a man with a decadeslong association with fringe beliefs), stated
that flying saucers come in and out the pole
holes. The Canadian neo-Nazi Ernst Zundel,
writing as Christof Friedrich, contributed the
book UFOsNazi Secret Weapons (1976),
which alleged that Hitler and his Last Battalion had fled to Argentina, then to Antarctica.
From there they entered the earth and dedicated their energies to the construction of an
advanced technology. Nazi technology is responsible for what we call UFOs. Zundel
and later the Missouri-based International Society for a Complete Earthtried to raise
funds to fly through the hole in the pole in vehicles prominently displaying swastikas to ensure that they got a friendly reception.
Some, though not all, current hollow-earth
advocacy is tied to explicit or implicit proNazi sympathies. For example, Norma Coxs
virulently anti-Semitic Kingdoms within Earth
(1985) blamed an international Zionist conspiracy for suppressing the truth about a hollow globe; she also openly praised Hitler. A
more benign, good-humored approach to the
subject of a hollow earth can be found in

123

Dennis G. Crenshaws occasional periodical

The Hollow Earth Insider.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; King Leo;
Lemuria; Mount Shasta; Rainbow City; Shaver
mystery
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy G reen, ed., 1993.The Smoky God
and Other Inner Earth Mysteries. New Brunswick,
NJ: Inner Light Publications.
Bernard, Raymond [pseud. of Walter Siegmeister],
1964. The Hollow Earth: The Greatest Geographi cal Discovery in History. New York: Fieldcrest
Publishing.
Cox, Norma, 1985. Kingdoms within Earth. Marshall, AR: self-published.
Crabb, Riley, 1960. The Reality of the Underground.
Vista, CA: Borderland Sciences Research Associates.
Fitch, Theodore, 1960. Our Paradise inside the Earth.
Council Bluffs, IA: self-published.
Friedrich, Christof [pseud. of Ernest Zundel], 1976.
UFOsNazi Secret Weapons? Toronto, Ontario:
Samisdat.
, 1978. Secret Nazi Polar Expeditions.
Toronto, Ontario: Samisdat.
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Michell, John, 1984. Eccentric Lives and Peculiar No tions. San Diego, CA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Trench, Brinsley le Poer, 1974. Secret of the Ages: UFOs
from inside the Earth. London: Souvenir Press.
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.

Honor
In early January 1978, according to a West
German newspaper, a twelve-year-old Iranian
girl, identified only as Sara, underwent a series
of contacts with an extraterrestrial creature
named Honor. The contacts took place over a
seven-day period. Covered with black hair or
fur, Honor stood six and a half feet tall and
hailed from a world ten light years ahead of
Earth. Sara said that the extraterrestrial had
given her psychokinetic powers that allowed
her to move household appliances with mind
power alone.

124

Hopkins, Budd

Further Reading
Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,
1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Hopkins, Budd (1931 )

Born in Wheeling, West Virginia, Budd Hopkins graduated from Oberlin College in 1953.
He moved to New York City to embark on a
successful career as a painter, sculptor, and
writer on the arts. One day in 1964, he and
two other persons witnessed the appearance of
a disc-shaped object that remained in view for
two or three minutes. The experience sparked
Hopkinss interest in UFOs. Though for the
next years that interest was confined to the occasional reading of UFO literature, in 1975
he participated in the investigation of a multiply witnessed close encounter of the third
kind in a New Jersey park directly across the
Hudson River from Eighty-eighth Street in
Manhattan. Hopkins went on to become actively involved in research on abductions. He
also became hugely influential in bringing
wider attention to the subject and shaping attitudes toward it.
Hopkins brought mental-health professionals into his work, which often involved
the use of hypnosis to retrieve ostensible
memories 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 vision of the abduction experience, highlighting
the sexual aspects and apparent genetic experiments involving mysteriously terminated
pregnancies and human/alien hybrids. He also
argued that abductions are usually not onetime encounters but events that occur periodically over abductees lifetimes. Hopkins had
also become convinced that abductions are far
more widespread than anyone had suspected.
He helped devise a survey conducted by the
Roper Poll. In Hopkinss view the results
which proved controversial and were read differently by some othersdemonstrated that
millions of persons in the United States alone

Budd Hopkins, 1997 (Lisa Anders/Fortean Picture

Library)

are, whether they are consciously aware of it

or not, abductees.
A third Hopkins book, Witnessed (1996),
recounted a monumentally complex, extremely bizarre abduction allegedly involving
a number of participants, including an unnamed prominent international political figure. (Published accounts have since identified
the man as Javier Perez de Cuellar, the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Perez de
Cuellar denies the story.) The claim sparked
an intense and often bewildering series of
charges and countercharges, though critics
were unable to uncover conclusive evidence to
support hoax allegations. Even so, the story
was so extreme, even by the standards of highstrangeness close encounters, that even sympathetic observers found it difficult to believe.
Hopkins wrote, This abduction event so
drastically alters our knowledge of the alien
incursion in our world that it is easily the
most important in recorded history (Hopkins, 1996).

Hweig

Though some abduction proponents have

argued that abducting aliens are benignly intentioned, Hopkins holds that they are indifferent to human beings and are coldly unemotional. Their purpose in coming here is to
study humans as if they were lab animals, and
they are particularly interested in our genetic
makeup.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Close encounters of
the third kind; Hybrid beings
Further Reading
Bloecher, Ted, Aphrodite Clamar, and Budd Hopkins, 1985. Final Report on the Psychological Test ing of UFO Abductees. Mount Rainier, MD:
Fund for UFO Research.
Hopkins, Budd, 1981. Missing Time: A Documented
Study of UFO Abductions. New York: Richard
Marek Publishers.
, 1987. Intruders: The Incredible Visitations at
Copley Woods. New York: Random House.
, 1996. Witnessed: The True Story of the
Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions. New York:
Pocket Books.
Unusual Personal Experiences: An Analysis of the Data
from Three National Surveys, 1992. Las Vegas,
NV: Bigelow Holding Corporation.

Hopkinss Martians
In a letter published in the April 19, 1897,
issue of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a traveling
salesman named W. H. Hopkins reported that
while strolling through hills east of Springfield, Missouri, three days earlier, he encountered two beautiful, unclad Martians.
The alleged incident occurred as newspapers throughout America were chronicling
often sensationalistic accounts of unidentified
aerial objects generally referred to as airships, though today they would be called
UFOs. Most people who took the reports seriously believed that the ships were the secret
creations of American inventors who soon
would reveal all, but there was also some speculation that Martians might be touring Earth.
Dubious tales of encounters with extraterrestrials appeared in some newspapers.
Hopkins claimed that he had seen an airship landed in a clearing. The most beautiful
being I ever beheld, a naked young woman
with hair falling to her waist, stood next to the

125

craft. She was picking flowers, speaking all the

while in a musical voice in a language Hopkins did not recognize. She was also vigorously fanning herself even though the day was
hardly warm. In the shade cast by the ship, a
naked man with shoulder-length hair and a
beard, fully as long as the womans hair, lay on
the ground, also working a fan.
Until Hopkins stepped forward, the couple
did not know they were being observed. The
man leaped to his feet, and the woman threw
herself into his arms. As Hopkins tried to assure them of his good intentions, they glared
back at him, clearly unable to understand
what he was saying. In time, however, the tension dissipated, and a kind of conversation,
mostly involving gestures, ensued. When he
inquired about their place of origin, they
pointed upwards, pronouncing a word
which, to my imagination, sounded like
Mars. They studied him with great curiosity. . . . They felt of my clothing, looked at my
gray hair with surprise and examined my
watch with the greatest wonder.
After he was given a tour of the interior,
the ship flew away with the occupants waving
farewell to Hopkins, she a vision of loveliness
and he of manly vigor.
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian;
Browns Martians; Dentonss Martians and Venusians; Khauga; Martian bees; Michigan giant;
Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Mullers Martians;
Olesons giants; Shaws Martians; Smeads Martians; Thompsons Venusians; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnolds Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.
Clark, Jerome, 1981. The Coming of the Venusians. Fate 34, 1 (January 1981): 4955.

Hweig
Hweig is an extraterrestrial who channels
through an Oregon woman named Ida M.
Kannenberg. She believes that she first encountered aliens in the California desert in

126

Hybrid beings

1940. According to testimony elicited under

hypnosis in 1980, aliens placed implants inside her head to facilitate communication
later between them and her. In 1978, she
began to hear from Hweig on a regular basis,
after a failed 1968 experiment that so terrified
her that she ended up in a mental hospital.
She was released when no evidence of psychopathology could be uncovered.
Hweig and his associates are here to rejuvenate Earth and its inhabitants. They plan to accomplish these changes via communication
with contactees, who will be led to certain disciples and . . . specific discoveries that will improve humanitys lot and Earths environment.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1999. Soul Samples: Personal Explo rations in Reincarnation and UFO Experiences.
Columbus, NC: Granite Publishing.

Hybrid beings
Hybrid beings are entities who are part
human and part humanoid. They figure in a
number of accounts of UFO abductions. Female abductees sometimes report anomalous
pregnancies that are enigmatically terminated,
typically in association with a missing-time
experience of the sort in which the abductions
allegedly took place. In a subsequent onboard
UFO encounter, the aliens present the abductee with a child who has the features both
of the human mother and of the abducting
entities, most often described as thin, gray- or
white-skinned, with oversized heads and large,
hypnotic eyes.
As early as the late 1960s, paranormal
writer John A. Keel, investigating reports of
UFOs and other strange occurrences in New
York City and on Long Island, noted that
some female witnesses experienced what he
called hysterical pregnancies (Keel, 1975).
Keels observation was little noted and soon
forgotten. In the 1980s, however, abduction
specialist Budd Hopkins independently came
upon the same phenomenon. Mostly through
the use of hypnosis, the women recalled in-

stances in which a kind of suction device removed fetuses from their wombs. In later abductions the women would be shown babies,
toddlers, and older children and told to touch
and interact with them in other ways. Though
generally human in appearance, the children
often appeared to be lacking the emotional
makeup of human beings.
In time, abductees reported encounters
with young adult hybrids. These hybrids,
among those sufficiently human-looking to
pass unnoticed on the street, would sometimes have sexual relationships with younger
abductees, who may or may not have given
their consent. David M. Jacobs, who has written extensively on the issue of hybrids, believes these particular beings are from a late
stage of the process. His investigations lead
him to believe that first-stage hybrids are halfhuman/half-alien. These entities tend to look
almost alien. In the next stage, Jacobs speculates, the aliens join a human egg and sperm
and assimilate genetic material from the firststage hybrid . . . into the zygote (Jacobs,
1998). The third-stage hybrid, created from
human sperm and egg and genetic material
from a second-stage individual, looks more
human. Only in the latest stages, the fifth or
sixth, do the hybrids resemble humans
enough to walk among us and, just as important, reproduce. They retain the strong mental
and telepathic powers of their alien heritage,
however. In Jacobss view, based on testimony
from abductees whom he has hypnotized, the
aliens are preparing to replace the human race
with a hybrid population. The aliens themselves are unable to reproduce, but through
hybrids, their species will surviveat the expense of humanitys. Jacobs holds that this
takeover could occur at any time and is more
likely to occur sooner than later.
Hybrids are a relatively new concept
among ufologists and in the accounts of alleged UFO experiencers. In retrospect, some
have suggested that the presence of human or
humanlike beings in early close encounters of
the third kind suggests hybrids were being
seen before they were being recognized. In a

Hybrid beings

famous October 1957 Brazilian abduction

case, a young man allegedly had sexual intercourse with an alien woman who, were she to
have been reported in a more recent episode,
would probably be judged a hybrid. Through
hand gestures, the woman seemed to indicate
that the fruit of their union would be born on
another planet.
On the other hand, critics point out, hard
evidence for the existence of hybrids simply
does not exist. Most of the testimony to their
presence owes, moreover, to accounts elicited
under hypnosis, a state in which unconscious
fantasizing frequently occurs. Scientific critics
have stated flatly that hybridization procedures of the sort described are biologically impossible. Though there is no shortage of anecdotal testimony, no medically documented

127

instances of anomalously terminated pregnancies have ever been demonstrated.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Close encounters of
the third kind; Hopkins, Budd; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Hopkins, Budd, 1987. Intruders: The Incredible Visi tations at Copley Woods. New York: Random
House.
Jacobs, David M., 1992. Secret Life: Firsthand Ac counts of UFO Abductions. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
, 1998. The Threat. New York: Simon and
Schuster.
Neal, Richard, 1991. Missing Embryo/Fetus Syndrome. UFO 6, 4 (July/August): 1822.
Schnabel, Jim, 1994. Dark White: Aliens, Abduc tions, and the UFO Obsession. London: Hamish
Hamilton.
Swords, Michael D., 1988. Extraterrestrial Hybridization Unlikely. MUFON UFO Journal
247 (November): 610.

Imaginal beings
University of Connecticut psychologist Kenneth Ring theorizes that an imaginal realm
exists somewhere between reality and fantasy.
In this third kingdom, entered through
(Rings italics) certain altered states of con sciousness that have the effect of undermining
ordinary perception and conceptual thinking
(Ring, 1992), one encounters magical yet
semireal entities such as UFO beings, angels,
and various otherworldly intelligences. Rings
imaginal realm is much like the interdimensional mind of another parapsychological
theorist, Michael Grosso.
To test certain aspects of the hypothesis,
Ring and a colleague, Christopher J. Rosing,
conducted extensive psychological testing of
several groups. They found that persons who
report UFO-abduction experiences and those
who have undergone near-death experiences
are psychologically indistinguishable. Though
not fantasy-prone in the clinical sense, they
have felt a connection with nonordinary realities since childhood. Moreover, those childhoods were troubled with episodes of abuse,
trauma, or serious illness. Because of these
difficulties, these individuals have developed
a dissociative response style as a means of
psychological defense. This causes them to be

129

so focused on their internal state that their

consciousness has changed in radical ways.
This expanded consciousness allows them to
enter the imaginal realm, there to meet extraordinary beings and undergo positive life
changes.
UFO abductees and near-death experients,
in Rings view, are prophetsmodern
shamanswho are picking up coded messages from the otherworld. Abductees see
small, gray, sickly looking aliens whose
heads are too big for their bodies. They look,
in other words, like starving children. Ring
reads this to mean, The future of the human
racesymbolized by the archetype of the
childis menaced as never before. Our
planet is experiencing a near-death crisis,
and we need to listen to what these extraordinary experiencers are telling us. They are
leading us to a cosmic-centered view of our
place in creation, a myth that has the power to
ignite the fires of a worldwide planetary regeneration and thus to save us from the icy
blasts of Thanatoss nuclear winter.
See Also: Psychoterrestrials
Further Reading
Ring, Kenneth, 1992. The Omega Project: Near-Death
Experiences, UFO Encounters, and Mind at Large.
New York: William Morrow and Company.

130

Insectoids

Insectoids
Some UFO abductees report onboard encounters with entities that resemble giant
praying mantises. These beings, typically
dressed in capes with long robes and high collars, are seen in association with the smaller,
humanoid grays, though they appear to have a
higher rank than their colleagues. Other
aliens appear to act somewhat subservient to
the insectlike beings, abduction investigator
David M. Jacobs has written.
Insectoids seldom participate directly in the
physical examinations of humans, though they
may engage in what Jacobs calls staring procedures, wherein an alien puts its face close to
an abductees, telepathically probes the contents of the individuals mind, stimulates emotions (everything from fear to love to sexual
arousal) and conjures up hallucinatory images
into it. Though the grays have little to say to
abductees, insectoids sometimes are communicative. In one of Jacobss cases, a woman reported being told that it was the aliens intention to take over the Earth with the insectoids
in charge of this new world order.
See Also: Abductions by aliens; MU the Mantis
being; Nordics
Further Reading
Jacobs, 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 Dehorsintelligences from
beyond in English translationallegedly
channeled through French contactee JeanPierre Prevost. Prevost, a heretofore-obscure
street merchant, had risen to public attention
through his involvement in a sensational incident said to have occurred on the morning of
November 26, 1979, in a Paris suburb. Prevost
and another business associate reportedly witnessed the disappearance of their friend Franck
Fontaine in the wake of a close encounter with
a UFO. Fontaine showed up a week later,

claiming not to remember anything that happened in the interim. Police and civilian UFO
investigators suspected a hoax.
Nonetheless, French science-fiction writer
Jimmy Guieu rushed into print with a book
on the case, but with a difference. In the
book, Contacts OVNI Cergy-Pontoise (1980),
Prevost became the central figure in the
episode, the intended target of the alien abduction. Within months, Prevosts own book
recounted his extraterrestrial contacts with a
strong emphasis on the usual contactee message about noble space visitors and confused,
destructive earthlings. His principal contact
was a wise space being named Haurrio. Readers inclined to doubt all of this could only
wonder at Prevost statements such as this one:
What does it matter to know, at the factual
level, where real life ends and imagination
takes over? Isnt it more important to take into
consideration the content of the messages?
(Bonabot, 1983).
In a July 7, 1983, newspaper interview,
Prevost confessed that both the Fontaine abduction and his own space contacts were fake,
concocted, he said, to attract an audience to
his philosophical messages by putting them in
the mouths of advanced intelligences. Even
so, he still tried to start a group with him at
the head, but it failed, as did a publishing enterprise and an FM radio station. Interviewed
by ufologist Jacques Vallee in 1989, Fontaine
stuck to his story but charged that Prevost was
lying about his.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees
Further Reading
Bonabot, Jacques, 1983. 1979 Fontaine Case in
France Now Admitted to Be a Hoax. MUFON
UFO Journal 190 (December): 10.
Evans, Hilary, with Michel Piccin, 1982. Who
Took Who [sic] for a Ride? Fate 35, 10 (October): 5158.
Vallee, Jacques, 1991. Revelations: Alien Contact and
Human Deception. New York: Ballantine Books.

Ishkomar
Ishkomar, an extraterrestrial, began channeling
for the first time in late September 1966

Ishkomar

through a Phoenix man identified only as

Charlesa blue-collar worker of modest education (Steiger, 1973). Ishkomar said he was
speaking via telepathic light beamed from a
spaceship in Earths atmosphere. He himself
had lived long enough so that he was able to
discard a physical body, though the ship contains others of us who are in human form.
Ishkomar began his Earth mission some thirty
thousand years ago to accelerate evolution so
that human beings could develop more quickly
and be able to accept guidancethough not
control, which galactic law forbidsfrom wise
space people like himself. You must reach a
high level of mental development and knowledge to be able to understand our purposes,
he said, so the work continues.
Ishkomar also warned that another group
also worked in Earths space. This group, while
not necessarily evil in itself, had purposes at
odds with humanitys best interests, and its
members sought to control human destiny.
Ishkomar refused to condemn these beings,
saying only that their purpose conflicts with
our purpose. This does not mean that their intentions are not good or honorable.
Soon there would be great upheavals on
Earths surface, and there would be much suffering and death. Only those who were men-

131

tally and physically prepared would survive.

The extraterrestrials did not plan any massive
rescue operation, since you are of no use to
us in the Outer Reaches. But they would
help those human beings who heeded their
words to make their planet improved and livable after the changes.
Ishkomar said his people were not concerned solely with Earth. They were galactic
travelers and were involved with the fates of
many worlds throughout the cosmos.
Charles told Brad Steiger that he had no
idea why he had been chosen, unless it was
because of a sighting of what he took to be a
UFO in Michigan in 1956. While observing
the object, he beamed a mental message to its
presumed occupants and told them, I would
like to be your friend.
After the Ishkomar messages started coming 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 reveal Charless full name, lest his life be endangered by unfriendly forces.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

J. W.
In 1953, a voice in her head identified itself to
Gloria Lee, a former child actress and model,
as that of J. W., an inhabitant of Jupiter.
Not quite convinced, Lee demanded physical
evidence of J. W.s existence. Some days afterward, J. W. alerted her to the presence of a flying saucer passing over her backyard in
Westchester, California. Lee went on to form
the Cosmon Research Foundation, which attracted as many as two thousand members, as
a forum for the distribution of J. W.s teachings, essentially a variation of Theosophy. She
also wrote Why We Are Here (1959), a book
widely read in early contactee circles.
Lee became a martyr to the contact movement in 1962 through tragic circumstances.
J. W. had provided her with spaceship blueprints and instructed her to take them to
Washington, DC, to show officials. But when
she and associate Hedy Hood went there, no
one was interested in meeting them. Lee told
her friend that J. W. had now informed her,
The space people are going to invade the
earth and establish a peace program (Barker,
1965). She was also ordered to go on a fast for
peace that would end when a light elevator
(spaceship) arrived to transfer her to J. W.s
home planet. The fast began on September 23
and lasted till November 28, when Lees

alarmed husband had her rushed to a hospital.

She died there on December 7.
In less than two months, according to a
Florida-based contactee group, Mark-Age
MetaCenter, Lee herself was sending psychic
messages from Jupiter. She promised that
spaceships would land on Earth within six
months if they were received in peace and good
will. She also mentioned that the recently deceased Marilyn Monroe had just arrived. Over
the years, Mark-Age would publish five volumes of Lee-generated channeled material.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Barker, Gray, 1965. Gray Barkers 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 Gloria
Lee. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.
, 1962. The Changing Conditions of Your
World, by J. W. of Jupiter, Instrumented by Gloria
Lee. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.
Mark-Age MetaCenter, 1963. Gloria Lee Lives! My
Experiences since Leaving Earth. Miami, FL:
Mark-Age MetaCenter.
, 19691972. Cosmic Lessons: Gloria Lee
Channels for Mark-Age. Miami, FL: Mark-Age
MetaCenter.

Jahrmin and Jana

In 1940, according to an account he would relate many years later, Jananda Korsholm, a

133

134

Janus

seven-year-old Danish boy, was playing with a

friend when a thunderstorm erupted. As he
ran home, he saw his sister looking out of the
window of the familys apartment. Just as he
was waving at her, he felt a golden light surrounding him and an intense heat surging all
through his body. He found himself ascending
inside the light until, suddenly, a gold and silver spaceship appeared just above him. It had
no door, but he entered it by passing through a
wall. Inside a circular room he encountered a
hairless, androgynous-looking figure who Jananda sensed was male. The figure, dressed in
a silver uniform with a pyramid logo on his
chest, said his name was Jahrmin (pronounced
Yarmin). A tall blond woman approached
him, touched his hand, and let him know via
telepathy that her name was Jana.
Through her touch, the boy found himself
transformed into a young man. Jana told him
that he had a mission on Earth. It would not
be easy because ill-intentioned persons and
forces would resist him. She would, however,
be there to protect him with her energy, and
they would be reunited at the conclusion of
his mission. Jananda knew that he had found
his soul mate, that no earthly love would ever
fulfill him as the love he shared with Jana.
On a television screen in the middle of the
room, he saw scenes from the solar systems
past, when meteors, comets, and other objects
falling from space drastically altered the surfaces of planets, and their inhabitants had to
be evacuated. He saw himself just about to be
evacuated from Earth, leaving a wife behind.
He also saw Earths changed landscape hundreds of years in the future.
Jananda Korsholm eventually moved to the
United States and found his way to Sedona,
Arizona, where he works as a channeler,
healer, and spiritual counselor.
Further Reading
Korsholm, Jananda, 1995. UFOs, Close Encounters of the Positive Kind. http://spiritweb.org/
Spirit/ufo-positive-negative-jananda.html

Janus
In his memoirs, Air Marshal Sir Peter Horsley,
onetime Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the

Royal Air Forces Strike Command, later

Equerry for the Royal Family, recounts a meeting with a self-identified extraterrestrial who
was introduced to him as Janus. He says the
incident took place one winter day in 1954,
after an acquaintance, a high-ranking military
officer interested in UFOs and convinced of
their friendly intentions, phoned him with a
curious message: to go that evening to a house
in Londons Chelsea district. A woman met
him at the door and led him into a dimly lit
room, where he was introduced to a Mr.
Janus. The stranger immediately asked him to
tell him what he knew about UFOs. Afterward, Mr. Janus expressed a desire to meet
Prince Philip, then launched into a two-hour
discourse on space travel, visitors from other
worlds, cosmology, and philosophy. Janus
stressed the human races immaturity and its
potential to destroy itself. In the course of this
conversation, Horsley came to believe that the
stranger was reading his mind.
Janus said that advanced observers from
distant planets are watching Earth, contacting
a select few trustworthy terrestrials while trying not to interfere directly in human affairs.
Once human beings have learned interstellar
travel, he said, it is of paramount importance
that you have learnt your responsibilities for
the preservation of life elsewhere (Horsley,
1997). In the meantime, the visitors also want
to ensure that they leave no conclusive proof
of their presence.
Horsley wrote that there was an odd sequel. Shortly after the meeting he prepared a
memo and gave it to Lieutenant General Sir
Frederick Browning, Treasurer to Prince
Philip. Browning pressed Horsley to arrange
another encounter. Horsley tried repeatedly
and unsuccessfully to reach the woman at
whose flat he had spoken with Janus. After a
few days he personally went to her residence,
only to learn that she had suddenly moved
out. The general who had set up the encounter became distant and evasive when
Horsley got in touch with him. He never saw
him, the woman, or Janus again.
Interviewed by British ufologist Timothy
Good, Horsley thought it strange that he

Jinns

had only a general impression of Januss appearance. He remembered only a normallooking man, approximately forty-five to fifty
years old, thinning gray hair, and dressed in
suit and tie.
When Horsleys book was published, the
London Times ran an article by Dr. Thomas
Stuttaford, who suggested that Horsley was
suffering from hallucination. Horsley insists, however, that the incident occurred as
reported.
Further Reading
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earths 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 Marshals Flight of
Fancy. London Times (August 14).

Jerhoam
Jerhoam is a State of Consciousness who
channels through John Oliver. He is here, he
says, to help humans incorporate the Great
Knowledge of the Soul into life to become
more aware . . . to become more awake, to become more loved, and to know how to express
love in many ways. He also seeks to reconnect with students from that time, persons
who have reincarnated and live on Earth now.
Many centuries agothousands of years
before the Great Pyramid was constructed
Jerhoam occupied a physical body, teaching at
the Great School of Ancient Wisdom.
Further Reading
An Introduction: Who Is Jerhoam? http://www.
jerhoam.com/whoisjer.html.

135

that the little people sometimes reported in

connection with UFOs are literally that: pygmies of earthly origin and the creators of an
extraordinary technology that gave them
space flight long ago.
Jessup first hinted at his theory in UFO
and the Bible (1956), asserting that all UFO
evidence pointed to the presence of space-intelligence, relatively near the earth, but yet
away from it and in open space . . . using navigatable contrivances. In his earlier life, he
had done graduate-level work in astronomy at
the University of Michigan. In the course of
his studies, and later in his adult life, he traveled in Africa and South America, often stopping to examine archaeological artifacts. He
became convinced that only an advanced civilization, with a technology that encompassed
teleportation, levitation, and space flight,
could have created such structures.
Eventually, he came to believe that about
100,000 years ago, in the pre-cataclysmic era
which developed a first wave of civilization . . .
space flight originated on this planet. . . . We
may assume that the Pygmies . . . developed a
civilization which discovered the principle of
gravitation and put it to work (Jessup, 1957).
When Atlantis and Mu sank into the oceans,
the little people fled in their spaceships.
They now reside on the moon and in floating
structures in a gravity neutral zone between
Earth and its satellite.
See Also: Atlantis; Lemuria
Further Reading
Jessup, 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.

Jessups little people

Morris Ketchum Jessup (19001959) wrote
four books on UFOs between 1955 and
1957. His book The Case for the UFO (1955)
was the first to use UFO in its title; heretofore, publishers preferred the then more familiar flying saucers. Jessup also was an earlier theorist in what would be called the
ancient astronaut genre, though his particular interpretation remains unique. He believed

Jinns
In traditional Arabic and Persian belief, jinns
are demonic, shape-shifting entities. Over the
centuries, the idea evolved that a few jinns are
good. There are five kinds of jinns, and only
one has occasional benevolent qualities. Typically, jinns take the shapes of insects, toads,
scorpions, and other animals deemed unap-

136 Joseph

pealing or obnoxious. The tradition bears

some resemblance to traditions of fairy folk in
other societies. At least two prominent writers
on the UFO phenomenon, Gordon Creighton
and Ann Druffel, are convinced that UFO beings are jinns in disguise.
Under the editorship of Charles Bowen,
Englands Flying Saucer Review, then a widely
read UFO journal, moved the publication
away from speculations about extraterrestrial
visitation toward interpretations that cast
UFOs in paranormal terms. No other contributor did so as enthusiastically as Creighton, a
retired British diplomat with a keen interest in
demonology. After Bowens illness and subsequent death in the 1980s, Creighton assumed
editorship of the magazine and promptly declared that he had identified the intelligences
behind UFO sightings, encounters, and abductions: jinns. In an article in a 1983 issue,
he pointed out that jinns materialize and dematerialize, switch between visibility and invisibility, change shape, kidnap humans, lie,
control minds, and engage their victims in
sexual intercoursebehaviors associated with
UFO entities.
He was convinced that the jinns are up to
no good. In follow-up writings, he contended
that these sinister supernatural powers secretly
control Earth, using thought control to get
humans to do their bidding. They are behind
crime and violence, and they have brought
AIDS and other deadly diseases into the population. Another great World War may be in
the making, he wrote in 1990, engineered
for cosmic purposes we cannot understand;
humans are merely property and playthings
and are soon to be removed from the face of
the Earth.
Ufologists responded to these notions with
a tactful silence with one exception: Ann
Druffel, an abduction-research specialist who
finds startling similarities between reports of
abduction scenarios in the Western world and
Gordon Creightons excellent research on the
jinns (Druffel, 1998). Druffel, a Californian,
investigated the experiences of an IranianAmerican she calls Timur. Timur encountered

humanoids in out-of-ordinary states of consciousnesssleep paralysis, meditation, astral

traveland recognized them as the jinns he
had heard of in his native country.
Druffel concludes that our own faeries
and jinns are merely an old human problem,
shape-shifted and wearing space garb to fool
us. They can be fended off by stouthearted,
determined individuals.
See Also: Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Creighton, Gordon, 1983. A Brief Account of the
True Nature of the UFO Entities. Flying Saucer
Review 29, 1 (October): 26.
, 1989. AIDS. Flying Saucer Review 34, 1
(March Quarter): 12.
, 1990. Grave Days. Flying Saucer Review
35, 3 (September): 1.
Druffel, Ann, 1998. How to Defend Yourself against
Alien Abduction. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Joseph
A Todmorden, Yorkshire, England, police officer named Alan Godfrey was on patrol at
5:05 A.M., November 28, 1980, when he encountered a metallic disc with a dome and a
row of windows. When he attempted to alert
headquarters, he found that his radio was not
working. Suddenly, he found himself one
hundred yards farther down the road than he
thought he was, and the UFO was gone. He
vaguely recalled getting out of his car and
hearing a voice. Under hypnosis later, Godfrey recalled that he lost consciousness after
a light from the object struck him. Then he
felt himself floating into the craft and meeting
a humanlike being named Joseph.
Six feet tall, friendly in manner, Joseph had
a thin nose, a beard, and a mustache. He wore
a skullcap and was clad in a sheet, making
him look something like a prophet from the
Bible. A large black dog accompanied him.
The room also contained eight robots, each
about three and a half feet tall, making a sort
of murmuring chatter. When they touched
Godfrey, beeping sounds emanated from
them. Joseph directed Godfrey to a bed,
where he lay as a beam of light from the ceil-

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)

ing shone on him. Communicating by telepathy, Joseph touched his head, and Godfrey
lapsed into unconsciousness for an undetermined period. The robots took off Godfreys
shoes and studied his toes. Meanwhile, instruments placed on his arms and legs caused him
discomfort to the point of sickness. A foul
odor permeated his nostrils. Joseph asked him
questions, but Godfrey would refuse to tell investigators what they were. The alien indicated that they had met before, apparently
when Godfrey was a child.
Godfrey would remember an earlier incident from 1965, when he was 18. Around 2

A.M., he and a girlfriend stopped their car

abruptly when a woman and a dog stepped

out in front of them. Certain that he had hit
the woman, he got out to help her, but there
was no sign of her or the animal. When he got
home, he found that two hours were missing
without explanation. Another incidenthis
seeing a ball of light in his room when he was
a childalso seemed to him evidence that the
1980 incident was not his first encounter with
aliens.
Further Reading
Randles, Jenny, 1983. The Pennine UFO Mystery.
London: Granada.

Kantarians
For four nights in September 1961, David
Paladins son claimed that somebody named
Itan was coming into his bedroom and taking
him away in a big sky car. Though at first
Paladin dismissed this as a childs fantasy, a
neighbor claimed that he had seen a tall, thin
man walking the boy toward a waiting flying
saucer. That November Itan came into Paladins own bedroom and engaged him in a
telepathic conversation. He and his people,
the Kantarians, lived on a planet in another
dimension. They do not interfere directly in
human affairs, but they have contacted certain
human beings in the hope that they could
gently push the human race in a more mature,
positive direction. They had been observing
humans since the beginning of Homo sapiens
and had even left a genetic imprint in some
humans.
Paladin claimed years of psychic connection with the Kantarian Confederation. Itan
and his friends have told him that if human
beings destroy themselves, the space people
can do nothing. But if natural cataclysms
threaten human existence, the Kantarians will
perform a rescue operation. Mostly, though,
they hope that humans will reform themselves, develop wisdom and kindness, and join
their Space Brothers in the cosmos one day.

Further Reading
Montgomery, Ruth, 1985. Aliens among Us. New
York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Kappa
In traditional Japanese lore the Kappa are malicious water demons shaped like monkeys
with scales. They lure the unsuspecting into
ponds and rivers, then devour them. One Japanese writer, Komatsu Kitamura, has theorized that the Kappa were extraterrestrials who
came to Japan sometime between the ninth
and eleventh centuries. Others have picked up
on this speculation, suggesting that the ostensibly scaly skin was actually a spacesuit. Alleged sightings continue even now. In November 1978, two construction workers
fishing off the coast of the port city Yokosuka
reported seeing a creature abruptly emerge
from the sea to glare at them. It was not a
fish, an animal, or a man, one said. It was
about three meters [ten feet] in height and
[was] covered with thick, scaly skin like a reptile. It had a face and two large yellow eyes
(Picasso, 1991).
Argentine ufologist Fabio Picasso has collected what he judges to be more or less comparable reports from his country. For example,
on the evening of April 22, 1980, a motorist

139

140

Karen

A Japanese print depicting a Kappa (Victoria and Albert

Museum, London/Art Resource, NY)

in Santa Rosa noticed something falling out

of the sky. At that moment, his car engine
suddenly ceased functioning. When he got
out to check the motor, he noticed a cold
breeze at foot level. Looking down, he saw the
legs of something that clearly was not human.
Looking up, he saw two humanoid creatures,
approximately seven feet in height, approaching him. They had webbed hands and were
clothed in black, shiny diving suits. Their
faces were skull-like. Though their protruding mouths were moving, no words were
coming out of them. One put its cold hands
around the witnesss head, and he passed out.
He revived a few minutes afterward, but a half
mile from where he had been.
Further Reading
Picasso, Fabio, 1991. Infrequent Types of South
American Humanoids. Strange Magazine 8
(Fall): 2123, 44.

Karen
Late at night, on the highway between Matias
and Barbosa, Brazil, on January 21, 1976, a
couple in a car saw a blue light envelope the
landscape. The light moved toward them until
it covered their vehicle. The car was absorbed

as if through a chimney into a brilliantly luminous circular object. Two dark-featured figures,
male and more than six feet tall, approached
and signaled that the two humans should step
out of their car. The ground seemed to move
under them, and the woman said she felt
drunk even though she had consumed no alcohol. The couple could not understand the
aliens strange language until one gave each of
them a headset and plugged it into a device. At
that moment, the words became understandable. The being introduced himself as Karen
and urged them to remain calm.
The woman underwent a series of medical
tests. She and her husband also drank a liquid
with an unappealing taste. Other aliens, one of
them female, appeared as Karen explained to
them that he and his people were conducting
medical research, even though on their world
they had conquered all illness, and no one ever
died anymore. He warned them not to talk
about their experience, since people would
think they were insane. If they wished, he
added, they could have their memories erased.
The couple turned down that offer. The woman
claimed some subsequent psychic contacts.
Further Reading
Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,
1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Karmic Board
All living entities must pass before the Karmic
Board before they can be incarnated on Earth.
Each entity receives its assignment, and at the
end of that assignment (bodily death) the entity appears before the board once more, this
time to have its performance reviewed. The
Karmic Board dispenses justice to this system
of worlds, adjudicating karma, mercy and
judgment on behalf of every lifestream
(Lords of Karma, n.d.).
Members of the Karmic Board include the
Great Divine Director, the Goddess of Liberty, Ascended Lady Master Nada, Cyclopea
(Elohim of the Fifth Ray), Pallas Athena

Kazik

(Goddess of Truth), Portia (Goddess of Justice), and Kuan Yin (Goddess of Mercy).
Further Reading
Lords of Karma, n.d. http://www.ascensionresearch.org/karma.html

Kazik
In September 1953, Albert K. Bender of
Bridgeport, Connecticut, suddenly shut down
his International Flying Saucer Bureau
(IFSB), confiding to a few close friends that
three men in black had threatened him and
given him the frightening answer to the UFO
mystery. Though Bender would provide few
details, he hinted that the visitors were agents
of the U.S. government. His alleged experience led an associate, Gray Barker, to write a
sensational and paranoia-drenched book,
They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers
(1956), about Bender and other supposedly
silenced UFO researchers. Eventually, Barker,
who had started a small West Virginiabased
publishing company, persuaded Bender to reveal what had happened to him. In Flying
Saucers and the Three Men (1962), Bender
wrote that he had run afoul, not of a terrestrial intelligence agency, but of extraterrestrial
intelligences from the planet Kazik.
Benders IFSB had come into existence in
April 1952 and was soon among the most successful of early UFO groups, claiming as
many as six hundred members in a number of
countries. Bender was also an enthusiastic science-fiction fan. A bachelor, he lived in a
house full of artifacts from horror films, and
at night, as he lay in bed, he would imagine
himself sailing out of his body and into deep
space. Soon, according to Benders book,
weird things began happening to him. Strange
lights and disembodied footsteps frightened
him, and once glowing eyes, accompanied by
a stench of sulfur, stared at him. With colleagues in Australia and New Zealand, Bender
speculated about a saucer base inside the
South Pole, and they laid plans for a research
project to study that possibility.

141

Bender urged his membership to try to

contact the saucers telepathically at the same
hour on March 15, 1953. While participating, he underwent an out-of-body experience
and then heard a voice warning him to discontinue delving into the mysteries of the
universe.
A few weeks later, he returned home from a
two-week vacation to smell the sulfur odor. A
few hours later, three shadowy, apparitional
figures dressed in dark suits spoke to him.
They gave him a device with which he could
contact them; all he had to do was hold it
tightly in his palm and say Kazik over and
over again. Two days later, he attempted contact. The experience initiated a series of encounters with monstrous beings who revealed
that Kazik was the name of their home
planet. They took Bender to their antarctic
base, where they revealed their big secret: they
had come to Earth to gather and refine sea
water. They also told him that God does not
exist and that there is no life after death.
Bender was given a disc that monitored his
activities and ensured his silence until they
completed their business, which was in 1960
when they departed from our planet. Bender
was free to tell his story, which he did in a
book that few, including (privately) Barker,
saw as anything more than a not particularly
interesting science-fiction novel. Two critics
pointed to the storys inherent implausibility:
The story lacks a good solid motive or purpose. . . . How could Bender or anyone else
have discovered [the Kazakians] secret until
they chose to reveal it; and if they wished their
secret to remain unknown, what possible purpose could they have had in revealing it deliberately to Bender, only to have to then force
silence upon him, causing him physical pain
and disturbing his peace of mind for the next
eight years? . . . What was so significant about
a few tons of sea water? . . . What had such
entities to fear from anyone, if Bender did
publish such a secret? Who would believe it,
or be able to interfere with such an advanced
civilization? (Beasley and Sampsel, 1963).

142 Keel, John Alva

Twelve years after Three Mens publication,

Barker expressed the view that the story was
something Bender had conjured up in a
trance or a dream (Barker, 1976). Most observers, however, suspected it to be conscious
fiction. One fantastic theory, proposed in
1980 by British ufologist Brian Burden, held
that an intelligence agency had subjected Bender to a thought-control experiment and
caused him to hallucinate space people.
See Also: Men in black
Further Reading
Barker, 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 Bender MysteryStill a Mystery? Flying Saucers
(May): 2027.
Bender, Albert K., 1962. Flying Saucers and the Three
Men. Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.
Burden, Brian, 1980. MIBs and the Intelligence
Community. Awareness 9, 1 (Spring): 613.

John Alva Keel (August C. Roberts/Fortean Picture Library)

Young, Jerry A., and Gray Barker, 1976. Letters.

Gray Barkers Newsletter 3 (January): 712.

Keel, John Alva (1930 )

Born Alva John Kiehl in Hornell, New York,
on March 25, 1930, John Keel would discover
the writings of anomalist Charles Fort
(18741932) at an early age. He grew up to
be a Manhattan-based writer who eventually
became internationally known for radical,
neodemonological interpretations of UFO,
anomalous and paranormal phenomena. Keel
would speculate that a wide range of otherworldly entities, none of which regard the
human race with favor (ultraterrestrials, to
use his term), emerge from an alternative reality he calls the superspectrum.
Keel claims to have attended the first flying-saucer convention ever held, in the old
Labor Temple on New Yorks 14th Street
(Keel, 1991). After a tour of duty in the mil-

Kihief

itary in the early 1950s, he wandered the

East and wrote his first book, Jadoo (1957),
on his adventures and observations. He
wrote that while in the Himalayas, he saw
the yeti (abominable snowman), a beast he
would come to think of as a demon
(Chorvinsky, 1990). In the 1960s, he embarked full time on investigations of UFOs,
men in black, monsters (including Mothman, an eerie winged humanlike creature
with which Keels name would forever after
be associated), contactees, and more. He
even reported having his own encounters
with unearthly entities. Borrowing from California occult theorist N. Meade Layne, Keel
became convinced that there are no visiting
extraterrestrials, only shape-changing supernatural beings composed of energy from the
upper frequencies of the electro-magnetic
spectrum. Somehow they can descend to the
narrow (very narrow) range of visible light
and can be manipulated into any desirable
form. . . . Once they have completed their
mission . . . they . . . revert to an energy state
and disappear from our field of visionforever (Keel, 1969).
Though dismissed by some as a crank, Keel
has been an influential theorist in some ufological and Fortean circles. His critics have
charged him with careless writing and
credulity, but his admirers prefer to think of
him as a bold, even outrageous, iconoclast.
See Also: Contactees; Men in black; Mothman; Ultraterrestrials
Further Reading
Chorvinsky, Mark, 1990. Cryptozoo Conversation
with John A. Keel. Strange Magazine 5: 3540.
Clark, Jerome, 1997. Spacemen, Demons, and Con spiracies: The Evolution of UFO Hypotheses.
Mount Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.
, 1971. Our Haunted Planet. Greenwich, CT:
Fawcett Publications.
, 1975. The Eighth Tower. New York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and Company.
, 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New York:
Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and Company.
, 1988. Disneyland of the Gods. New York:
Amok Press.

143

, 1969. The Principle of Transmogrification. Flying Saucer Review 15, 4 (July/August):

2728, 31.

Khauga
Khauga is a Celestial Being whom William
Ferguson met in an out-of-body state while
meditating on the evening of January 12,
1947. Traveling at the speed of consciousness, he found himself on Mars within ten
seconds. Khauga met him on his arrival, remarking that he had something to say about
the observations that we have made of your
planet. He also wanted Ferguson to pass on
some messages to his fellow earthlings.
According to Khauga, a great network of
canals covers the planet. Electromagnetic
fields enclose its cities. Martians themselves,
all of whom have red hair, red complexions,
and broad features, float through the air via
levitation. They are a foot shorter than the
typical Earth person. Khauga expressed incredulity that human beings kill each other in
battles. Martians, he said, are twenty thousand years ahead of earthlings in spiritual evolution and scientific development. Concerned
about the state of affairs on our planet, the
Martians had decided to release positive energy particles into the earths atmosphere . . .
to counteract the negative energy particles
that man himself has released (Ferguson,
1954). Khauga asked Ferguson to assure the
people of Earth that things would soon be
much better in their world.
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian;
Browns Martians; Dentonss Martians and Venusians; Hopkinss Martians; Martian bees; MincePie Martians; Mullers Martians; Shaws Martians; Smeads Martians; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Ferguson, William, 1954. My Trip to Mars. Potomac,
MD: Cosmic Study Center.

Kihief
Kihief was the spirit guide to the late Francie
Paschal Steiger, who with her then-husband,
Brad Steiger, spearheaded the Star People

144

King Leo

movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Paschal Steiger believed herself to be a reincarnated extraterrestrial. Kihief, who guided her
through her life, said he was from a place like
unto Venus (Steiger and Steiger, 1981). She
took his words to mean that he was from an
otherdimensional counterpart to Earths (uninhabitable) sister planet. Throughout her
lifetime, Paschal Steiger interacted with a variety of friendly, spiritually advanced space people. She met the first of them when, as a fiveyear-old child, she saw a robed being whom
she took to be an angel.
See Also: Star People
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.
Steiger, Brad, and Francie Steiger, 1981. The Star
People. New York: Berkley Books.
Steiger, Francie, 1982. Reflections from an Angels Eye.
New York: Berkley Books.

King Leo
King Leo is a reptilian being who is descended
from the dinosaurs. He and his fellows live in
an underground kingdom, where they have
resided since just before the catastrophe that
destroyed other life from the Age of Reptiles.
Some have met him in person, but most of his
communications come through channeling.
King Leo got his name from a woman who
prefers to call herself Joy DLight (sometimes
JoyDLight). Her association with reptilian beings began on November 7, 1961, when she
and her husband, an air force man, were living in Oregon. Her husband had left town on
assignment, and it was her first night alone.
That night, from her open bedroom door facing the kitchen, she saw three bipedal reptilian beings standing next to her refrigerator.
Six and a half feet tall, they had scaly skin and
spikes down their backs; their eyes were yellow. Too frightened to leave her bed, she eventually fell asleep. They were gone when she
woke up; nonetheless, they appeared every
night for two months thereafter. Often they
were waiting for her when she came home

from work. Eventually, she took up a brief residence with her sister and returned only after
some days had passed. The entities, who had
never harmed her or spoken with her, were
not there.
That changed in 1996 when one showed
up in her house. She was wide awake and not
in her bedroom this time, and she no longer
felt the terror she had originally experienced.
The being spoke for the first time, assuring
her that he and his companions had never
meant to harm her; they were just interested
in her. He vanished after a few moments. On
another occasion this being or one much like
it showed up briefly on the television screen
while she was surfing channels. The following
year, one appeared for about five minutes before disappearing without communicating.
One day in July 1998, she lay down to rest
when instantly she found herself transported
to an underground kingdom. The ruler, who
was standing in front of her, initiated a conversation, during which he told her that originally the reptilian race had been dinosaurs.
Over time they evolved into smaller creatures,
though their eating habitsthey were herbivoreshad not changed. Now they wanted to
return to the surface (top side, he called it)
and reclaim their rightful roles as rulers of
Earth. Joy explained that no single individual
rules the surface, that there are many nations
and many leaders.
When she inquired as to his name, he
replied that her tongue would not be able to
pronounce it. He suggested that she make up
a name with which she felt comfortable. She
decided to call him Leo, telling him that
Leo means king. From then on, she addressed him as King Leo.
King Leo wanted to know what love feels
like, since he and his people had no emotionsthough such feelings are just now
starting to evolve in them. They have a religion; they recognize the same Creator as surface 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

Kuran

like to live on the top again, though most

would be staying behind. Those who wanted
to go to the surface, however, were concerned
that human beings would not accept their appearance. He told her that at present one and
a half million reptilians live beneath the earth.
According to Joyces friend Elliemiser, He is
very congenial, likable and pleasant to communicate with. . . . Now they are waiting to
find out what our response will be. . . . They
will not just suddenly pop up and frighten us
(The Reptilians, 1999).
King Leos reptilians are not to be confused
with evil reptoids who are coming to Earth
from the Draco constellation. These beings
are violent meat-eaters who seek to destroy
humans with their advanced technology. The
reptilians, on the other hand, do not have
space travel, and their technology, while developing, is still relatively primitive.
See Also: Channeling; Reptoids
Further Reading
DLight, Joy, and Elliemiser, 1999. The Reptilians
and King Leo. http://www.greatdreams.com/
reptlan/repleo.htm

Korton
Commander Korton is a well-loved, ubiquitous channeling entity. He is also a leading
light in the Ashtar Command, a close, trusted
associate of Ashtar. According to a common
belief, he heads the Ashtar Command Kor
Communications Base, located in an otherdimensional correlate to the planet Mars. His
task is to initiate contact with budding channelers and train them for their work. He also
supervises the Eagles, extraterrestrials who live
on Earth and pass as earthlings while performing missions for the Ashtar Command.
Some contactees have reported boarding his
ship in out-of-body states to attend briefings
in what looks like a large amphitheater.
One psychic who observed him in the
course of an interstellar conference describes
him as clad in a vanilla-colored robe. His
eyes were deep-set, the observer reported,
and blue in color. He had a strong straight

145

nose, slightly high cheek bones, firm full

mouth. His hair was golden-blond . . . but his
beard was lighter. . . . There was a firmness
with this individual, but there was also a great
deal of warmth vibration alsothe warmth of
love, of acceptance, of youre o.k.(Tuieta,
1986).
See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Contactees
Further Reading
Tuella [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: Portals
of Light.

Kronin
On July 26, 1967, near Big Tujunga Canyon
in California, a man and a woman in a car
heard a disembodied voice speaking. It alerted
them to the imminent appearance of something out of the ordinary. They spotted a
flash, then a disc-shaped UFO that landed
nearby. A tall, boneless, eyeless figure
emerged. He was, he said, Kronin, head of the
Kronian race. He was also a space robot encased in a time capsule (Keel, 1975).
When she arrived home, the woman, Maris
DeLong, took a phone call. It was from Kronin, the first of several in which he discussed
cosmic matters.
Further Reading
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.

Kuran
Kuran are a race of people whom an
actress/writer given the pseudonym Jessica
Rolfe claims to have met over a period of
years, beginning in her childhood. The
Kuran, who are described as beautiful,
tanned, golden-haired people who look
human, would materialize in her Miami
Beach, Florida, bedroom and teach her their
secrets. The Kuran communicate telepathically, though they do make vocal sounds for a
few simple sentiments such as look there,

146 Kurmos

watch out, and wow. They are among

twelve alien races who have visited Earth.
They have bases here, some off the coasts of
Florida and Argentina, one in Brazils Amazon
basin, and they have lived in them, unknown
to human beings, for millions of years. They
still do not understand humanitys tendency
to be violent and prejudiced.
The Kuran told Rolfe that the human race
originally occupied a planet located between
Mars and Jupiter. They visited this planet just
before natural forces were set to destroy it, offering to remove the inhabitants to a suitable
place if they agreed to live by Kuran law. The
inhabitants refused, and the Kuran withdrew.
The residents of the doomed planet managed
to escape on their own. Some went to a
planet in the constellation of Pegasus, and the
other, to the Kurans displeasure, colonized
Earth and became our ancestors. Earth
proved an inhospitable place, not sufficiently
evolved to have achieved the cosmic harmonies that give rise to peaceable, welladjusted races. The new colonists, moreover,
interfered with Earths ecology, forcing its
previous, reigning, intelligent species from
the land into the oceans; humans now know
these beings as dolphins. Other alien races
who arrived were driven off or forced to live
in remote regions. The creatures humans call
Bigfoot or Sasquatch originally came from
outer space.
Over time, the new inhabitants forgot
their cosmic heritage and their true history.
Earths surface, once a single land mass surrounded by ocean (and recalled vaguely as the
lost continent of Mu), broke up, and the people were scattered. Cut off from one another,
they developed different cultures and different languages. Only an elite group called the
Magi preserved knowledge of the true past.
Each harbored ambitions for himself and collected followers. They used their knowledge
to abuse Earths natural energies and to harness atoms for destructive purposes. Disturbed by these developments, the Kuran returned to Earth and tried to reform its

inhabitants. With their followers, they constructed the paradisiacal land of Atlantis,
only to have the Magi destroy it with atomic
bombs. The nuclear explosions changed
Earths landscape and climate and created the
continents we know today.
Even today a secret conflict continues between the Kuran and the Magi. On occasion
the Kuran have tried to interfere in human affairs, each time with negative results. Myths
and legends of the gods of the ancient world
recount, in distorted form, previous Kuran efforts to lead us.
See Also: Atlantis; Lemuria
Further Reading
Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.
Direct Encounters: Personal Histories of UFO Ab ductees. New York: Walker and Company.

Kurmos
In March 1966, a mystically inclined Scotsman named R. Ogilvie (Roc) Crombie, visiting Edinburghs Royal Botanic Gardens,
spotted a creature that looked half human and
half animal. Three feet tall, it had cloven
hoofs. It told Crombie that its name was Kurmos. It was a nature spirit that helped trees to
grow.
Kurmos accompanied Crombie back to his
apartment, where it stayed for a short time.
On a subsequent trip to the garden, Crombie
called out to him, and Kurmos appeared. He
learned that in earlier ages Kurmos had been
the god Pan.
Further Reading
Ash, David, and Peter Hewitt, 1990. Science of the
Gods. Bath, England: Gateway Books.

Kwan Ti Laslo
Kwan Ti Laslo channels from the Blue Diamond Planet. This planet is not in orbit
around a sun (as planets are virtually by definition) but rather is a sort of giant spacecraft
that travels all over the universe investigating
conditions there. The planet/spacecraft reports its findings to the Intergalactic Council.

Kwan Ti Laslo

In the mid-1970s, it made a brief visit to

Earths vicinity. Earthly astronomers mistook
the spacecraft for a comet.
Certain advanced human beingsKwan Ti
Laslo mentioned former presidents Harry
Truman and John F. Kennedy specifically
are allowed to come to the Blue Diamond
Planet and live there. The planet gives off blue

147

light from its many waterways and temperate

climate. There is no environmental pollution.
All highly evolved planets have almost instantaneous cleansing of air and waters,
Kwan Ti Laslo explains.
Further Reading
The Blue Diamond Planet, 1976. Other World Life
Review 1, 9 (November): 7.

Laan-Deeka and Sharanna

In February or early March 1967 a Puerto
Rican man named Lester Rosas received several telepathic messages from two Venusians,
Laan-Deeka and Sharanna. They promised
that they would meet with him face-to-face
one day soon.
On the evening of March 31, acting under
a strange compulsion, Rosas boarded a bus
and took it to the end of the line, which happened to be along a coastal area. He kept
walking until he reached a deserted part of the
beach. By then it was pitch black, and he was
unsure about what he was doing there and for
what, or for whom, he was waiting. Then he
felt an odd sensation as a man who had shoulder-length hair and was dressed in a close-fitting garment approached him. The man extended his hand, but when Rosas tried to
shake his hand, the stranger withdrew it after
a mild pressing of palms. He said in Spanish,
Yes, beloved Earth brother, I am LaanDeeka, of the planet Venus. He went on to
state that Venusians had been keeping human
beings under surveillance since their primitive
origins and had also been living, unnoticed,
among them.
Laan-Deeka then commenced to discuss
reincarnation, saying that advanced earthlings
who obey natures laws are permitted to live

their next lives on spiritually developed planets. In the universe, he said, most communication, even interplanetary and interstellar
communication, occurs by telepathy. Human
beings are backward, in part, because they fail
to realize that telepathy is even possible.
The Venusian led Rosas to the other side of
a small nearby wall, where they witnessed the
materialization of a flying saucer. A door slid
open, and a woman emerged to engage Rosas
in a palm-to-palm Venusian handshake. She
was so lovely that I was speechless for a moment, Rosas recalled. Her hair was long and
fair, and she had a fantastic figure. . . . I estimated her measurements at 5'4" and 37-2735. She introduced herself to Rosas as Sharanna, Laan-Deekas fiance.
Though the couple looked to be no more
than twenty years old, their manner suggested
wiser, older persons. They had high foreheads
and slightly slanted eyes, his green, hers blue.
There was a musical sound to their voices, a
sense of joy in their speech and action.
The three entered the ship and flew off to
Venus, which proved to be the paradisiacal
world reported by other contactees. On their
way to the planet, Sharanna condemned the
war in Vietnam as senseless and stupidas
are all wars. She also criticized those who refused to believe contact stories. If contactees

149

150

Lady of Pluto

reports are sometimes contradictory, she

said, it is with good reason. Your Earth people
are contacting space people from different
planets and different cultures, in different
stages of advancement. . . . Therefore the reports could hardly be the same (Rosas, 1976).
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Rosas, Lester, 1976. Visits from Venus. Other
World Life Review Pt. I. 1, 8 (October): 45; Pt.
II. 1, 9 (December): 34.

Lady of Pluto
Kelvin Rowe, an acquaintance of such early
contactees as George Adamski and Truman
Bethurum, began hearing voices in his head in
early 1953. The voices were mostly indistinct,
and he was unsure of their meaning. On
March 9, 1954, while driving to San
Bernardino, California, the word Pluto
sounded inside his brain three times in succession. Later that month, after further brief
messages from beings he identified as
Guardians from Space, he requested a direct,
in-person meeting. A voice replied that one
would happen, but he might not recognize it
when it did.
At the Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention in the California desert the
following year on April 4, he kept company
with Truman Bethurum, whom he had
known four years before Bethurum began
claiming an association with the spacewoman
Aura Rhanes of Clarion. He met three young
people, a woman and two men, who looked
normal and were friendly. It was only later
that Rowe realized that they had said something to him that they could not have known
about an earlier trip he had taken to see
Bethurum. Rowe wondered if they had been
space people, and soon a mental message confirmed that they had been. The message was
from the young woman, whom he would call
the Lady of Pluto.
In a 1958 book, Rowe recounted the conversation that followed. The Lady of Pluto
told him that contact with space people

would radically alter earthling science and humankinds beliefs on a range of issues. She also
said that earthwomen would be more receptive than earthmen, that by the time the open
contact occurred, women would hold positions of authority in business and government. Their influence would ensure that the
changes took place without undue conflict
and destruction. She promised that in time,
when he was ready, he would be permitted to
board a spacecraft.
Mental communication with various space
people continued over the next months. Eventually, a spaceman came to Rowes house late
one evening. The two had a short conversation via telepathy before the extraterrestrial
disappeared into the night. Soon Rowe was
regularly seeing flying-saucer people. A week
after the first meeting, the same Space Brother
and a companion reappeared at his door. He
invited them in for a conversation about cosmic and philosophical issues. According to
Rowe, They were fine looking men, with
smooth, dark sun-tan complexions, and dark
hair styled in longer length than our modern
cuts (Rowe, 1958). Three weeks of saucer
sightings and psychic contacts took place. The
communicators were a man and woman from
Jupiter: the Brother and Sister, Rowe called
them. He unexpectedly met them in the flesh
for a short while.
His next contact, a few weeks later in January 1955, was with the Lady of Pluto, the first
time he had seen her since Giant Rock. She
was accompanied by a Space Brother, and
Rowe described her as mettlesome and
lovely. She stood five feet three inches tall,
wore a blouse, jacket, and slacks in contrasting tones of a beautiful, pansy-blue, similar to
royal blue, and a shade of red-wine in a scintillating, deep intensity. He was told that she
was the earthly equivalent of a captain on a
spacecraft. She also said that an asteroid was
passing dangerously close to Earth but that
the space people would make sure it did not
cause damage.
Some weeks later, Rowe met the Lady of
Pluto again, in the company of the Brother

Land beyond the Pole

and Sister of Jupiter. On this occasion he was

finally permitted to board a landed ship for a
few minutes. In due course, Rowe would fly,
more than once, into space onboard spacecraft, sometimes with the Lady of Pluto, more
often with the Sister of Jupiter. Some there
are who believe UFOs are the greatest mystery of our century, Rowe wrote. I only
hope I have made it clear that there is no mystery connected with them.
See Also: Adamski, George; Aura Rhanes; Bethurum, Truman; Contactees
Further Reading
Rowe, Kelvin, 1958. A Call at Dawn: A Message from
Our Brothers of the Planets Pluto and Jupiter. El
Monte, CA: Understanding Publishing Company.

Land beyond the Pole

According to F. Amadeo Giannini, author of
Worlds beyond the Poles (1959), Admiral
Richard E. Byrd discovered a marvelous new
land when he flew 1,700 miles beyond the
North Pole during an expedition in 1947. He
saw ice-free lakes, mountains, and forests. He
even caught a glimpse of an enormous animal
walking through the underbrush. In 1956, on
a second expedition to the Arctic, he witnessed similar sights. Giannini claimed that
the U.S. government had sworn Byrd to silence after he first hinted of his discoveries in
his 1947 interviews with the New York Times.
Giannini, characterized as the archetypal
crank by one critic (Kafton-Minkel, 1989),
believed that Byrds alleged experience verified
hisGianninisbelief that the Earth is not
round but more or less spindle-shaped; at
each spindle point the surface, instead of ending, cur ves back overhead. The universe consists not of space but of vast land, physical
continuity he called it. What appear to humans as stars, planets, galaxies, and other phenomena in the distant cosmos are only globular and isolated areas of a continuous and
unbroken outer sky surface. His original inspiration, he wrote, was a mystical vision he
experienced while strolling through a New
England forest one day in 1926.

151

Published as a vanity-press (that is, at the

authors expense) book, Worlds beyond the
Poles would have passed quickly into oblivion
if not for the fact that Ray Palmer, editor of
Flying Saucers and promoter of the Shaver
Mystery, read the book after receiving a review
copy. Always looking for an issue to stir up his
readers, Palmer wrote of Byrds supposed secret flight to argue that the Earth is hollow
with giant holes at the poles. Anyone entering
the holes will encounter a hidden world harboring an intelligent civilization that builds
and flies superaircraft that are called UFOs.
Palmer got the Byrd story from Giannini but
did not mention him, claiming that he had
gotten his information from years of research (Palmer, 1959). A number of readers
pointed out that the New York Times stories
about Byrds expedition did not quote him as
saying anything about forests or a giant beast;
even worse, in 1947 and 1956, Byrd was at
the South, not the North, Pole. Palmer was
forced to acknowledge that his sole source was
Giannini. Unapologetic, he went on to speculate that perhaps Byrd had made a secret flight
to the Arctic in 1947; either that, or a deliberate effort was being made to build an edifice
which could be toppled IF AND WHEN THE
TRUTH CAME OUT ABOUT THE SOUTH
POLE! (Palmer, 1960). And if neither of

these were true, the question of which pole

Byrd had flown over was moot since Byrd had
encountered a lush, green landscape where
none should have existed and that, in the end,
was all that matterednotwithstanding the
nonexistence of any documentation that Byrd
had made any such claim in the first place.
Giannini soon weighed in to attack Palmers
hollow earth interpretation and to argue for a
secret Arctic expedition by Byrd in 1947,
which was followed by a suppression of his
discoveries.
In the 1970s, a Missouri-based organization called the International Society for a
Complete Earth, headed by retired marine
corps officer Tawani Shoush, who was also a
Modoc Indian, issued what it claimed was a
secret diary that Byrd kept during his 1947

152

Cover of Flying Saucers magazine, June 1970, with a November 1968 satellite photo allegedly showing the hole in the
North Pole leading to the interior of hollow earth (Fortean Picture Library)

Lanello 153

North Pole expedition. Written in an amateurish, pulpy style, strikingly unlike the erudite prose found in Byrds undisputed published works, the diary has Byrd and his radio
operator passing over a green landscape and
spotting a mammoth, while the temperature
rises to seventy-four degrees. Soon the two
men spot three flying saucers with swastika insignias (perhaps not coincidentally, Shoushs
group held that the inner-earthers, a Teutonic
race known as the Arianni, favor the
swastika). The saucers take control of Byrds
plane and lead it to a city pulsating with rainbow hues of color. There they meet the Arianni and engage in conversation with an aged,
wise man known as the Master. The Master
warns that human beings are insufficiently advanced to be fooling with something as dangerous as atomic energy. The diarys last entry,
supposedly written shortly before Byrds death
in 1957, says, I have faithfully kept this matter secret as directed all these years. It has been
completely against my values of moral right.
Though unsupported by any evidence, the
story of Byrds flight beyond the pole became a
staple of hollow-earth literature. As late as
1993, Timothy Green Beckley was asking,
Was it because of Admiral Byrds weird flight
into an unknown Polar land in 1947 that the
International Geophysical Year was conceived
in that year, and finally brought to fruition ten
years later, and is actually still going on? Did
his flight make it suddenly imperative to discover the real nature of this planet we live on,
and solve the tremendous mysteries that unexpectedly confronted us? (Beckley, 1993).
Dennis G. Crenshaw, editor of The Hollow
Earth Insider Research Report, expresses a view
that is at once skeptical and conspiratorial. He
notes that when the diary quotes some of the
Masters words, those words bear an unsettling resemblance to those spoken by the
Dalai Lama of Shangri-La in the classic 1937
film Lost Horizon. He also bluntly charges that
Tawani Shoush and his group forged the
diary. Nonetheless, he sees a sinister hand in
all of this. Byrds polar expeditions were in the
service of the paymasters of the Illuminati

and . . . a New World Order . . . John D.

Rocherfeller [sic] and his pals. Moreover, Giannini himself consciously served the conspiracy. From uncertain evidence, Crenshaw concludes that Gianninis family owned the Bank
of Italy and the Bank of America. He goes
on, If, as my research seems to indicate, it is
the One Worlders plan to hide what is going
on at the earths poles, what better way to
cloud the water, so to speak, than to have one
of their own, an admitted member of an international banking family, toss in a controversysuch as this phony trip by Admiral
Byrdto make hollow earthers appear as
ridiculous[?] (Crenshaw, 1996).
See Also: Hollow earth; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, ed., 1993. The Smoky God
and Other Inner Earth Mysteries. New Brunswick,
NJ: Inner Light Publications.
Crenshaw, Dennis G., 1996. The Missing Diary of
Admiral Byrd: Fact or Fiction? The Hollow Earth
Insider Research Report 4, 1: 815.
, 1997. Admiral Byrds 1939 Antarctic Expedition and the Mysterious Snow Cruiser. The
Hollow Earth Insider Research Report 4, 2: 416.
A Flight to the Land beyond the North Pole, or Is This
the Missing Secret Diary of Admiral Richard Evelyn
Byrd? n.d. Houston, MO: International Society
for 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, Lost
Races, and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Palmer, Ray, 1959. Saucers from Earth! A Challenge to Secrecy! Flying Saucers (December):
821.
, 1960. Editorial. Flying Saucers (February): 4, 2934.
, 1961. Byrd Did Make North Pole Flight
in Feb., 1947!Giannini. Flying Saucers (February): 411.

Lanello
In his most recent incarnation on Earth,
Lanello, an Ascended Master, was Mark L.
Prophet (19181973), married to Elizabeth
Clare Prophet of the Church Universal and
Triumphant. Since then, as Lanello, he has

154

Laskon

channeled through Prophet and Carolyn

Shearer.
Lanello first came to Earth thousands of
years ago from his native Venus after Sanat
Kumarathe brother of Sananda (Jesus) and
sometimes called Earths planetary spiritdetermined to save the human race from destroying itself. Over the centuries Lanello
went through many incarnations, all in fulfillment of his earthly mission. In his lives, he
has been an Atlantean priest, Noah, Lot,
Amenhotep IV, Bodhidharma (founder of
Zen Buddhism), Aesop, Pericles, Mark the
Evangelist, Lancelot, Saladin, King Louis XIV
(the Sun King), Hiawatha, and Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, among others.
See Also: Ascended Masters; Sananda
Further Reading
Ascended Master Lanello: I Am Here and I Am
There! I Am Everywhere in the Consciousness of
God! n.d. http://www.ascension-research.org/
lanello.html.

Laskon
James Hill, who lived on a farm near Seymour, Missouri, experienced numerous flying-saucer sightings and contacts with their
occupants, beginning in 1940. The contacts
occurred through his radio or via mental
telepathy. Eventually, a saucer landed, and as
Hill watched, the crew let out a large dog,
which went under a tree and gave birth to
pups. Hill kept one of the Venusian pups,
named Queenie. Hills principal contact over
time was with Brother Laskon, a member of
the Solar Tribunal on Saturn.
According to Laskon, Jesus is a frequent
space traveler who visits the many inhabited
planets. When he is in our system, he stays on
Mars and Saturn, but most of his time is spent
on Venus because of its loveliness. Laskon knew
Bucky, an earthman living on Venus and the
frequent contact of another Missouri contactee
(and friend of Hill), Buck Nelson. Laskon also
was able to confirm Chief Frank Buck Standing
Horses trip to the planet Oreon in the summer
of 1959. Saturn, which houses the Solar Tribunal, is a beautiful planet where greatly ad-

vanced, spiritually wise beings reside. The

twelve Elder Ones who compose the tribunal
are the names of all of the prophets in the biblical times, Laskon has said (Dean, 1964). Like
Jesus, a senior member of the tribunal, they flew
to Earth in spaceships, spent their time here,
and then departed in the same way. Moses,
however, lives on Venus, where he serves on the
Supreme Council. John the Baptist returned to
Earth in the 1950s and even attended a contactee convention in Los Angeles in July l959.
See Also: Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-o-leeka; Contactees
Further Reading
Dean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip tures. New York: Vantage Press.

Lazaris
Lazaris first spoke to Jach Pursel, a Florida regional insurance supervisor with no interest in
the New Age or occult, after his wife, Peny,
urged him to meditate as a way of easing jobrelated stress. Instead of meditating, Pursel fell
asleep. Soon an oddly accented voice was
speaking through him. Though startled and
even frightened, Peny grabbed pen and paper
and started asking questions. The entity said
its name was Lazaris.
The channeling continued for years with
Lazaris relating a philosophy rather like that
associated with other popular channeled entities of the period, including Ramtha and Seth.
In this philosophy, humans are evolving spiritual beings who need to gain access to the divine intelligence that is within each of them.
Lazaris became hugely popular, and at the
peak of Lazariss fame on the New Age circuit,
Pursel was channeling as much as forty hours a
week, with Penyfrom whom he was now divorcedand her new husband managing the
business. Lazaris, who always used the plural
pronoun when speaking, told writer Jon Klimo,
We are always in a state of expansion. We have
no boundary. We have no edge of who we are,
and yet we know who we are. We know where
we begin and end, although there is no
form. . . . We have always been and we will al-

Lemuria 155

ways be; and therefore, we are always constantly

exploring our awareness, gathering data, gathering insight, gathering vibration and internalizing that vibration. We are always everywhere
and nowhere simultaneously (Klimo, 1987).
See Also: Channeling; Ramtha; Seth
Further Reading
Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los
Angeles: J. P. Tarcher.
Martin, Katherine, 1987. The Voice of Lazaris.
New Realities 7, 6 (July/August): 2633.
Pursel, Jach, 1987. Lazaris, The Sacred Journey: You
and Your Higher Self. Beverly Hills, CA: Concept
Synergy.
, 1988. Lazaris Interviews. Two volumes.
Beverly Hills, CA: Concept Synergy.

Lemuria
Lemuria was the invention of British zoologist Philip L. Schattler, who conceived of it as
an Indian Ocean land bridge connecting

Madagascar and extreme southern India.

Schattler, who was researching animal populations, sought to explain why these two
widely separated locations shared many of the
same flora and fauna. (In the twentieth century, continental drift theory rendered Schattlers hypothesis obsolete.) He called the postulated land bridge Lemuria, after the
lemurs, animals that the two areas shared in
common. Before long, however, occultists
and mystics would incorporate the concept of
Lemurianow conceived of as a lost continent in the Pacific Oceaninto their own alternative histories.
For a time, however, Lemuria remained a
scientifically respectable hypothesis. One
major champion, German evolutionary biologist Ernst Haeckel, speculated that Homo sapi ens originated on Lemuria, though that could
not be proved because any remains had sunk
to the bottom of the sea along with the land

A science fiction novella about Lemuria by Richard S. Shaver and Ray Palmer in Amazing Stories, March 1945 (Fortean
Picture Library)

156

Lemuria

bridge. Others theorized that Lemuria was

just part of a vast continent, called Gondwanaland, which had circled most of the
Southern Hemisphere, leaving only a patch of
the Pacific Ocean uncovered. None of the scientists argued that either Lemuria or Gondwanaland had survived into historical time.
Lemuria entered the occult tradition
through Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, founder
of Theosophy. In The Secret Doctrine (1889),
Blavatsky wrote that the present human race
evolved through a series of root races. The
third root race lived on Lemuria. These beings
had three eyes, one in the back of the head,
and were egg-laying hermaphrodites (possessing attributes of both sexes); some had four
arms. Aside from these features, they were
generally apelike in appearance.
Other occult writers went on to create their
own Lemurians. Through astral clairvoyance the English theosophist W. Scott-Elliot
learned that it was on Lemuria that human
beings entered physical bodies. The original
Lemurians were twelve to fifteen feet tall, had
flat faces and muzzles, and no foreheads.
Their eyes were set so far apart that their vision extended sideways, and they had a third
eye behind their heads. Eventually, these beings began to practice sex, and the Lhas, spirit
entities who were to inhabit the bodies and
guide them through evolution, were so repulsed that they refused their duty. The Lords
of the Flame, advanced Venusians, took over
and guided the Lemurians into a more human
and spiritual state. During the Mesozoic era
Lemuria began to break up, and one of its
peninsulas became Atlantis.
In the late nineteenth century, archaeologist Augustus Le Plongeon, working in the
Yucatan, believed he had discovered how to
translate Mayan hieroglyphics. His translations, which other scholars judged dubious,
led him to believe that he had uncovered evidence of a lost civilization known as Mu. He
assumed Mu to be Atlantis. After his death,
however, his friend James Churchward, who
had inherited Le Plungeons papers, argued
that Mu, the motherland of man, had been

in the South Pacific, not in the Atlantic. Mu

housed a white population of some sixty-four
million souls who had built great cities and
worshipped the sun. Mu sank beneath the sea
ten thousand years ago. Churchward claimed
to have learned about Mu from tablets written
in the dead Naacal language. He had been
given access to them, he said, while serving in
India in the Bengal Lancers. Churchward
wrote about his findings in four books, beginning with The Lost Continent of Mu
(1926). His failure to produce any evidence
that the Naacal tablets existed outside his
imagination sparked hoax charges that
Churchward never successfully refuted.
Soon Mu and Lemuria were assumed to be
the same place, and thus Lemuria became a
Pacific equivalent to the Atlantics Atlantis. In
the early years of the twentieth century, speculation grew that California was a surviving
fragment of Lemuria. A popular occult legend, apparently originating in a 1908 article
in The Overland Monthly, heldand still
holdsthat a surviving Lemurian colony lives
inside Mount Shasta, on the California-Oregon border. According to Lemuria: The Lost
Continent of the Pacific (1931), by H. Spencer
Lewis (writing as Wishar S. Cerve), when
Lemuria broke up, a California-sized part of it
crashed into North Americas west coast and
attached itself. In 1936, Robert Stelle of
Chicago founded the Lemurian Fellowship,
based on his channeled messages from
Lemurians living inside Mount Shasta. In two
books published between 1940 and 1952,
Stelle depicted Lemuria as an enormous land
mass and a lost paradise.
In the mid-1940s, the Ziff-Davis sciencefiction magazines Amazing Stories and Fantas tic Adventures ran a series of stories and allegedly factual articles based in part on
Richard S. Shavers memories of life in
Lemuria, some of whose inhabitants still reside under the earth. Most have gone mad and
use the advanced technology available to them
to torment surface-dwellers.
Lemuria was incorporated into the flying
saucer-based alternative realities proposed by

Lethbridges aeronauts

the contactees and channelers who came

along in the late 1940s and 1950s amid popular speculation about visitation from other
planets. The Pacific lost continent played a
prominent role in George Hunt Williamsons
speculative books Other TonguesOther Flesh
(1953), Secret Places of the Lion (1958), and
Road in the Sky (1959), which laid out an ancient history in which Lemurians and Atlanteans interacted freely with a variety of extraterrestrial races.
Now an assumed reality in just about any
metaphysical, New Age, hollow earth, or
saucerian worldview, Lemuria sooner or later
enters just about any discussion predicated on
the assumption that everything humans think
they know about the ancient history of Earth
and the human race is wrong.
See Also: Atlantis; Contactees; Hollow earth; Mount
Shasta; Shaver mystery; Williamson, George
Hunt
Further Reading
Blavatsky, Helene P., 1889. The Secret Doctrine. Two
volumes. London: Theosophical Publishing
Company.
Churchward, James, 1926. The Lost Continent of
Mu. New York: Ives Washburn.
De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The At lantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature.
New York: Dover Publications.
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Scott-Elliot, W., 1925. The Story of Atlantis and the
Lost Lemuria. London: Theosophical Publishing
House.
Shaver, Richard S., 1945. I Remember Lemuria!
Amazing Stories 19, 1 (March): 1270.
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
, 1958. Secret Places of the Lion. London:
Neville Spearman.
, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: Neville
Spearman.

Lethbridges aeronauts
In the spring of 1909, the British Isles were
inundated with sightings of enigmatic objects
that some people called airships. Popular
and official opinion concurred that German

157

spies were involved, though it is now known

that no such German surveillance was occurring or, for that matter, was even technically
achievable. One man claimed to have seen an
airship 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 romancing.
During the winter, Lethbridge was a dock
worker in Cardiff. In the warmer months, he
performed puppet shows in the towns and
villages of Wales. Around 11 on the evening
of May 18, returning home across remote
Caerphilly Mountain, he rounded a bend at
the summit and was taken aback to see something unusual lying along the side of the
road. His first impression was that it was
some big bird. Standing next to it were two
tall men clad in heavy fur coats and tight-fitting fur caps. Their bearing and smart appearance led him to think of them as military
officers. They were working at something,
but Lethbridge was not close enough to see
what it was.
When he got within twenty to thirty yards
of them, they reacted to the rattle of his
spring-cart and jumped up as if startled. They
jabbered furiously to each other in a strange
lingoWelsh or something else; it was certainly not English. Retrieving something on
the ground, they ran to a carriage underneath
the object, which then ascended in a zigzag
motion. Two lights on its side suddenly came
on. Emitting an awful noise, the craft flew
higher and set off in the direction of Cardiff.
After Lethbridge told his story in that city,
investigators rushed to the site. If not for that
circumstance, the episode would have the appearance of an early close encounter of the
third kind. Indeed, it is published in some
UFO literature as just that. Most accounts
leave out what the investigators found at the
site: a variety of artifacts including parts of letters, a spare part for a tire valve, papier-mch
wads, blue paper containing figures and letters, and clippings about airships. All of this
suggests, or at least seems intended to convey,

158

Li Sung

the notion that the airship crew consisted of

foreign spies.
Though nothing is known about the incident beyond what appears in Welsh and English newspapers of the period, the story
seems suspect. The first chronicler of the
UFO phenomenon, Charles Fort, remarked
that anybody else [who] wants to think that
these foreigners were explorers from Mars or
the moon (Fort, 1941) was free to do so, but
he himself suspected a hoax. Because no foreign spies were engaged in aerial surveillance
of Britain in 1909, it is hard to imagine another explanation.
Coincidentally or otherwise, during a wave
of UFO reports in France in the fall of 1954,
a railroad worker at Monlucon claimed that
one evening he encountered a tube-shaped
craft. Outside it stood a man dressed in what
looked like a long, hairy overcoat. When the
witness addressed the figure, the latter responded in an unknown language. The witness left the scene to report it to his supervisor, but when the two returned, the UFO and
the hairy-coated figure were gone.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Fort, 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):
1719.
Vallee, Jacques, 1974. The Pattern behind the UFO
Landings. In Charles Bowen, ed. The Hu manoids, 2776. London: Futura Publications.

Li Sung
Li Sung, said to be the spirit of a village
philosopher who lived in northern China in
the eighth century, channeled through Alan
Vaughan. Vaughan, a longtime writer on psychic phenomena, first experienced Li Sung in
1983, but sixteen years earlier, three British
mediums had told him he would be communicating with this Chinese spirit. Vaughan
said he did not believe them. But one day,
while he was teaching at a psychic seminar in
Sedona, Arizona, a couple asked himhe was

then editing a publication called Reincarna tion Reportif he could divine their past lives.
Suddenly a tremendous energy flooded
over the top of my head, he would recall. It
was like watching a dream, as the Chinese entity Li Sung began to speak through me. He
gave them some detailed information about
past lives and how they fit into their present life
paths. For me, it was the beginning of an enlargement of consciousness (Shepard, 1991).
Vaughan went on to channel Li Sung in
public on many occasions. Vaughan contends
that anyone can channel if he or she wants to.
It is, he asserts, as easy as learning how to
whistle.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los
Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Shepard, Leslie A., 1991. Encyclopedia of Occultism
and 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: Gale
Research.

Linn-Erri
Linn-Erri introduced herself to Robert P. Renaud one night in July 1961. A Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, ham-radio buff and General
Electric technician, Renaud heard beeping
sounds from his radio and then heard a lovely
female voice asking him to stay on the frequency for a while. She told him, I am called
Linn-Erri, and my associates and I come from
the planet Korendor. We are speaking to you
from our spaceship many miles above your
earth (Clark, 1986). She and her fellow Korendorians had chosen to contact him because
they knew of his interest in UFOs, world
peace, and the future of humankind. After
Linn-Erri introduced him to other crewmembers, she explained how Renaud could construct a transmitter for easy reception of future messages from space. Later that year, the
space people helped him convert a television

Luno

set to receive their transmissions. For the first

time, he saw the beautiful Linn-Erri and was
shocked to learn that she was seventy-four
Earth years old.
In due course, Renaud was meeting personally with the Korendorians, riding in their
ships, and learning their science and philosophy, which was essentially indistinguishable in
its essentials from that widely recounted in
saucerian literature. He stayed away from the
contactee lecture and convention circuit and
confined his public activities to a series of articles about his alleged experiences in a metaphysically oriented saucer magazine. He also
produced dubious-looking photographs of
supposed spacecraft.
To outward appearances, nothing distinguished Renaud from many others making
outlandish and not very believable claims.
Still, ufologist Allan Grise, an interested but
highly skeptical observer of the contactee
scene, found Renaud a fascinating and enigmatic figure. If Renaud was engaged in
fraud, he said years later, it was preposterous, unrewarding fraud.
Grise visited Renaud at his home and
found, as the contactees writings asserted, a
basement room full of electronic equipment,
including the television set and the short-wave
radio over which the communications supposedly were effected. Grise, an engineer by
profession and ham-radio buff by avocation,
found that everything seemed to make sense.
The circuits were all appropriate to extend the
receiving range. In other words, if he was
getting messages from an aerial source, he had
the equipment with which to receive them.
More remarkable, however, were the books
Renaud was writing on Korendorian life and
philosophy. There were a dozen or so of them,
all single-spaced, each five hundred to six
hundred pages long. There were, so far as
Grise could discern from studying their contents, no typographical errors. But that was
not all.
When he wrote those books, Grise recalled, it was like his hands belonged to
someone else. Hed sit there in front of his

159

typewriter and pay no attention to what was

coming out of him. Hed be on the phone or
talking with me, and all the while his hands
are going, producing this perfectly typed,
clearly written stuff on alien philosophy. It
was just unbelievable. Renaud seemed singularly uninterested in promoting himself and
volunteered nothing, though he would answer
questions.
Renaud also had a large collection of tapes
allegedly of his space communications. Grise
listened to some of them and heard what was
supposed to be the voice of Linn-Erri. The
recordings, of excellent quality, carried a voice
with a kind of hesitancy in speech patterns
suggesting a foreign person doing well in English. It had a singsong, melodious quality.
Soon afterward, Renaud broke off his brief
association with Grise. He ceased all contact
activities, telling his publisher that he had
done his part and wanted no more of it. By
the end of the 1960s, Renaud had dropped
out of sight. In 1985, Renaud still puzzled
Grise. Something quite out of the normal
was going on, he said. Whatever it was.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Clark, Jerome, 1986. Waiting for the Space Brothers. Fate Pt. I. 39, 3 (March): 4754; Pt. II. 39,
4 (April): 8187; Pt. III. 39, 5 (May): 6876.

Luno
Luno was one of a number of Space Brothers
who communicated through Lorraine Darr of
Rochester, Minnesota. In the mid-1970s, she
and her husband, Victor, performed psychic
healing under the direction of friendly extraterrestrials whom the couple occasionally
glimpsed in apparitional form. Vic also underwent out-of-body trips that took him into
spaceships. Sometimes they took him to
Venus, where he used his healing talents to
cure ailing natives. The couple also believed
that while in meditative states they entered
other dimensions. Other Space Brothers who
helped the Darrs included Becovol, Norbol,
Muello, Maynell, and Julo.

160

Lyrans

Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.

Lyrans
According to the channeling entity Germane,
human ancestors interacted with Lyrans,
members of an extraterrestrial race that functioned as stern, authoritarian teachers. Early
humans both revered and feared them. They
were sturdy, large, light-skinned people. Their
symbols were birds, cats, and the phoenix.
The phoenix image was an invention of theirs,
intended to symbolize the indestructibility of
their empire. They did not hold earthlings in
high regard and hoped that the Great Flood

would destroy all of them, so that the Lyrans

could start over with a new, improved civilization. Other, more kindly disposed extraterrestrials, however, warned Noah and others, and
humanity was saved.
Travel to Earth from the Lyran system took
generations. Thus, once the Lyrans arrived
here, they could never leave. They lost all contact with their home world and eventually intermarried with native earthlings. Back on
Lyra the inhabitants continued to evolve and
advance into highly spiritual beings, but their
cousins stranded on Earth did not.
See Also: Channeling; Germane
Further Reading
Royal, Lyssa, 1994. ET CivilizationsGermane.
http://www.lemuria.net/article-et-civilizations.
html.

Mafu
Mafu channeled through Penny Torres of Los
Angeles, beginning in 1986. Thirty-two thousand years old, Mafu claimed to have passed
through seventeen incarnations on Earth. He
taught that God is in everything and everyone,
and everything and everyone is in God. Beyond
that, he championed a macrobiotic diet, meditation, and the adoption of a spiritual path.
In 1989, Torres, now Penny Torres Rubin,
made a pilgrimage to Hardiwar, India, in the
Himalayan foothills. She refashioned herself
with the title and name of Swami Paramananda Saraswatti. Back in the United
States she created the Foundation for the Realization of Inner Divinity and a subsidiary,
the Center for God Realization. Through
these she has disseminated Mafus teachings.
For a time Mafu was among the most popular channeling entities on the New Age scene
of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He was
sometimes said to be little more than a clone
of the famous Ramtha, channeled by the controversial J. Z. Knight, though at one point
Torres Rubin charged that Ramtha was nothing more than a fraud.
See Also: Channeling; Ramtha
Further Reading
Interview: Penny Torres on Mafu, 1986/1987. Life
Times 1, 2 (Winter): 7479.

161

LEcuyer, Michele, 1986/1987. Mafu. Life Times 1,

2 (Winter): 8082.
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Magonia
The concept of Magonia entered the literature
of ufology in a 1964 issue of Englands Flying
Saucer Review. Ancient-astronaut theorist
W. R. Drake, author of a series of pieces highlighting what he judged to be evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, briefly cited a ninthcentury French account of a ship in clouds
from a place called Magonia. A slightly
longer version appeared in Jacques Vallees
Passport to Magonia (1969), in which Vallee
went on to turn Magonia into the unknown
realm from which many unexplained phenomenaeverything from elves to demons to
UFO humanoidsemerge. He defined Magonia as a sort of parallel universe, which coexists with our own. It is made visible and
tangible only to selected people (Vallee,
1969). In his view, each culture experiences
Magonia in a fashion that conforms to its own
expectations concerning supernatural encounters. Thus, rural Ireland experiences fairies,
while Space Age America has its ostensible extraterrestrials. Vallee did not mean to imply

162

Marian apparitions

that these experiences were purely hallucinatory; he was convinced of an underlying but
impenetrable reality forever disguised under
many masks. A British magazine, still published, named itself Magonia after Vallees
book, though the magazine rejects paranormal explanations of such phenomena.
The Magonia story appeared originally in a
circa 833 manuscript written in Latin by Agobard (779840), the Archbishop of Lyons.
The title in English is Book Against False
Opinions Concerning Hail and Thunder.
Agobard was fiercely hostile to all non-Christian beliefs. One that particularly infuriated
him was the mad and blind belief that
there exists a certain region called Magonia,
from which ships, navigating on clouds, set
sail to transport back to this same region the
fruits of the earth ruined by hail and destroyed by the storm. Agobard tells of several of these senseless fools who held in custody three men and one woman, who they
said had fallen from these ships. The prisoners were brought in front of an assembly to be
stoned to death, but the archbishop managed
to save their lives, after the truth finally triumphed and he had shown up the absurdity
of the charges (Brodu, 1995).
In a critical analysis of the legend, French
anomalist Jean-Louis Brodu reviewed Magonias various uses over the centuries as well as
the embellishments that attached themselves
to it. In the UFO age, the sketchy account
was variously represented as a landing with
aliens or an early abduction case. Some accounts twisted details and reported that the
captives had been stoned to death, Agobards
explicit words to the contrary. Surveying the
scholarly literature on the Magonian tales,
Brodu argues that Agobards account makes
no sense outside the context of the period,
which included the belief that the Earth is flat
and that ships can sail through cloud seas.
Magonia may be a corruption of Magonianus, meaning from Port-Mahon, a onceflourishing harbor on the Balearic island of
Minorca.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Fairies encountered

Further Reading
Brodu, Jean-Louis, 1995. Magonia: A Re-evaluation. In Steve Moore, ed. Fortean Studies: Volume
2, 198215. London: John Brown Publishing.
Drake, W. R., 1964. Spacemen in the Middle
Ages. Flying Saucer Review10, 3 (May/June):
1113.
Vallee, Jacques, 1969. Passport to Magonia: From
Folklore to Flying Saucers. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

Marian apparitions
Visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM)
have been reported since at least the third century of the Christian era. The first for which
there is anything approximating detailed
knowledge dates back to 1061 when the BVM
provided a vision of Christs residence in
Nazareth and directed the witness, the lady of
the manor in Walsingham, Norfolk, to see
that a precise copy was constructed on the
spot. A few visions are well known, and the
Roman Catholic Church has granted official
recognition to a small number, though it has
rejected the vast majority as delusional. BVM
encounters are far from rare. Every year several occur around the world. With very few
exceptions, the primary witnesses are
Catholics, and usually devout followers of the
faith. Sometimes other supernatural phenomena accompany the BVMs manifestation and
become, to the faithful, veridical evidence that
the event was real.
Undoubtedly the most spectacular such
case 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 flash
of light and observed a brilliantly illuminated
figure of a woman standing amid the branches
of an oak tree. The apparition announced that
she was from heaven and would return six
times, on each occasion on the thirteenth of
each succeeding month. On the last visitation
in October, she would tell them who she was
and why she had come. Soon word spread,
and by June 13 some sixty persons accompa-

Marian apparitions

The Vision of Our Lady of Fatima (Fortean Picture

Library)

nied the children. Though the BVM appeared, no one but the children saw her, and
the communication, which predicted the
deaths of the two younger children in the near
future (they died in 1919 and 1920), occurred
through the oldest child, Lucia de Santos,
who was told that she would live long as a
witness to the living reality of Mary.
Ever larger groups followed the children to
the site in the succeeding months. In August,
the BVM asked that a chapel be built at the
site of her appearances. On September 13,
some members of the crowd, estimated to be
between twenty-five and thirty thousand persons, reported seeing the passage from east to
west of a mysterious globe-shaped light. A
month later, the number of pilgrims had
swelled to seventy thousand. The BVMas

163

always, visible only to the childrenappeared

at noon during a blinding rainstorm. The
three saw her, Joseph, and the child Jesus
standing in the sky near the sun. Meanwhile,
some in the crowd saw, or thought they saw,
the sun begin to dance dramatically through
the clouds, spinning and shooting colors, as
the rain let up.
In the 1940s, in her memoirs, Lucia de
Santos, since 1925 a Carmelite nun, revealed two of three secrets the BVM had
imparted to her. Although open to other interpretations, the prophecies were thought
by most believers to refer to the end of
World War I and the start of World War II
and to the end of Soviet Communism and
the conversion of the Russians to Catholicism. The third secret was sent to the Vatican in the 1950s. It became the focus of
much speculation, most of it alleging that it
predicted a third world war. In May 2000,
however, as Pope John Paul II embarked on
a pilgrimage to Fatima, during which he
spoke with the ninety-three-year-old Lucia,
the Vatican released the prophecy, which he
believed predicted the 1981 assassination attempt on the pope in St. Peters Squarean
interpretation disputed by others.
The first New World appearance of the
BVM is said to have taken place five miles
north of Mexico City just after dawn on December 9, 1531. A fifty-seven-year-old Aztec
Indian, Juan Diego, was racing along a hillside to get to mass in a nearby village. Passing
a site at the foot of a hill called Tepeyac, which
earlier had housed a temple to the Aztec
Mother Goddess, he heard a feminine voice
calling his name. He saw a young woman,
looking about fourteen years old and having
Mexican features, who asked that a chapel be
built at the site. She also told him that he
should alert the bishop in Mexico City immediately. With some difficulty, he got an audience with the bishop, who was skeptical.
Diego returned to report his failure to the
BVM, who was waiting for him. She instructed him to return the next day. This time
the bishop asked for a sign.

164 Marian apparitions

That same day, Diegos uncle, who was seriously ill, had a vision of the BVM and was
cured. Meanwhile, Diego repeated the
bishops request to the apparition. She told
him to pick roses from the hillside (though
they should have been out of season). He was
instructed to wrap them in his long outer cape
(known as a tilma) and to take them to the
bishop. When he did so, he unrolled the tilma
and was as shocked as the bishop and his associates when the cape turned out to contain a
full-color image of the BVM. To this day the
tilma is displayed in a Mexico City church,
where thousands of pilgrims come to see it
every year.
To skeptics, the figure gives every indication of having been painted on the cloth.
They also point out that the figure has more
to do with conventional iconography of the
period than with otherworldly manifestation. They have also raised questions about
the provenance of Juan Diegos story, suggesting it is based on an earlier Spanish legend. Still, whatever the truth, the story and
the image have proved equally durable and
to the faithful remain powerful symbols of
Marys continuing interest in the Church
and its believers.
A third major BVM appearance occurred at
Knock, a small village in western Irelands
County Mayo, in 1879. A commission of inquiry set up by John McHale, the Archbishop
of Tuam, investigated it soon afterward. On
the evening of August 21, Mary Beirne, a middle-aged housekeeper for the local priest, was
walking by the chapel when she was surprised
to see three beautiful figures, one resembling
the BVM, the other St. Joseph, the third a
bishop, standing motionlessly near an altar. A
white light surrounded them. She thought
someone had put on a display of statues. She
went to a friends house and stayed for half an
hour. When she and her friend Mary
McLoughlin were on their way back to the
priests house, her friend remarked on the figures. She ran off to notify relatives. Meanwhile, Beirne watched the scene carefully, later
providing this description to investigators:

I beheld . . . not only the three figures, but an

altar further on the left of the figure of the
Blessed Virgin Mary, and to the left of the
bishop and above the altar a lamb about the
size of that which is five weeks old. Behind the
lamb appeared the cross; it was a bit away from
the lamb, while the latter stood in front from
it, and not resting on the wood of the cross.
Around the lamb a number of gold-like stars
appeared in the form of a halo. This altar was
placed right under the window of the gable
and more to the east of the figures, all, of
course, outside the church at Knock. (McClure, 1983)

The other witnesses came to the scene and

observed the motionless figures. Though it
was raining all the while, they would report,
the ground around the figures remained dry.
Yet when Mary Beirnes mother approached
to kiss the BVMs feet, she felt nothing. She
could see the figures, but she could not touch
them. Eventually, the figures faded away. All
in all, at least fifteen persons saw them.
Knock is now a major destination for Marian
pilgrims.
The tradition of Marian apparitions has
continued unabated into modern times. In
1999, on the eve of the millennium, visionaries were encountering the BVM in Germany,
New Hampshire, Illinois, El Salvador, Ontario, and elsewhere. Most prophecies related
with these visions asserted that nuclear warfare would erupt before the end of the year.
During the conflict for custody of six-year-old
Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez, some of Elians
Miami relatives claimed to have seen the
BVM, manifesting, they asserted, to show her
support for their belief that the boy should be
kept in their custody instead of his Cuban fathers.
Secular treatments of BVM apparitions
range from conventional viewsfor example,
that hysteria, hoax, and hallucination underlie
the accountsto more expansive theories.
The sightings at Fatima, for example, figure in
some UFO literature, in which they are said
to be encounters with an alien being disguised
as or mistaken for the BVM. The late D. Scott

Mark

Rogo, a writer and researcher interested in a

wide range of anomalous phenomena, treated
BVM and comparable religious miracles as
parapsychological phenomena.
Further Reading
Dash, Mike, 1997. Borderlands. London: Heinemann.
Delaney, John J., ed., 1960. A Woman Clothed with
the Sun: Eight Great Appearances of Our Lady in
Modern Times. Garden City, NY: Hanover
House.
McClure, Kevin, 1983. The Evidence for Visions of the
Virgin Mary. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press.
Nickell, Joe, with John F. Fischer, 1988. Secrets of the
Supernatural: Investigating the Worlds Occult Mys teries. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Rogo, D. Scott, 1982. Miracles: A Parascientific In quiry into Wondrous Phenomena. New York: Dial
Press.
Van Meter, David, 1999. Digest of Marian Apparitions and Catholic Apocalypticism. http://members.aol.com/UticaCW/Mar-Review.html.

Mark
Mark may or may not be among the extraterrestrials with whom George Adamski allegedly
interacted. He figures in an unusually interesting contact claim made by a woman identified
only as Joelle and known to British ufologist
Timothy Good, who told her story for the
first time in a 1998 book. Joelle, a British
woman of Russian background, never publicized her reported experiences, which occurred between 1963 and 1964, and they did
not see print until after her death.
Joelle told Good that the contacts were initiated when she was doing a house-to-house
marketing survey in the Sheffield area in September 1963. At one house she noticed a variety of gadgets, none of which she recognized as
commercially available. The woman (given the
pseudonym Rosamund) whom she was interviewing said her husband (Jack) was a scientist, inventor, and ham-radio operator. When
Rosamund stepped briefly out of the room,
Joelle heard a message come through the radio
transceiver from someone named Mark, proposing a meeting at Blue John at 4:30 the
next afternoon. On Rosamunds return, when

165

Joelle mentioned that a message had come

through, the woman acted shocked and
quickly turned off the radio. Subsequently,
Joelle determined that Blue John was the
Blue John Caves near Castleton in Derbyshire.
Intrigued by Rosamunds reaction (though
Joelle did not tell her what the message had
said), Joelle made a point of driving through
the cave area on her way back to London.
Parking her car in an out-of-the-way place at
the appointed time, she watched from a distance as a disc-shaped aircraft landed and a
man from inside the craft emerged to meet a
waiting man, apparently Jack, whose car she
recalled seeing parked in front of the house
the day before. As the two drove away, the aircraft shot off at high speed. Joelle thought she
had witnessed spy activity and assumed the
aircraft to be an advanced Soviet vehicle.
Joelle was almost ready to report her observations and suspicions to the police but felt
compelled to call on the couple one more
time. She drove directly to their residence and
knocked on the door, explaining to Jack
who had barely opened the doorthat she
had some further survey questions to ask. She
was admitted into the house at the insistence
of the man she recognized from the rendezvous of a few minutes earlier. The stranger,
no longer dressed in uniform but in ordinary
street clothing, identified himself as Mark.
Speaking in a teasing, good-natured tone, he
said he knew why she was there.
Thus began Joelles interaction with space
people. Over the next fifteen months, she
spent eight and a half hours in the company
of Mark and another human-looking extraterrestrial she called Val. Mark and Val proved
vague about their exact place of origin, except
to say that it was an earthlike planet in another solar system. They also said they had
played a role in speeding up human evolution.
They were here to work secretly with scientists
from several countries, but as to their larger
purpose, they would only state, We are not
here for entirely philanthropic purposes.
On one occasion, Joelle was allowed to
touch a spacecraft and to watch its departure.

166

Martian bees

Once she translated a Russian manuscript in

the British Museum for Mark and Val, and at
other times she entertained them in her
home, finding them to be pleasant companions with a good senses of humor and a love
of earthly food, wine, and music. She was
shown devices that projected holographic images of their home planet, and once Val himself showed up in holographic form.
The visitors told Joelle that they and their
associates had, indeed, contacted Adamski,
the best-known and most controversial of the
early contactees, but that he had proved untrustworthy, revealing information he had
been given in confidence. After that they fed
him false information that they knew would
discredit him, and Adamski himself, frustrated because the space people were drawing
away from him, began fabricating encounters.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; Orthon
Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
York: Abelard-Schuman.
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earths Encounters
with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.

Martian bees
In one of the very first books on the then-new
phenomenon of UFOs, British writer Gerald
Heard offered a theory that even now, more
than half a century later, is a distinctive one.
Heard, who in 1950 was living in Los Angeles, read an interview in the Los Angeles Times
with astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Though vehemently anti-UFO, Kuiper thought it at
least possible that intelligent life existed on
Mars. He added, however, that conditions
there being what there were (or at least as they
were thought to be at the time), Martians
would likely be advanced insects of some sort.
Possibly, Kuiper was speaking humorously,
but Heard, a mystically inclined individual,
took him seriously. He proposed that just
such beings were piloting the flying saucers.
These superbees were perhaps two inches
in length . . . as beautiful as the most beautiful
of 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 like
topazsuch a body would be worthy of this
super-mind. . . . It is we who would feel
shabby and ashamed, and may be with our
clammy, putty-colored bodies, repulsive!
The Martians had come to Earth, Heard
speculated, because they feared the effect humans aggressive ways and atomic bombs
could have on them. What if human beings
blew up the Earth and huge dust clouds cut
off the suns rays, turning Mars into an even
colder planet? It was also possible that Earths
very powerful magnetic field might generate
dangerous sunspots and send deadly radiation
into Marss atmosphere. Perhaps the superbees
were here in what amounted to a police action: to stop us from causing further trouble
to them and to the rest of the solar system. So
far, however, Heard said, the Martians were
acting with remarkable patience, in the fashion of very circumspect, very intelligent gentlemen (Heard, 1950).
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian;
Browns Martians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga;
Mince-Pie Martians; Monka; Mullers Martians;
Shaws Martians; Smeads Martians; Wilcoxs
Martians
Further Reading
Heard, Gerald, 1950. The Riddle of the Flying
Saucers: Is Another World Watching? London: Carroll and Nicholson.

Mary
Mary is one of a number of extraterrestrials
who are alleged to have made appearances at
the annual Giant Rock, California, Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention held between
1954 and 1977. In 1959, while attending the
convention, Harry Mayer observed mysterious globes of light hovering over the runway
at Giant Rocks tiny airport. As he was running toward them, a pretty, young, blond
woman suddenly appeared in front of him,
put out her arm, and stopped him in his
tracks. Though she was barely more than five
feet tall, and Mayer was well over six feet, she

Meier, Eduard Billy 167

had, he told ufologist William Hamilton, the

strength of many men (Hamilton, 1996).
They spoke long enough for him to learn
that her name was Mary. Under her coat, she
was wearing a chocolate-brown uniform that
looked something like a ski suit. She was, she
said, from Venus. Mayer attended at least one
more Giant Rock convention hoping to see
her again, but this turned out to be his one
and only contact with her.
See Also: Van Tassel, George W.; Venudo
Further Reading
Hamilton, William F., III, 1996. Alien Magic: UFO
CrashesAbductionsUnderground Bases. New
Brunswick, NJ: Global Communications.

Meier, Eduard Billy (1937 )

Born on February 3, 1937, in Bulach,
Switzerland, Eduard Albert Billy Meier
would become an international contactee
celebrity. (His nickname stems from a youthful fascination with characters from the Amer-

ican Old West such as Wild Bill Hickok and

Billy the Kid.) Meier claims to have received a
mental message from space people when he
was five years old, after he and his father
watched a saucer-shaped object flying near
their house. In 1944, on his seventh birthday,
Meier met Sfath, a wise elderly extraterrestrial,
who took him for a ride on his spacecraft. In
the course of the flight, Sfath placed a helmet
over young Billys head and filled his mind
with advanced knowledge. Periodic contacts
with Sfath continued until Meier was a young
adult. Meier wandered through Europe, Asia,
and the Middle East. Traveling in Turkey in
August 1965, he suffered an accident, which
cost him half his arm. Soon afterward, he met
seventeen-year-old Kaliope (Popi) Zafireou
and married her. Back in Switzerland, the
Meiers settled in a rural village. On the afternoon of January 28, 1975, Meier photographed a spacecraft and had an hour-anda-half conversation with its pilot, a beautiful
spacewoman named Semjase (pronounced

Eduard Billy Meier, one of the most controversial contactees (Fortean Picture Library)

168

Meier, Eduard Billy

sem-ya-see). Meier would produce many

more photographs, claim more contacts, recount trips into space and through time, and
become the most controversial contactee since
George Adamski.
Meiers aliens came from the Pleiades star
system and from a planet named Erra, one of
ten planets in orbit around a sun known as
Tayget. The aliens got there from another
planet in the constellation of Lyra, where
thousands of years ago a war forced much of
the population to flee to other worlds. At one
point 2.8 million years ago, as they were exploring the new galactic neighborhood, the
new Pleiadians found Earth, then housing
primitive human beings. Some Pleiadians intermarried with humans, but their educational efforts only led to a war with earthlings,
who used the newly supplied extraterrestrial
technology against the Pleiadians. A second
wave of Pleiadians was destroyed in the same
way. Semjase was part of a third wave. She and
her associates hoped to move human beings in
a positive direction, and they selected Meier as
their earthly agent.
Unlike nearly all other contacters, Meiers
space friends were hostile to religion, though
apparently not to the notion of God as such.
Once, when Meier was aboard a spaceship
(beamship as the Pleiadians called them) he
was able to photograph the Eye of God in
deep space. He also traveled to the Pleiades
and into another dimension and secured pictures of dinosaurs, cavemen, and a future
earthquake in San Francisco. A virtual industry of Meier-related publications, photographs, videos, and other materials found an
audience around the world. Wendelle C.
Stevens, an American, energetically promoted
Meier, till then little known to Americans. He
published books supporting Meier and had
the non-English-speaking Meiers work translated. Stevenss efforts encouraged an independent journalist, Gary Kinder, to write a surprisingly sympathetic book for a mainstream
publisher.
To conservative ufologists, Meier seemed
like a shameless hoaxer. He became a particu-

lar obsession to a young California man, Kal

Korff, who spent years investigating Meiers
claims. He published two intensely critical
books published between 1981 and 1995. Independent analyses suggested that the beamships in the photographs were in fact small
models, some suspended on fishing wire, others apparently held in hand. Investigators
traced other images in Meiers photos to
NASA footage and (in the case of Semjase) a
picture in a European fashion magazine. In
the mid-1990s, after Popi Meier divorced her
husband, she told European ufologists that
her former husbands claims were bogus.
According to Meier, the Pleiadianswho
call themselves Plejaranswithdrew all of
their bases on Earth in February 1995 to
protest the proliferation of phony claims of
contact with them. Since then Meier has experienced approximately four contacts a year
with Ptaah, who is Semjases father. He claims
more than 250 contacts with Pleiadians, in
general, since 1975.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; Semjase
Further Reading
Elders, 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.
FIGULos Angeles Study Group, n.d. The Official
Billy Meier Web Page. http://www.billymeier.
com/index-alt.html.
Kinder, Gary, 1987. Light Years: An Investigation into
the Extraterrestrial Experiences of Eduard Meier.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Korff, Kal K., 1995. Spaceships of the Pleiades: The
Billy Meier Story. Amherst, NY: Prometheus
Books.
Korff, Kal K., with William L. Moore, 1981. The
Meier IncidentThe Most Infamous Hoax in Ufol ogy. Fremont, CA: self-published.
Maccabee, Bruce, 1989. Pendulum from the
Pleiades. International UFO Reporter 14, 1 (January/February): 1112, 22.
Stevens, Wendelle C., 1983. UFO . . . Contact from
the PleiadesA Preliminary Investigation Re portThe Report of an Ongoing Contact. Tucson,
AZ: self-published.
, 1989. UFO . . . Contact from the Pleiades: A
Supplementary Investigation ReportThe Report of
an Ongoing Contact. Tucson, AZ: self-published.

Me-leelah
Stevens, Wendelle C., ed., 1988. Message from the
Pleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy
Meier, Volume I. Phoenix, AZ: Wendelle C.
Stevens and Genesis III Publishing.
, ed., 1990. Message from the Pleiades: The
Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier, Volume II.
Phoenix, AZ: Wendelle C. Stevens and Genesis
III Publishing.
, ed., 1994. Message from the Pleiades: The
Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier, Volume III.
Phoenix, AZ: Wendelle C. Stevens and Genesis
III Publishing.
Winters, Randolph, 1994. The Pleiadian Mission: A
Time of Awareness. Atwood, CA: The Pleiades
Project.

Me-leelah
Me-leelah is a Pleiadian woman who figures
in an abduction incident said to have occurred in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the
early hours of July 19, 1988.
Phyllis and her adult, married daughter
Diane were in the latters car (Diane was
driving her mother home) when they noticed
an unusual starlike object. As it approached,
they could see inside what proved to be an
elongated craft. Through its lighted windows, they glimpsed its interior and saw six
figures inside. Suddenly, they felt a presence
inside their vehicle. They heard a clicking
sound and abruptly found themselves ascending a ramp into the UFO. A finely
skinned, short woman with slightly slanted
eyes and no hair, yet beautiful nonetheless,
guided Diane. The alien woman wore a onepiece, navy-blue suit such as a jogger might
wear. The three walked through an aromatic
mist before entering the main part of the
craft. Their guide told them, Greetings. I
am from the Pleiades, and my name is Meleelah. I am the commander of the craft
(Hind, 1996). She spoke in a soft but highpitched, sing-song voice.
There were eight personstwo women
and six meninside the craft. One of the
men helped as Me-leelah put the two women
on tables and subjected each to a physical examination, including an X ray and a shot
under the right breast (this, it was explained,

169

was done in order to collect DNA and RNA

samples). The other crewmembers paid no
heed to the abductees. Afterward, Me-leelah
showed them what looked like an ordinary
map of the world. She told them that giant
waves would soon destroy much of South
Africas Cape area. Comparable destruction
would occur elsewhere on the Earth with considerable loss of life. Those who wanted to
survive should flee to the mountainous areas
of Spain. The United States would go to war
in the Middle East, and AIDS would kill
many people everywhere.
At the conclusion of the examination, the
two women stepped down from the tables.
Me-leelah spoke and then performed some act
that later neither Phyllis nor Diane could recall. All they knew was that Me-leelah was
abruptly wearing a different, more attractivelooking jacket. Soon the two became aware
that Me-leelah was reading their minds. She
would verbally answer questions they had
formed only in their minds. At one point,
after Diane had answered a question of Meleelahs less than truthfully, the Pleiadean
brought her face within inches of Dianes. Her
pupils became vertical, disturbingly reptilian.
After the moment of anger had passed, Meleelah told them they could go. Two of the
men escorted them back to their car, but not
before the commander had promised that
they would meet again in two years time. She
added that this was two years in Pleiadean
time, four in Earth time.
By the time they got home, neither woman
remembered the incident. They only noted
how strangely quiet and calm everything
seemed to be: no traffic, no birds, no sound.
Over time, memories of the experience gradually returned. May 1992 came and went without a further contact.
Cynthia Hind, a ufologist from Harare,
Zimbabwe, who investigated the story, says
the women were unread in the UFO literature. They had not heard of other claims of
Pleiadean contacts, they claimed.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Meier, Eduard
Billy

170

Melora

Further Reading
Hind, Cynthia, 1996. UFOs over Africa. Madison,
WI: Horus House Press.
, 2000. Highlights from an African Case
Book. Ohio UFO Notebook 21: 110.

Melora
Melora is a channeling entity who communicates through Jyoti Alla-An of Boulder, Colorado. Alla-An characterizes Melora as a
higher-dimensional group consciousness
from the Sirius system. As is often the case
with such beings, MeloraGreek for
golden appleis a name of convenience,
not the entitys actual moniker; real names
for interdimensional beings are either nonexistent or incomprehensible to humans.
Melora and her colleagues, Alla-An says, ask
us to call them names with which we resonate or which trigger us to remember our
soul histories.
Melora is a higher member of Alla-Ans
soul group. At the time of their initial contact, Melora was serving on the Council of
Four with Pallas Athena, Ocala (an angel),
and Bi-la (a Tibetan guide). The Council of
Four existed to help people express their
Being-ness. Then Ocala and Bi-la merged
into Melora. In the future, it appears that
Melora and Athena will merge. Alla-An says,
During these years of my association with
Melora, it has been clear that SHE continues to
learn and grow through ME! Her flexibility, her
unconditional love, her compassionall these
have taught me much about relationship with
the Divine. It has taught me how critical our
consciousness within incarnation is to the spiritual development of non-physical versions of
ourselves in higher dimensions. Most importantly, working with Melora has taught me
about how honored we are by all the higher beings in the light, who fully appreciate the difficulty of being light works in 3rd dimension.
(Alla-An, 1998)
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Alla-An, Jyoti, 1998. Melora. http://mh102.infi.
net/~lightexp/Melora3.html.

Men in black
According to legend and report, strange individuals, who are often menacing and usually
dressed in black suits, have threatened UFO
witnesses and investigators on a number of
occasions since the beginning of the UFO
age. The men in black (sometimes called
MIB) are variously suspected to be government agents, enforcers for powerful secret
groups (International Bankers, the New
World Order by another name), alien entities,
inner-earthers, or even demons.
In this last context, it is worth noting an
episode that occurred during a religious revival in Wales in 1905. When the revival was
at its most intense, many reported divine and
demonic supernatural encounters, and some
individuals, both believers and secular journalists covering the revival, witnessed unusual
aerial phenomena that today might be
thought of as UFOs. A contemporary account
mentions that a man dressed in black visited
a young rural woman over three consecutive
nights to deliver a message . . . which she is
frightened to relate (Evans, 1905). In his
book on traditions of Satan, William Woods
writes that the devil mostly . . . is dressed in
black, and always in the fashion of the day
(Woods, 1974).
Men in black established a place in UFO
lore after a September 1953 incident. A
Bridgeport, Connecticut, man, Albert K.
Bender, headed one of the most successful
early UFO groups, the International Flying
Saucer Bureau, but closed it down suddenly.
After much prodding he confided to close associates, most prominently Gray Barker, that
three individuals in dark suits had visited him
to warn that he had come too close to the
truth about UFOs. They passed on information that frightened him so badly that he
wanted nothing more to do with the subject.
Barker later wrote a sensationalistic, paranoiadrenched book, They Knew Too Much about
Flying Saucers (1956), that, more than any
other single piece of writing, launched the
MIB legend. Though Bender initially hinted
that his visitors were from the government, he

Men in black

Albert K. Benders sketch of one of the three men in black

who visited his Connecticut house in September 1953 and
gave him the solution to the UFO mystery (Fortean Picture
Library)

eventually wrote Flying Saucers and the Three

Men (1962) for Barkers small publishing
company. In what nearly all readers saw as an
amateurish science-fiction novel passing itself
off as factual, Bender identified the three men
as space people who abducted him to Antarctica, where Bender met monstrous beings at
an alien base.
The dismal reception afforded Benders
book would likely have ended MIB talk if not
for the emergence in the latter 1960s of John
A. Keel, who coined the term MIB. Keel, a
freelance writer living in New York City, secured a generous book contract from a major
New York publisher to write what was intended to be the definitive work on UFOs. An
occult theorist strongly attracted to demonology, Keel held UFOs and their occupants to be shape-shifting entities from a sinister otherworld. Among their agents were
MIB who, in common with their brethren,

171

sought to confuse, manipulate, and even destroy those who encountered them or sought
to uncover the truth about them. Keel collected MIB reports from several states and further claimed that he had interacted with them
personally. In Keels view, MIB have played a
behind-the-scenes role in much of human history and belief.
For the most part, Keels MIB could not
have passed easily for human. They were darkfeatured (or, conversely, unnaturally pale),
bug-eyed, and confused; and their behavior
betrayed their unfamiliarity with the earthly
environment and social customs. For some
reason, they usually drove black limousines,
frequently Cadillacs.
Other investigators collected similar reports
from around the world. Some suggested that
the MIB were government or military operatives, others that they were aliens. By 1966,
even the U.S. Air Force was hearing of such incidents and tried to run them down, without
success. Colonel George P. Freeman, a Pentagon spokesman for the U.S. Air Forces UFOinvestigating Project Blue Book, complained,
We havent been able to find out anything
about these men (Keel, 1975). In the 1990s,
ufologist William L. Moore would allege,
though without providing substantiating evidence, that Men in Black are really government people in disguise . . . members of a
rather bizarre unit of Air Force intelligence
known currently as the Air Force Special Activities Center (AFSAC) (Moore, 1993).
In recent years, Jenny Randles, a wellregarded English ufologist, has looked into
MIB cases in Britain. In her view, some are
genuinely puzzling, sometimes involving witnesses who have never heard of the phenomenon yet describe many of its classic features.
From interviews and official documents, Randles was led to the conclusion that a secret department of the Ministry of Defense was
monitoring certain kinds of UFO reports.
See Also: Kazik; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Barker, Gray, 1956. They Knew Too Much about Fly ing Saucers. New York: University Books.

172

Menger, Howard

Bender, Albert K., 1962. Flying Saucers and the Three

Men. Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.
Evans, Beriah G., 1905. Merionethshire Mysteries.
Occult Review 1, 3 (March): 113120.
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.
Moore, William L., 1993. Those Mysterious Men
in Black. Far Out (Winter): 2729.
Randles, Jenny, 1997. The Truth behind Men in
Black: Government Agentsor Visitors from Be yond. New York: St. Martins Paperbacks.
Woods, William, 1974. A History of the Devil. New
York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Menger, Howard (1922 )

Howard Menger (pronounced men-jer), a
New Jersey sign painter who was sometimes
called the East Coast equivalent of George
Adamski, rose to prominence in flying-saucer
contactee circles in the 1950s. In his first public appearance, on Long John Nebels radio
show on New Yorks WOR, on October 29,
1956, Menger claimed lifelong contacts as
well as flashback memories of an earlier life
as an extraterrestrial. The space people were
mostly from Venus, and prominent among
them were beautiful, blond women. In early
1956, when the contacts intensified, Menger
began taking photographs of alleged spacecraft. He also claimed interplanetary flights in
the company of Aryan-type beings and produced, among others, pictures of the lunar
surface taken from a flying saucer.
Conservative ufologists scoffed at Mengers
tales and rejected his photographs as absurdly
unconvincing. Writing in Saucer News, Lonzo
Dove deemed them so evidently faked that it
is almost foolish to even criticize them
(Dove, 1959). When the anticontactee National Investigations Committee on Aerial
Phenomena challenged Menger and other
contactees to submit to polygraph examinations, Menger declined.
His supporters flocked to his High Bridge,
New Jersey, farm, where some reported seeing,
from a distance, spacemen in luminous uniforms and other oddities, attributed by skeptics to effects engineered by Menger confeder-

Howard Menger with a free energy machine (Fortean

Picture Library)

ates. One supporter apparently was Connie

Weber, an attractive young blond woman to
whom Menger, a married man, had turned his
romantic attentions. Menger declared Weber
to be the sister of a spacewoman he had met
in 1946. For her part, Weber recalled that in
previous lives she had been a Venusian and
Menger had been a Saturnian (a relationship
she documented in a lurid 1958 book, My
Saturnian Lover). On one occasion, four followers of Mengers were invited separately
into a dark room, where each had a brief audience with a spacewoman concealed in shadow.
When a sliver of light accidentally caught the
supposed spacewoman, however, one of them
recognized Weber. Subsequently, Menger left
his wife and married Weber.
By the time his book From Outer Space to
You appeared in 1959, Menger had largely
withdrawn from the saucer scene. The next
year, interviewed on Long John Nebels television show, Menger startled his host and audience by seeming to disavow his former claims.
In the 1960s, he changed his story, now as-

Metatron

serting that he had participated in an elaborate hoax at the instigation of a secret government agency that wanted to test human reactions to extraterrestrial visitors.
Howard and Connie Menger moved to
Vero Beach, Florida, where they lived quietly for more than two decades. In 1990,
they resurfaced at the National UFO Conference in Miami Beach and began publishing materials that again presented the space
contacts as authentic. They also appeared in
the 1992 Discovery Channel documentary
Farewell, Good Brothers. They make occasional appearances on the saucer and New
Age scene.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees
Further Reading
Baxter, Marla [pseud. of Constance Weber Menger],
1958. My Saturnian Lover. New York: Vantage
Press.
Contactee Letters, 1957. Confidential Bulletin to
NICAP Members (September 6).
Dove, Lonzo, 1957. Mengers Adamski-Type
Saucers. Saucer News 4, 2 (February-March):
67.
Menger, Howard, 1959. From Outer Space to You.
Clarksburg, WV: Saucerian Books.
Moseley, James W., 1966. Strange New Ideas from
Howard Menger. Saucer News Non-Scheduled
Newsletter 26 (January 25).
Nebel, Long John, 1961. The Way Out World. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Schwarz, Berthold E., 1972. Beauty of the Night.
Flying Saucer Review 18, 4 (August): 59, 17.

Merk
According to George Hunt Williamson,
eighteen thousand years ago a Venusian
named Merk flew a Light Ship to Telos, an
eastern section of Lemuria in what is now Arizona, initiating a period of cordial and productive relationships between Venusians and
Lemurians, who then had developed flight
but not space flight. The Lemurians built a
memorial to commemorate the spot where
Merks craft had landed.
See Also: Lemuria; Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Williamson, George Hunt, 1959. Road in the Sky.
London: Neville Spearman.

173

Mersch
According to Colorado contactee Dave Schultz,
six extraterrestrial races are visiting Earth. One
is the Mersch. The Mersch are six feet tall,
weigh two hundred pounds, and have bald
heads and slanted eyes. Their home planet is in
the constellation Scorpio. They are active in abductions and mutilation of cattle and other animals in western states.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees; Olliana
Olliana Alliano
Further Reading
Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky
Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.
Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies, University of Wyoming.

Metatron
Metatron is a divine interface between God
and the outer worldsmeaning us on the
outer layers of physical creationthe hardened shell around the cosmic egg of Light
(Arvey, 1994). Metatronic energy is transmitted once a week to the Earth, and seekers can
gain access to it if they are attuned to the
proper frequency. Much of the information
Metatron sends is of a densely technical nature. A good part of the channeled material
comes through James J. Hurtak, who records
it in The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch
(1982). Hurtak, however, is far from the only
Metatron channeler.
The most famous communicant with
Metatron is the rock guitarist Carlos Santana.
Santana claims that Metatron was responsible
for the restoration of his career in 1999 and
2000. During a meditation session Metatron
told him, We want to hook you back to the
radio-airwave frequency and to reconnect
the molecules to the light, presumably meaning renewed airplay and popular attention
(Gates and Gordon, 2000).
The name Metatron comes out of traditional Jewish mysticism, where Metatron is
depicted as an archangel, perhaps the highest
of them all. Some mystics believe that on
Earth he was the prophet Enoch whom God
took directly to heaven without the transi-

174

Michael

Carlos Santana, the most famous communicant with

Metatron, performing in Munich, Germany, May 2000
(AFP/Corbis)

tional detail of dying. Other sources assert

that it was he who led the Israelites through
the wilderness after the Exodus.
Further Reading
Arvey, Michael, 1994. Metatron. http://www.spiritweb.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): 6667.
Gilmore, Robert and Laurie, eds., n.d. The Ascension Is Life Lived from Joy. http://www.nitehawk.com/daydove/25metatr.html.
Hurtak, James J., 1982. The Book of Knowledge: The
Keys of Enoch. Los Gatos, CA: Academy for Future Science.
Stone, Joshua David, 1994. The Complete Ascension
Manual. Sedona, AZ: Light Technology Publishing.

Michael
In two books, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro chronicled the channeling experiences of a young
San Franciscoarea woman given the name

Jessica Lansing. Yarbro wrote that in 1970, as

Jessica and her husband, Walter (also a pseudonym), played with a ouija board after dinner, they began receiving communications
from an entity who first refused to answer the
question, Who is this? Eventually, under
prodding, it said, The last name a fragment
of this entity used was Michael. Michael
went on to say, We are of the mid-causal
lane. The astral plane is accessible to the physical plane. We are not (Yarbro, 1979).
Michael claimed to be composed of more
than a thousand fragments of old souls.
In later automatic writing and channeling,
Michaelwho resisted being identified by a
masculine pronountaught that each individual must go through seven basic soul
stages over a minimum of seven reincarnated
lives. But Michael would respond impatiently
if someone asked a question about his or her
personal life. We are not the Ann Landers of
the cosmos, Michael snapped. As the
Michael phenomenon grew, however, this
changed, and Michael would speak to individuals about themselves and offer them
guidance.
Jessica Lansing herself was uncertain
whether Michael was an independent intelligence or some manifestation of an aspect of
her psyche. In time, others reported communications from Michael. In 1984, two followers founded the Michael Educational Foundation. The foundation maintains that Michael
is a collection of one thousand fifty souls, all
of whom once lived lives on Earth. It sponsors
other Michael groups throughout the United
States. Michael F. Brown, an anthropologist
who has studied the channeling movement,
calls Michael as close to a channeling franchise as one can find in the United States
today (Brown, 1997).
According to Michael, the foundation
states, we agree to come into each lifetime
with a basic Role that we play to best support
the world around us. In addition to this Role,
we have numerous Overleaves or personality
traits that we choose to play from (Who Is
Michael? n.d.).

Mince-Pie Martians
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Brown, Michael F., 1997. The Channeling Zone:
American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.
Who Is Michael? n.d. http://amt.to/mef/mchan.
html.
Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, 1979. Messages from Michael.
New York: Playboy Paperbacks.
, 1986. More Messages from Michael. New
York: Berkley Paperbacks.

Michigan giant
According to the Saginaw Courier-Herald of
April 17, 1897, a flying machine landed half
a mile southwest of Reynolds, Michigan, at
4:30 A.M. on the fourteenth. Witnesses who
had seen it hovering rushed to the scene,
where, to their shock, they spotted its pilot,
who appeared human but was nine and a half
feet tall. His talk, while musical, is not talk at
all, but seems to be a repetition of bellowing.
The being looked hot and uncomfortable
even though he was nearly naked. What
looked like polar-bear pelts lay nearby, apparently winter clothing for which the traveler
had no use at the moment.
One farmer made the mistake of approaching the figure too closely. For his efforts he
found himself at the receiving end of a severe
kick. It was delivered with sufficient ferocity
and velocity that the mans hip broke.
The article, clearly written with tongue in
cheek, concludes, Great excitement prevails
here, and lots of people are flocking here from
Morley and Howard City to view the strange
being 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 the
third kind; Olesons giants; Smith; Wilson
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnolds Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.

175

Migrants
In George Hunt Williamsons alternative history Other TonguesOther Flesh (1953), Migrants are spirit beings from the Sirius Star system. They arrived on Earth during the Miocene
Epoch (between twenty-five and thirteen million years ago) with the intention of looking for
bodies to inhabit. At first, they gave serious consideration to cats, but after due reflection they
decided that apes were more likely to evolve toward intelligence, civilization, and technology.
In the meantime, employing their vast paranormal powers, the Migrants conjured up
grotesque material forms for themselves. This
period is known among extraterrestrial historians of Earth as the Great Abomination.
Williamson reported, The abomination
was so vast that forms were fusing together
into monsters having no purpose but self-destruction. Men and animals were growing interchangeable of spirit and structure. Man was
beastly and beast was manlike. These abominable entities took the forms of the creatures
remembered in legend and mythology as
griffins, 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 kind
of global warming that melted the poles and
sparked huge floods. Monsters and anomalies were destroyed, the channeled entity
Elder Brother informed Williamson. No
longer could they propagate. Pure species
were saved and pronounced sterile unto all
but themselves. The Migrants lost all their
psychokinetic powers and became normal primates. They began engaging in sexual unions
with ape-women, and out of these alliances
modern Homo sapiens eventually emerged.
See Also: Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

Mince-Pie Martians
The so-called Mince-Pie Martians appeared in
a kitchen in Rowley Regis, in Englands West

176

Mince-Pie Martians

Midlands, on January 4, 1979, to star in what

may well be Britains most bizarre close encounter of the third kind.
At 6 A.M., Jean Hingley, forty-five years
old, had just sent her husband off to work
when she noticed a light outside. Thinking
the carport light was still on, she went out to
check. She was unsettled to see a large orange
sphere hovering over the carport roof. She
hurried back inside and, with her dog Hobo,
watched the UFO. As she was doing so, she
noticed that the dog seemed to be frozen as if
paralyzed. Suddenly he fell over sideways and
lay there motionless.
At that moment, three winged figures
zipped past her, leaving Mrs. Hingley feeling
cold and weak. She managed to follow them
into the living room, where two of them were
shaking the Christmas tree so hard that the
fairy atop it fell to the floor. The figures themselves looked almost fairylike. Three and a
half feet tall, they were humanoids with wide,
white faces, big, dark eyes, no noses, slitlike
mouths, and large oval wings covered with
glittering dots of various colors. Each wore a
transparent helmet on its head; at the top of
the helmet a light shone. There were no fingers on the hands or feet on the legs; each just
tapered to a point. The wings did not move
like a birds but fluttered gently or folded in
like a concertina.
Hingley found herself paralyzed, unable to
speak or move, until the beings spoke to her,
saying, Nice? They spoke in unison with
what sounded like a gruff, masculine voice.
Then she could move and talk again. When
she asked where they were from, they were
silent. They sailed around the room, then
landed and bounced up and down on the
couch. She shouted at them to stop, and they
did, though this would be the last time they
did what she asked them to do.
The episode lasted for an hour. It was often
difficult, trying, and even painful. If they did
not like what she had to say, a beam would
shoot from the light at the top of their helmets and hit her on the forehead just above
the bridge of the nose. Sometimes she would

be blinded. At other times she would be paralyzed. And at yet other times, when she had
addressed them with a seemingly inoffensive
question, the light would not hurt her. They
would not tell her why they shot the light at
her, or why they would quote back to her any
question she asked them. The experience
made her eyes sore, and when she complained, the beings insisted they did not intend to harm her.
When she inquired again about their place
of origin, they replied this time, From the
sky. Seeing a picture of Jesus on the wall,
they flew up to it and engaged her in a conversation about him, then went on to banal
subjects (a British entertainment figure, the
Queen, the role of the housewife, children)
before returning to Jesus. Then they floated
slowly around the room picking up small objects, including cassette tapes. Hingley told
investigators, They touched all the Christmas cards and all the furniture. . . . I think
they had magnets in their hands, cause they
kept lifting things that they touched. They
asked for water. In response she filled four
glasses and put them on a tray, along with several mince pies. She lifted a glass, and the beings lifted theirs, but when they saw her
watching them, they blinded her with the
light beam. The next thing she knew, they
were putting empty glasses down. Next she
thought of offering them cigarettes and cigars
that they were looking at. When she lit one,
however, the beings recoiled in fright. She
thought 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 they
glided themselves out. Each was holding its
mince pie. They sailed out the back door and
entered through an opening in the UFO,
which flew away and was soon lost to view.
At that moment, Hingley suffered agony,
pure agony. . . . My legs, I couldnt feel them,
and then I was wobbly, and very, very weak. I
grabbed the table. I slid my feet along the

Monka

carpet, and I got on the settee, and I didnt

know how long I was there. Ooh! I was
dead! (Budden, 1988). She lay incapacitated
until five oclock that afternoon. Finally, her
strength was sufficiently restored so that she
was able to phone her husband, a neighbor,
and the police.
Investigators found an oval-shaped impression in the backyard snow. Hingley complained that her clock, radio, and television
were no longer functioning. The cassette
tapes that she said the beings had touched
were ruined. She suffered a range of physical
discomforts in her eyes, ears, and jaw. Her
doctor became alarmed enough about her
well-being that he ordered her to stay home
from work for two weeks. As outlandish as
her story sounded, investigators did not
doubt her sincerity.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Budden, Alfred, 1988. The Mince-Pie Martians:
The Rowley Regis Case. Fortean Times 50 (Summer): 4044.

Miniature pilots
One day in 1929, according to a story she
told many years later, a five-year-old girl and
her eight-year-old brother were playing in the
garden of their Hertford, Hertfordshire, England, home when they heard an engine
sound. It was coming from a nearby orchard
and over the garden fence. As its source came
into view, the children saw a tiny biplane,
with a wingspan of no more than twelve to fifteen inches, descend and land briefly by a
garbage pail. During the few seconds that it
was on the ground, both children got a clear
view of a figure they described as a perfectly
proportioned tiny pilot wearing a leather flying helmet, who they said, waved to us as he
took off.
The sight so unsettled the two that it wasnt
until they were well into their adult lives,
around 1960, that they spoke of it to each
other. I have no explanation to offer, the
woman said, but I do know that this was not

177

a figment of my imagination (Creighton,

1970).
In a UFO-age counterpart to this strange
story, a Seattle woman reported that around 2
A.M. one night in late August 1965 she awoke
paralyzed. Unable to speak or move, she
watched helplessly as a football-shaped gray
object sailed through her open window and
hovered over a carpet in her bedroom. As the
tiny UFO prepared to land, three tripod legs
dropped from it. Once settled on the floor,
the UFO let out a ramp, down which stepped
five or six miniature beings clad in tight-fitting uniforms. They then engaged in what appeared to be repair work on their craft. On
completing the job, they walked up the ramp
and into the ship and flew away. At that
point, the witness found that she had regained
normal mobility.
It seems likely that this second incident was
a hallucination of a kind frequently associated
with sleep paralysis.
Further Reading
Creighton, Gordon, 1970. A Weird Case from the
Past. Flying Saucer Review 16, 4 (July/August):
30.
Hufford, David J., 1982. The Terror That Comes in
the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Super natural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Monka
Monka first surfaced as the disembodied voice
of a Martian on a tape owned by contactee
Dick Miller. Miller played the message at the
April 1956 Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention, telling the audience that
the voice had mysteriously appeared on a tape
inside a sealed can. The message had Monka
(I am what you would call the head of my
government) promising, On the evening of
November 7, of this your year 1956, at 10:30
P.M. your local time, we request that one of
your communications stations remove its carrier signal from the air for two minutes
(Mon-Ka of Mars, 1956). From ten thou-

178

Mothman

sand feet the occupants of a brilliantly illuminated spacecraft would speak to the people of
Los Angeles.
The message electrified occultists and
saucerians in California and elsewhere. When
played in London in September, it had the
same effect on their British counterparts.
Newspaper coverage mocked the tape and
message, and conservative ufologists dismissed
the message as a silly hoax. On November 2,
the Los Angeles Mirror-News reported that
some months before, while living in Detroit,
Miller had been caught faking a radio message
from a spaceman. All this notwithstanding,
the Monka message spurred two mass rallies
in Los Angeles, and Monka enthusiast and
rally organizer Gabriel Green appeared on the
widely vie wed House Party television show to
spread the word that friendly extraterrestrials
would be talking to southern California on
November 7.
As a publicity stunt, two area radio stations
went off the air for two minutes on the night
in question as hundreds of believers gathered
on rooftops. No UFO appeared, of course,
but Monka would live on in channeled messages from hundreds of contactees up to the
present. No longer a Martian, he is now usually taken as a close associate of the most
beloved and ubiquitous of interdimensional
channeling entities, Ashtar.
See Also: Ashtar; Contactees
Further Reading
Beckley, Timothy Green, 1981. Book of Space Con tacts. New York: Global Communications.
Garrison, Omar, 1956. Time Flew by, but That Flying Saucer Didnt. Los Angeles Mirror-News (November 8).
Mon-Ka of Mars Gives Saucer Research a Black
Eye, 1956. CSI News Letter 6 (December 15):
35.
Tuella [pseud. of Thelma B. Turrell], ed., 1989.
Ashtar: A Tribute. Third edition. Salt Lake City,
UT: Guardian Action Publications.

Mothman
Mothman, a monstrous creature reported by
dozens of witnesses in towns along the Ohio
River Valley, got its name from a villain in the

then-popular Batman television series. Though

their stories received little public attention, at
least one witness claimed to have had a kind of
communication with it.
Mothman first appeared in the local press
in November 1966, after two young couples
spotted it around 11:30 P.M. while driving
through an abandoned World War II munitions complex known locally as the TNT
area. Gray in color with humanlike legs, the
creature had glowing red, hypnotic eyes
and, witness Roger Scarberry said, was
shaped like a man, but bigger. Maybe six and
a half feet tall. And it had big wings against its
back (Keel, 1975). Terrified, the witnesses
fled in their car only to spot the same or a
similar creature on a hill by the road. That
creature spread its batlike wings and pursued
the vehicle at speeds of up to one hundred
miles per hour. All the while, it made a
squeaking sound. As they sped toward Point
Pleasant, West Virginia, where they would tell
their story to a deputy sheriff, they noticed a
large, dead dog along the side of the road.
This last detail would seem significant to
later investigators after they learned of the
experience that had happened an hour before
to Newell Partridge from rural Salem, West
Virginia. Partridge had been watching television when suddenly he saw an unfamiliar
kind of interference on the screen. In the
meantime, he could hear his dog Bandit
howling strangely. When he picked up a
flashlight and stepped outside, he was
shocked to seeat one hundred fifty yards
distancethe dog circling a shadowy figure
with glowing red eyes that did not look like
an animals. Something about the scene
struck Partridge as deeply abnormal, and he
felt cold chills running down his back. Just
as he was about to go inside, Bandit charged
the intruder, ignoring his master, who was
trying to restrain him. Partridge went inside
to get a gun but could not bring himself to
go outside again. He went to sleep. The next
morning he discovered that Bandit was missing. Later, when he read a newspaper account of the Point Pleasant incident, the ref-

Mount Lassen 179

erence to a dead dog struck him. Bandit was

never seen again.
Other witnesses reported seeing Mothman, as the press soon dubbed it, in the
TNT area and elsewhere. Sightings continued
from time to time for months afterward. Reports consistently described a gray entity
larger than a man, who was headless and had
wings, legs, and glowing red eyes on its upper
chest. When in flight, its wings did not flap.
When it walked, it had a shambling gait. Observers seemed especially terrified of the eyes.
Because of the witnesses manifest sincerity
and terror, no one argued that the sightings
were hoaxes. The most popular conventional
explanations held that they had seen owls or
sandhill cranes. The episode became the subject of two books.
In May 1976, nearly a decade after the
scare had run its course, representatives of the
Ohio UFO Investigators League looked up
some of the witnesses. All stuck by their original testimony and insisted that they had not
mistaken ordinary birds for Mothman. The
most curious testimony came from early witness Linda Scarberry (wife of Roger Scarberry), who said that she and her husband
had seen the creature hundreds of times,
one from as close as three or four feet. She
went on,
It seems like it doesnt want to hurt you. It just
wants to communicate with you. But youre
too afraid when you see it to do anything. . . .
We rented an apartment down on Thirteenth
Street, and the bedroom window was right off
the roof. It was sitting on the roof one night,
looking in the window, and by then I was so
used to seeing it that I just pulled the blinds
and went on. I felt kind of sorry for it [because] it gives you the feeling like it was sitting
there wishing it could come in and get warm
because it was cold out that night. (Raynes,
1976)

A Mothmanlike creature was also involved

in a close encounter of the third kind from
Sandling Park, near Hyde, Kent, England, on
November 16, 1963. That evening a group of

young people saw a glowing oval, some fifteen

to twenty feet in diameter, hovering over a
field. A few seconds after the UFO disappeared behind a clump of trees, witness John
Flaxton related, a dark figure shambled out. It
was all black, about the size of a human but
without a head. It seemed to have wings like a
bat on either side and came stumbling towards
us. We didnt wait to investigate (The Saltwood Mystery, 1964). This is the only known
report to link such a creature with a UFO.
Whatever Mothman may or may not have
been, no encounters with it have been reported in recent years.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Barker, 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 Company.
Raynes, Brent M., 1976. West Virginia Revisited.
Ohio Sky Watcher (January/February/March):
910.
The Saltwood Mystery, 1964. Flying Saucer Review
10, 2 (March/April): 1112.

Mount Lassen
Mount Lassen, in Californias Tehama County,
houses good and evil beings who live deep inside caves and engage in conflict with advanced weapons, according to the testimony of
a man identified as Ralph B. Fields.
At some unspecified time, apparently, in
the latter twentieth century, Fields and a companion named Joe (no last name offered) went
to the mountain in search of guano (bat
dung), which they hoped to market as fertilizer. On their first night, the two slept at the
foot of the mountain. By the third day, they
were nearing the mountaintop when they decided to make camp and prepare a meal. Joe
went off to collect dead scrub bush for the
fire. Suddenly, he returned in a state of high
excitement. He had found a big cave nearby,
and it looked like a promising place to search
for the object of their quest.

180

Mount Lassen

A Morlock (with victim) as depicted in the 1960 movie version of H. G. Wellss The Time Machine (Photofest)

The deeper the two went into the cave, the

deeper it seemed. Once they got twenty feet
into it, the walls expanded to ten feet wide
and 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 and
down, and they kept going until suddenly, realizing how far they were from the surface,

Mount Shasta

they began to get nervous. Besides that, there

was no evidence of guano. Still curious, they
decided to plow ahead and kept walking for
another mile or two. Then, with the aid of
their flashlights, they made an amazing discovery: the floor was worn smooth, and the
cavern walls and ceiling seemed cut artificially.
What had seemed a cave now looked more
like a tunnel.
A light flashed, and three men confronted
Fields and Joe. The men were of normal appearance, seemingly around fifty years of age,
dressed in jeans and flannel shirts. Only their
shoes, with their unusually thick soles, looked
out of the ordinary. One of the strangers
asked what they were doing there, but he
acted as if he did not believe the two mens answer. Two more strangers showed up. The
guano-hunters were badly frightened, convinced that they had fallen into the hands of a
criminal gang in hiding. Their fears only rose
when one of the band told them that they
should accompany them deeper into the cave.
About two miles later, they came to a spot
where the walls expanded. There they encountered a strange device that looked like a toboggan with a seat and a control panel. It gave off
a buzzing sound. The group sat on the wide
seat and flew off at a terrific speed. After a
journey of some considerable distance, they
saw a similar machine approaching them.
Suddenly acting nervous, they maneuvered
their machine to a stop. It landed two feet
from the other one. The crew of the first ship
leaped out and tried to run away, but the crew
of the second, who were carrying pencil-like
weapons, shot them down, killing all of them.
Certain of their imminent doom, Fields
and Joe watched as the new group approached
them. One member asked if they were surface people. After telling him that they had
come from there just recently, the stranger
went on to say that they were lucky they had
been rescued. You would have also become
horloks, and then we would have had to kill
you also. The man spoke in a friendly manner, giving Fields the confidence to ask what
was going on. All the man would say was that

181

surface people are not ready to have the

things that the ancients have left. . . . However, there are a great many evil people here
who create many unpleasant things for both
us and the surface people. They are safe because no one on the surface believes that we
exist.
Ralph and Joe were flown back to the surface and warned never to return. Fields says,
We had been told just enough for me to believe that down there somewhere there were
and are things that might baffle the greatest
minds of this Earth. Sometimes I am tempted
to go back into that cave if I could again find
it, which I doubt, but then I know the warning I heard in there might be too true (Commander X, 1990).
It may be worth noting that H. G. Wellss
famous science-fiction novel The Time Ma chine (1895) features a race of violent subterranean humans known as Morlocks.
See Also: Brodies deros; Hollow earth; Mount
Shasta; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Commander X [pseud. of Jim Keith], 1990. Under ground Alien Bases. New Brunswick, NJ: Abelard
Publications.

Mount Shasta
Mount Shasta in northern California, near the
Oregon border, is the scene of occult legends
that go back to the nineteenth century. Even
before white settlers arrived in the region in
1827, however, local Indian tribes believed
that giant creatures, apparently of the
Sasquatch variety, lived in caves on the mountain. The giants were feared because of their
habit of capturing individuals and taking
them to their caves, where they would squeeze
their victims to death. Another race of beings,
small, usually invisible entities akin to fairies,
also called Shasta their home, according to
tribal traditions.
But it took Frederick Spencer Oliver of
nearby Yreka, California, to put the mountain
on the mystical map. In the mid 1880s,
Oliver, then in his teens, produced a novel, A
Dweller on Two Planets, which he claimed an

182 Mount Shasta

A nineteenth-century engraving of Mount Shasta, California, the scene of occult legends from far back in the past (Library
of Congress)

entity named Phylos the Tibetan had dictated

to him. In fact, when the novel was published
in 1899, Phylos, not Oliver, was identified as
the author. Phylos said he had experienced
several incarnations, including one in Atlantis
and another on Venus. In his most recent one,
during the mid-century California gold rush,
he (he being Walter Pierson, the name he
held during that lifetime) met Quong, a Chinese man. Quong, a knower of mystical secrets, led Pierson into Shasta via a hidden tunnel. Inside the mountain they found huge
chambers and treasures belonging to a secret
brotherhood of advanced beings who had
lived there for a very long time, devoting
themselves to humanitys spiritual betterment.
In his astral body, Pierson traveled to Venus,
where he learned many secrets; he also learned
of his previous lives. Once enlightened, he
was rechristened Phylos and became a
guardian of the cosmos. A modern chronicler
remarks that the Tibetan part of his title
seems to have been added for Mysterys sake
(Kafton-Minkel, 1989).

Olivers novel owed much of its inspiration

to Madame Blavatskys theological writings
and to works of mystical fantasy such as Edward Bulwer-Lyttons Zanoni: A Rosicrucian
Tale and Marie Corellis A Romance of Two
Worlds. It was original, however, in setting a
secret civilization within Mount Shasta. The
next writer to do so, Harvey Spencer Lewis
(writing as Wishar C. Cerve), identified the
inhabitants as survivors of Lemuria, the Pacific Oceans version of Atlantis. According to
Lewiss Lemuria: Lost Continent of the Pacific
(1931), when Lemuria split and sank, its east
coast crashed into part of North Americas
west coast to become the states of Washington, Oregon, and California. Many of the surviving Lemurians took up residence inside
Shasta.
Lewis claimed that persons living near
Shasta occasionally encountered distinguished-looking men in white robes as they
walked out of the forest. Sometimes these beings, who stood seven feet tall, did business in
local stores, using gold nuggets to make their

Mount Shasta

purchases and refusing change. The strangers

had long, curly hair, and on their large foreheads there were bulges visible with special
decoration over them covering their third
eyes. Along the thick forests on Shastas eastern flank, the Lemurians had built great marble temples. On some evenings they held mystical celebrations at which they lit big fires and
danced. They also raised odd-looking cattle.
They flew peculiarly shaped boats which
have flown out of this region high in the air
over the hills and valleys . . . to the waters of
the Pacific Ocean. Mostly, however, the
Lemurians managed to keep themselves and
their activities invisible, setting up energy
walls that effectively concealed them from
prying eyes.
The American branch of the Rosicrucians,
headquartered in San Jose, published Lewiss
book. During the 1930s, it also sponsored expeditions that sought to locate the secret entrances to Shasta. Articles in Rosicrucian Di gest discussed the mountains mysteries.
Then on May 22, 1932, the Los Angeles Times
Sunday magazine ran a destined-to-be-influential piece by Edward Lanser. Lanser claimed
that while taking a train trip on the Shasta
Limited on his way to Portland, he observed
mysterious lights on Shasta in the early dawn.
The conductor told him that the Lemurians
were holding ceremonies. On his way back to
Portland, Lanser wrote, Lanser spent time in
the Shasta area and found that nearly everyone there took the reality of the Lemurians for
granted. Business men, amateur explorers,
officials, and ranchers in the country surrounding Shasta spoke freely of the community, and all attested to the weird rituals that
are performed on the mountainside after sunset, midnight and sunrise, he wrote (De
Camp, 1980). The Lemurians performed
these rituals to celebrate their escape to Gautama (North America). He asserted that
Prof. Edgar Lucien Larkin, whom he characterized as a famous astronomer, had actually
been able to observe Lemurians and their
temples through a telescope. Larkin was in reality an occult buff who had died some eight

183

years earlier. Though widely quoted since,

Lansers story was a hoax ormore to the
pointa tongue-in-cheek exercise satirizing
the curious beliefs the mystically minded were
circulating about a beautiful but otherwise ordinary natural monument.
In Unveiled Mysteries (1934) Guy Warren
Ballard, writing as Godre Ray King, reported
that in 1930, while working as a mining engineer at Shasta, he met Saint Germain, an immortal being who gave him a creamy liquid to
drink. The liquid, Saint Germain explained,
was LifeOmnipresent Life. Many other
encounters followed, and Ballard (who died in
1939) soon formed the I AM Activity, a notorious cultlike organization that combined
Theosophical doctrine with fascist ideology.
Around the same time, occultist Maurice Doreal was detailing his own Shasta experiences,
which were with the Atlanteans who lived in a
colony seven miles beneath the mountain.
Though the colony had only three hundred
fifty-three inhabitants, it dominated the
Lemurians, four and a half million of whom
lived, essentially, as prisoners of the Atlanteans
even deeper under Shasta. Doreal was unique
in his depiction of the Lemurians as evil and
dangerous.
As Shastas legends continued to expand, it
was said that the mountains interior housed
two magnificent Lemurian cities, Iletheleme
and Yaktayvia. The latter, some said, was the
source of beautiful bell sounds, which some
had professed to hear emanating from the
mountain. The Yaktayvians are master bell
builders. All the while, occult pilgrims were
arriving in growing numbers to the area;
many would stay. Some claimed to have seen
and communicated with Lemurians and
other extraordinary beings. Others reported
UFO sightings on the mountain. Believers
explained the phenomena as Lemurian aircraft or visiting extraterrestrial spacecraft calling on their friends inside the mountain. At
least one person, Nola Van Valer, swore that
she had met Phylos the Tibetan on the
mountain. On another occasion she spoke
with Saint Germain.

184

Mr. X

See Also: Atlantis; Bonnie; Fairies encountered;

Lemuria; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Commander X [pseud. of Jim Keith], 1990. Under ground Alien Bases. New Brunswick, NJ: Abelard
Productions.
De Camp, L. Sprague, 1980. The Ragged Edge of Sci ence. Philadelphia, PA: Owlswick Press.
Frank, Emilie A., 1998. Mt. Shasta, Californias Mys tic Mountain. Hilt, CA: Photografix Publishing.
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races, and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Tierney, Richard L., 1983. Americas Mystical
Mount Shasta. Fate 36, 8 (August): 7076.

ers and persuaded her to invest in a worthless

mining venture. At a trial in Oakland in October 1961, a young astronomer named Carl
Sagan assured the jury that human life could
not exist on Saturn. Schmidt received a oneto ten-year sentence for grand theft.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Flying Saucer Figure Convicted, 1961. Oakland
[California] Tribune, October 27.
The Kearney, Nebraska, Contact Claim, 1957.
CSI News Letter 10 (December 15): 1213.
Schmidt, Reinhold O., 1963. The Edge of Tomorrow:
A True Account of Experiences with Visitors from
Another Planet. Hollywood, CA: self-published.

Mr. X

MU the Mantis Being

On the afternoon of November 5, 1957,

Reinhold Schmidt, a grain buyer with a
prison record, allegedly encountered the
crew of a landed flying saucer along the
banks of Nebraskas Platte River. Two
crewmembers ushered him inside, where he
met two other men and two women, all of
whom spoke high German to one another
and German-inflected English to Schmidt.
Their captain identified himself as Mr. X.
After a brief conversation about Americas
satellite program, Schmidt left the craft,
which then departed.
When Schmidt reported his encounter to
the sheriff s office in nearby Kearney, officers
went to the site and found footprints as well
as a greasy substance at the supposed landing
site. They also located two empty oil cans not
far away, leading them to suspect a hoax. After
being held overnight in jail, Schmidt was examined by two psychiatrists and pronounced
mentally ill. He spent a few days in the Hastings State Hospital before being released.
Thereafter, he pursued a career on the contactee scene, claiming further contacts with
Mr. X and his associates, who he learned were
from Saturn. His space friends flew him
around the world, to Egypt, to the Antarctic,
and elsewhere. It all ended, however, after he
told a California widow that from a spaceship
he had seen quartz crystals with healing pow-

A West Virginia woman who prefers to use

the pseudonym Rebecca Grant says she has
had a lifetime of paranormal experiences, including missing-time episodes and apparent
UFO abductions. When she was forty years
old, aliens revealed themselves to her. At first
the communications were purely telepathic.
After two years they began to appear physically to her. These appearances, always brief,
at first frightened her, but in due course she
became friendly with a being who looked like
a giant praying mantis, a kind of entity sometimes reported by abductees. The mantis
being, apparently possessing a sense of humor,
conveyed the idea that he would like to be
called MU, short for Master of the Universe, though Grant said she would prefer
that he be MU-Bug . . . to help keep things
in perspective. MU communicates telepathically and is not physically present during the
communications.
MU told her that he and his race had helped
life evolve on Earth. Close to one hundred different alien groups visit Earth, some from other
places in the galaxy, some from parallel universes. They are on Earth because of their concern about what human beings are doing to the
planets environment. Though they possess the
means to do so, they are not repairing the damage because humans have to learn to do that
themselves; alien help would only prolong hu-

Mullers Martians

manitys existence. We might survive long

enough to find an even grander way to destroy
ourselves, Grant says MU has observed, one
that could harm worlds other than our own.
These beings feel that . . . they would be condemning themselves to a violent confrontation
with us in the future. The aliens have taken a
middle course. They abduct people and remove
some of their DNA, combining it with the
DNA of various alien races; thus, something
of the human race will continue. Others are
trying to implant spiritual beliefs and psychic
perceptions into the brains of humans in the
hope that greater wisdom will lead them to survival and peace.
According to MU, alien science indicates
that Earth faces a bleak future of ecological
collapse, geophysical cataclysms, and political
and social upheaval, which may lead to
atomic and biological warfare. None of this is
certain, only probable. If these things happen,
MU says, the aliens may remove a group of
women and children from the surface of the
Earth to protect them for the purposes of procreation. These would all be abductees whose
genetic make-up had already been altered.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Insectoids
Further Reading
Lewels, Joe, 1997. The God Hypothesis: Extraterres trial Life and Its Implications for Science and Reli gion. Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower Press.

Mullers Martians
A mediums contacts with Martians are the
subject of a classic early work on abnormal
psychology, Theodore Flournoys From India
to the Planet Mars (1899). Flournoy, a prominent Swiss psychologist, gives the medium the
pseudonym Helene Smith in his book, but
her real name was Catherine Elise Muller.

185

Born in 1861, Muller possessed a considerable imagination and a keen intelligence. She
grew up in a family in which psychic and visionary experiences were common, and she
herself had a number of them. Friends drew
her attention to spiritism, and soon she became a medium. Through her, such historical
figures as the great novelist Victor Hugo and
the legendary occultist Cagliostro spoke, spinning what Flournoy characterizes as complex
sagas. Her Martian adventures began only
after a friend remarked, in her presence, on
something he had read recently. It was a statement by the popular science writer Camille
Flammarion that Martian humankind and
Earth humankind may one day enter into
communication with the other. The friend
expressed the hope that such a thing would
happen.
Soon afterward, Muller informed him that
she had made contact with Martians. These
encounters occurred in a variety of mental
states, including sleep. Flournoy was led to
the conclusion that, at least at some level of
her psyche, Muller was always living with the
Martians. The communications and experiences were voluminous. She had many Martian friends and was often on that planet interacting with them and observing everything
around her. She even produced, albeit in
piecemeal fashion, a Martian language that
Flourney recognized as an infantile travesty
of French.
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian;
Browns Martians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga;
Martian bees; Monka; Shaws Martians; Smeads
Martians; Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Flournoy, Theodore, 1963. From India to the Planet
Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism with
Glossolalia. New Hyde Park, NY: University
Books.

Noma
In 1961, investigating the Brown Mountain
lights (believed by most authorities to be refractions of distant light sources such as passing automobiles) near Morganton, North
Carolina, Ralph Lael discovered that if he sent
telepathic messages to the lights, they would
respond. One light urged him to enter a door
concealed on the mountainside, where the entities responsible for the lights operated. Lael
passed into an eight-foot-square room with
transparent walls. There a voice told him that
the human race had come into being on a
planet once known as Pewam, now the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. On a subsequent visit not long afterward, Lael boarded
a flying saucer and was taken to Venus. There,
besides meeting the direct descendants of Pewamites, he encountered a lovely, scantily clad
woman named Noma. His hosts also showed
him footage of Pewams destruction and of
early Earth humans.
Further Reading
Machlin, Milt, and Timothy Green Beckley, 1981.
UFO. New York: Quick Fox.

Nordics
Nordic is a name given to a kind of alien
being reported in UFO encounters that range

from contact claims to close encounters of the

third kind to abductions. The term did not,
however, come into general use among ufologists until the 1980s. Nordics are said to resemble Scandinavians, at least in a generic
sense; they are tall, blond, fair-skinned
(though sometimes described as deeply
tanned), and attractive-looking. Witnesses
often claim that their eyes are different from
northern Europeans in being somewhat
slanted or even almond-shaped.
The beings that would later be called
Nordics were first known as Space Brothers
often, though not always, from Venuswhen
1950s contactees such as George Adamski and
Howard Menger reported meetings with
friendly extraterrestrials, with whom they
traveled into space and had other adventures.
Though conservative ufologists rejected these
claims as absurd hoaxes, generally similar figures were reported in the testimony of witnesses who did not fit the contactees flamboyant profiles.
In one such incident, a farmer near Linha
Vista, Brazil, while working in a field heard a
sewing-machine sound. When he looked to
its source, it turned out to be a strange craft,
shaped like a tropical helmet, hovering
nearby. A man could be seen inside the UFO,
another stood near a fence, and a third was

187

188

Nostradamus

approaching the witness, who was sufficiently

startled to drop his hoe. The being smiled and
picked up the hoe, handing it back to the
farmer before he and his companions returned
to the ship and flew away. The beings, clad in
light brown coveralls, had long blond hair,
pale skin, and slanted eyes. The farmer, who
knew nothing of flying saucers, thought the
craft and its occupants were from the United
States.
Typically in these kinds of close encounters, the Nordics were not communicative,
just silent and distant; they were not unfriendly but not forthcoming either. Ufologists collected hundreds of such accounts
from all over the world. As abduction reports
rose to prominence in later years, Nordics
showed up in many stories, almost always
seen in association with little gray aliens and
in circumstances that suggested that they occupied a higher position in the otherworldly
chain of command than did their smaller fellows. One writer on the abduction phenomenon, David M. Jacobs, believes that the evidence clearly suggests that the Nordics are
most probably adult hybrids, the products of
human/alien mating (Jacobs, 1998).
Nordics live on in current contactee lore,
where they are assumed to be genuine extraterrestrials, perhaps representing the race that
seeded the Earth and gave rise to modern Homo
sapiens. Nordics, according to Billy Meier and
other 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; Waltons abduction
Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
York: Abelard-Schuman.
Bowen, Charles, ed., 1974. The Humanoids. London: 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 from

the PleiadesA Preliminary Investigative Report
The Report on an Ongoing Contact. Tucson, AZ:
Wendelle C. Stevens.

Nostradamus
NostradamusMichael de Nostradame (1503
1566)was a French physician, astrologer,
and counselor to Kings Henry II and Charles
IX. He is remembered for his prophecies of
world events, culminating in the Second
Coming of Christ in 2000. According to an
Indiana woman, he returned to this world in
1996 as a channeled entity after living on the
Great Central Sun since his death.
A woman who identifies herself only as Pati
reports that on a Friday night in July 1996,
she was sitting in on a channeling session with
like-minded friends when a message came
through from an anxious-sounding Nostradamus. Though Pati had never paid much
attention to Nostradamus or his prophecies
before, she felt a strong, immediate connection. Nostradamus communicated only
briefly, but before he withdrew, the channeling group assured him that he was welcome to
come back anytime he wished to do so.
The next day, while on a long drive through
the country, Pati felt Nostradamuss spirit inside
her, seeing and hearing all that passed through
her eyes and ears. He asked questions about
everything around them. Over the next two
months, Pati felt other energies enter her. She
suspected that they were friends and associates
of Nostradamuss from the Great Central Sun.
Judging by the questions that were asked, Pati
writes, these energies either had not been on
this planet before or, if they had been, it was so
long ago that nothing looked familiar apart
from the trees, rocks and water. They asked
questions about how houses were built, why
this or that particular shape? What materials did
we use? On and on, they went, asking about
planes, cars, barns and llamas, and why do people MOW their grass! (Pati, 1999).
On two occasions, Pati verbally channeled
Nostradamus. On the first, he expressed satisfaction with his life now and praised the ef-

Nostradamus

189

Nostradamus, shown in magicians garb in his laboratory, writing about astrology (Bettmann/Corbis)

forts of Pati and like-minded people who were

making life on Earth better. On the second,
he identified two women in the channeling
group as his wife and servant in his Earth incarnation. He apologized for treating them as
less than his equals.

See Also: Channeling

Further Reading
Pati, 1999. Nostradamus Comes Back . . . And
Likes What He Sees! Planet Lightworker (September/October). http://www.planetlightworker.
com/articlefarm/pati/article1.htm.

Octopus aliens
While 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 walked
over to help what he assumed to be a stranded
motorist. The car turned out to be a globeshaped object hovering just above the ground.
Nearby were two bizarre-looking creatures
that resembled octopuses. They were light in
color and three feet tall, and they were dashing on four or five legs toward the UFO,
which shot away as soon as they entered it.
Journalists and ufologists who examined
the site soon afterward found an abundance
of burned grass. They also reported that their
watches had abruptly ceased operating.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Ballester Olmos, Vicente-Juan, 1976. A Catalogue of
200 Type-I UFO Events in Spain and Portugal.
Evanston, IL: Center for UFO Studies.

Ogatta
Ogatta is, in the channeling of North Carolina psychic Greta Woodrew, one of five
planets in a jorpah (solar system) in another
galaxy. (The other planets are Oshan, Archa,
Mennon, and Tchauvi.) Woodrew, a wealthy

professional woman who grew up and lived

much of her life in New York City and Connecticut, discovered her connection with
Ogatta while exploring her paranormal talents, prominently including metal-bending,
with noted parapsychologist Andrija Puharich. Under hypnosis on December 17, 1976,
she under went an out-of-body experience, in
which she encountered a figure with both
human and bird features. It was clad in a silver
suit and had marvelous, golden eyes with a
loving expression. Via telepathy she learned
that he was Hshames from the Ogatta jorpah
(his actual home planet was Mennon).
Soon, under hypnosis and then by channeling, Woodrew was communicating with
other entities, one named Ogatta after the
planet. She would form a particularly close association with a female Ogattan named Tauri.
She learned that many cosmic civilizations,
including the Ogattans, are visiting the Earth
in ships; the Ogattans call their ships gattae.
Woodrew herself had a dual existence. In one
aspect she lived on Earth; in another she lived
on Ogatta as Plura. Plura had made the decision to liveor at least to have a part of her
lifeon Earth in order to prepare earthlings
for the coming Earth changes that will devastate much of the planet before a new age
brings peace and harmony.

191

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OINTS

In time Woodrew learned, via recovered

memories, that she had been interacting with
the Ogattans since her childhood. Her first
contact took place in the early 1930s when she
was three and a half years old. For the next six
years, she had many experiences with space
people. She was flown to a beautiful planet
where she could hear colors and see music
because, like her fellow Ogattans, she was free
of the limitations of human physiology; thus,
her brain processed stimuli differently.
Though her contacts were overwhelmingly
with Ogattans, on occasion she met beings
from other worlds. Once she had an out-ofbody encounter with beings who looked halfhuman and half-fish. These entities seemed
friendly, but, on a handful of other occasions,
she dealt with extraterrestrials who were not so
amiable. Some believed the Earth to be of no
significance, thus its problems were of no concern to major players in the larger cosmic order.
Woodrew became a lecturer on the New
Age circuit, wrote a self-published book, and
published a newsletter, The Woodrew Update.
After the Ogattans warned them that they
would have to move to preserve their safety
during the coming geological upheavals,
Woodrew and her husband, Dick Smolowe,
bought a property in western North Carolina
in 1982. They moved from Westport, Connecticut, to the survivalist compound they
named Reisha Way. In 1988, Doubleday released Woodrews book Memories of Tomorrow.
A few years later, Woodrow and Smolowe
moved to Winston-Salem for health reasons.
See Also: Channeling; Dual reference
Further Reading
Heard, Alex, 1999. Apocalypse Pretty Soon: Travels in
End-Time America. New York: W. W. Norton and
Company.
Woodrew, Greta, 1981. On a Slide of Light. Black
Mountain, NC: New Age Press.
, 1988. Memories of Tomorrow. New York:
Dolphin/Doubleday.

anomalist Ivan T. Sanderson. To Sanderson

OINTS are any beings that are on Earth but
are not human. He did not confine his definition simply to extraterrestrial visitors, who in
his view are only one among a variety of beings present on this planet. Poltergeistsinvisible, destructive spiritsare one kind of
OINT. So are the entities who, so he theorized in Invisible Residents (1970), dwell under
the oceans, occasionally snatching ships,
planes, and their crews in places such as the
Bermuda Triangle. (Could there have
evolved a technological civilization . . . underwater? I am afraid I have to say that . . . there
is no logical reason for stating that there could
not be.) He also believed that invisible dimensions or parallel universes surround humans. From these other dimensions, entities
pop in and out of human reality with regularity, manifesting as everything from fairies to
UFOs. They shift their shapes to whatever
form may be appropriate to the occasion and
the circumstance.
Curiously, however, Sanderson held a dim
view of all such visitors, not because he feared
they might be unfriendly but because the
OINTS are . . . incredibly and abysmally stu pid. He suspected that they were so advanced
that their technology now controlled them
and that they have given up mental activity,
just as technology has caused humans to reduce much of their physical activity. That
they are for the most part overcivilized and
quite mad, he wrote, is, in my opinion, an
open-ended question but quite probable. Perhaps, we will never be able to cope with them
until we, too, all go quite mad.
See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Fairies encountered
Further Reading
Sanderson, Ivan T., 1970. Invisible Residents: A Dis quisition upon Certain Matters Maritime, and the
Possibility of Intelligent Life under the Waters of the
Earth. New York: World Publishing Company.

OINTS

Old Hag

OINTS are Other Intelligences in an

acronym coined by maverick biologist and

The Old Hag is a folk expressionpopular,

for example, in Newfoundlandfor the par-

Old Hag 193

Henri Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781 (The Detroit Institute of the Arts, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bert L. Smokler and Mr. and
Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleishman)

ticular experience that gave rise to the word

nightmare. Nightmare has come to be a
synonym for bad dream, but traditionally
nightmare (from the Anglo-Saxon nicht
[night] and mara [incubus or succubus]) referred to a specific nocturnal experience. A
menacing supernatural entity, often perceived
as an ugly witch, enters a bedroom and sits on
the witnesss chest, leaving him or her with the
sensation of being crushed. All the while the
victim lies paralyzed and helpless.
Though the experience occurs frequently
to Americansone in six, according to a scientist who has studied the phenomenon
American culture has no name for it. Thus,
those who undergo it are at a loss to understand it or to put it into any larger context.
Many, having never heard of others experiences, are left wondering about their sanity.

The Old Hag is the subject of a classic

work, The Terror That Comes in the Night
(1982), by David J. Hufford, a medical scientist and folklorist at Pennsylvania State University. Hufford uses the experience, among
other things, to scrutinize the way psychologists have dealt with such reports and to examine the trustworthiness of eyewitness testimony to anomalous events. Most scientists
and scholars have sought to explain Old Hag
attacks as the result of perceptual errors, faulty
memories, lies, psychotic episodes, or hallucinations shaped by images in the claimants
cultural environment. According to Hufford,
they have often discarded witness testimony,
resulting in what Hufford charges was an effort to reinvent the experience so that it could
be explained. Referring to a study by early
psychoanalyst and Freud biographer Ernest

194

Olesons giants

Jones, Hufford says that one can hardly distinguish the experiences themselves from their
interpretations.
Hufford argues that if would-be explainers
had listened to what the witnesses reported
about the particular symptoms of Old Hag
experience, they might have been able to explain it sooner. Research in the 1960s and
1970s in sleep paralysis both underscores the
accuracy of the testimony and explains most
of it, though, so far, not the peculiar fact that
the contents of the experience are consistent no
matter to whom or in what cultural context
they occur.
In Huffords judgment, too much scholarly
writing on extraordinary experience reflects
unexamined prejudices and makes facile assumptions about cultural processes, thus
confusing rather than clarifying issues.
Old Hag sleep paralysis may explain at
least some abduction and other ostensibly
UFO-related bedroom visitations. For example, John A. Keel, author of several books
on UFOs, has written of his own encounters
with strange entities, including one in which
I woke up in the middle of the night to find
myself unable to move, with a huge dark apparition standing over me (Keel, 1970).
Addressing the abduction phenomenon,
Hufford has said, If the paralysis attacks, as
described by abductees, are directly linked to
abductions, there is every reason to believe
that the abduction phenomenon has great historical depth and is associated in complex
ways with other classes of anomalous experience (Hufford, 1994).
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Hufford, David J., 1982. The Terror That Comes in
the Night: An Experienced-Centered Study of Su pernatural Assault Traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
, 1994. Awakening Paralyzed in the Presence
of 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, 348354.
Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press.
Keel, John A., 1970. Strange Creatures from Time and
Space. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Gold Medal.

Olesons giants
On May 2, 1897, during a spate of mysterious airship sightings that some popular
speculation tied to possible visitors from
other planets, the Houston Post published a
letter from John Leander of El Campo, Texas.
Leander related the story of a local man,
identified only as Mr. Oleson, an elderly, retired sailor who once served on Danish vessels. According to Leander, in September
1862 Oleson had witnessed the crash of a
mysterious craft and seen the bodies of the
giant beings who had flown it.
At the time the incident took place, Oleson
was serving as mate on the brig Christine on
the Indian Ocean. A furious storm erupted
and raged for hours until, finally, a wave
washed over the ship, and Oleson and five
companions were swept onto a small, rocky island. All were injured, and one soon died.
The island was devoid of life, and the men resigned themselves to their deaths. As they sat
hopeless at the base of a cliff, they witnessed a
bizarre and terrifying sight: an immense flying
ship, apparently out of control and about to
crash, was heading directly toward them. Fortunately, the wind blew it off course, and it
smashed against the rocks a few hundred
yards away.
Overcoming their deep fear, the sailors
made their way to the wreckage. The machine, which they deduced had been the size
of a battleship, lay in a shapeless mass, revealing little except that the craft had had four
large wings. There were things that looked
like tools and furniture, evidently from the
ships interior, and the men opened boxes covered with unusual characters. Inside the
boxes, they uncovered nourishing food.
But their horror was intensified, Leander
wrote, when they found the bodies of more
than a dozen men dressed in garments of
strange fashion and texture. The bodies were a
dark bronze color, but the strangest feature of
all was the immense size of the men. They had
no means of measuring their bodies, but estimated them to be more than twelve feet high.
Their hair and beards were also long and as

Orthon

soft and silky as the hair of an infant

(Bullard, 1982). The sight so unsettled one of
the men that he was driven mad. He
promptly hurled himself off into the sea,
where he drowned.
The survivors retreated from the scene, and
it took them two days to restore their courage
sufficiently to return. They rummaged for
food and then dragged the giants bodies off
the cliff and into the water. Using pieces of
the spaceship, they built a raft and set out on
the now-still ocean. Sixty hours later, they
came upon a Russian vessel heading for Australia. Before they could reach port, however,
three more of Olesons companions died from
their injuries and shock.
Fortunately as a partial confirmation of
the truth of his story, Leander wrote, Mr.
Oleson took from one of the bodies a finger
ring of immense size. It is made of a compound of metals unknown to any jeweler who
has seen it, and is set with two reddish stones,
the names of which are unknown to anyone
who has ever examined it. The ring was taken
from the thumb of the owner and measure
two and one-quarter inches in diameter.
Leanders yarn was one of many told in
the spring of 1897 about airships and their
supposed crews. Newspapers all over America carried comparable tall tales, including
one alleging a Martians crash-landing and
his subsequent burial in a small north-Texas
town.
See Also: Aurora Martian; Michigan giant; Wilson
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed. 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnolds Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.

Olliana Olliana Alliano

Speaking at a contactee conference in 1982,
Dave Schultz, an electrician from Louisville,
Colorado, related a lifetime of interactions
with extraterrestrials, among them the Olliana
Olliana Alliano. The Olliana Olliana Alliano

195

are forty inches tall, humanlike in appearance

except for a slightly larger head. Schultz called
them the good people, guardians of the
Earth. It was Olliana Olliana Alliano who
died in the 1948 spaceship crash at Aztec,
New Mexico, chronicled in Frank Scullys Be hind the Flying Saucers (1950).
This alien group is here to get the vibrations of the planet up to a level in which we
can join the space federation. Before that
happens, humans have to shed their violent,
warlike, greedy ways. The Olliana Olliana Alliano have contacted every political leader on
Earth to deliver this message.
See Also: Contactees; Mersch
Further Reading
Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky
Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.
Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies, University of Wyoming.

Orthon
Orthon was the name George Adamskior,
more accurately, his ghostwriter Charlotte
Blodgetgave to the Venusian Adamski met
in the desert of southern California on November 20, 1952. Space people, Adamski explained, never call themselves by name when
interacting with human beings because they
have an entirely different concept of names as
we use them (Adamski, 1955). In that first
encounter, Adamski communicated with the
being he called Orthon via gestures, sign language, and snatches of telepathy, during
which the Venusian expressed concern about
earthlings warlike ways. Adamski saw Orthon
again briefly when he flew overhead in his
scout craft the following December 13.
He next met Orthon in the early morning
hours of February14, 1953, when two spacemen picked him up at a Los Angeles hotel and
drove him into the desert to an awaiting
saucer. As he approached the ship, he saw Orthon, who was finishing some repair work.
Seeing a very small amount of molten metal
that he had thrown out, Adamski scooped up
the object. When his companions asked him
why he was doing that, he said he wanted

196

Oxalc

concrete proof of his contacts. Orthon explained, though, that you will find that this
alloy contains the same on all planets
(Adamski, 1955). They boarded the ship
together and flew into space, where Adamski
and Orthonnow speaking lucid English, as
had not been the case in their first encounterengaged in extended conversation.
A third meeting with Orthon took place
on August 23, 1954, after the same two spacemen, Firkon of Mars and Ramu of Saturn,
picked up Adamski at his home and took him
to a spacecraft. Adamski was reunited not
only with Orthon but also with other extraterrestrials, including the beautiful women Ilmuth (a Martian) and Kalna (a Venusian)
who had been aboard the ship he had entered
earlier. This time Orthon showed Adamski
scenes from the Venusian surface. The Venusians, Orthon said, have an average lifetime of
a thousand years.
On April 25, 1955, Adamski flew into
space again with Orthon. A crewmember used
Adamskis camera to take photographs of a
nearby Venusian Mother Ship into which
Adamski had transferred. Two of the blurry
results are reproduced in Inside the Space
Ships. One of them, according to the caption,
shows a Venusian looking out of a porthole,
Adamski out of a second, though to the untrained eye the faces look like no more than
blobs of light. Lou Zinsstag, a Swiss woman
who was close to Adamski and eventually became his biographer, reported that one day in
1959, while the two were conversing, he
pulled out his wallet and extracted from it a
photograph of Orthon in profile. Zinsstag,
who was allowed to study it briefly, was struck
by the figures pronounced chin.
In the early 1960s, according to Adamski,
a new group of space people replaced the old
one. In later years, after his death, old associates such as Blodget, Madeleine Rodeffer,
Fred Steckling, and Steve Within made
claims of having met Orthon, but Alice
Wells, Adamskis executor and head of the
George Adamski Foundation, rejected their
assertions.

See Also: Adamski, George; Ramu

Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
York: Abelard-Schuman.
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earths Encounters
with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.
Hallet, Marc, 1997. Adamski and His Believers: A
Reminiscence. In Hilary Evans and Dennis
Stacy, eds. UFOs 19471997: From Arnold to the
Abductees: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers, 2834.
London: John Brown Publishing.
Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski, 1953. Flying
Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book
Centre.
Zinsstag, Lou, and Timothy Good, 1983. George
AdamskiThe Untold Story. Beckenham, Kent,
England: Ceti Publications.

Oxalc
Oxalc is from the planet Morlen, settled long
ago by human beings from the Orion system.
They sought to establish a supercolony. The
planet now houses six large cities in which beings from many worlds, including Earth, currently reside. Oxalc oversees forty-nine extraterrestrial guides involved in Mission Rama.
According to one source, The word RAMA
contains a vibratory activator and was chosen
forty-two hundred years ago. RA represents
the Sun or irradiation and MA represents
Mother Earth. The mantra Rama means Irradiating Light on Earth (Edilver, n.d.). Mission Ramas purpose is to help planets in transition, such as Earth (also known as Merla), as
they enter the fourth dimension.
Oxalcs presence on Earth became known
in 1973 after a group of Peruvian flying-saucer
enthusiasts led by Sixto Paz Wells decided to
try to establish psychic communications with
extraterrestrials. The initial contacts took place
through automatic writing from an entity who
called himself Oxalc. Oxalc gave a specific date
and place where he would meet them personally. The group went to the location, a coastal
region thirty-seven miles south of Lima, and
were shocked to see a brilliantly lighted, hamburger-shaped metallic craft hovering less than
three hundred feet over their heads. Their fear
and excitement were so intense that Oxalc,

Oz Factor 197

communicating telepathically, informed them

that no meeting would take place; before one
could happen, they would have to learn how
to control their emotions.
The messages continued and began to circulate through the Spanish-speaking world. They
described the nature of the cosmos, Earths secret history, and human beings spiritual nature. The teachings were circulated under the
name Mission Rama, organized as a nonprofit
corporation. They hold that there are three different universes: material (Septennial), mental
(Eternal), and spiritual (Mental). Our own
Milky Way is under the direction of twentyfour highly evolved beings, the Elders of the
Galaxy. Beneath them are advanced civilizations which actively assist lesser but developing
races. Each of these takes on a particular task,
as Genetic Engineers, Keepers, Guardians, Instructors, and the like. Galaxy M-31, in the
Andromeda constellation, is the seat of an extremely important council where representatives of a number of galaxies in our region of
space deliberate. The council is called the
Council of Nine, and the beings sitting on it
are the Nine of Andromeda. They, along with
the twenty-four Elders of each galaxy, comprise
the Great White Brotherhood of the Star.
Members of the Earths Mission Rama have
reported extraordinary experiences, not just
UFO sightings but otherworldly journeys
through artificially constructed space-time
portals (Xendras). Many others received their
Cosmic Names, whose pronunciation is in
tune with the total nature of each individuals
soul, one document states (Edilver, n.d.).
See Also: Great White Brotherhood
Further Reading
Edilver [pseud. of Giorgio Piacenza], 1992. Mission
Rama. Coral Gables, FL: self-published.

Oz Factor
Oz Factor is a phrase coined by British ufologist Jenny Randles, who calls it the sensation
of being isolated, or transported from the real
world into a different environmental framework. Randles noted its presence in a number

of UFO cases she investigated. It was as if, she

wrote, witnesses were being transported temporarily from our world into another, where
reality is but slightly different. . . . I call it the
Oz Factor, after the fairytale land of Oz
(Randles, 1983). She suspects that in many ostensibly straightforward UFO encounters, witnesses are in an altered state of consciousness.
In Oz Factor incidents, an individual may
witness a spectacular UFO display or even
landing and contact in a public space at a time
when other persons should be about. Yet
other people will be weirdly absent, and a
zone of silence will surround the scene. The
witness may feel as if he or she has been chosen to view the object.
Such phenomena have also been reported
in the context of men in black encounters. For
example, Peter Rojcewicz tells of an experience he underwent one afternoon in November 1980, when he was doing research on a
Ph.D. dissertation in folklore at the University of Pennsylvania library. His subject was
UFOs. A strange man dressed in black interrupted his work and engaged him in a disjointed exchange about flying saucers. The
stranger then seemed to disappear. I was
highly excited and finally walked around the
stacks to the reference desk and nobody was
behind the desk, Rojcewicz wrote. He could
find no one else in the library anywhere, a situation he regarded as virtually incomprehensible. Fighting panic, he returned to where he
had been sitting. In about an hour I rose to
leave the library, he recalled. There were
two librarians behind each of the two desks!
(Rojcewicz, 1987).
An American psychiatric social worker
writing under a pseudonym recounts a lifetime of encounters with a range of otherworldly beings. She says,
I apparently entered into an altered state when
encounters occurred. It seemed to be an altered
energy or time field created by the beings.
Everything fell silent. The air felt heavy, like
liquid crystal, and it seemed to carry nonverbal
information between the beings and myself.

198

Oz Factor

From left to right: Peter Brookesmith; Jenny Randles, the ufologist who coined the term Oz Factor; and Jerome Clark at
Fortean Times UnConvention95 (Lisa Anders/Fortean Picture Library)

Time slowed and eddied in strange ways. Beings usually informed me (telepathically in
most cases) that I would not remember the
events until much later. As they communicated
this, an opaque screen formed in my mind,
and the encounter began to feel dim, even
while it was still occurring. Additionally, when
the encounter ended, the altered field also dissolved. Merely exiting the field also cloaked the
memory. (Oakman, 1999)

See Also: Men in black

Further Reading
Oakman, Lisa [pseud.], 1999. UFO Beings, Folklore, and Mythology: Personal Experiences. In ternational UFO Reporter 24, 4 (Winter): 712.
Randles, Jenny, 1983. UFO Reality: A Critical Look
at the Physical Evidence. London: Robert Hale.
Rojcewicz, Peter M., 1987. The Men in Black Experience and Tradition: Analogues with the Traditional Devil Hypothesis. Journal of American
Folklore 100 (April/June): 148160.

Paul 2
Paul Solem, an Idaho rancher, first heard from
Paul 2though he did not know his name at
the timein 1948 when a mental voice from
a flying saucer told him, You will hear from
us later (Clark, 1971). Four years later Solem
met Paul 2, a self-identified angel from
Venus. Solem was informed that he had been
a Venusian in a previous life and that his mission in the present incarnation was to work
with North and South American Indians to
prepare the City of Zion. A great cataclysm
was coming, and in its wake a utopian society
would be built with the aid of space people
and their earthly allies.
Solem surfaced publicly in July 1969 at the
Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Idaho, where
he and several Indian associates declared in a
series of campfire meetings that flying saucers
had arrived to fulfill a Hopi prophecy about
the Day of Purification. According to Hopi
tradition, a great fiery explosion would herald
the coming of the True White Brother. Only
those who had remained true to the ancient
Hopi ways would be spared.
Moving his operation to Hotevilla, Arizona, where the Hopi Sun Clan was headquartered, Solem worked with the 106-yearold Chief Dan Katchongva to integrate flying
saucers into the tribes traditional faith.
199

Katchongva was a friend of contactee and

fringe archaeologist George Hunt Williamson, author of books speculating about the relationship of native religions and visiting extraterrestrials. Younger tribal members resisted
Katchongva and Solems efforts, though other
residents of the area were claiming UFO
sightings that they took to be evidence of the
prophecys imminent fulfillment.
Solem announced that Paul 2 would bring
in flying saucers for all to see on four occasions, beginning on Easter Sunday 1971.
Their failure to appear on the first scheduled
date destroyed Solems credibility, and soon
afterward Katchongva was ousted from his
position as leader of the Sun Clan. He died
the following year. Solem lapsed into obscurity. His last known public appearance was on
July 21, 1990, in the resort town of Lava Hot
Springs, Idaho, where he spoke to a small
crowd and tried without success to entice
saucers to fly overhead.
See Also: Contactees; Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Clark, Jerome, 1971. Indian Prophecy and the
Prescott UFOs. Fate 24, 4 (April): 5461.
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.

200

Philip

Kimball, Richard W., 1995. American Indian

Prophecies Confirm the Reality of Flying
Saucers. 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 have
been given a degree of physical reality when a
Toronto-based parapsychological group consciously invented him. He was part of an experiment intended to demonstrate that mental energies can create the sorts of entities
reported in spiritualist sances and poltergeist
episodes.
In September 1972, members of the
Toronto Society for Psychical Research invented Philip, laying out a detailed personal
biography. A pro-royal aristocrat during Englands Civil War, Philip fell in love with a
Gypsy woman but lost her when authorities
tried and burned her at the stake as a witch.
His failure to find a way to save her filled him
with guilt and grief and prevented his soul
from passing on to the afterlife, leaving it an
earthbound spirit. The group, whose members included psychologist A.R.G. Owen and
his wife Iris, began to meditate on Philip in
hopes that he would appear to them in
some fashion. Nothing happened for a year.
Then the group decided to try a different
tactic. Members decided to imitate the methods of nineteenth-century spiritualist circles,
on the theory that skepticism inhibited the
occurrence of paranormal phenomena. Like
the earlier spiritualist sitters, they sat in a circle, sang, or otherwise tried to create an atmosphere conducive to the manifestation of
the unknown. Within a few weeks, they began
hearing raps from the table. They were able to
communicate with the knocker by asking simple yes or no questions. Once the table apparently levitated. Eventually, Philip seemed
to take on a personality of his own, independent of the one the group had assigned him.

He would reject or contradict his life story.

Once, when a member reminded him that he
was purely imaginary, he disappeared for
some weeks, to reappear only when members
managed to recapture some semblance of belief in his actual existence.
On one occasion, the group demonstrated
Philips manifestations on a television program. Iris Owen and another member, Margaret Sparrow, wrote a book on the episode,
which they believed demonstrated the reality
not of ghosts but of psychokinesis. One subsequent observer, however, cautions that though
potentially highly significant, the experiment
has not been repeated by other researchers
(Dash, 1997).
See Also: Tulpa
Further Reading
Dash, Mike, 1997. Borderlands. London: Heinemann.
Owen, Iris M., and Margaret Sparrow, 1976. Con juring up Philip. New York: Harper and Row.

Planetary Council
Celeste Korsholm, a Sedona, Arizona, channeler and metaphysical counselor, learned of
the Planetary Council one day in 1991. In an
out-of-body state, she met the twelve ascended masters who compose the ruling body
of Earths solar system. Over the next few
years, they returned individually to channel
the histories of the planets and their futures.
Each planet, she learned, is like a university.
Each of us comes from somewhere else, from
a higher dimension of existence known as the
Source, and enters through star gates such as
Lyra, Orion, Sirius, and the Pleiades, where
our higher frequencies of Light are gradually
decreased to prepare for life in the denser
third dimension, in Korsholms words (Korsholm, 1991), on the way to the solar system.
The education starts at the Schools of Saturn, where the pilgrim gets a crash course in
each planets vibrations before spending a separate lifetime on at least one other planet before
making the decision whether to volunteer for
postgraduate work on Earth (Korsholm,

Power of Light

1995). On the chosen planet, one assumes the

physical form of its inhabitants. That means
that on Venus one becomes a winged humanoid that gives off light and color as it flies.
Merbeings live on Neptune, and on Uranus
one finds hairy primates with the features of
both human beings and the great apes. Mars
has two advanced insect races, one of ants, the
other of praying mantises. Jupiter houses
giant, intelligent reptilian forms. Each species
got its Light Intelligence from a group of traveling extraterrestrials called the Watchers who
monitor planets looking for species of exceptional promise. As Earth was being developed,
the inhabitants of other planets were asked to
contribute representatives, thus fairies, mermen and mermaids, Bigfoot/Sasquatch, insects, and dinosaurs. Explorers and refugees
from star wars live on the other planets. Evidence of the presence of neighboring extraterrestrials can be found in archaeological discoveries and ancient myths. Each group tended to
concentrate its efforts in a particular region,
for example Martians in the Middle East, Uranians in Mexico, and Plutonians in China.
Earth and other planets have undergone
much turbulence, much of it caused by the
tenth planet, Phoenix. This huge planets
three thousand plus year orbit is at right angles to the plane of all the other planets orbits, Korsholm explains (Korsholm, 1995),
and when the other planets are on the same
side of the sun as it, its powerful magnetic
force field causes havoc on the surfaces of
those worlds, both destroying and creating.
The Planetary Council must always monitor
the location and effects of Phoenix. Its members also deal with the periodic arrival of
groups from other solar systems. Some are
highly evolved and benign, others less developed and belligerent.
According to Korsholm, the members of
the Planetary Council are: Horus, representing the sun, coordinates the councils work
with that of higher space intelligences and
Christ councils. Hermes (Mercury) is in
charge of communication through space.
Adonis (Venus) guides the evolution of love

201

and beauty. Enoch (Earth) oversees prophecy.

Croesus (Mars) is responsible for the coordination of council activities with the dictates of
the Ascended Masters in the Brotherhood of
Light. Athena (the asteroid belt, formerly the
planet Maldek) defends truth and justice. Jove
(Jupiter) balances magnetic fields. Zoroaster
(Saturn) monitors order, structure, and destiny. Quetzalcoatal (Uranus) leads religious
and philosophical change. Merlin (Neptune)
directs scientific discovery. Lao-Tzu (Pluto)
offers objective, detached wisdom, and Apollo
(Phoenix) generates change. All of these individuals figure in earthly mythology and (in
the case of Lao-Tzu, the founder of Taoism)
history.
See Also: Ascended Masters; Athena; Fairies encountered; Sasquatch
Further Reading
Korsholm, Celeste, 1991. Lao-Tzu, Planetary
Council Member from Pluto. http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/pluto-celeste.html.
, 1995. Tales from the Planets. http://spiritweb.org/Spirit/tales-planets-celeste.html.

Portla
Portla is best remembered as the extraterrestrial who in a July 18, 1952, channeling with
George W. Van Tassel introduced Ashtar, the
most ubiquitous and beloved of New Age beings. The psychic message was, Approaching
your solar system is a ventla [spaceship] with
our chief aboard, commander of the station
Schare in charge of the first four sectors. . . .
We are waiting here at 72,000 miles above
you to welcome our chief, who will be entering this solar system for the first time (Van
Tassel, 1952). The chief was Ashtar.
See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Van Tassel, George W.
Further Reading
Van Tassel, George W., 1952. I Rode a Flying Saucer!
The Mystery of the Flying Saucers Revealed. Los
Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.

Power of Light (POL)

One day in 1967, a deeply unhappy Swedish
man, Bjorn Ortenheim, vowed to commit sui-

202

Prince Neosom

Landscape with volcanic craters, Haleakala Mountains, Maui, Hawaii National Park. Bjorn Ortenheim was informed by
Power of Light that Lemurian ruins with still powerful energies and vibrations could be found on or near the ocean around
Maui. (Library of Congress)

cide. Prior to committing the act, however, he

lapsed into a deep, almost comalike sleep.
When he awoke, he was mysteriously transformed, full of scientific ambitions and bold
ideas. He soon became aware that otherworldly
entities were instructing him during his sleep.
They were particularly interested in nonpolluting technology and in other inventions that
would elevate human consciousness. In 1981,
the leader of the group, Power of Light (Ortenheim soon began thinking of him as POL), appeared to him in waking consciousness.
Ortenheim found himself ever more attracted to the Hawaiian island of Maui. POL
informed him that Lemurian ruins with still
powerful energies and vibrations could be
found on or near the ocean. In fact, the capital city of Lemuria, Denerali, lay under the
water in the bay outside Maui. POL said a
large crystal from that lost continent existed

there. Ortenheim should use its energies, employing his own technological innovations to
enhance them, to raise human consciousness.
He soon moved to Maui to pursue his
work, always under POLs guidance. According to Ortenheim, POL is not a person but a
near-god who is among Gods highest servants. POL is, he says, in charge of the ultimate energy and source of life in our universe,
the Universal Magnetic Field, UMF (Montgomery, 1985).
See Also: Lemuria
Further Reading
Montgomery, Ruth, 1985. Aliens among Us. New
York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Prince Neosom
Prince Neosom was Lee Childers, a Detroit
baker who, in 1958, reinvented himself as a

Psychoterrestrials

member of the royal family of the planet

Tythan, eight and a half light years from
Earth. Neosom said he had replaced the body
of a stillborn child (Childers). He also claimed
that he could travel instantaneously through
space simply by closing his eyes and wishing
himself to other planets. Three times, he said,
the men in black had killed him, and three
times a rejuvenation machine had brought
him back to life.
At the peak of his brief moment in the
spotlight, Neosom/Childers was brought to
New York City to lecture. In December 1958,
he appeared on Long John Nebels popular
WOR radio show, which catered to the eccentric and the esoteric, but he managed to get
thrown off the air before his allotted time was
up; his stories were too outlandish even for
the famously tolerant Nebel. By this time,
Childers had left his wife and five children
and taken up with Beth Docker, soon renamed Princess Negonna, whom he soon
married and honeymooned with on Tythan.
Childerss career on saucerdoms fringes
continued until the early 1960s.
See Also: Men in black
Further Reading
Barker, Gray, 1959. Chasing the Flying Saucers.
Flying Saucers (May): 1943.
Mann, Michael G., 1960. Prince or King, He Isnt a
Spaceman! Saucer News 7, 1 (March): 57.
Mapes. D. O., 1959. Prince Neosom, Planet: Tyton
[sic]. Buffalo, NY: self-published.

Psychoterrestrials
New Age psychologist Michael Grosso uses
the term psychoterrestrials to describe a
range of anomalous and paranormal entities,
including UFO beings, Marian apparitions,
and men in black. He believes that such entities, though mythic constructs, are able to
assume a quasi-physical reality because of the
deep resonance they have in humanitys collective psyche. Another name for psychoterrestrials is psychic projections.
Grosso believes that UFOs and other exotic
phenomena are forces of rebirth that the

203

An artists impression of a gray alien, based on witness

descriptions, an example of a psychoterrestrial being
(Debbie Lee/Fortean Picture Library)

ultradimensional mind has conjured up to

transform mass consciousness in order to save
the human race for otherwise certain selfdestruction. Given the timeless, spaceless nature of ESP and PK [psychokinesis], perhaps
some (or all) human minds form a systema
parallel universe of mind, a distinct entity
with its own properties. . . . It would be a
mind with properties distinct from component minds, on the assumption that the whole
is greater than the sum of its parts. . . . Perhaps this is the entity that holds the secret to
the UFO mystery (Grosso, 1991).
In his view, psychoterrestrial phenomena
are so powerful that, for example, in their
UFO manifestation they are even able to
show up on radar. Grosso drew inspiration in
his speculations from the celebrated Swiss
psychologist and philosopher C. G. Jung. In
his own reflection on the UFO phenomenon,
however, Jung, who thought UFOs were
probably of extraterrestrial origin, rejected the

204 Puddys abduction

Aliens, or psychoterrestrials, capture a man played by James Earl Jones in The UFO Incident, an NBC TV movie, 1975.
(Photofest)

notion of materialized psychisms as impossible, and, in particular, he dismissed the notion that materialized psychisms, even if they
could be proved to exist, could be detected by
instruments such as radar.
See Also: Imaginal beings; Marian apparitions; Men
in black
Further Reading
Grosso, Michael, 1985. The Final Choice: Playing
the Survival Game. Walpole, NH: Stillpoint
Publishing.
, 1992. Frontiers of the Soul: Exploring Psychic
Evolution. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books.
, 1989. UFOs and the Myth of the New
Age. In Dennis Stillings, ed. Cyberbiological
Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO
Contact Experience, 8198. St. Paul, MN: Arches
Project.
, 1991. The Ultradimensional Mind.
Strange Magazine 7 (April): 1013.
Jung, C. G., 1959. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of
Things Seen in the Skies. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and Company.

Puddys abduction
An incident from Australia in the early
1970s may or may not shed light on the
UFO abduction phenomenon. Maureen
Puddys experiences, some contend, indicate
that persons who believe that aliens have kidnapped them may instead be suffering vivid
hallucinations, perhaps in altered states of
consciousness.
On the evening of July 3, 1972, on her way
home from seeing her hospitalized son, this
thirty-seven-year-old Victoria woman was
alarmed to see a glowing blue UFO pacing
her car at a distance of no more than a hundred feet. Just as suddenly as it appeared, it
was gone. One night later that month, she
began hearing a mental voice repeatedly
speaking her name. The next evening, July 25,
at the same place she had seen it before, the
UFO showed up. Her car engine abruptly

Puddys abduction

ceased functioning, and everything became

eerily silent. A mechanical voice speaking too
perfect English told her, All your tests will
be negative. It went on, Tell the media. Do
not panic. We mean no harm (Magee, 1972,
1978). At the UFOs departure the cars engine resumed operation.
She next heard the voice in February, when it
instructed her to return to the meeting place.
By this time she had met with two prominent
ufologists, Judith Magee and Paul Norman, so
she called them and asked them to meet her at
the designated location. As Puddy waited in her
parked car for the two to arrive, a man with
long, blond hair, wearing a uniform that looked
like a ski suit, briefly appeared next to her before he vanished. As soon as they pulled up,
Magee and Norman joined her inside her vehicle. Puddy shouted that the same strange man
was beckoning to her, but the investigators saw
nothing. She then seemed to faint, though her
mouth kept moving. She spoke of being in a
round room and watching as a mushroomshaped device rose from the middle of the floor.
It was covered with markings reminiscent of hieroglyphics. Near it stood the blond-haired figure she had seen minutes before. She said the
man was telling her to describe what she was
seeing. All the while Puddy was growing ever

205

more frightened, until finally she broke into

tears. At that moment she regained full consciousness but remembered nothing.
She claimed one other subsequent encounter with the stranger, whom she saw
standing in the road about a week later.
Australian ufologist Keith Basterfield
would write, All who interviewed Maureen
Puddy thought her to be a normal, healthy individual. The entire series of events puzzled
her, and she got nothing but ridicule from
persons for reporting the episodes (Basterfield, 1992). Her story bore some resemblance
to abduction accounts, but there are also some
differences, notably the absence of the medical examination which figures in most such
experiences. Still, skeptics see it as evidence
that what witnesses believe to be objective experiences may in fact be subjective in nature.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs
Further Reading
Basterfield, Keith, 1992. Present at the Abduction.
International UFO Reporter 17, 3 (May/June):
1314, 23.
Magee, Judith, 1972. UFO over the Mooraduc
Road. Flying Saucer Review 18, 6 (November/
December): 35.
, 1978. Maureen Puddys Third Encounter.
Flying Saucer Review 24, 3 (November 1978):
1213, 15.

R. D.

Ra

In both abduction reports and contactee stories, claimants sometimes report seeing
human beings onboard a UFO and in the
company of aliens. One such incident is said
to have occurred on June 5, 1964, in Argentina. At 4 A.M., a doctor and his wife were
driving a few miles from the airport at Pajas
Blancas, in Cordoba province, when their engine failed. A huge, extraordinary-looking
craft landed on the highway in front of them.
For the next twenty minutes the couple stared
in puzzlement and unease at the UFO. Then,
according to a press account, a man walked
out of it and spoke to them in Spanish, Dont
be 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 your
own fashion (Creighton, 1974).
The man walked slowly back toward the
UFO and was joined by two gray-clad beings
who had suddenly appeared. They boarded
the ship, and it flew rapidly away, a violet-colored trail in its wake.

Ra channeled through Carla Rueckert. Ra was

not an individual but a group entity, part of
the Confederation of Planets in the Service
of the Infinite Creator (Rueckert and Elkins,
1977). The goal, Ra said, was to give instructions to those of planet Earth who would seek
the instructions for how to produce within
themselves the vibration that is more harmonious with the original thought.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees

Further Reading
Creighton, Gordon, 1974. The Humanoids in
Latin America. In Charles Bowen, ed. The Hu manoids, 84129. London: Futura Publications.

207

Further Reading
Rueckert, Carla, and Don Elkins, 1977. Secrets of the
UFOs. Louisville, KY: L/L Research.

Rainbow City
Rainbow City was the ancestral, earthly home
of the human race, according to a mystically
inclined couple, W. C. and Gladys Hefferlin.
It was located in Antarctica before the Earth
tipped on its side, and the continent became
the uninhabitable place as it is known today.
The Hefferlins surfaced in 1946, in short
pieces published in Ray Palmers Amazing Sto ries, then publishing a series of stories detailing the Shaver mystery, a supposedly true account of Richard Shavers adventures with
good and evil races living in caverns under the
earth. After W. C. Hefferlin made a passing
reference to Rainbow City, Palmer ap-

208

Rainbow City

pended a statement describing it as the headquarters, a deserted city of the Gods (or the
Elder Race) under the ice of the [South] Pole
(Kafton-Minkel, 1989). Hefferlin claimed to
have access to advanced weapons and devices
left over from Rainbow City, but his assertions about the science behind them were so
full of elementary technical errors that reader
ridicule encouraged Palmer to cease publishing Hefferlins writings.
He and his wife reappeared, however, in
1947 and 1948, in publications of the California-based Borderland Sciences Research
Associates. In a series of articles, they recounted their association with a mysterious
man named Emery, whom they first met in
1927. Over time they developed a system of
telepathic communication with him, sending
thoughts back and forth from their Indiana
home to his in New York City. Emery began
to travel widely, dropping out of sight without
explanation, then reappearing. Just before the
onset of World War II, he informed them that
he had met a Tibetan master who lived in a
hidden valley in that nation. Soon he was
working under orders from the Masters of
Human Destiny, otherwise known as the Ancient Three.
Recognizing W. C. Hefferlin as a reincarnated engineer who had worked for the ancients long ago, the Three asked him for help
in constructing a fleet of three hundred-fifty
circle-winged aircraft. After the craft were
completed, they searched Antarctica for the
ruins of Rainbow City, where the Three had
lived during their first earthly incarnation.
Emery himself participated in the search,
which ended on Thanksgiving Day 1942
when he found Rainbow City.
Over time, Emery revealed the secrets of the
Three to the Hefferlins. Once, they said, the
human race ruled hundreds of galaxies. Unfortunately, the spacefarers eventually encountered
the Snake People, and soon deadly conflict
spread through the cosmos. After centuries of
stalemate, the tide turned in the Snake Peoples
favor. The Snake People pursued the humans
through space, stranding some on obscure,

backwater planets. The rest made it to the

planet now known as Mars, where the last of
the Human Empire lived in relative comfort
for a long time. Then the planet began to die,
its oxygen and water evaporating and the temperature growing ever colder.
Thus the humans found their way to the
third planet in the solar system. They settled
in what is now Antarctica, a pleasant, temperate place. They built seven cities, each with its
own color (Red City, Green City, Blue City,
and so on). The greatest of all was Rainbow
City, constructed from many colors of a very
hard plastic. Under the wise leadership of the
son and daughter of the Great Ruler (still on
Mars) and the daughters fianc (later to be
called the Ancient Three), the colony thrived,
and a golden age ensued, ending when the
Snake People, having discovered where the
humans were hiding, mounted a surprise attack. In the fierce battles that followed, the
Earth was knocked on its side, turning
Antarctica into a wasteland. The humans were
driven to other, now warmer continents.
Their technology destroyed, they were reduced to a primitive state and gradually lost
all memory of their former elevated state.
When they rediscovered it, Emery and his
associates found the city surrounded by ten
thousand feet of ice, thus concealing the remains from previous explorers. Hot springs
beneath the city kept it warm, and the search
party went through all six levels. Inside the
city, plants and trees of all kinds still grew,
along with huge butterflies. All kinds of evidence of the ancients presence survived, including clothes (which suggested they were
eight feet tall) and advanced technology. The
technology included a teleportation device
and a vast subway system. The trains were
linked to hollow caverns all over the earth.
Emery traveled to some of them and found
yet more wonders from the ancients.
The Ancient Three sought to restore the
human races former glories. According to the
Hefferlins, the worlds nonwhite races had already accepted their leadership, which was
headquartered in seven temples in Africa,

Ramtha

Asia, and South America. The thought machines inside these temples broadcast vibrations to those who were receptive to them.
The principal message was that other nations
must free themselves of European domination, though the Ancient Three had opposed
the Japanese imperial designs that helped
spark World War II. Once the Ancient Three
had realized their vision and taken benevolent
control of the Earth, there would be no more
slavery, colonialism, or excessive taxation, and
all races would be equal.
Though the Hefferlins soon faded into obscurity without ever providing proof of Rainbow City (or even of their enigmatic friend
Emery, for that matter), the notion of Rainbow City figured in Robert Dickhoffs
Agharta: The Subterranean World (1951) and
Michael X. Bartons Rainbow City and the
Inner Earth People (1960).
See Also: Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
X, Michael [pseud. of Michael X. Barton], 1960.
Rainbow City and the Inner Earth People. Los Angeles: Futura.

Ramtha
Ramtha, perhaps the leading channeled entity
of the 1980s, first appeared in a Tacoma,
Washington, living room to announce, I am
Ramtha, the Enlightened One, and I have
come to help you over the ditchby which,
it turned out, he meant the ditch of limitation (Knight, 1987). J. Z. Knight (born Judith Darlene Hampton) and her husband had
been experimenting with pyramids, which according to a 1970s New Age belief had mysterious powers. For a short time, Knight believed that Ramtha was a demonic entity.
Soon, however, a spiritualist friend helped her
understand the nature of her experience, and
she gave her guidance in how to channel
Ramtha. On December 17, 1978, she gave
the first public channeling of Ramtha.

209

Ramtha claimed to be 35,000 years old,

born on the lost continent of Lemuria.
Lemuria, in the Pacific, was destroyed in an irresponsible experiment its scientists conducted. Some residents, including Ramthas
family, escaped to southern Atlantis (the experiment that devastated Lemuria also destroyed much of north Atlantis). There they
lived, experiencing poverty and discrimination in the slums of a city called Onai. When
he grew into adulthood, Ramtha led a revolt,
which overthrew the existing order in Atlantis. As he was recovering from wounds, he
became interested in meditation and spent
much time reflecting on metaphysical questions. He also learned to alter his body so that
its vibrations changed, allowing him to enter
the light realm. On the occasion of his physical death, he ascended permanently to that
realm. Just before that happened, though, he
demonstrated his new paranormal powers in
India, where he is still remembered and
revered as the incarnate deity Rama.
In the early 1980s, Knight went public
with Ramtha. She traveled throughout the
United States giving two-day workshops
known as Ramtha Dialogues. Along the
way, she attracted the attention of New Ageoriented celebrities such as Shirley MacLaine,
Richard Chamberlain, Mike Farrell, and Shelley Fabres, who enthusiastically supported her
work. MacLaine discussed Ramtha in her
best-selling Dancing in the Light (1985).
Knight put together a nonprofit corporation
that evolved into the non-tax-exempt Sovereignty, Inc.
By this time, Knight had amassed so much
money that a growing legion of critics questioned her sincerity. She now lived on a luxurious horse-breeding ranch in Yelm, Washington, the focus of a large following of pilgrims
who had moved to the Northwest from
homes all over the nation and the world.
Some, seeking a safe haven from the cataclysmic Earth changes that Ramtha said were
about to occur, had left families to do so. Sessions with Ramtha were expensive. Beyond
that, critics charged, Ramtha had become, in

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Ramu

effect, Knights business partner; would-be investors in Knights Arabian horses would seek
the masters advice. After some complained
they had purchased mediocre horses after
heeding Ramthas advice, authorities investigated, and Knight ended up reimbursing unhappy buyers, though no charges were filed.
Critics also asserted that the once gregarious,
friendly Ramtha had grown ever more authoritarian and demanding. Even some sympathetic to channeling beliefs speculated that
whatever energy came through J. Z. Knight
has either shifted, departed, or been replaced
by a less benign entity (Klimo, 1987).
In 1988, Knight formed Ramthas School of
Enlightenment, which claims some three thousand students from twenty-three countries. In
1995, a small scandal erupted when press accounts exposed the Federal Aviation Administrations payment of $1.4 million for sensitivity-training classes overseen by a Ramtha
disciple. Over the past decade or so, according
to one knowledgeable observer, the prophecies
of Knight and Ramtha seem to have moved
closer to those of right-wing survivalists and
anti-Semites, who foresee a world held in the
sinister group of international bankers as part
of a New World Order (Brown, 1997).
Knowledgeable observers, such as religiousstudies scholar J. Gordon Melton, say that
much of Ramthas teaching comes from the
Gnostic tradition, which holds that God exists within each of us and is to be found there
through contemplation and self-mastery.
See Also: Atlantis; Channeling; Lemuria
Further Reading
Brown, Michael F., 1997. The Channeling Zone:
American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Carroll, Robert Todd, n.d. The Skeptics Dictionary: Ramtha aka J. Z. Knight. http://skepdic.
com/channel.html.
Kauki, Christopher Vincent, 1997. Ramtha in the
Petri Dish: The Mixing of Science and Faith in
Yelm. Syzygy 6, 1 (Winter/Spring): 139142.
Klimo, Jon, 1987. Channeling: Investigations on Re ceiving Information from Paranormal Sources. Los
Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.
Knight, J. Z., 1987. A State of Mind. New York:
Warner Books.

MacLaine, Shirley, 1985. Dancing in the Light. New

York: Bantam Books.
Melton, J. Gordon, 1998. Finding Enlightenment:
Ramthas School of Ancient Wisdom. Hillsboro,
OR: Beyond Words Publishing.
Stearn, Jess, 1984. Soul Mates. New York: Bantam
Books.
Weinberg, Steven L., ed., 1986. Ramtha. Eastsound,
WA: Sovereignty.
, ed., 1988. Ramtha: An Introduction. Eastbound, WA: Sovereignty.

Ramu
Ramu is the name George Adamski gave to a
visitor from Saturn. With Ramu and others,
Adamski flew around the moon one memorable night in 1954. He cautioned, however,
that Ramu, like the other Space Brothers, has
an entirely different concept of names as we
use them (Adamski, 1955). Thus, Ramu was
not really the spacemans name. Adamski describes Ramu as slightly over six feet, with
ruddy complexion and dark brown eyes and
wavy black hair.
A different Ramu from Saturn figures in a
story that farmer Velma Thayer told the
Cincinnati Enquirer in August 1955. This
Ramu landed in a flying saucer at her Lake
Geneva, Wisconsin, farm on October 15,
1928, along with other little fellows. All
were blond-haired and from four feet six
inches to five feet three inches in height. They
stayed for ten days (it is not clear whether at
Thayers residence or in their saucer). Ramu
told Thayer that they were from Saturn and
had come with peaceful intentions. U.S. government authorities came to the farm and
placed a guard around the ship. At one point,
however, the guard fell asleep, and the saucer
escaped. Thayer said she had had occasional
contacts since with Ramu and his crew.
Nonetheless, in an earlier accountone
published in a contactee-oriented magazine
before Adamskis Ramu became known
Thayer did not mention a Ramu in connection with the alleged experience, suggesting
that the inclusion of the name was a later embellishment. This earlier version says nothing

Renata

about communication or interaction with the

crew. When the saucer landed, according to
her, Seven small people emerged and ran into
the woods, never to be seen again (Space
Ship, 1954). In their absence, she examined
the ship inside and out. Rather than escaping,
the craft was taken to the General Electric laboratory, which subsequently informed her
that it was made up of materials that definitely did not belong to this earth. According
to Thayer, a dozen landings of ships with similar crews took place in Wisconsin and Illinois
between 1919 and 1930.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees
Further Reading
Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,
1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Space Ship Lands in Celery Field, 1954. Interplan etary News Digest (March): 22.

Raphael
Raphael is responsible for the Starseed transmissions, said to come from a parallel dimension through channeler Ken Carey. Carey, a
Missouri farmer, had no previous channeling
experience before Raphael came through one
day in 1979. He says the messages first arrived
via waves or pulsations that translated symbols into their verbal correlates. Often, he
writes, it was the case that the only human
conceptual system with approximating terminology was religious. Hence, the occasional
use of Christian words and phrases (Carey,
1982). Eventually, the communications occurred more straightforwardly in English.
Raphael says he exists only when he is interacting with Carey or with whomever he is
communicating through Carey. When he is
not active, he merges back into the Being behind all being, awaiting his next mission. On
one occasion, however, he claimed to be the
intelligence represented by Christ.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Carey, Ken, 1982. The Starseed Transmissions: An Ex traterrestrial Report. Kansas City, MO: UNISUN.

211

Raydia
After a 1979 UFO sighting, Lyssa Royal
found herself more and more fascinated with
paranormal subjects. Her interests led her, in
1984, to Darryl Anka, who channeled Bashar.
During the period of her association with
Anka, she had a vivid dream in which an entity appeared to inform her that soon she herself would be channeling. She was led to a
channeling class in Los Angeles. By 1985, a
number of entities were making their presence
known to her. One was Raydia, who stayed
with Royal for three years.
Royal went on to found the Association of
Love and Light, channeling Raydia as well as
some others. Raydia was a heart-centered
female entity, a collective consciousness
with a strong affiliation with the star Arcturus. She last communicated in 1988,
telling persons who were sitting in on a channeling session, You will never see me in this
form again. Royal says that Raydia integrated herself into an entity Royal would
subsequently channel, Germane (Behind the
Veil, 1998).
See Also: Bashar; Channeling; Germane
Further Reading
Behind the Veil: A Look at the Phenomenon of
Channeling, 1998. http://www.royalpriest.com/
channel.htm.
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of Ameri can Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale
Research.

Renata
Renata channels through Scott Amun. On
April 15, 1999, she (gender is presumed since
the entity does not specify its sex) came
through for the first time to discuss various
issues.
Renata says that on her planet, Osyllium,
people look and act much like humans; yet,
paradoxically, Osylliums history is richer and
more diverse than Earths. Perhaps one reason
is that Osyllium people change their language
every four or five years. They do this by adjusting their brain frequencies, and the purpose is to accelerate change and encourage

212

Reptoid child

new insight. Great changes are about to occur

on Earth through the electrical energy that
emanates from the north pole. Human beings
soon will notice a special effect in the
northern lightsa message from Renatas
people. Humans will also sense a changing
situation in their dreams, which will help prepare them for their opening into higher electrical frequencies.

from ordinary light but was comfortable in

infrared light. Scales began to grow along its
spine. An expert who has requested
anonymity examined photographs of the
creature, which he deduced belonged to a
saurian species.
The mother is raising the creature in seclusion. It is an amphibian reptile said to be
horrible to behold.

Further Reading
Amun, Scott, 1999. Morning Dawns on the
Human Race. http://www.scottamun.com/
write/April1598write.htm.

See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Reptoids

Further Reading
Corrales, Scott, 2000. Alien Shock: The Encounter
Phenomenon Overseas. Ohio UFO Notebook 21:
2226.

Reptoid child
In a story represented as true by Mexican ufologist Luis Ramirez Reyes, a woman is said to
have given birth to a hideous alien baby after a
missing-time, presumed abduction experience. Ramirez claims that the birth took place
in September 1993 but due to its very nature
has been kept under wraps.
The unnamed woman, a cosmetics salesperson, was on her usual route, which took
her between Mexico City and Poza Rica, Veracruz, one day in early 1993. As she passed
the Teotihuacan pyramids, she saw what she
thought was a UFO in the clear sky. Suddenly,
she found herself in Poza Rica. Though her
wristwatch told her it was 11 A.M., the actual
time was 2 P.M. She had no idea how she had
traveled the 185 miles to the city.
In the weeks to come, she experienced
weakness and nausea. When a doctor examined her, he pronounced her pregnant. She
protested that this was impossible; she was a
virgin. Nonetheless, seven months later, she
gave birth to a hideous creature described as
having double-membraned eyes, thick froglike lips, joined fingers and hard, shell-feature
on its skin which [was] similar to a tortoises
shell. At first the doctors and nurses panicked. The clinic director finally managed to
calm them. He ordered them to keep the matter strictly confidential.
The creature was kept in an incubator for
three weeks, fed on a diet of herbs. It recoiled

Reptoids
Beings sometimes referred to as reptoids or
reptilians figure in a number of abduction
and contact reports. According to one source,
three different varieties exist: the Reptoid
(reptilian-humanoid crossbreeds), the various
reptilian-gray crossbreed types, and the hierarchical 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 involving reptoids (though before the concept had
become popular) happened on November 17,
1967, when thirteen-year-old David Seewaldt
of Calgary, Alberta, while crossing a vacant
lot, heard a high-pitched sound. When he
looked for its source, he saw a house-sized
UFO landing. It shot a beam of light at him,
putting him into a trancelike state as he was
levitated into the craft. There two hideouslooking entities with brown crocodile skin
took off Seewaldts clothes and led him into a
room where he was examined and given a
shot. He was then beamed back to the field.
By the time he got home, all conscious memory of the encounter had passed. It returned
five months later in a vivid dream. A year
later, investigators, including a University of
Alberta psychologist, interviewed the youth.
John S. Carpenter, a Missouri-based social
worker and abduction researcher, reports cases

213

An artists rendition of the Loveland Frogman, a reptoid that was seen by two Ohio policemen in March 1972 (Ron
Schaffner/Fortean Picture Library)

214

Reptoids

of repulsive and insensitive reptilian aliens.

What is fascinating, he writes, is that persons who had never heard of these lizard-types
are reporting strikingly similar details in regards [sic] to their anatomy, manner, and behavior. In every case of mine the reptilian
forces a rape upon the subject with no explanation or apparent reason (Carpenter, 1994).
Another researcher, Karla Turner, has written
of similar incidents, including one in which
an abductee recalled being on a table surrounded by humanoid aliens. She said, A
reptile-looking creature was getting on top of
me, I guess to rape me, just before she lapsed
into unconsciousness (Turner, 1994).
Besides such experiential claims, reptoid/
reptilian aliens have given rise to a new
mythology that fuses conspiracy theories, biblical literalism, hollow earth, and other ideas.
Among the most bizarre is the assertion by a
leader of Britains Green Party, David Icke,
who holds that the Royal Family are shapeshifting reptilians who conduct bloody rituals
on hapless human victims, including children.
At least one writer reports that former President George Bush is a reptilian. Others assert
that reptoids live in vast caverns underground,
working in collaboration with evil forces in
U.S. military and intelligence communities.
Others say that the reptilians have been slandered, thatexcept for their (to the human
eye) unsettling appearancethey are gentle,
decent, and well intentioned.
One who speaks well of reptilians is jazz
singer Pamela Stonebrooke, who has spoken
openly of a sexual relationship with one. She
has great respect for him and a profound
connection with this being. Under hypnosis,
she was regressed to an earlier life hundreds of
thousands of years ago to find herself a member of a band of reptilian warriors facing a
catastrophic event in which we perished
together. . . . I believe that on one level, I may
be meeting these entities again, perhaps fellow
warriors from the past warning us of an impending, self-inflicted doom (The Reptilians, n.d.). Carpenter has written of reptoid
witnesses known to him, One . . . sheepishly

admits to having an incredible orgasm while

being totally repulsed by the intruders
grotesque appearance. Within two months a
second female from the same town reported
independently the same type of Reptilian invader, with the same surprising and embarrassing orgasmic response! (Carpenter, 1993).
Some observers believe that the reptilians
are satanic entities related to the serpent who
led Adam and Eve astray. They maintain that
hundreds of thousands of these creaturesas
many as one hundred fifty-thousand in New
York alonelive in underground bases, feasting on children whom they lure into their
lairs. According to some, however, the reptilians are vegetarians.
John Rhodes writes that the reptilians
travel from their home regionAlpha Draconisin mother ships with most of the occupants in a state of suspended animation for
the bulk of the voyage. As they pass planets,
some of the functioning crew fly off in scout
ships to study the new worlds and establish
subterranean bases thereon. Where Earth is
concerned, according to Rhodes, the reptilians hatch their plots from these bases, establishing a network of human-reptilian crossbred infiltrates [sic] within various levels of
the surface cultures military industrial complexes, government bodies, UFO/paranormal
groups, religious, and fraternal (priest) orders,
etc. These crossbreeds, some unaware of their
reptilian genetic mind-control instructions,
act out their subversive roles as reptilian
agents, setting the stage for an [sic] reptilian
led ET invasion (Rhodes, n.d.).
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Close encounters of
the third kind; Hollow earth; Hybrid beings;
King Leo; Reptoid child; Volmo
Further Reading
Allan, W. K., 1975. Crocodile-Skinned Entities at
Calgary. Flying Saucer Review 20, 6 (April):
2526.
Carpenter, John S., 1993. Abduction Notes: Reptilians and Other Unmentionables. MUFON
UFO Journal 300 (April): 1011.
, 1994. Other Types of Aliens: Patterns
Emerging. In Andrea Pritchard, David E.
Pritchard, John E. Mack, Pam Kasey, and Claudia Yapp, eds. Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the

215

A painting of Madame Helene Blavatsky, who proposed the theory of five root races, with the symbol of the Theosophical
Society above her head (Fortean Picture Library)

216

Root Races

Abduction Study Conference, 9195. Cambridge,

MA: North Cambridge Press.
Coleman, Loren, 1988. Other Lizard People Revisited. Strange Magazine 3: 34.
DLight, Joy, and Elliemiser, 1999. The Reptilians
and King Leo. http://www.greatdreams.com/
reptlan/repleo.htm.
McClure, Kevin, 1999. Dark Ages. Fortean Times
129 (December): 2832.
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-Human
Abduction Agenda. Roland, AR: Kelt Works.

Root Races
In the alternative reality proposed in the influential nineteenth-century Theosophical writings of Helene Petrovna Blavatsky, the world
has seen five root races, each with its own
seven sub-races, and these latter with their
own branch races. Blavatsky wrote that two
more root races will come before the human
race finishes its evolution.
The First Root Race, of fire mist folk,
lived near the north pole in the Imperishable
Sacred Land. They were invisible. The Second
Root Race were astral beings on their way to
becoming material and visible. Also living in
the polar region, they occupied a more or less
material 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; some

had four arms, and some had an eye in the
back of their heads. These beings lived on the
now-lost Pacific continent of Lemuria. By the
time the Fourth Root Race, dwelling on Atlantis, appeared on Earth, the present human
form had developed. Humans represent the
Fifth Root Race. In the relatively near future,
the Sixth Root Race will replace humans.
After the Seventh Root Race has risen and
fallen, a new cycle of civilizations will begin
on the planet Mercury.
Blavatsky claimed as her source for these
revelations an archaic Manuscripta collection of palm leaves made impermeable to
water, fire, and air, by some specific unknown
process. . . . On the first page is an immaculate white disk within a dull black ground. On
the following page, the same disk, but with a
central point (Blavatsky, 1889). These Stanzas of Dzyan recorded the hidden history of
the cosmos and all of its inhabitants, including the human race. Other scholars, however,
contend that Blavatsky drew on contemporary scientific and occult literature and embellished it considerably, though not quite beyond recognition.
See Also: Atlantis; Lemuria
Further Reading
Blavatsky, 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: The
Woman behind the Myth. New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Saint Michael

Sananda

Saint Michael the Archangel is perhaps best

known from the traditional Georgia Sea Islands spiritual Michael, Row the Boat
Ashore, but even in contemporary time
some people claim to have experienced his
presence. One is a Southern California
woman, Melissa MacLeod, a practicing
Roman Catholic. In the 1980s, she experienced terrifying nocturnal visitations in
which a tall, black-hooded figure stared at her
menacingly from beside her bed. She is convinced, according to ufologist Ann Druffel,
that her intense belief in Michael saved her
from this demonic manifestation.
Fascinated by MacLeods experiences, a
friend, writer and parapsychologist Stephen
A. Schwartz, engaged in three months intense
meditation to see if he could visualize
Michael. After three months, a point of light
suddenly shone in his room. Within it, the
form of a luminous entity, human in shape
but larger, emerged into view. He had a demeanor of absolute implacability, Schwartz
recalled (Druffel, 1998). He was convinced he
had seen the archangel.

Sananda, a popular channeling entity, is a powerful being who is Ashtars superior in the space
mission to redeem Earth. Sananda, known as
Jesus in an earlier, earthly incarnation, is perhaps best known, however, as the principal
contact of Dorothy Martin (Sister Thedra),
whose failed prophecy of earth-shaking events
in December 1954 attracted worldwide attention and became the subject of an influential
case study in the sociology of religion.

Further Reading
Druffel, Ann, 1998. How to Defend Yourself
against Alien Abduction. New York: Three
Rivers Press.

217

See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Hierarchal Board; Sister Thedra

Further Reading
Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley
Schachter, 1956. When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Tuella [pseud. of Thelma B. Turrell], ed., 1989.
Ashtar: A Tribute. Third edition. Salt Lake City,
UT: Guardian Action Publications.

Sasquatch
Sasquatchalso known as Bigfootis a large
apelike creature unrecognized by zoology but
often reported seen in the forests of the Pacific
Northwest of the United States and Canadas
far west. To those few scientists who are willing
to concede its possible existence, Sasquatch is
thought to be related to Homo sapiens primate
ancestors. In other words, though intelligent as

218

Saint Michael casting the dragon Satan and his angels down to Earth (Fortean Picture Library)

Sasquatch

219

A photograph of the track of a huge animal, seen by Mount Everest climbers and said to be made by the Abominable
Snowman, 1958. Similar creatures, generally called Bigfoot or Sasquatch, are often reported in the forests of the Pacific
Northwest of the United States and Canadas far west. (Bettmann/Corbis)

animals go, it does not have human, much less

superhuman, intelligence. There are, however,
individuals who claim contacteelike dealings
with Sasquatch, which they describe as highly
evolved beings with extraordinary mental
powers.
Southern California psychic Joyce Partise,
holding a sealed envelope containing a photograph of an alleged Sasquatch footprint,
declared that theres a civilization of thousands of gorilla men who live underground and are able to communicate with
those in outer space (Slate, 1976). Some
witnesses assert that when they tried to take
photographs or collect other direct evidence
of their Sasquatch sightings, the creatures
used a kind of hypnosis to prevent them
from acting.

Still others say they have received detailed

psychic messages, often consisting of spiritual and ecological material. The Sasquatch
may appear, at least initially, as no more
than a pair of glowing eyes or a ball of light
that can enter anywhere, even into closed
houses and bedrooms. They can also change
shapes. In a handful of cases, UFO witnesses
say they have seen apelike creatures during
close encounters, and a small number of abduction incidents recount onboard interactions with Sasquatch creatures, seen in the
company of (relatively) more conventional
humanoids.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees
Further Reading
Chorvinsky, Mark, 1994. Our Strange World. Fate
47, 10 (October): 2224.

220

Satonians

Fenwick, Lawrence J., 1983. Multiple Abductions

in Canada. MUFON UFO Journal Pt. I. 183
(May): 1013; Pt. II. 184 (June): 36.
Halpin, Marjorie, and Michael M. Ames, eds., 1980.
Manlike Monsters on Trial: Early Records and
Modern Evidence. Vancouver: University of
British Columbia Press.
Slate, B. Ann, 1976. Gods from Inner Space. UFO
Report 3, 1 (April): 3638, 5152, 54.
Slate, B. Ann, and Alan Berry, 1976. Bigfoot. New
York: Bantam Books.

Satonians
Satonians, according to the Solar Cross Foundation, a onetime organization of contactee
sympathizers, are evil space people. They look
exactly like good space people, but persons
who encounter them can detect their negative
thoughts. They also respond ambiguously and
evasively when asked to identify themselves.
Satonians always lose in conflicts with their
benevolent counterparts. A person approaching a spacecraft should be certain it is not a
Satonian ship.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Tuella [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 superhuman
adepts who have used their magical power and
knowledge to initiate and guide occult groups
and hidden societies.
According to British occultist S. L. MacGregor Mathers (18541918), who claimed
to have met the Secret Chiefs on a number of
occasions, these people or entities are able to
live in both physical and psychic bodies. They
are, he told a correspondent, possessed of terrible . . . powers. . . . I felt I was in contact
with a force so terrible that I can only compare it to the shock one would receive from
being near a flash of lightning during a great
thunderstorm (Keith, 1997).
Further Reading
Keith, Jim, 1997. Casebook on the Men in Black. Lilburn, GA: IllumiNet Press.

Semjase
Semjase is best known in contactee circles as a
beautiful spacewoman from the planet Erra
in the Pleiades star system. Eduard Billy
Meier of Switzerland claims to have met her
after her beamship landed on his farm on
the afternoon of January 28, 1975, initiating
a series of contacts that made Meier the most
well known and controversial of the secondgeneration contactees. Meier would allege
trips through space and time in the company
of Semjase and her associates, and he would
produce photographs said to depict her but
thought by critics to be a model in a Sears
catalog.
According to Meier, Semjase is around 350
years old, though she looks to be in her twenties. She is blond, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned.
Her only extraterrestrial characteristic is her
extended earlobes. Because she possesses
knowledge remarkable even by Pleiadian standards, she is considered an Jshrjsh (ish-rish), a
sort of demigoddess. Before meeting Meier in
1975, she spent eight years in the DAL Universe (a twin parallel universe to the Earths,
known as the DERN Universe) in the company of Asket, a DAL native woman who had
assisted Meier through his earlychild and
young-adultinteractions with extraterrestrials. She then left the DAL Universe and returned briefly to Erra before arriving in Europe. Meier insists that her orders were to
work exclusively on that continent.
While visiting the headquarters of the
Meier movement, the Semjase Silver Star
Center in Hinterschmidruti, Switzerland, on
December 15, 1977, she suffered a life-threatening accident. A beamship rushed her back
to Erra for medical treatment. On returning
the followed May, she resumed contact with
Meier. Those contacts ended on March 16,
1981, when other duties kept her away until
early 1984. Their final contact occurred on
February 3, 1984, Meiers forty-seventh birthday. The following November, complications
from her 1977 accident led to a health emergency. She was taken to the DAL Universe to
begin the decades-long process of recovery.

Seth

Fred Bell of Laguna Beach, California, has

his own Semjase tales to tell, to Meiers intense displeasure. An inventor, musician,
artist, and holistic-health enthusiast, Bella
committed believer in pyramid energyonce
went about in the world with a small pyramid
on his head. He says that beginning in 1971
he received mental impressions of an oddly familiar, beautiful blond woman. Eventually, he
became convinced that he had known her in a
previous lifetime, when he was an archaeologist who uncovered evidence that Paladins
landed on Earth long ago. Soon Bell met
Semjase personally. At first she would not give
him her name, but when they got closeapparently even having a sexual relationship for
a timeshe told him her life history and revealed the secrets of the Pleiadians. She helped
him with various projects and inventions. Bell
came to refer to Semjase as his soul mate.
He also met her father, Ptaah, and others.
For a time, Bell was on friendly terms with
Wendelle C. Stevens, an Arizona man most
responsible for bringing Meiers claims to an
American audience. Stevens has published a
series of books based on his investigations in
Switzerland and also on Meiers contact diaries. At first Stevens cited Bells claims as independent evidence for the existence of Semjase and Pleiadean visitors.
In due course, however, Meier denounced
Bells stories as lies. A Pleiadian named Quetzal told Meier that Bell could not possibly be
telling the truth because Semjase and Ptaah
had never been to America. Moreover, the
Pleiadians entered into physical contact only
with Meier, and nobody else. Quetzal was
among the extraterrestrials with whom Bell
supposedly interacted.
One fundamentalist Christian writer holds
that Meier got the name Semjase from the
fallen angel/demon Shemyaza, described in
the apocryphal Book of Enoch. Or it might
be the Semjase, a real entity, that is one of
Satans emissaries, one of the many evil deceptive forces at work in the world right now
(Billy Meier and the Swiss UFO Case, n.d.).
See Also: Contactees; Meier, Eduard Billy

221

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 Albert Meier Dissociates Himself from Dr. Fred
Bells Lies and Claims. http://www.figu.ch/us/
critics/contra/bell.htm.
Steiger, Brad, 1988. The Fellowship: Spiritual Contact
Between Humans and Outer Space Beings. New
York: Dolphin/Doubleday.

Seth
Jane Robertss channeling of Seth had large
impact on the emerging New Age movement
in the 1960s. Seth first appeared when the
Elmira, New York, writer and her husband
were playing with a ouija board in 1963. Soon
Roberts learned how to put herself into a
trance state and let Sethwhom she thought
of less as a spirit than as some kind of intelligent energy forcespeak through her. She
recorded these sessions and used a few of
them in a book, How to Develop Your ESP
Power (1966), later reissued as The Coming of
Seth (1976).
In 1970, with the publication of The Seth
Material, Roberts commenced writing a series of books, most of them focused on
Seths teachings. In time, a Seth movement
came into existence on the New Age scene.
Roberts also started channeling William
James, the great American psychologist,
philosopher, and psychical researcher, and
releasing books based upon Jamess alleged
postmortem observations and experiences.
Unlike some channelers who would follow
her, Roberts remained reclusive and publicity-shy and rarely appeared in public. She
died on September 5, 1984. After her death
other channelers claimed to have heard from
Seth. One, Thomas Massari, reported that
Seth had communicated with him as early as
1972.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Roberts, Jane, 1970. The Seth Material. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
, 1972. Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the
Soul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

222 Shaari
, 1978. The Afterdeath Journal of an American
Philosopher: The World View of William James. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
, 1981. The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Shaari
Shaari is an extraterrestrial who inhabits the
body of a young professional woman. The
woman, an occasional practitioner of channeling, was seriously injured in a car accident.
After the accident, she decided that she had
served her life purpose and would go on to
another level of existence, though without
dying; instead, she gave her body to a being
of higher consciousness. This being would be
able to obser ve and offer insight into upcoming planetary changes that will affect everybody who lives on Earth.
The Intergalactic Council of Twelve (consisting of space people and angels) and the
Star Command, working with the earthwoman, carefully effected the change over a
period of six months between January and
July 1989. On July 14, the exchange occurred.
By this time, the woman was out of the hospital and had resumed a part-time occupation,
the conducting of channeling workshops. The
woman was holding one on an island in the
Pacific Northwest when she was instructed to
go to the south part of the island, lie down on
the shore, and breathe rhythmically. Shaari,
waiting in a spaceship in the company of
Ashtar and others, found herself enveloped in
light and drawn into the womans body.
Everything that I was familiar with had
just shifted, she recalled. There I was in a
body that felt like concrete. Nothing moved,
everything felt very heavy. . . . As I started to
think about moving, these awkward fleshy
limbs began to respond and jerk and twitch.
Finally, I managed to get on my feet and eventually made it back to the workshop site. The
people there were wonderful and took care of
me in all ways. Shaari says her mission is to
bridge the gap between human and extraterrestrial communication and to establish the

potential for technological exchange and interplanetary trade (Shaari, 1994).

Prior to her incarnation on Earth, Shaari
was a commander in the Star Command,
which she had served for most of her 750
years. She was born a Pleiadian/Arcturian hybrid created out of the thoughts of a
Pleiadean and Arcturian council. In other
words, she did not have biological parents.
Even so, she has a family and a mate named
Mishar, a Star Command officer, counselor,
and healer. Nearly seven feet tall, he hails
from Arcturus, which means that he has a
spectacular set of wings. These wings allow
him to shift consciousness and to run through
different color, light, and sound frequencies.
With this power he monitors the fluctuations
of mass human consciousness, which can have
an adverse effect on weather patterns. If necessary, he shifts that consciousness in a more
positive direction toward less destructive
weather. Mishar also seeks an earthly incarnation but has yet to find an Earth male who is
willing to surrender his consciousness in exchange for Mishars.
The British Columbia woman who now
calls herself Shaari claims to have all memories
of her extraterrestrial life available to her in
waking consciousness. Though she can channel, she does not often do so because she does
not have the need.
See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Hybrid beings
Further Reading
Shaari, 1994. An Extraterrestrials Journey to
Earth. http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/et-journey.html.

Shan
Shan is a name space people sometimes call
the Earth. Shan is regarded as a troubled
planet strongly influenced by dark forces. Its
reputation is such that spaceships from other
worlds have come here both to protect extraterrestrials from human influence and to reform humans and defeat Satan.
According to the pseudonymous contactee
Patrick J. Bellringer, Shan is undergoing radi-

Shaver mystery

cal changes now that it has been permitted to

move from the third dimension to the fourth
dimension. In 1962, Shan entered the Photon
Belt, an invisible band of powerful light energy, as it began the transition which continues now but which will be completed in the
early years of the twenty-first century. Beginning on August 17, 1987, Shan was led a distance of thirteen million light years into a new
orbit closer to the Great Central Sun as millions of starships, using powerful magnetic
beams, transferred it to another solar system
in the Pleiades. The process was completed on
December 15, 1995. Sahn is now the fourth
planet in the orbit of Coeleno (see-lee-no).
Few human beings have noticed the transition because the space people have gone to
great lengths to conceal their operation. If the
sky looks familiar, appearances are deceptive;
the familiar stars and planets have been replaced by hovering starships, which take care
to remain in precisely the same configuration
as the constellations of old. Only the most observant have realized that the sun is emitting
more intense light but looks smaller (because
we are now seven million miles farther away
from our new sun so as to adjust for the differences from the old one). Our new moon is
brighter because of Coelenos more brilliant
light. Soon Shan will be moved into the spiritually advanced fourth dimension, but not before all kinds of devastating changes occur.
Radical weather changes, massive volcanic
eruptions, and other cataclysms will wipe out
the unenlightened parts of humanity (unaware of but still under Satans influence) so
that only those who are morally pure and intellectually superior will survive to enter the
new realm.
Among the victims will be Satan and his
minions, who live on Shan but remain oblivious to the Earths new location in space. The
space people will launch a surprise attack on
Satan and drive him and his troops into the
void where they can no longer do harm.
According to Bellringerhimself reincarnated from the Coeleno system but from the
fifth planet, Hatonn, to which he and his

223

Pleiadean family will return soonShan from

the beginning was regarded as a planet of unusual attractiveness. Two hundred six million
years ago immigrants from the Pleiadesour
ancestorssettled on it. Bellringer states that
Shan held a position at the cross-roads of the
Cosmos as a supply planet for other planets.
Because of its abundance and beauty it was
chosen as the prison planet by Lucifer, the
Arch-Angel when he left the Cosmic Realms
for his anarchy against God/Aton. Because of
the presence of Satan and his allies, the people
of Shan have had an extremely difficult time
achieving complete harmony and balance
with the Laws of God and of the Creation.
Among other things, Satan has kept humans
ignorant or fearful of the extraterrestrial races
that are visiting Shan and attempting to
change it for the better. Shan has been a special schoolroom for the gifted kidsa tough
course to learn tough lessons. Sadly enough,
most have failed the course (Bellringer, n.d.).
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Bellringer, Patrick H., n.d. People of the Lie: The
Photon Belt. http://www.fourwinds10.com/
phb/photon.htm.

Shaver mystery
The Shaver mystery is named after Richard
Sharpe Shaver. Shavers strange claims about
his experiences with cavern-dwelling deros
(deranged and vicious) and teros (virtuous but
overwhelmed), warring remnants of an ancient earthly race and possessors of advanced
technologies, were featured prominently in
the popular science-fiction pulp Amazing Sto ries between 1944 and 1948. Amazings editor,
Ray Palmer, promoted Shavers stories for the
next three decades, and Shaver continued to
tell them until his death.
The genesis of the episode was a letter the
heretofore obscure Shaver wrote to Amazing in
1943. The letter purported to be a reproduction of an ancient alphabet from Lemuria, a
lost continent said to have sunk into the Pacific
Ocean some twelve thousand years ago (in real-

224

Shaver mystery

Cover of The Hidden World magazine, spring 1961,

containing articles on the Shaver mystery (Fortean Picture
Library)

ity, Lemuria is a nineteenth-century invention).

Palmer published it in Amazings January 1944
issue. By then, he and Shaver were corresponding. Shaver produced a ten-thousand-word
manuscript titled A Warning to Future Man,
which Palmer rewrote as a science-fiction
novella, I Remember Lemuria! The story appeared under Shavers by-line in the March
1945 issue. Palmer presented it as a true story
based on racial memory, though Shaver
claimed that he had received his knowledge of
humanitys hidden history directly from beings
who live in a vast network of tunnels and caves
under the Earths surface.
The response was a flood of letters from
curious readers and some from persons who
related unusual experiences that they thought
validated Shaver. A promotional genius with
the instincts of a carnival barker, Palmer
coined the phrase Shaver mystery, started a
Shaver Mystery Club, and opened Amazings

pages to allegedly factual material and sciencefiction stories based on it. Palmer wrote that
when he visited Richard and Dorothy Shaver
at their farm, he heard mysterious voices that
could not have come from Mr. Shavers lips.
They were speaking first in English then in a
strange language, about a woman who earlier that day had been torn into four quarters
about four miles away and four miles down
[from the Shaver house] (Palmer, 1961).
At least in its most vital phase, the Shaver
mystery ended in 1948, when pressure from
outraged science-fiction fans led Ziff-Davis,
Amazings publisher, to order its closing. That
same year Palmer and Curtis Fuller founded
Fate, dedicated to the true mysteries Amaz ing had featured along with Shaver matters,
and he left the science-fiction magazine the
following year. Not long afterward, Palmer
moved to Amherst, Wisconsin, where he
started Mystic (later Search) and Other Worlds
(later Flying Saucers). These publications carried articles by and about Shaver. Between
1961 and 1964, Palmer published sixteen issues of a trade-paper-formatted magazine, The
Hidden World, devoted entirely to the Shaver
mystery. Shaver died in 1975. Palmer, who
had continued to champion the mystery
while disputing some of Shavers interpretations, died two years later.
Though to all but a few Shavers claims
were outlandish and absurd, even grotesque,
Shaver did not strike those who knew him as a
hoaxer. There seemed little doubt that Shaver
believed what he said, notwithstanding some
noteworthy inconsistencies in his testimony
over the years. For example, he told at least
four mutually exclusive stories about how he
learned of the Earths secret past and its subterranean races. In his most frequent telling,
however, it occurred first through telepathic
messages from a mysterious woman, then as
mental voices emanating from depraved creatures 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 in
the early 1930s. Always vague on dates,

Shaver mystery

Shaver was also vague on what was happening

in his life amid his growing realization of, and
interaction with, the reality of a literal underground. It appears, from uncertain though
not entirely implausible inference, that he
spent some time in a mental hospital, and he
may also have served a short prison stretch for
bootlegging. On occasion Shaver intimated as
much, even as he less plausibly claimed to
have lived in the caves with the embattled
teros (integrative robots; again, like their enemies the deros, beings of flesh and blood).
How long he supposedly lived there is also
unclear.
In any event, out of these elements came a
complex, alternate history of the human race.
Long ago, according to Shaver, extraterrestrials known as Atlans and Titans or the Elder
Races colonized the Earth. (The Atlans lived
on Atlantis, the Titans on Lemuria.) These beings, who possessed fantastic technologies,
lived extraordinarily long lives and never
stopped growing, owing to the integrative
(positive) energies cast out by the sun. Some
grew to fifty feet, a few considerably more.
Eventually, however, the sun changed and
began to beam detrimental (negative) energy,
causing, among other effects, aging and mortality. To block the deadly rays, the Elders
built an immense Cavern World to house the
Earths fifty billion Atlans and Titans. But the
effort ultimately failed, and twelve thousand
years ago the Elders who survived fled to
other stars, leaving behind a small population,
which had fallen victim to the detrimental radiation. Some wandered to the surface and in
time forgot their history as they became the
mortal and confused Homo sapiens. The others stayed in the caves to become the sadistic,
cannibalistic idiots called deros. One other
group, the smallest of the three, was the teros,
who had escaped the negative rays but who,
for various reasons, had not joined the exodus
from Earth. Both the deros and the teros were
robots not because they were walking mechanical contraptions but because they were
under the influence of, respectively, negative
and positive energies.

225

The deros used the advanced technologies

to torment surface-dwellers. As Palmer explained it, they have death rays, giant rockets
that traverse in the upper air . . . ground vehicles of tremendous power, machines for the
revitalizing of sex, known as stim machines
(in which these degenerates sometimes spend
their whole lives in a sexual debauch that actually deforms their bodies in horrible
ways) . . . and ben rays which heal and restore
the body but are also capable of restoring lost
energy after a debauch [Palmer, 1961]). Besides causing plane crashes, madness, violence,
and other maladies on the surface, deros
sometimes abduct human beings, usually
women, and subject them to hideous tortures.
Their rays cloud human thought and keep
them oblivious to the deros existence. The
badly outnumbered teros are engaged in a
protracted but ultimately futile conflict with
their evil counterparts.
After its exile from Amazing, the Shaver mystery passed from the attention of all but a tiny
band of occult and true-mystery enthusiasts,
who continued to report on and speculate
about deros and caverns in amateurish newsletters as well as Palmers periodicals. The mystery figured in a few not widely read UFO-era
books, including Eric Normans The Under-Peo ple (1969) and Brinsley le Poer Trenchs Secret of
the Ages: UFOs from inside the Earth (1974).
Several writers of a skeptical bent have argued
that through Shaver, as one puts it, Palmer almost single-handedly created the myth of
UFOs as extraterrestrial visitors (KaftonMinkel, 1989). In fact, a connection between
the Shaver mystery and the international UFO
phenomenon of the past five decades has yet to
be demonstrated. Flying saucers as such did not
enter Shaverian mythology until after the rest of
the world started talking about them.
A more interesting issue concerns the motivations of the principals. Shavers manifest belief in experiences that could not have happened in consensus reality leads some, such as
hollow-earth chronicler Walter Kafton-Minkel, to see Shaver as a visionary, a member of
that ancient fellowship of receivers of revealed

226

Shaws Martians

knowledge, a prophet like Moses or Joseph

Smith though without the religious trappings.
Even if Shaver technologized hell, he remained
to the end an atheist and a materialist. To him
the caverns existed in this world and had nothing to do with the supernatural.
Though usually depicted as a cynical exploiter of a deluded man whom any responsible adult would have directed to the nearest
psychiatrist, Palmer himselffor all his promotional instincts, which he exercised vigorously in the long course of his association
with Shavermay have been caught up in the
belief in at least something. Perhaps, he sometimes suggested in public statements, Shavers
experiences had occurred on the astral realm
(Steinberg, 1973). On one occasion, he defended the mystery in private circumstances
in which he not only had nothing to gain but
also risked looking foolish. Though we will
never know for sure, one reasonable reading
of Palmers role in the affair is that this complex man was both believer and exploiter.
See Also: Atlantis; Brodies deros; Hollow earth;
Lemuria; Mount Lassen
Further Reading
Kafton-Minkel, Walter, 1989. Subterranean Worlds:
100,000 Years of Dragons, Dwarfs, the Dead, Lost
Races and UFOs from inside the Earth. Port
Townsend, WA: Loompanics Unlimited.
Palmer, Ray, 1961. Invitation to Adventure. The
Hidden World A-1 (Spring): 414.
, 1980. The Dero and the Tero. Gray
Barkers Newsletter 12 (July): 7.
Shaver, Richard S., 1945. I Remember Lemuria!
Amazing Stories 19, 1 (March): 1270.
Steinberg, Gene, 1971. The Caveat Emptor Interview: Ray Palmer. Caveat Emptor 1 (Fall): 912,
26.
, 1973. The Caveat Emptor Interview:
Richard S. Shaver. Caveat Emptor 10 (November/December): 510.
Wright, Bruce Lanier, 1999. From Hero to Dero.
Fortean Times 127 (October): 3641.

Shaws Martians
In November 1896, unidentified airships
what today would be called UFOswere reported over northern California, initiating a
flurry of sightings and excitement that within

months would move eastward until all of

America was affected. This was the first UFO
wave in America, and on November 25, 1896,
the first ever UFO abduction occurredif
one credits the testimony of Colonel H. G.
Shaw, who claimed a near escape from capture
by Martians.
Shaw told his story two days later in a letter
published in the Stockton Evening Mail, a California paper on whose editorial staff he had
once served. On the day of his adventure, he
and a companion, Camille Spooner, left Lodi
at six oclock in the morning and were quietly
moving along when their horse abruptly
snorted in terror and stopped in its tracks.
Three strange beings . . . nearly or quite
seven feet high and very slender, of more or
less human appearance, strange beauty, and
nudity, stood in front of them on the road.
When Shaw approached them and asked
where they came from, they gave a response
that 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, and
long, narrow feet. When he briefly touched
one, Shaw had the impression that the being
weighed no more than an ounce. He wrote,
They . . . were covered with a natural
growth . . . as soft as silk to the touch, and
their skin was like velvet. Their faces and heads
were without hair, the ears were very small, and
the nose had the appearance of polished ivory,
while the eyes were large and lustrous. The
mouth, however, was small, and it seemed to
me that they were without teeth. That and
other things led me to believe that they neither
ate nor drank, and that life was sustained by
some sort of gas. Each of them had swung
under the left arm a bag to which was attached
a nozzle, and every little while one or the other
would place the nozzle in his mouth, at which
time I heard a sound as of escaping gas.
(Bullard, 1982)

Each also carried an egg-sized device that cast

an intense but not unpleasant light when
opened.

Shiva

At this point the beingswhom Shaw presumed to be from Marstried to carry him
and his friend away, but weighing as little as
they did, they lacked the strength. So they
turned around and flashed lights in the direction of a nearby bridge. The two men then
perceived an airship, some one-hundred fifty
feet long, hovering twenty feet over the water.
The three Martians floated with a swaying
motion toward the craft. A door opened on
the side, and the trio disappeared inside. The
ship flew away and was seen no more.
Concluding his letter, Shaw blasted other
airship stories as clumsy fakes that should
not be given credence by anyonepresumably with tongue buried deeply in cheek. Besides being the first known alien encounter in
America to see print, Shaws was also the first
of many hoaxes to come in the months ahead,
as newspaper columns were filled with outlandish tales of airships and their occupants,
extraterrestrial and human.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Allinghams Mar tian; Aurora Martian; Browns Martians; Calfrustling aliens; Dentonss Martians and Venusians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga; Lethbridges
aeronauts; Martian bees; Michigan giant; MincePie Martians; Monka; Mullers Martians; Smeads
Martians; Smith; Wilcoxs Martians; Wilson
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnolds Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.

Sheep-killing alien
In early 1968, according to a Bolivian newspaper, a farm woman near Otoco went to her
sheep corral early one evening to discover that
a strange net had been placed over it. A humanlike figure, four feet tall and wearing a
bulky-looking spacesuit, was busy slaughtering sheep with a tubular, hooked instrument.
After killing the animals, he would dump
their entrails into a bag.
The woman shouted at him and hurled
stones in his direction. The alien strolled over

227

to a boxlike instrument with a wheel at the

top. As he twisted the wheel, the net was
withdrawn into the box. As he was so engaged, the witness had picked up a club and
was about to use it on the intruder. In response, he threw his weapon at her. Each time
it returned to his hands like a boomerang, and
each time it passed the woman, it cut her.
Gathering his tools, the alien then floated
noisily upward and was lost to sight.
The local police colonel counted thirtyfour dead sheep. Each had had some of its digestive organs removed.
See Also: Calf-rustling aliens; Close encounters of
the third kind
Further Reading
Galindez, Oscar A., 1970. Violent Humanoid Encountered in Bolivia. Flying Saucer Review 16, 4
(July/August): 1517.

Shiva
Shiva is usually known as a major Hindu god,
associated both with destruction and chaos
and with wisdom and meditation. But in February and March 1994, Shivathe blood,
the muscle, fur, bone, and spirit of animals
communicated through Sedona, Arizona, psychic Toraya Ayres. He spoke from and for the
animal point of view. He described himself
once as having the physique of a bear, another
time calling himself only a body of energy
and denying that he had any physical body.
Shiva said that human beings need to reexamine their destructive relationship with animals. Humans should not see animals as inferior to them but as equal but different
spiritual beings. Animals do not have a concept of God, but they do have a profound understanding of their place in natures order.
We do live in an eternal now of loving cooperation within nature, which we recognize
without words as a divine force, and as many
divine energies working together for the
greater good. Like humans, animals evolve
and move into higher dimensions in a different vibrational range.
The physical world that you know is only
a tiny part of reality, according to Shiva.

228

Shovar

You will be exploring the nonphysical worlds

and dimensions, too. As multi-dimensional
beings you already do this in your dreams, but
you will soon do it consciously.
See Also: Ayala
Further Reading
Ayres, Toraya, 1997. Messages from the Animal
Kingdom. http://www.spiritweb.org/Spirit/animal-kingdom-ayres.html.

Shovar
Shovar is the name of a humanlike entity the
pseudonymous Rachel Jones of Coeur dAlene, Idaho, allegedly met during a UFOabduction experience over a two-hour period
between June 20 and 21, 1977.
Awakened at 11:55 P.M. when she heard
someone walking upstairs, Jones found herself paralyzed. She saw someone enter the
room, then felt a lifting sensation. In what
seemed an instant, she regained her ability to
move. She was astonished to see that it was
then 1:57 A.M.
Under hypnosis conducted by psychologist/ufologist R. Leo Sprinkle, she told of seeing an ugly intruder with no pupils in his
eyes, a thin-lined mouth, normal-looking
nose, and thinning hair. He had four fingers
on each hand but no thumbs. Picking her up,
he brought her to an unknown place and
passed through a door into a chamber with a
cold floor. Three other beings were there. One
was human or near-human in appearance.
The man accompanied her into another room
containing various instruments, including
two wheel-shaped devices and a boxlike table.
She sat on the table and conversed with the
man, who said his name was Shovar. He asked
her to take off her shirt. After resisting, she reluctantly did so. Shovar expressed puzzlement
about her suntan, which she then explained to
him.
She was instructed to lie on her stomach as
a light shined on her back. The other beings
rubbed a liquid on her shoulders. It caused
great pain, and she protested. Shovar said the
pain would stop, and it did. She did not ac-

cept his apology, however. It did not sound

sincere, and, moreover, she got the distinct
impression that he did not even know what
pain was.
Even under hypnosis Jones could not recall what happened next. Her memory
picked up with a conversation with Shovar,
who she realized was communicating telepathically. Shovar told her that they had
changed her so that she would be better for
others. They had met before, he went on,
and they would meet again. Asked why they
had taken her, he replied that he could not
answer the question right then. Three beings
entered the room, and Jones abruptly found
herself back in bed.
Headaches plagued her for the next few
days, and she noticed a small round scar on
her shoulder.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Sprinkle, Ronald
Leo
Further Reading
Idaho Abduction Case, 1977. The APRO Bulletin
(November).

Sinat Schirah (Stan)

Since 1983, Sinat Schirah, known affectionately as Stan, has channeled through Arlene
Nelson. Three years later, Nelson began a
process she called pure channelingchanneling so intense that she had no conscious
sense of it while it was happening or conscious memory of it afterward. It would take
place one weekend every month between January and May.
She and her husband, Mervin Beaver
Colver, with whom Nelson believes she has
shared a number of incarnations, founded
Lifelight University in Mill Valley, California,
in 1987. Students are instructed in a variety of
New Age beliefs and practices. Stans channeled messages are preserved on tapes and in
books.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of Ameri can Religions. Fifth edition. Detroit, MI: Gale
Research.

Sister Thedra

Sister Thedra
Sister Thedra was born Dorothy Martin, but
to most of the world she is remembered as
Marian Keach, the pseudonym given her in
the classic sociological book When Prophecy
Fails (1956). In 1954, through space people
who communicated with her through automatic writing, she learned of an imminent
catastrophic, earth-changing event, to occur a
week before the end of the year. She and her
small band of followers in Illinois and Michigan would be swooped up in a flying saucer
and rescued just before the cataclysm took
place. Martin and her followers sought to
publicize the prophecy, only to be ridiculed in
newspapers all over the country. After the failure of the prophecy, Martinsoon renamed
Sister Thedra at the urging of her space contactsmoved to the Southwest, then to Peru
for five years. Returning to the United States,
she established and headed a contactee-oriented spiritual group in Mount Shasta, California. Toward the end of her life, she relocated to Sedona, Arizona, and died there in
1992.
Born in 1900 in West Virginia, Martin discovered occultism in the late 1930s while living in New York City. First attracted to
Theosophy, she explored the spectrum of esoteric literature and became an early student of
Dianetics (from which Scientology grew). She
also read the works of Guy Warren Ballard,
creator of the I AM movement, arguably the
first religious group to make extraterrestrial
contacts a central tenet. Another book, Oah spe, recorded the 1881 channeling of John
Ballough Newbrough, depicting a richly populated spiritual cosmos whose inhabitants include guardian angels known as ashars who
sail the universe in etheric ships. When flying
saucers came on the scene and the contactee
movement followed in their wake, Martin followed developments with interest.
In the meantime, Charles and Lillian Laughead (pronounced Law-head) were doing the
same. Their own odyssey had begun in 1946,
when the couple were Protestant medical missionaries in Egypt and Lillian started suffering

229

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 the
Michigan State College Hospital in East Lansing. He and his wife continued their mystical
studies, incorporating flying saucers into their
newfound faith. In early 1953, on a trip to
southern California, Laughead met George
Adamski, whose claimed meeting with a
Venusian named Orthon in the California
desert was causing a worldwide sensation. Of
particular interest to Laughead were the footprints the Venusian had left in the desert sand.
They contained enigmatic symbols whose
meaning Adamskis followers were already discussing and debating.
Laughead returned to Michigan with drawings of the prints, which his wife devoted the
next five months to deciphering. She concluded that the left prints symbols depicted
the sinking of the lost continents Atlantis and
Lemuria, the right their reemergence from the
ocean floor following geological cataclysms
that soon would befall the planet.
Through an automatic-writing message
given him by an acquaintance, Dr. Laughead
heard from the Elder Brother, who later, according to Laughead, identified himself as
being Jesus the Christ and also Sananda.
Laughead was to continue his work with
saucers, and soon Venusians would contact
him.
At this stage, the Laugheads had not heard
of Dorothy Martin. They did not know that
she also was in psychic contact with the Elder
Brother as well as with a group of beings she
called the Guardians. In April 1954, one of
the latter introduced himself as Sananda from
the planet Clarion. In a previous lifetime,
Sananda said, he was Jesus. Martinor at
least her unconscious mindgot the name
Clarion from contactee Truman Bethurum,
but Bethurums Clarion was a planet on the
other side of the moon; Martin/Sanandas
Clarion, on the other hand, existed in the
etheric realm. A companion planet, Cerus
(sometimes confusingly referred to also as a

230

Sister Thedra

constellation), housed other space people

who kept Martins arm and hand in furious
motion with automatic writing as they made
good on their promise to teach her cosmic
wisdom. The Elder Brother promised that he
would return soon. . . . They that have told
you that they do not believe shall see us when
the time is right (Festinger et al., 1956).
Martins messages were attracting attention, and a handful of followers soon came
together in the Chicago area. Among those
who spoke with Martin was John Otto, a
UFO lecturer of national reputation and notable credulity. Visiting Detroit to hear a lecture by Adamski, Otto met the Laugheads,
who informed him of their saucer interests
and experiences. Otto in turn urged them to
get in touch with Martin. Soon afterward,
they wrote and introduced themselves. All of
this seemed particularly significant to Martin
when she received a message urging her to go
to East Lansing to seek a child . . . to whom I
am trying to get through with light. When
informed, Mrs. Laughead immediately concluded that she was the child (Festinger, et
al., 1956).
After the Laugheads met Martin in Oak
Park in early June 1954, the three formed a
close association that would profoundly affect
their lives and fortunes in the months and
years to come. By this time, Martin was receiving as many as ten messages a day, all of
them ominous, all warning of imminent disasters and cataclysms. The news was not entirely bad: Those who would listen and believe would enter a New Age of knowledge
and happiness. The messages got more specific. Spaceships would land soon, and selected individuals would be flown to other
planets, along with space people who had
been on secret Earth assignment.
On August 1, Martin, the Laugheads, and
nine believers showed up at a Chicago-area
military base, where they had been told a flying saucer would land at noon. No ship
showed up, but the next day Sananda informed her through automatic writing that he
was the stranger the group had observed pass-

ing by during the wait for the landing. It

would not be the last time Martin would inflate a mundane incident into a signal from
the cosmos. Nor would it be the last of the
unfulfilled prophecies.
In that same message on August 2,
Sananda warned that soon a tidal wave off
Lake Michigan would wash over Chicago and
cause enormous destruction. Subsequent
communications spoke of enormous geological upheaval that would break North America
in two, sink much of Europe under the ocean,
and raise Mu from its underwater grave.
Martin and the Laugheads reported these
revelations to the larger world in a seven-page
mimeographed document, Open Letter to
American Editors and Publishers, sent out
on August 30. A handwritten addendum appended at the last minute cited December 20
as the date of evacuation, in other words,
the final day on which human beings living in
the affected area could save themselves. A second mailing two weeks later concerned the
terrific wave that would rise from Lake
Michigan at dawn on December 21 and engulf Chicago.
Soon the group found itself featured in a
tongue-in-cheek newspaper story. The publicity brought followers, curiosity-seekers, and
practical jokers to Mrs. Martins door. It also
brought her and her group to the attention of
the University of Minnesotas Laboratory for
Research in Social Relations, which enlisted the
services of five psychologists, sociologists, and
graduate students. The volunteers were to observeas participants and self-identified believersa prophetic movement at work and to
see what happened when the anticipated events
did not occur. In due course, Leon Festinger,
Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, the
professors who had directed the experiment,
chronicled the episode in When Prophecy Fails.
Though Martin, Laughead, and the others
harbored ambivalent feelings about the publicity and proselytization, it would have been impossible to conceal what was going on. The
group now claimed followers not only in the
Chicago area but also in East Lansing and De-

Sister Thedra

troit. In East Lansing, Laughead led a churchrelated Quest group and, moreover, had ties to
the Detroit saucer community, dominated by
contactees and mystics, including medium Rose
Phillips, who had her own cosmic sources.
When some of Martins followers asked Phillips
about the December 21 prophecy, those sources
responded ambiguously.
On the Earth plane, Dr. Laughead was facing a serious professional and personal crisis
over his ever more visible advocacy of beliefs
that most people thought bizarre or even
laughable. On November 22, he was asked to
resign his position with the college health service effective December 1, though word of the
firing would be withheld for another three
weeks. College president John A. Hannah
later told the press that students had complained about Laugheads propagandizing
them on a peculiar set of beliefs of questionable validity (The End, 1955). Effectively
cutting their ties to East Lansing, the Laugheads moved into the Martin residence and
awaited the arrival of the flying saucers that
would save them and their companions at the
onset of the December 21 cataclysm.
On December 17, a Chicago newspaper
exposed the groups strange beliefs and Laugheads loss of employment. Other papers
around the country, and soon afterward the
world, picked up the story, and the result was
blistering ridicule on an international scale.
The publicity also left the relentlessly gullible
group open to pranks that periodically sent its
members packing in preparation for meetings
with space people or saucer landings.
Though on the morning of the twentieth
the Guardians promised that they would
board a flying saucer just after midnight, no
spaceship appeared. Stunned, the group tried
to figure out what had happened. Finally,
someone suggested that the groups positive
work had prevented the flood. Not long afterward, a message from Sananda confirmed that
interpretation. When Laughead called reporters and wire services to pass on the good
news, he triggered a fresh round of ridiculelaced stories. Even worse, group members

231

who had given up jobs and cut ties with skeptical family members faced uncertain futures.
Prank calls and visits over the next 24 days,
however, kept the group open to the prospect
of a landing. Martin also claimed that earthquakes that had taken place in Italy and California validated her prophecy. By now she was
grasping at anything. A message on the
twenty-third directed everyone to stand in
front of the Martin house at 6 P.M. and sing
Christmas carols, at which time a saucer
would come down and its crew would engage
the group in personal conversation. The message further instructed the group to publicize
the new prophecy and to invite all interested
persons to come.
For Martin, the caroling episode marked a
turning point. It sparked a near riot and drew
law-enforcement personnel to the scene. Community pressure forced the police to draw up a
warrant against Martin and Laughead, charging them with disturbing the peace and contributing to the delinquency of minors. She
was also warned that she faced psychiatric examination and possible institutionalization.
Early in January 1955, Dorothy Martin
slipped out of town. Under an assumed name,
she flew to Arizona. In her new residence she
found herself much closer to the hub of contactee activity. Both Truman Bethurum and
George Hunt Williamson (a contactee, fringe
archaeologist, and alleged witness to Adamskis
first Venusian encounter) lived in Arizona. The
Laugheads, now resettled in southern California, dropped in from time to time.
Through Williamsons channelings, the
Laugheads and Martin learned of the Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, a supernatural order
dating back to Lemurian times and headquartered in the present Lake Titicaca in Peru.
Guided by further prophecies of imminent
apocalypse channeled through both Williamson and Martin, the twoalong with a small
band of disciplesmoved to Titicaca to establish the Priority of All Saints in the remote
northern town Moyobamba. From Hemet,
California, the Laugheads kept the North
American faithful abreast of developments. A

232

Sky people

bulletin reported day-by-day activities there.

Each report was accompanied by a transcript
of channeled or automatically written messages, often with apocalyptic overtones. Soon,
these messages said, cataclysmic changes
would bring flying saucers down from the
skies and Lemuria and Atlantis up from the
ocean bottom.
By the summer of 1957, however, nearly all
of the spiritual pilgrims were back in the
United States. The exception was Martin,
whom Sananda had directed to stay behind.
Living under the most primitive conditions, suffering from poverty and ill health,
Martin barely survived. She felt that her colleagues had betrayed her. She spent a portion
of her meager income on postage for mailings
to North America, but no one seemed to listen or care. Even so, the messages continued
to come at a furious pace. Now they included
dramatic visionary encounters with various
space people, angels, and religious figures.
Though expecting to spend the rest of her
life in the Andes, Martin was surprised to receive instructions to return to the United
States in 1961. She moved to southern California and was there for nearly a year before
heading to the far northern part of the state
and Mount Shasta, long an attraction to
Americas mystically minded. Occult legend
held that a colony of Lemurians lived inside
or under the mountain. The Lemurians maintained contacts with extraterrestrials who regularly arrived in saucers.
Sananda and Sanat Kumara ordered Martin to establish the Association of Sananda
and Sanat Kumara. Finding peace and stability at last, she took up residence in the Shasta
area and worked with a small but devoted
band of followers who carefully recorded and
circulated the messages she received daily.
By 1988, with Sedona, Arizona, now the
New Age center of North America, the space
people dictated yet another move. It was here,
on June 13, 1992, that Sister Thedras long,
strange trip ended. Just before her death
Sananda told her of his plans for her in the
next world. As her body failed, her hand

guided a pen one last time to write the final

message from her beloved cosmic friend: It is
now come the time that ye come out of the
place wherein ye are. . . . Let it be, for many
shall greet thee with glad shouts!
See Also: Adamski, George; Atlantis; Bethurum,
Truman; Contactees; Lemuria; Mount Shasta;
Orthon; Sananda; Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Clark, Jerome, 1997. The Odyssey of Sister Thedra. Syzygy 6, 2 (Summer/Fall): 203219.
The End of the World, 1955. The Saucerian 3, 2
(Spring): 47, 5560.
Festinger, Leon, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley
Schachter, 1956. When Prophecy Fails. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Ibn Aharon, Y. N. [pseud. of Yonah Fortner], 1957.
Diagnosis: A Case of Chronic Fright. Saucer
News 4, 5 (August/September): 36.

Sky people
Brinsley le Poer Trench, author of a series of
books proposing esoteric theories about everything from space visitors to the Earths hidden
history, held that the sky peoplecalled the
Elohim in the Old Testamentcreated Animal or Adamic Man, otherwise known as the
present human race. The creation occurred via
what would now be called genetic engineering, and it was done by a renegade band of
Elohim called the Jehovah. The Jehovah,
knowing that their experiment was an unauthorized one, removed their creation to an obscure locationwhat the Bible calls the Garden of Edenon Mars. In due course,
another extraterrestrial race, known as the Serpent people, learned of the Garden and visited
it, curious about experiments that had created
women. The Serpent people gave the heretofore-innocent inhabitants of the Garden wisdom and scientific knowledge, and they also
introduced them to sexual intercourse and reproduction. Many of the Adamic Women
bore children sired by the Serpent race.
The Jehovah were furious when they found
out about the Serpent peoples interference,
but it was too late for them to continue their
domination of Adamic Man. The individual
Jehovah most responsible for the experiment,

Smith 233

Noah-I, was driven from Mars. With his creations, he flew back to Earth in a spaceship
(Noahs Ark) and populated the Earth.
According to Trench, all human conflict
stems from mankinds dual nature. Only if we
achieve total consciousnessin which both
the superior Serpent heritage and the Animal
nature are integratedcan we claim our place
as wise, peaceful citizens of the galaxy.
Further Reading
Trench, Brinsley le Poer, 1960. The Sky People. London: Neville Spearman.

Smeads Martians
A century ago pioneering psychical researcher
James Hyslop investigated a case in which an
American woman received psychic messages
from Mars. The Martians, however, were not
natives of the planet but deceased relatives
who were now living on the Red Planet.
The woman, whom Hyslop identifies only
as Mrs. Smead, was married to a clergyman.
All her life she had had psychic experiences,
many of them involving spirit communications through automatic writing. Then in
1895 a different set of messages started to
come through. They were from her three dead
children and her deceased brother-in-law.
One of the daughters, Maude, provided a description of her new home, which she said was
crisscrossed with canals, reflecting a belief to
that effect (since conclusively debunked)
promulgated by astronomer Percival Lowell.
The communications ceased, then resumed
again five years later as if there had been no
interruption. Invited to assess them, Hyslop
deduced that they came out of a secondary
personalitywhat now would be called the
unconscious mindof Mrs. Smeads. He
wrote,
We find in such cases evidence that we need
not attribute fraud to the normal consciousness, and we discover automatic processes of
mentation that may be equally acquitted of
fraudulent intent; while we are also free from
the obligation to accept the phenomena at

their assumed value. Their most extraordinary

characteristic is the extent to which they imitate the organizing principle intelligence of a
normal mind, and the perfection of their impersonation of spirits, always betraying their
limitations, however, just at the point where we
have the right to expect veridical testimony to
their claims. (Hyslop, 1908)
See Also: Aliens and the dead; Allinghams Martian;
Aurora Martian; Browns Martians; Dentonss
Martians and Venusians; Hopkinss Martians;
Khauga; Martian bees; Mince-Pie Martians;
Monka; Mullers Martians; Shaws Martians;
Wilcoxs Martians
Further Reading
Hyslop, James H., 1908. Psychical Research and the
Resurrection. London: Fisher Unwin.

Smith
During a wave of sightings of mysterious,
never-explained airships (UFOs in modern
terminology) in the spring of 1897, a Rockland, Texas, man named John Barclay claimed
an encounter with a close-lipped pilot who
gave only his last name. The Houston Daily
Post of April 25 reported the incident.
Around 11 P.M., as Barclay told the story,
he heard his dogs barking frantically. Glancing out his window, he was startled to see an
oblong-shaped object with wings circling just
above his pasture. Moments later the ship
landed. Winchester rifle in hand, the witness
stepped outside where he spotted a stranger.
The stranger identified himself only as
Smith. He would not allow Barclay to get
closer to the ship. We cannot allow you to
get any closer, but do as we request [and] your
kindness will be appreciated, Smith said,
and we will call on you some future day and
reciprocate your kindness by taking you on a
trip. He handed Barclay ten dollars and
asked him to purchase lubricating oil, two
cold chisels, and bluestone from a nearby saw
mill and railroad depot. On his return Barclay
asked the aeronaut where he was from. Anywhere, Smith replied, then added, We will
be in Greece day after tomorrow. He entered
the ship and was gone.

234

Source

Since conventional aviation history attests

that no such ships were flying over America in
the late nineteenth century, some UFO writers have theorized that the so-called aeronauts
were really extraterrestrials or supernatural entities in disguise. A more likely explanation is
that the stories were hoaxes of the sort that
filled many period newspapers.
See Also: Aurora Martian; Lethbridges aeronauts;
Michigan giant; Ultraterrestrials; Wilson
Further Reading
Chariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas Airship
Mystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing.
Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The G reat Airship Mystery: A
UFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead and
Company.

Source
The Source, a sort of universal mind, was
channeled through Paul Solomon. Solomons
channeling began in 1972 when he was living
in Atlanta and going through acute personal
distress in the wake of a failed marriage. In an
effort to deal with his emotional problems,
Solomon underwent hypnosis. Under hypnosis a powerful voice spoke through his mouth,
warning, You have not attained sufficient
growth or spiritual awareness to understand
contact with these records! Bewildered,
Solomon and hypnotist Harry Snipes III decided to explore the mystery in a second session. From there the Source, as Solomon and
Snipes called it, began instructing Solomon
on how to communicate with it and how to
pass on its wisdom to others.
The Source taught a spiritual philosophy
that it called Inner Light Consciousness,
thus the name of the organization Solomon
soon formed: Fellowship of the Inner Light.
In 1974, Solomon and his followers relocated
to Virginia Beach, Virginia, where Edgar
Cayce, to whom Solomon would be compared, had lived and had pursued his spiritual
work. Like Cayces, Solomons readings encompassed Atlantis, reincarnation, healing,
prophecies, and more.
The Source claimed to be a greater power
than the spirit or channeling entities that were

a good part of the focus of the New Age

movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Its mission was to provide a way for seekers to touch
the Holy Spirit within them and, thereafter,
to let it guide them. Before his death in 1994,
Solomon had conducted thousands of readings, many preserved on tape and sold by associates who seek to keep his and the Sources
memory alive.
See Also: Atlantis; Channeling
Further Reading
Beidler, William, 1977. Paul Solomon . . . Another
Cayce? Fate 30, 2 (February): 5661.
A Healing Consciousness, 1978. Virginia Beach, VA:
Masters 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.

SPECTRA
Under hypnosis on November 30, 1971, Israeli psychic Uri Geller recalled an incident
that occurred when he was three years old.
Geller encountered a dazzling light from
which a voice emanated. The voice said it was
his programmer. Over the years, Geller received many more messages from this intelligence, which called itself SPECTRA and,
sometimes, Hoova. It gave Geller his reported
paranormal talents. In the opinion of Gellers
hypnotist and then-collaborator, physician/
parapsychologist Andrija Puharich, Geller
may have been a prophet specifically created
to serve as an intermediary between a divine
intelligence and man (Puharich, 1974).
SPECTRA claimed it was a supercomputer
into which the minds and bodies of a wide variety of intelligent beings had been transferred. These beings communicated with
Geller through automatic writing, states of altered consciousness, and voices on blank
tapes. SPECTRAs first appearance on Earth
was twenty thousand years ago, when its
spaceship landed in the present nation of Israel. Since then SPECTRA has seen the Jews

Springheel Jack 235

Further Reading
Geller, 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: Anchor
Press/Doubleday and Company.

Springheel Jack

Uri Geller, the psychic performer, ca. 1978 (HultonDeutsch Collection/Corbis)

as its special people and has tried to protect

them. In the meantime, other beings from
other planets and dimensions unrelated to
SPECTRA have visited Earth. The beings behind SPECTRA have said that they live in the
future. They are short and generally human in
appearance, looking likein their words
certain exotic types of Japanese.
This fantastic tale figured largely in
Puharichs Uri (1974), but Geller himself distanced himself from it. His own autobiography, published a year after Puharichs book,
does not even mention SPECTRA, though it
does recount his childhood close encounter
with a silvery mass of light that seemed to
make time stand still. As the light approached
him, the youthful Geller felt a sharp pain in
his forehead, then lost consciousness for an
undetermined period of time.

Springheel Jack (sometimes referred to as

Spring Heeled Jack) is a figure out of Victorian folklore, a mysterious man or being of violent disposition and a strange ability to jump
great distances. Stories about him were first
told in suburban London in September 1837.
Some victims described him as a man wearing
a flowing cloak and glaring at his victims with
glowing eyes. It was claimed that he shot
flames from his mouth. Others said he disguised himself as a white bull or bear, while at
least one witness claimed he wore polished
steel armor, with red shoes (Credulity,
1838). Some reports suggested that the attacker was not acting alone. Many of the attacks were on women and were seemingly sexual in nature (he ripped their clothes), though
apparently they did not involve actual rape.
London police, who took the reports seriously, investigated them but made no arrests.
Popular speculation pointed to Henry Marquis of Waterford, a man noted for recklessness, drunkenness, and other behavioral excesses, but no clear or convincing evidence
backed up the suspicions. Superstitious people held that Springheel Jack was a ghost, and
that belief took root in folklore.
Sporadic sightings of a mysterious leaping
figure occurred in various places in England
into the twentieth century. In 1877, many
residents of Caistor, Norfolk, saw someone
dressed in sheepskin (reminiscent of earlier reports of Jacks cladding himself in animal
skin) jumping from roof to roof, and the same
or a similar individual was widely observed in
Lincolnshire. On one occasion, when a mob
chased him, he leaped over walls and roofs. In
1904, in Liverpools Everton district, residents
saw a man dressed in a cloak and black boots

236

Sprinkle, Ronald Leo

executing high leaps, on one occasion allegedly springing from the ground to a
rooftop twenty-five feet high.
Though Springheel Jack legends are not a
part of American folklore, figures very much
like him appear in a few curious episodes. In
1938, a century after the London reports,
people in and around Provincetown, Massachusetts, claimed encounters with a leaping
man with fierce-looking eyes and pointed
ears. They said he stunned his victims with a
blue flame emanating from his mouth. Comparable stories were told in Baltimore in the
summer of 1951. On June 18, 1953, three
witnesses in a Houston neighborhood allegedly sighted a leaping, black-clad figure in
a cloak and saw a rocket-shaped UFO zoom
away moments after the beings disappearance. At least two other cases link leaping,
Jacklike figures to UFOs, one in Gallipolis,
Ohio, in the early 1960s, another at Washingtons Yakima Indian Reservation in December
1975.
The first suggestion that Jack may have
been an extraterrestrial appeared in the
March 6, 1954, issue of the British magazine
Everybodys. The next year, in a book on Liverpool history and lore, Richard WhittingtonEgan remarked that such a theory would account for his astounding leaping proclivities
because he would be adapted to the requirements of life on a greater-gravity planet. Likewise, differences in physical constitution
would probably enable him to live longer on
earth and might well explain the flame-like
emanations from his mouth (WhittingtonEgan, 1955).
On the other hand, in an extended survey
of all available literature on the legend, British
writer Mike Dash rejected any notion that the
various reports over a century and a half were
connected except as folklore. In Dashs view,
Springheel Jack is a catchall name denoting
unrelated pranksters, hoaxers, and criminals.
Still, it is hard to deny that intriguing questions remain, and Springheel Jackwhatever
he or it may or may not beconstitutes an
appealingly romantic mystery.

Further Reading
CredulityThe Ghost Story, 1838. London Times
(January 10).
Dash, Mike, 1996. Spring-Heeled Jack: To Victorian Bugaboo from Suburban Ghost. In Steve
Moore, ed. Fortean Studies, Volume 3, 7125.
London: John Brown Publishing.
Haining, Peter, 1977. The Legend and Bizarre Crimes
of 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 private
practice in Laramie, Wyoming. Prior to that,
as a member of the counseling department of
the University of Wyoming, he became
known as one of a handful of mental-health
professionals with a sympathetic interest in
the UFO phenomenon. He was the first to
study the psychological make-up of abductees
and contactees. In 1968, as a psychological
consultant for the U.S. Air Forcesponsored
University of Colorado UFO Project, he hypnotized a Nebraska police officer who reported a puzzling period of missing time during a close encounter. Sprinkles principal
interest, however, was in persons who believed themselves to be in psychic and other
contact with friendly space people, whom
Sprinkle called UFOlk. In 1980, he and the
Institute for UFO Contactee Studies held the
first Rocky Mountain Conference on UFO
Investigation. From then until 1996 he
would direct the meetings, which brought
together contactees, their followers, and interested observers.
Sprinkles interest was, and is, more than
academic. He believes himself to be a contactee and maintains an active interest in reincarnation and other metaphysical questions.
UFOs and their occupants are here, he believes, so that human development moves
from Planetary Persons to Cosmic Citizens
(Sprinkle, 1995).
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Contactees
Further Reading
Parnell, June O., and R. Leo Sprinkle, 1990. Personality Characteristics of Persons Who Claim

Star People
UFO Experiences. Journal of UFO Studies 2
(new series): 4558.
Sprinkle, R. Leo, 1999. Soul Samples: Personal Explo rations in Reincarnation and UFO Experiences.
Columbus, NC: Granite Publishing.
, 1969. Personal and Scientific Attitudes: A
Study of Persons Interested in UFO Reports. In
Charles Bowen, ed. Beyond Condon: Flying Saucer
Review Special Issue No. 2, June, 610. London:
Flying Saucer Review.
, 1976. Hypnotic and Psychic Aspects of
UFO Research. In Proceedings of the 1976
CUFOS Conference, 251258. Evanston, IL:
Center for UFO Studies.
, 1995. The Significance of UFO Experiences. In David Pursglove, ed. Zen in the Art of
Close Encounters, 164165. Berkeley, CA: New
Being Project.
Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1980. Proceedings of the Rocky
Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.
Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies.

Star People
Star People is a notion made popular in the
late 1970s and early 1980s. Brad Steiger, a
prolific writer on paranormal, occult, and ufological subjects, introduced the phrase in a
1976 book. He writes that the majority of
Amerindian Medicine People believe that
Star Peopleindividuals who many lifetimes
ago came to Earth with a mission from their
home worldsare becoming active at this
time in an effort to aid mankind [in surviving] a coming Great Purification of the
planet (Steiger, 1976). In the course of his
investigation of channeling and channelers, he
says, he became aware of women he calls Star
Maidens. Such women shared certain physical characteristics and had memories of arriving on Earth twenty thousand years ago in
a starship. Before long Steiger became convinced that just as many menincluding
himselfhad similar claims to extraterrestrial
origin.
Steiger eventually married a woman he believed to be a Star Maiden, Francie Paschal.
Paschal reported a lifetime of otherworldly experiences, beginning with childhood visions
in which an apparitional spaceman, looking
like a Hollywood-type Viking prince, told

237

her, Like unto another Christ child you will

be. He said she was from a planet . . . like
unto Venus (Steiger, 1976). She and Steiger
believed they had shared previous lives. As
part of what they believed to be their mission,
the couple moved from upstate New York to
Scottsdale, Arizona.
An article on their beliefs concerning Star
People in the May 1, 1979, issue of the Na tional Enquirer brought them a flood of letters and telephone calls. It turned out that
other persons suspected that they also were
space people put in place to help the human
race through coming cataclysms and changes.
Many said they had heard a disembodied
voice tell them, Now is the time, shortly
before they read the Enquirer piece. The
Steigers went on to release books in the Star
People Series, three originals and two
reprints of earlier Brad Steiger titles. The
originals were based in considerable part on
Francies channelings.
According to these messages, the Starseeds
are the true Star People. As direct descendants
of extraterrestrials, they have both alien and
human genes. The Star Helpers are descendants of the extraterrestrials original disciples.
Later, from further channeling, hypnotic regression, and testimony from others, the
Steigers concluded that three different types
of space ancestors could be discerned: Refugees who crash-landed on this planet thousands of years ago, after escaping from turmoil
and destruction on their home planet; Utopians, benign aliens who colonized other worlds
to give them perfect societies; and Energy
Essences, nonphysical entities who drift
through space, drop in on planets, and occasionally occupy a host body.
In The Star People (1981), the Steigers reported that a number of their correspondents
believed they had insights into the immediate
future. They foresaw worldwide famine in
1982, a pole shift between 1982 and 1984,
World War III no later than 1985, and Armageddon around 1990. Somewhere in the
middle of this, space people would land and
announce their presence.

238

Stellar Community of Enlightened Ecosystems

By the mid-1980s, the Steigers had divorced, and only Francie maintained enthusiasm for the Star People notion. Her death, a
few years later, effectively ended what remained of the movement.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1973. Revelation: The Divine Fire. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.
, 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 Angels Eye.
New York: Berkley Books.

Stellar Community of
Enlightened Ecosystems
Sometime in the 1980s, Jerry Doran of Wilmington, California, claims to have had an out-ofbody experience. He ascended into space where
he encountered five blue skinned dolphins
floating inside [a] spaceship. Through telepathy
the dolphins informed him that they were associated with the Stellar Community of Enlightened Ecosystems. The community sought to
guide human evolution toward attainment of a
Group Mind which includes the animals and
plants of Earth, the Earth itself, the Sun and
similar enlightened star systems throughout the
Cosmos (Melton, Clark, and Kelly, 1990).
Further Reading
Melton, 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 successful writer of horror and science-fiction novels
but has since become better known as a chronicler of his own paranormal and otherworldly
experiences, including abductions by UFOs.
Born to a prominent San Antonio family, he
attended the University of Texas, then moved
to New York to begin a writing career. On the
evening of December 26, 1985, he experienced

Whitley Strieber (Dennis Stacy/Fortean Picture Library)

a number of peculiar encounters of which he

did not have full conscious recall. A subsequent
hypnosis session led him to believe that he had
encountered aliens who inserted a needle into
his brain. Strieber sought out the well-known
abduction investigator Budd Hopkins, who
lived not far from him though the two had not
met till then. Hopkins introduced him to psychiatrist Donald F. Klein, who subjected
Strieber to psychological tests and pronounced
him normal. Strieber and Hopkins soon parted
company on bad terms around the time
Strieber published a best-selling account of his
abduction experiences, Communion (1987).
Communion sparked something of an uproar, with some criticsmost vocally Thomas
M. Disch in The Nationaccusing Strieber of
having written a science-fiction novel that he
was passing off as fact. Strieber also had his
defenders, who argued that he had too much
to lose to engage in that sort of literary fraud.
A follow-up book, Transformation (1988), recounted further experiences, and it, in turn,
was followed by more books recounting ever

Sunar and Treena

more fantastic interactions with the visitors,

as Strieber calls them. By the time he published Secret School in 1996, he was claiming
that aliens had been interacting with him all
of his life, beginning in his childhood when
the visitors instructed him and other San Antonio children on their missions as adults.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Extraterrestrials
among us; Hopkins, Budd
Further Reading
Conroy, Ed, 1989. Report on Communion: An Inde pendent Investigation of and Commentary on Whit ley Striebers Communion. New York: William
Morrow 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. New
York: HarperCollins Publishers.
, 1996. The Secret School: Preparation for
Contact. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Strieber, Whitley, and Anne Strieber, eds., 1997. The
Communion Letters. New York: HarperPrism.
Swords, Michael D., 1987. Communion: A Readers
Guide. MUFON UFO Journal 229 (May): 36.

Sunar and Treena

Dean Anderson of Egg Harbor, Wisconsin,
was atop a riding lawn mower at a golf course

239

when a flying saucer landed. It was 4:15 A.M.,

August 22, 1976. A door opened, and two beings, a man and a woman, floated out on a
beam of light. As they stepped toward Anderson, the saucer vanished. They shook Andersons hand, and the man said, We come in
peace. I am Sunar, from Jupiter. This is
Treena. She comes from Saturn (Bartholomew and Howard, 1998). Sunar, who had
copper skin, said he was more than two hundred years old. The lightly tanned Treena, clad
in a one-piece, skin-tight, green, glistening,
metallic suit, looked, Anderson thought, like
Elizabeth Taylor.
The space people told him that they had
come to Earth to gather specimens. Before
they left, they handed him an envelope with
instructions not to open it for five Earth
days. After waiting for the designated period,
Anderson found a golden amulet inside. On
one side there was a bird resembling a dove.
On the other, a message read, Peace and
friendship forever, Treena and Sunar, with
depictions of Saturn and Jupiter beside the
names.
Further Reading
Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,
1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.

Tabar
On the night of December 10, 1979, a Rhode
Island woman, Elaine Kaiser, saw a white light
and fell unconscious. Subsequent probing
through hypnosis elicited the memory of
floating in a beam into a room aboard a spacecraft. There she encountered a giant being in a
dark metallic suit. By telepathy, the being told
her his name was Tabar, and he was from 2.4
million light years away. She was laid on a
table and connected by instruments to a man
who lay on another. She did not recognize the
man. The procedure seemed to be something
like 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 in
an audience. He did not act as if he recognized her, and she did not approach him.
Further Reading
Alien Visitors? 1982. Oakland [Michigan] Press
(August 22).

Tawa
Tawa, a Blackfoot Indian and a friend of
Jesus in a previous incarnation, emerged in a
Ouija board session in suburban Chicago on
August 22, 1968. Previous to this, Candy
Fletcher had been pursuing spiritual ques241

tions by reading metaphysical books and exploring altered states of consciousness. But it
was through her husband, Rey, that Tawa
spoke. Under hypnosis, Rey Fletcher channeled Tawas teachings until late 1970 when
he turned his attention to more prosaic concerns. His wife, however, transcribed the
teachings and began work on a book based
on them. She also founded the Circle of
Power Foundation. In 1984 the Fletchers
moved to Victor, Montana, to devote full
time to their spiritual concerns.
According to Tawa, Jesus was born again
into the world in 1962, but the individual
had yet to realize that he was the Messiah.
Soon, however, he would come to that knowledge and reveal himself to the world, which
this time would accept his mission. But before
that happened, the anti-Christ would exert
malign influences and power before Jesus vanquished him.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Fletcher, C. R., 1984. Spirit in His Mind. Victor,
MT: Circle of Power Foundation.

Tecu
Tecu (pronounced Tey-coo) is an entity who
channeled through a young California

242

Thee Elohim

woman, Sanaya Roman. Roman first heard

from him when she and a friend were vacationing in Kauai, Hawaii. At that time, he
dictated a book-length manuscript on how to
heal psychically and how to use the universal
laws of energy to ones benefit. According to
Roman, Tecu identified himself as a Lord of
Time from the portals of the world of essence
where all matter is created (Roman and
Packer, 1987).
He came to her a second time on another
Hawaiian trip. Then she learned that he came
from a universe of a different frequency, thus
making communication difficult and infrequent. In that universe, energy is symmetrical. A jolly being, he took in good humor the
difficulties he encountered trying to walk in
Romans body. Because in his realm energy is
absorbed whenever it is necessary, he was at
first perplexed by the experience of eating
food. Eating is at the root of your problems,
he remarked wryly. First you have to have
food. Then you need dishes. Then you have to
build a house to contain the dishes. Then you
have to go to work to pay for the house. All
because you have to eat!
Tecu came back on several occasions to discuss the coming Earth changes and to encourage Roman to continue her project of teaching others how to channel.
See Also: Channeling
Further Reading
Roman, Sanaya, and Duane Packer, 1987. Opening
to Channel: How to Connect with Your Guide.
Tiburon, CA: H. J. Kramer.

Thee Elohim
In April 1971, a Milwaukee woman, June
Young, experienced a vision in which white
and black people linked hands. All were wearing black robes with large white rosaries
around their necks. Soon she began receiving
messages from Archangel Michael. He told
me to start a class dealing with the higher laws
of God, she said. He gave me full instructions. The lessons were brought and taught by
Michael and his Angels. Michael is the head

of our class as well as our protector. She came

to understand that her original vision was of
the group she would form, the Arising Suns
Interplanetary Class of Thee Elohim.
She explained to writer Brad Steiger that
Thee Elohim are the seven spirits of God:
Chamuel, Gabriel, Raphael, Zadkiel, Michael, Jophiel, and Uriel. They stand before
God and co-create with Him, she explained.
They manage and direct all forms that exist.
In 1972 Jophiel, the angel of intuitive
light, told her that because she had managed to overcome your desires of the flesh,
he and his colleagues were giving her back
the name she had held in her previous incarnation as a Venusian: Bright Star. Ever after
she went by that name, working at her mission to bring the material and spiritual
kingdoms together. According to her space
friends, the Earth would go through devastating physical and social upheaval in the last
years of the twentieth century, but with the
help of the space people and their terrestrial
associates, the Earths people will eventually
enter a new age of peace, harmony, and spiritual wisdom.
See Also: Contactees; Michael
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.

Thompsons Venusians
Samuel Eaton Thompsons story is as strange
as any from the UFO age. Before the word
contactees had been invented, Thompson,
an elderly, poorly educated, retired railroad
worker, claimed to have spent two days in the
company of naked, Edenic Venusians and,
moreover, seemed to actually believe his own
story was true.
Thompsons strange odyssey began on
March 28, 1950, as he was driving between
Morton and Mineral, Washington, on his way
home from a visit to relatives in Markham. As
he passed through a wooded area, he decided
to stop and take a break. He took a stroll

Thompsons Venusians

down an old logging trail that took him

deeper into the forest. As he entered a
clearing, he saw a hovering UFO that, he later
related to a local newspaper reporter, appeared to be made of a glowing, sun-colored
substance similar to plastic and was shaped
like two saucers fused together. I judged it was
about eighty feet horizontally and thirty-two
vertically (Centralian Tells, 1950). Equally
peculiar was the sight of tanned, fine-featured,
naked children playing on steps that led from
the saucer to the ground.
Excited, Thompson approached the craft,
feeling a mild heat emanating from itthe
cause, he would learn subsequently, of its occupants tanned skins. As he came nearer, his
presence brought the adultsbeautiful and
nude, with dark blond hairto the door.
They seemed frightened of him. He told them
he meant no harm, and they relaxed. After
asking him in clumsy English to remove his
shoes and socks, they invited him inside,
where he spent the next forty hours.
He learned that they were from Venus.
The ship was also their home. It carried ten
men and ten women as well as twenty-five
children between six and fifteen years old. Interviewed a few days later by private pilot and
well-known UFO witness Kenneth Arnold,
Thompson said the Venusians were friendly
and cheerful but curiously nave. He compared them to animals, meaning that instinct
rather than intellect governs their activities.
They knew nothing of the technology that
powered their ship; they knew which buttons
to push and levers to pull to get where they
wanted to go, and that was it. They had no
sense of time and no curiosity, and because of
their eating habitsthey were vegetarians
and stayed away from cooked foodsthey
never got sick and lived long lives. Their vegetables were like those found on Earth, and
Thompson ate some while on the spaceship
(the word the Venusians used for their craft).
He pronounced the food just great.
Venusians fear earthlings because human
aircraft had shot down some of their spaceships. Earth is considered a bad planet, but

243

Mars is even worse. There are twelve inhabited planets in the solar system. Each resident
is born under the sign of the planet on which
he or she is born, except for Earth, whose
problems stem from the fact that each person
is born under a different sign. Venusians and
earthlings long ago were very close, sharing
the first religion ever known, but the people
of Earth eventually became corrupt, and a
curse was cast upon their planet. Venusians
and other space people are now reincarnating
on Earth; their goal is to reform the earthlings
and prepare them for Christs Second Coming
in A.D. 10,000.
After sleeping overnight in a chair in one of
the ships bedrooms, Thompson asked for permission to go home and pick up a camera.
They did not know what a camera was. When
he explained, they said he could go but asked
him not to bring anyone else along. The photographic experiment came to nil. It was just
like trying to take a picture of the sun, he
told Arnold. It has a glow to it. That film was
just blank. I wanted to get some of them right
onto the ground to take some pictures of
them, but they wouldnt come out (Clark,
1981).
The Venusians left on March 30, cautioning Thompson to keep certain information to
himself. If he ever saw them again, no one ever
knew. For many years his story was little
known, with a brief newspaper account the
only record of it. In 1980, Arnold gave a tape
of his early April 1950 interview with Thompson to Fate magazine, and an article largely
based on it appeared in the January 1981
issue. Arnold remarked on Thompsons ignorance and lack of imagination, and he was
convinced that Thompson believed his story,
its outlandish, even absurd, qualities notwithstanding. Arnold speculated that he had undergone some sort of psychic experience.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees; Hopkinss
Martians
Further Reading
Arnold, Kenneth, 1980. How It All Began. In
Curtis G. Fuller, ed. Proceedings of the First Inter national UFO Congress, 1729. New York:
Warner Books.

244

Tibus

Centralian Tells Strange Tale of Visiting Venus

Space Ship in Eastern Lewis County, 1950. Cen tralia [Washington] Daily Chronicle (April 1).
Clark, Jerome, 1981. The Coming of the Venusians. Fate 34, 1 (January): 4955.

Tibus
Tibus channels through Diane Tessman, a
channeling contactee now living in Iowa.
Tibus, a member of the Ashtar Command and
the Free Federation of Planets, has visited the
Earth thousands of times. Under hypnosis with
psychologist/ufologist R. Leo Sprinkle, Tessman recounted several childhood memories
of encountering Tibus aboard a mother ship.
He was in the company of two humanoids, one
of whom was insectlike in appearance. The humanoids performed medical experiments on
her. One experiment, which occurred when she
was three years old, left a surgical scar between
her nose and upper lip. Tessman believes that
the space people were seeking to implant a
replica of Tibuss soul inside her.
See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Contactees; Sprinkle,
Ronald Leo
Further Reading
Montgomery, Ruth, 1985. Aliens among Us. New
York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Time travelers
According to Bruce Goldberg, a California
physician and a prolific writer on occult and
metaphysical subjects, visitors from the future
are here. He claims to have met several
chrononauts, as he calls them. They are
here, he says, to help us in our spiritual evolution, and they, not extraterrestrials, are the
agents responsible for UFO abductions.
Time travel was, or will be, invented in the
year 3050. The inventor, Taatos, was the god
Hermes thousands of years ago, in another
lifetime. Before Taatos traveled back to our
time to talk with Dr. Goldberg, however, he
helped send holographic images into our present reality. Goldberg writes that the chrononauts have mastered hyperspace travel between dimension[s], and can move through

walls and solid objects. By existing in the fifth

dimension, they can observe us and remain invisible. Genetic manipulation of our chromosomes is a routine procedure for them. They
have greatly speeded up our rate of evolution.
While traveling in an out-of-body state
through the fifth dimension, Goldberg encountered a thirty-sixth-century man who
called himself Traksa. Traksa told him that
many chrononauts are living quietly among
humans, keeping out of the public eye and
even spending much of their time in a literally
invisible state. Traksa eventually acknowledged
to Goldberg that one purpose of his visit was
to introduce Goldberg to Art Bell, then host of
a nationwide radio show catering to enthusiasts of the esoteric. Goldberg then realized that
spelled backwards, Traksas name was ASK
ART. Afterward Goldberg appeared at least
nine times on Bells popular program.
He also met Muat, Traksas supervisor from
the fortieth century. In earlier lifetimes, he
played big roles in both Atlantis and Lemuria.
Nirev (thirty-first century) helped with the
nineteenth centurys industrial revolution,
and Alsinoma (thirty-fourth century) tutored
Leonardo da Vinci. Chat Noy (fiftieth century) is or will be one of the great pioneers of
time travel.
Chrononauts are spiritual people, Goldberg writes. They follow us from lifetime to
lifetime, tracing our souls back to previous
lives and monitoring our spiritual unfolding.
Their ultimate purpose is to facilitate the perfection of the human soul to allow for ascension and the end of the karmic cycle. There
are also future problemswars, pollution, infertilityin this and parallel universes that
they are trying to avert by assisting us now in
our spiritual progress (Goldberg, n.d.).
Marc Davenport theorizes that UFOs are
visitors from the future. In his view, These
time machines are peopled by a complex mixture of human beings, evolved forms of humanoid beings, genetically engineered life
forms, androids, robots and/or alien life
forms. These occupants make use of advanced
technology based on principles that will be

Tulpa 245

discovered at some point in our near future to

produce fields around their craft that warp
space-time. By manipulating those fields, they
are able to traverse what we think of as space
and time as well (Davenport, 1992). Davenport, however, does not claim to have seen
any of these time travelers himself.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Atlantis; Lemuria
Further Reading
Davenport, 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.
http://www.drbrucegoldberg.com/TimeTravelers2.htm.

Tin-can aliens
Four miles east of Long Prairie, Minnesota, at
7:40 P.M. on October 23, 1965, a young radio
announcer named James Townsend was
rounding a curve when suddenly he saw something in the road and slammed on his brakes.
It was a rocket-shaped UFO resting on three
fins. The car skidded to a halt only twenty feet
from the device, which stood thirty to forty
feet tall and was ten feet in diameter.
In a circle of light beneath the UFO,
Townsend observed three objects or entities
that looked like beer cans on tripod legs and
with three matchstick arms. Even though they
had no eyes, he was certain that they were
staring at him. When he stepped out of his
car, they came toward him. After what seemed
an eternity, they scooted under the ship and
disappeared into the light circle. The UFO
shot off with an ear-splitting roar.
His outlandish story notwithstanding, lawenforcement officers and civilian investigators
believed that Townsend, a devoutly religious
man, was not perpetrating a hoax.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Jansen, Clare John, 1966. Little Tin Men in Minnesota. Fate 19, 2 (February): 3640.

Tree-stump aliens
One of the most bizarre close encounters of
the third kind ever took place on the evening

of April 5, 1966, in Newport, Oregon, during

a nationwide UFO wave. Though such reports overwhelmingly describe human or humanoid entities, two teenaged girls claimed to
have seen aliens that looked like tree stumps.
As they told the story, they were walking to
the house of one of themKathy Reeves
when they sensed that someone was following
them. At a turn in the road, they looked behind them to see something like a flashlight
with a cover over the end. Assuming it was a
prankster trying to scare them, they threw
rocks toward the light. But when they did so,
other, bigger lights suddenly switched on.
Frightened, the girls started running. Their
dash home was interrupted, however, by a
bizarre sight: three shapes moving across a
pasture apparently heading toward the lights.
They looked, Kathy Reeves later said, like
three little tree stumps walking on legs that
resembled a tree trunks tap roots. They had
no heads or arms. They were clad in multicolored clothes, orange, blue, white, yellow, and
watermelon-colored (Brandon, 1978). The
sight set the witnesses screaming homeward.
The resulting publicity brought investigators and curiosity-seekers to the Reeves residence over the next few days. At least two of
them, including Deputy Sheriff Thomas W.
Price, reported seeing strange moving lights.
There were no further reports of aliens, treestump ones or otherwise, though.
See Also: Close encounters of the third kind
Further Reading
Brandon, 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 created
by mental concentration. Such an entity is believed to take on at least a quasi-physical form
and to be visible to others besides its creator.
The most famous tulpa account appears in
Alexandra David-Neels With Mystics and Ma gicians in Tibet, originally published in 1931.
David-Neel, an adventurous French woman

246 The Two

educated at the Sorbonne, traveled widely

through Tibet in the early part of the twentieth century, exploring places and meeting
Buddhist holy men that no European had before encountered. The Geographical Society
of Paris awarded her a gold medal, and the Legion of Honor knighted her.
David-Neel wrote that while living with
the Tibetan yogis, she decided to conjure up a
tulpa. She imagined him to be a fat, jolly
lama. After some months, the being came into
existence. Apparently David-Neel essentially
considered him a vivid hallucination, a kind
of imaginary companion, and she was unsettled when it began to take on a reality of its
own. First, she claimed, it became no longer
necessary for her to think of it for it to appear,
and it seemed to adopt a recognizable personality and to perform appropriate actions.
A change gradually took place in my
lama, she said. The countenance I had
given him altered; his chubby cheeks thinned
and his expression became vaguely cunning
and malevolent. He became more importunate. In short, he was escaping me. One day a
shepherd who was bringing me butter saw the
phantasm, which he took for a lama of flesh
and bone.
Alarmed, she decided that she had to destroy the entity. It was not easy. It took six
months of hard mental work. She concluded,
That I should have succeeded in obtaining a
voluntary hallucination is not surprising.
What is interesting in such cases of materialization is that other persons see the form created by thought.
Though such first-person allegations of
real-life tulpas are exceedingly rare, DavidNeels story would inspire a great deal of speculation that seeks to explain a broad range of
extraordinary entities, from lake monsters to
UFO humanoids, as tulpalike thought
forms or (in Michael Grossos phrase) psychoterrestrials (Grosso, 1992).
See Also: Imaginal beings; Psychoterrestrials
Further Reading
David-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 Two
The Two were Marshall Herff Applewhite,
also known as Bo, and Bonnie Lu Nettles, also
known as Peep, two of the stranger flyingsaucer contactees. Nettles would be long dead
when Applewhite, then heading a cultlike
group called Heavens Gate, led thirty-eight
followers to mass suicide in a house in a
wealthy neighborhood of San Diego in March
1997. Their departure from this worldintended to free their bodies so that their souls
could board a spaceship thought to be accompanying the Hale-Bopp cometgenerated
headlines the world over.
Behind the tragedy lay a quarter-century of
spiritual odyssey that began in 1972, when
the psychiatrically troubled Applewhite, a
musical director at a local Episcopal church,
met Nettles, a nurse, at a Houston hospital.
The Two shared an interest in the occult, and
in Nettles, Applewhite found someone he had
been looking for: a woman with whom to establish a platonic relationship and a shared
metaphysical mission. Applewhites homosexuality had caused him legal and employment
problems and spiritual confusion. The occult
doctrine the Two would create, under guidance from space people, eschewed sexuality
and demanded chastity from its adherents.
Beginning in 1973, Applewhite and Nettles set out on a rambling pilgrimage through
several western states. While living along
Oregons Rogue River, they experienced a
revelation that they were the two witnesses
who Revelation 11 had prophesied would
appear on Earth during its last days. Their
first attempt to announce themselves to a
larger world occurred in Oklahoma City,
where they introduced themselves to local
ufologist Hayden Hewes, who had a flair for
publicity. They told Hewes to announce that
they were here to help the human race ascend to its next evolutionary level. According
to Hewes, they spoke as if humans were

The Two

alien to them (Hewes and Steiger, 1976).

Their behavior and general demeanor were
so odd that Hewes wondered if they were actual extraterrestrials.
Through leaflets signed by Human Individual Metamorphosis (HIM), the Two sought
followers. The documents identified them as
two individuals who had come from an advanced realm to testify to the same message
that Jesus had given to the world. Those who
followed them would have to abandon all ties
to this world, including family, friends, jobs,
and possessions. When they achieved metamorphosis, they would experience actual biological and chemical changes in their bodies.
Bo and Beep, as they then called themselves, made themselves available to the public
in the spring of 1975 at a meeting held in the
home of a Los Angeles psychic. Twenty-four
persons followed them to participate in further
gatherings in California, Colorado, and elsewhere, where new believers were solicited to
become Bo and Peeps sheep. Little of this attracted press attention until twenty members
of an audience, which had come to hear the
Two in Waldport, Oregon, disappeared with
them the next day. Newspaper accounts depicted the couple as mysterious. The account
even seemed to leave open the possibility that
the missing audience members had flown off
in a UFO. In fact, they had joined the pilgrimage. Six weeks later, two University of Montana sociologists found themthough not Bo
and Peepin Arizona. Bo and Peep, fearing
assassination, had dropped out of sight. Before
their departure, however, they separated their
150 to 200 followers in autonomous families
of about a dozen persons each. Within each
family there was further breakdown into couples, preferably a man and a woman, who were
to observe each other carefully. Sex and even
friendship were explicitly discouraged; the relationship had one purpose, which was that
each person would have his or her faults
pointed out, thus making it possible to overcome human limitations.
Each family went its own way, supporting
itself via meetings, contributions by new

247

Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles,

photographed after their 1975 arrest by local police in
Harlington, Texas, for auto theft and credit card fraud
(Bettmann/Corbis)

members, and begging. The reception of such

proselytizing was usually hostile, but small
numbers of recruits filled the ranks, often replacing those who had lost interest. Most followers were occult tourists whose fascination
with any particular metaphysical doctrine was
only passing. The failure of flying saucers to
arrive to take believers to a New World also
discouraged interest.
In early 1976, the movement, now consisting of fewer than one hundred members, retreated with Bo and Beep to a mountain camp
near Laramie, Wyoming. The couples authoritarian control was intensified, and those
judged unqualified were forced out. By fall,
the band had relocated to Salt Lake City.
Around this time, two members inherited a
great deal of money, which they turned over
to Bo and Peep. They purchased houses
(crafts in their terminology) in Denver and

248

The Two

DallasFort Worth and essentially removed

themselves from the world. Press stories about
them were few, though in 1979 one member
spoke with Time and recounted the day-today spiritual activities of the group, which
were rigidly directed. Nettles died, apparently
of cancer, in 1985.
In 1993, the group reemerged into view
with an advertisement in USA Today and followed it with pronouncements in other publications. Now calling themselves Total Overcomers, members lectured in various cities.
Two years later, the group, by then called
Heavens Gate, moved to San Diego and set
up a successful computer business with its
own web site. In October 1996, it purchased a
mansion in San Diegos exclusive Rancho
Santa Fe.
It was there that the mass suicide occurred,
apparently on the night of March 2526,
1997. Alerted by an anonymous phone call
(the caller was later identified as Richard Ford,
one of the groups followers), police found the
bodies of thirty-nine identically dressed men
and women of androgynous appearance.
Some of them, it was learned, had been surgically castrated. All had died of poison and suffocation. One of them was Applewhite. According to a videotaped statement, the deaths
occurred so that members could leave their

vehicles (bodies) and join a giant spaceship

that they believed was following the HaleBopp comet.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Balch, Robert W., 1995. Waiting for the Ships: Disillusionment and the Revitalization of Faith in
Bo and Peeps UFO Cult. In James R. Lewis, ed.
The Gods Have Landed: New Religions from Other
Worlds, 137166. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Bruni, Frank, 1997. Cult Leader Believed in Space
Aliens and Apocalypse. New York Times (March
28).
Flying Saucery in the Wilderness, 1979. Time (August 27): 58.
Hewes, Hayden, and Brad Steiger, eds., 1976. UFO
Missionaries Extraordinary. New York: Pocket
Books.
Hoffmann, Bill, Cathy Burke, and the staff of the
New York Post, 1997. Heavens Gate: Cult Suicide
in San Diego. New York: Harper-Paperbacks.
Niebuhr, Gustav, 1997. On the Furthest Fringes of
Millennialism. New York Times (March 28).
Oliver, Evelyn Dorothy, 1997. Graduating to the
Next Level: The Heavens Gate Tragedy in the
Context of New Age Ideology. Syzygy 6,1 (Winter/Spring): 4358.
Peters, Ted, 1977. UFOsGods Chariots? Flying
Saucers in Politics, Science, and Religion. Atlanta,
GA: John Knox Press.
Steiger, Brad, 1976. Gods of Aquarius: UFOs and the
Transformation of Man. New York: Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich.

Ulkt
Ulkt, a Martian, introduced himself through
automatic writing to a Salt Lake City UFO
buff, Mary Sewall, in early 1982. He told her
that Earth is overloaded with negative vibrations. Humans cannot join the federation of
intelligent worlds until they learn to cast positive vibrations. If they stop conflict and immoral behavior, their collective vibratory rate
will rise. Ulkt signed each communication
with what looked like an H on its side. Sewall
took this to be a symbol of infinity.
Further Reading
Sprinkle, R. Leo, ed., 1982. Proceedings: Rocky
Mountain Conference on UFO Investigation.
Laramie, WY: School of Extended Studies, University of Wyoming.

ultraterrestrials have one thing in common: a

detestation of human beings and all they stand
for. Human beings who encounter them often
end up psychically enslaved or destroyed.
In Keels view, heavily influenced by traditional demonology, The Devils emissaries of
yesteryear have been replaced by the mysterious men in black. The quasi-angels of Biblical times have become magnificent spacemen.
The demons, devils, and false angels were recognized as liars and plunderers by early man.
These same impostors now appear as longhaired Venusians (Keel, 1970).
See Also: Channeling; Fairies encountered; Keel,
John Alva; Men in black
Further Reading
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Ultraterrestrials
Ultraterrestrials dwell in the superspectrum, a
field of intelligent energy capable of manipulating matter. Ultraterrestrials are among the
materialized manifestations from this alternative reality. They appear to human beings in a
range of guises: as demons, extraterrestrials,
channeling intelligences, angels, fairies, monsters, men in black, and other supernatural entities. They are behind all of the worlds religions, and they have manipulated history. All

Ummo
Ummo is supposedly the name of a planet
that revolves around a star known to Ummites
as Iumma, 14.6 light years from the Earth. It
is also the focus of one of the most complex,
enigmatic hoaxes in the history of the contactee movement.
The episode began in February 1966 in a
Madrid suburb, where witnesses allegedly saw
a UFO hovering close to the ground. One

249

250

Ummo

One of several UFO photographs taken by Antonio Pardo at San Jose de Valderas, Madrid, Spain, June 1, 1967 (Fortean
Picture Library)

witness, Jose Luis Jordan Pena, reported seeing a strange symbol on the bottom of the
craft. It resembled two reverse parentheses,
with a vertical bar between them. Only Jordan
Pena told of seeing such a symbol (in fact
quite similar to the stylized H used sometimes
to represent the planet Uranus), which he described in a letter to prominent Spanish ufologist Antonio Ribera. On June 1, 1967, the
same man claimed to have investigated another close encounter at San Jose de Valderas,
near Madrid. He said witnesses had told him
that they saw a symbol on the UFOs bottom.
It was like the earlier one, except that now a
horizontal bar crossed the vertical and linked
the two reverse parentheses. The following
day, Antonio San Antonio, a newspaper photographer, took a phone call from an anonymous young man. The caller said he had
taken pictures of the UFO, and San Antonio

could pick them up at a certain photographic

laboratory. One of the pictures depicted the
curious logo.
Soon afterward, leaflets signed Henri
Dagousset asserted that the UFO had left
capsules in the area. Dagousset offered three
hundred dollars for each sample, referring takers to a general delivery address at Madrids
main post office. In August, Barcelona writer
Marius Lleget, author of a recently published
UFO book, received a letter with no return
address from Antonio Pardo. Inside the envelope were two more pictures of the San Jose
de Valderas object with the identical symbol.
Pardo said he had taken them moments after
the first photographer had snapped his. He
also enclosed a green plastic strip with the
symbol on it, explaining that he had recovered
it from a boy who had found it and a similar
strip inside a mysterious tube. (Subsequent

Ummo 251

analysis determined it to be a weather-resistant plastic developed for military and aerospace use. It was, in other words, of earthly
origin.) Then a man identifying himself as
Pardo phoned Lleget and spoke with him at
length. Lleget never asked for his address, and
Pardo did not provide it, to the later frustration of Ribera and Rafael Farriols. The two
ufologists called every Antonio Pardo (Anthony Brown in English) in Madrids phone
book without ever finding anyone who would
own up to being Llegets informant.
A related development, investigators would
soon learn, had occurred on May 20, when
the Spanish newspaper Informaciones published a peculiar announcement: that soon a
flying saucer would land near Madrid to return earthbound extraterrestrials to their
home planet, Ummo. On the evening of the
thirtieth, three persons reportedly watched a
UFO land near a restaurant in Santa Monica,
another Madrid suburb. The next day, according to one of the witnesses, impressions, burn
marks, and small amounts of a metallic substance attested to the UFOs presence. These
alleged events seemed to confirm a prediction
made by contactee Fernando Sesma, president
of the Society of the Friends of Space, on May
31. In a speech to a small group, he revealed
that since 1965 he and two associates had
been recipients of phone messages and written
communications from Ummites. They had
informed him of a sighting to occur on June
1. They provided the exact geographical coordinates. The Santa Monica incident seemed to
confirm the Ummites statement.
The written messages soon started to arrive
in the mail of Spanish UFO enthusiasts, then
to some of their French colleagues. Postmarks
indicated that they were sent from all over the
world, from cities in Europe to others in New
Zealand and Canada. On each page the
Ummo symbol appeared. It was the same one
Jordan Pena and other witnesses had reportedly seen and the anonymous young man had
photographed. The messages typically consisted of many pages of discourse on Ummite

life, society, science, technology, language,

and politics. Besides the monographs, there
were phone calls from purported Ummites,
always speaking with great precision in a
monotone voice. Untraceable or unsigned letters came from human beings who had dealt
with Ummites face to face (they were described as tall, blond, and Scandinavian in appearance) and witnessed marvelous technology. The quantity of such material was
astounding. By 1983, according to an estimate by one knowledgeable student of the
episode, some sixty-seven hundred Ummorelated communications were in the hands of
a variety of recipients. Most were written in
Spanish, a small minority in stilted French
that seemed to have been translated from
Spanish.
In one document, the Ummites said they
had arrived on Earth in March 1950. The following April 24, they revealed in another document that they had stolen a number of items
from a family in an isolated house in the
French Alps. By this time, the French government had become interested, and at last it had
an investigatable claim. But official inquiries
turned up nothing: no police records, no evidence of the cave in which the Ummites asserted they had been living between their
landing and the break-in. In the 1970s, the
San Jose de Valderas UFO fell victim to
photoanalysis that established that the object
was an eight-inch plate, the symbol drawn in
ink. Still, the communications continued, and
an Ummo cult grew up around them. A number of books, mostly in Spanish and French,
would examine or celebrate Ummo.
Though no evidence supports the existence
of Ummo and Ummites, the identity of the
perpetrators 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. . . . A
science journalist, a government engineer
working on advanced projects, or a frustrated
writer could match the psychological profile

252

Unholy Six

of the UMMO author (Vallee, 1991). He

contends that the perpetrator or perpetrators
got their inspiration from Jorge Luis Borgess
fantastic short story Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis, Tertius (1941), a fable about imaginary planets
that in some sense become real. Other suspects are Fernando Sesma, Jordan Pena, or
some intelligence agency involved in a psychological experiment. Hilary Evans thinks a
better, more sustained investigation by the
Spanish ufologists who probed the affair
would have produced answers and made
Ummo less mysterious than it appears to be.
Whatever the case, Ummo documents still
show up in the mail of a few individuals, most
prominently the French aerospace engineer
Jean-Pierre Petit. Whoever is beyond the
episode has expended much time and energy
to it over three decades.
Further Reading
Evans, Hilar y, 1983. Ummo: A Perfect Case? The
Unexplained 12, 134: 26612665.
, 1983. The Ummites Tell All. The Unex plained 12, 135: 26862689.
, 1983. UmmoRed Alert. The Unex plained 12, 137: 27382740.
Ribera, Antonio, 1975. The Mysterious UMMO
Affair. Flying Saucer Review Pt. I. 20, 4 (January): 2024; Pt. II. 20, 5 (March): 1316; Pt. III.
21, 1 (June): 2628; Pt. IV. 21, 2 (August):
2425, 27; Pt. V. 21, 34 (November): 4346.
Vallee, Jacques, 1991. Revelations: Alien Contact and
Human Deception. New York: Ballantine Books.

Unholy Six
According to George Hunt Williamson, six
solar systems housing planets peopled by
negative space intelligences exist in the
Orion nebula. The Unholy Six live on
dying worlds, and they plan to destroy the
Earth so that they can have access to its resources. The Orion group has its own subversive agents on Earth, working with them to
undercut the work of friendly, pro-human
space visitors of the Space Confederation.
Though incapable of entering the Earths atmosphere in their own spacecraft, the Unholy
Six project their intelligences into the brains
of certain earthlings.
Williamson wrote that the underlying cause
of conflict between the Space Confederation
and the Unholy Six is that the former are
Deists and the latter are Ideists. In other
words, the Space Confederation believes in a
divine power to which all are answerable, and
the Unholy Six believe only in the primacy of
the idthe power of the individual. For
countless millennia there have been no possibilities of reconciliation between these
groups, Williamson said (Williamson, 1959).
See Also: Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: Neville
Spearman.

Vadig
Vadig is an extraterrestrial invented by selfconfessed hoaxer Thomas F. Monteleone. In
March 1968, as a psychology student at the
University of Maryland, Monteleone heard
West Virginia contactee Woodrew Derenberger talking about his space contacts on
Washington, DC, radio station WWDC.
Derenberger claimed to have traveled to the
planet Lanulos. Convinced that Derenberger
was lying, Monteleone decided to play a practical joke and to assert that he, too, had been
to Lanulos. He called the station under the
name Ed Bailey and added new details
about the planet and its people. Derenberger
readily agreed with what the caller said.
To Monteleones chagrin, the station was
able to trace the call. Derenbergers manager
Harold Salkin phoned him and learned his
true identity. A week later, Salkin, Derenberger, and the latters wife called on Monteleone, who tape-recorded the interview. In
the interview, the young man reported that
while driving home on an interstate highway
he witnessed a UFO landing. Two aliens
emerged, and one introduced himself as
Vadig. Two months later, Vadig showed up at
the Washington restaurant where Monteleone
worked part-time. He arranged a meeting,
ending the encounter, as he had before, with

the enigmatic words Ill see you in time.

The following Sunday night, Vadig drove the
young man into rural Maryland where they
boarded a spaceship and flew to Lanulos,
where the inhabitants walk about naked. One
week later Monteleone met Vadig and another
Lanulosian for the last time.
Not long after the initial interview the
Derenbergers and Salkin returned to talk
once more, bringing along with them occult
journalist John A. Keel. Keel, who thought
Monteleone had revealed information only a
real contactee would know, wrote about the
Vadig encounter in later magazine articles
and in a book. When Vadig said he would
see you in time, according to Keel, he was
hinting that UFO beings originate outside
of our time frame. . . . UFOs are from another time cycle vastly different from our
own (Keel, 1969).
Monteleone went on to a short career as a
public contactee. His story appears in a book
Derenberger wrote with Harold W. Hubbard
in 1970, cited as evidence of the authenticity
of Lanulos and the authors experiences with
it. In 1979, in a short article in Omni, Monteleone confessed the hoax, noting, I contradicted Mr. Derenbergers story on purpose.
But on each occasion, he would give
ground . . . and in the end corroborate my

253

254

Val Thor

own falsifications. He even claimed to know

personally the UFOnaut who contacted me!
A fuller account of the episode appeared in
1980 in a Fate article by ufologist Karl T.
Pflock. By this time Monteleone had embarked on what was to prove a successful career as a science-fiction writer.
See Also: Contactees; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Derenberger, Woodrow W., and Harold W. Hubbard, 1971. Visitors from Lanulos. New York:
Vantage Press.
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.
, 1969. The Time Cycle Factor. Flying
Saucer Review 15, 3 (May/June): 913.
Monteleone, Thomas F., 1979. Last Word: The
Gullibility Factor. Omni 1 (May): 146.
Pflock, Karl T., 1980. Anatomy of a UFO Hoax.
Fate 33, 11 (November): 4048.

Val Thor
Val (or Valiant) Thor, a Venusian, met Frank
E. Stranges, evangelist and contactee, in the
Pentagon one morning in December 1959. At
the time Stranges was conducting a Christian
crusade in Washington. An anonymous Pentagon official of his acquaintance invited him
to the building. In one room he met a handsome, tanned man with wavy brown hair. In
the course of a half-hour conversation, the
stranger informed him that he was from
Venus. Over the course of years, Stranges flew
on spacecraft with Val Thor and wrote two
books about their experiences together.
Stranges reported that Venusians are physically like humans in all ways, except that they
do not have fingerprints. Fingerprints are a
sign of fallen man, according to Val Thor
(Stranges, 1974). Venusians, who are without
sin, are devout Christians, but they have no
need for the Bible because of their closeness to
its author. In their first meeting Stranges
learned that seventy-seven Venusians were living secretly in the United States, but that
number was subject to constant change because the Space Brothers were always coming
and going. Val himself was scheduled to re-

turn to Venus on March 16, 1960. The Venusians had come to Earth to help mankind return to the Lord.
On the morning of February 5, 1968, Val
Thor phoned Stranges and instructed him to
meet at the San Diego Airport. From there,
the two drove across the border into a coastal
town in Sonora, Mexico. Near there, they
boarded a flying saucer with a large crew, including a woman named Teel. Inside Vals
compartment, Stranges learned that his friend
had spoken with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, then
running for the Democratic nomination to the
presidency. Kennedy had written Val a letter
requesting a meeting, and Val had responded.
Val found Kennedy nervous and suspicious.
That evening aboard the spaceship, as they
watched a large televisionlike screen, Stranges,
Val, and several dozen Venusians sorrowfully
observed Kennedys assassination.
On another occasion, in January 1974,
Stranges flew to Las Vegas to meet Val and
friends. At the airport, two young men
dressed in black called him by name. Assuming they were the space people who were to
take him to Val Thor, he followed them into a
black Cadillac. Suddenly, they and a third,
similarly clad man turned on him and were
beating him severely when two menspace
peoplecame to the rescue. They caused the
Cadillac and the three men in black, agents of
dark forces opposed to the Venusians benevolent mission, to disappear. They then took
Stranges to the scheduled conference with Val
inside a flying saucer.
Still an active lecturer and saucer personality, Stranges claims to have photographic proof
of Vals existence. The photographs, reproduced in his books and shown at his lectures,
depict a man dressed in a suit and surrounded
by other persons in what look like ordinary social situations. Val Thor resembles a Hollywood bit player more than an extraterrestrial.
See Also: Contactees; Men in black
Further Reading
Stranges, Frank E., 1974. My Friend from beyond
Earth. Second edition. Van Nuys, CA: International Evangelism Crusades.

Van Tassel, George W. 255

, 1972. The Stranger at the Pentagon. Second
edition. Van Nuys, CA: International Evangelism
Crusades.

Valdar
In 1960, a young man identified only as
Edwin was working in a factory in Durban,
South Africa, when he met and befriended a
new supervisor. One night while the two were
fishing together, the latter spoke into a mechanical device, called up space people, and
produced a sky show with UFOs. Soon afterward, the man confessed to Edwin that his
real name was Valdar. He also told Edwin that
he was from Koldas, a planet that existed in
an anti-matter universe to which he must
soon return. He left Edwin the device before
he disappeared. In a few months, the two
were talking over the interdimensional radio.
Edwin learned that Koldas is one planet in a
twelve-world confederation.
The exchange continued for years. Before
long, Edwin channeled the messages rather
than taking them through the radio. Many of
the messages were of a technical and scientific
nature. Others were occult and metaphysical.
In 1986, South African ufologist Carl van
Vlierden published a book-length account of
Edwins alleged experiences and messages.
Further Reading
Hind, 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. (19101978)

Besides being a contactee himself, George Van
Tassel made his mark as the foremost promoter of the early contactee movement. Every
year he sponsored the Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention at his residence in
the high desert between Yucca Valley and
Joshua Tree, California. He also introduced
Ashtar, among the most ubiquitous and
beloved of channeling entities, to the occult
and flying-saucer world.

Born in Ohio, Van Tassel moved to California in 1930 with his family. He worked as an
aircraft technician for, among others, Howard
Hughes. In 1947, the Van Tassels took up residence inside an immense, partially hollowedout rock called simply Giant Rock. Van Tassel
started receiving psychic messages from extraterrestrials in January 1952, the first of them
from Lutbunn, senior in command first wave,
planet patrol, realms of Schare [pronounced
Share-ee, a starship station in space]. We have
your contact aboard 80,000 feet above this
place (Van Tassel, 1952). A flood of other
messages followed in the next days, weeks, and
months, all from peace-loving space people associated with the Council of Seven Lights on
the planet Shanchea. Van Tassel wrote what
may be the first contactee book, in the modern
sense, I Rode a Flying Saucer! (1952). Its title
notwithstanding, at that point all of his contacts had been mental ones. Not until August
24, 1953, would Van Tassel board a spacecraft
(or ventla, in the vocabulary of his space
friends).
Beginning in early 1953, Van Tassel held
weekly public channeling sessions. The Giant
Rock conventions began that spring, attracting the new contactee stars and their followers
and affording the emerging movement much
publicity. Soon Van Tassel, in person and
through his College of Universal Wisdom,
was raising money for the Integratron, a machine to be built according to extraterrestrials
specifications. It was supposed to rejuvenate
tissue and restore youthful vigor. By 1959, the
structure was partially built, but for all Van
Tassels subsequent efforts it would never be
completed.
More than any other single figure, Van Tassel gave direction and cohesion to what otherwise would have been a disparate movement.
He supported contactees whose claimsas
was often the caseconflicted with his own,
to the expense of his own credibility. Ufologist
Isabel L. Davis, for example, saw him as a
charlatan who knew fully well that the contact
stories were bogus. Others, however, judged
him to be sincere and dedicated to a meta-

256

Vegetable Man

George Van Tassel (right) with Long John Nebel (Fortean Picture Library)

physical vision in which, however outlandish

it may have seemed to others, he truly believed.
Van Tassel died in Santa Ana, California,
on February 9, 1978. Since then, some channelers have reported messages from him. I
was immediately taken into fellowship with
the Great Masters of the Council of which I
wrote, he told one (Tuella, 1989).
See Also: Ashtar; Channeling; Contactees
Further Reading
Curran, Douglas, 1985. In Advance of the Landing:
Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: Abbeville
Press.
Davis, Isabel L., 1957. Meet the Extraterrestrial.
Fantastic Universe 8, 5 (November): 3159.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
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 the Flying Saucers Revealed. Los
Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.

, 1958. The Council of Seven Lights. Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.

Vegetable Man
Jennings Frederick, a young West Virginia
man, claimed that while bow-and-arrow
hunting one afternoon in July 1968, he heard
a high-pitched jabbering, much like that of a
recording running at exaggerated speed.
Even so, he could understand it, and it was
communicating to him that he should not be
afraid. I come as a friend, the voice said.
We know of you all. I come in peace. I wish
medical assistance. I need your help. Then
Frederick saw the creature whom wags would
soon 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 a
quarter in diameter. It had three seven-inchlong fingers at the end of each arm. Instead of

Villanuevas visitors

fingertips, the fingers had needlelike tips and

suction cups. Its slender body looked like the
stalk of a plant, and so did its color: green.
Suddenly the entity gripped Fredericks
hand. Before he realized what was happening,
it was drawing blood from it. Then its eyes
turned red, and they began to rotate like spinning orange circles. The effect was hypnotic.
Frederick no longer felt any pain from the extraction, which lasted a minute or so. Afterward, a restored Vegetable Man bounded up a
nearby hill, each of his steps covering twentyfive feet.
Fredericks pain resumed. As he started to
walk home, he heard a humming sound. It
made him panic because he thought the entity
might be coming after him in its flying saucer.
He ran as fast as he could and got back home
unharmed.
Frederick was friends with Gray Barker of
Clarksburg, West Virginia, a publisher and
promoter of outlandish saucer materials.
Barker was also a self-confessed hoaxer and
encouraged other hoaxers. For a time, Vegetable Man played a large role in Barkers promotions. No one else has ever reported an encounter with him.
See Also: Tree-stump aliens
Further Reading
Steiger, Brad, 1978. Alien Meetings. New York: Ace
Books.

Venudo
Dan Boone, the son-in-law of George W. Van
Tassel, a leading figure in the contactee movement of the 1950s and 1960s, was in a Yucca
Valley, California, liquor store early one Saturday evening when he heard a group of peopletwo men and two womenask for directions to Giant Rock. He offered to lead
them there, and they followed him to the site.
Boone assumed they were there to attend the
weekly channeling and discussion group Van
Tassel held. He was right. The leader, who
said his name was Venudo, sat near Boone
and Van Tassel while the other three rested on
a couch nearby.

257

Venudo casually produced a device that had

been hanging around his neck. He tapped it
and, in full view of about thirty witnesses, he
vanished instantly. A minute later he became
visible again. Boone asked him if he could do
that once more, and Venudo obliged. This time
Boone reached over and felt Venudos shoulder,
though he could not see it. According to
Boone, Venudo and his friends were space people checking in on Van Tassels activities.
See Also: Channeling; Contactees; Van Tassel,
George W.
Further Reading
Hamilton, William F., III, 1996. Alien Magic: UFO
CrashesAbductionsUnderground Bases. New
Brunswick, NJ: Global Communications.

Villanuevas visitors
In 1953, Salvador Villanueva Medinas claimed
encounter with friendly men from another
world sparked international excitement. Followers of the emerging contactee movement
saw it as evidence that the space people were
now expanding their mission to Latin America,
and for a time Villanueva became something of
a hero in that regions occult world.
As the story went, Villanueva, a taxi and
limousine driver, was contracted to drive from
Mexico City up to Laredo, Texas. He and his
two passengers from Texas left Mexico City
on the morning of August 22. In the late afternoon, the cars differential gave out, and
Villanueva managed to roll the car to the side
of the highway before it came to a complete
stop. The two passengers decided to walk to
the nearest village to see if they could find a
mechanic. The driver stayed with the car and
did what he could to get it running again. He
jacked up the car and crawled underneath it
and began tinkering. There was little traffic,
and he felt very much alone.
Darkness had fallen when he heard footsteps. From beneath the vehicle, he saw two
legs covered in what look like corduroy. He
crawled out uneasily and stood to face the
man. The stranger had a pale white face. He
was dressed in a one-piece suit and had a

258

VIVenus

three-inch-wide belt around his waist. Lights

shone from little holes in the belt, and he was
holding a helmet under his arm. He had fine
features and a penetrating stare. He had
shoulder-length gray hair and his face was
hairless. He was four feet tall.
Too stunned and frightened to speak, Villanueva could not find the words to respond to
two questions, spoken in fluent Spanish, about
what was wrong with the car. Finally, he managed to ask if the man was an aviator. The little
man replied in the affirmative, then added an
odd remark about my machine which you
people call an airplane. He indicated that it
was parked behind a mound not far away.
Feeling more comfortable, Villanueva invited him to sit down in the car. But at that
moment the lights on the belt started to flash,
and a buzzing noise sounded. The stranger
donned his helmet and walked toward the
hill. The driver returned to his business with
the car, and not long afterward two motorcycle police officers came by and ordered him to
take the vehicle off the road. Afterward, he lay
down to sleep inside it.
Sometime later, knocks sounded on the
window. Groggily Villanueva sat up, assuming
that his passengers had returned. He was surprised to see instead the aviator and a companion, the latter a taller version of the first.
They entered the car and conversed with the
driver. The shorter one did most of the talking.
As they described their home, Villanueva realized that they were space people. It took him
awhile to decide that they were not joking.
Over the next few hours, he learned much
about their home world, its civilization, its
cities, its technology, and more. Thousands of
years ago, he was told, many destructive wars
were fought between the planets nations,
until finally its inhabitants established a oneworld government under what amounted to a
benevolent dictatorship of a council of wise
men. The state raised and educated the children, and there was no serious poverty. People
from this planet live undetected among earthlings, reporting on human affairs to their otherworldly superiors.

Toward dawn the buzzing sounds, emanating from either the helmets or the belts, resumed. The two left the car, with Villanueva
following. Eventually, they came to the ship, a
saucer-shaped structure. The men invited him
inside the craft, but at that moment he lost his
nerve and fled back to the car. From it he saw
the saucer ascend and disappear in the direction of the rising sun.
When his experience became known soon
afterward, Villanueva was compared to the
prominent American contactee George
Adamski. Adamski met Villanueva in Mexico
in the spring of 1955 and asked him a series
of questions. An American couple that also
was there would write, If the questions astounded us, so did the answers. Salvador
passed his examination at the hands of a man
who, having seen a saucer himself, knew how
to ask about certain things which no mere
imaginary contact could give the answers to
(Reeve and Reeve, 1957). Desmond Leslie,
Adamskis associate and co-author, visited Villanueva later that year. Leslie claimed that
Adamski had confided the Key to him, explaining that every man who has received a
true and physical contact with men from
other worlds has been given a certain Key
whereby it shall be known that he is speaking
truly. No man . . . could ever stumble upon
this key by guess or chance. . . . Villanueva
gave it without hesitation (Good, 1998).
Unlike Adamski and other contactees of the
period, Villanueva did not embark on a professional career. So far as is known, he claimed no
further meetings with extraterrestrials.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees
Further Reading
Good, Timothy, 1998. Alien Base: Earths Encounters
with Extraterrestrials. London: Century.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

VIVenus
The woman who called herself VIVenus
Viv for shortmade her mark in the mid1970s to the early 1980s. She said she was a

Volmo

Venusian who replaced a woman, her exact

physical double, who had committed suicide
in a New York hotel on September 24, 1960.
As she was brought to Earth that night, she
lost all memory of her life on Venus, a world
of Love (VIVenus, 1982). The memories returned seven years later, and she embarked on
a mission to reform this corrupt, cruel planet.
From Christmas 1974 until mid-1982, Viv
walked an average of ten miles a day and
preached the cosmic gospel to whoever would
listen. When she wasnt preaching, she was
playing guitar and singing interplanetary
hymns. In 1980, she campaigned for her favorite presidential candidate under the slogan
Its Not Odd to Vote for God (Shoemaker,
1980).
See Also: Dual reference
Further Reading
Shoemaker, Susan, 1980. A Venusian Visitor Goes
Campaigning. Oakland [California] Tribune
(July 13).
VIVenus: Starchild, 1982. New York: Global Communications.

259

Volmo
Ted Rice grew up in rural Alabama. Early in
life he learned that he had psychic abilities, and
he was aware of what he took to be spirit guides
but later identified as extraterrestrials. One of
these was a reptoid entity named Volmo.
Volmo communicated spiritual truths to
Rice as he slept. It was only when he saw Volmo
that he realized Volmo was not an angel but a
grotesque-looking alien. Under hypnosis, in an
ostensible reliving of his first physical encounter, he remarked that Volmo just isnt
human. . . . Hes really tall . . . six and a half feet
tall . . . and massive. Hes got a strong, powerful
body, and its dark colored, dull gray or olive
brown. . . . Theyre dark, sort of yellow-gold,
with sharp teeth. . . . There are only three or
four fingers on each hand, and I think theyre
webbed. The hands look clawlike, because hes
got these long, pointed nails on each finger.
See Also: King Leo; Reptoid child; Reptoids
Further Reading
Turner, Karla, 1994. Masquerade of Angels. Roland,
AR: Kelt Works.

Walk-ins
Ruth Montgomery popularized the notion of
the Walk-in, highly evolved souls who take
over the bodies of human beings who are willing to relinquish them. These beings are believed to be so advanced that it is not practical, or sometimes even possible, for them to
go through the normal process of reincarnation, starting out as a baby. In any event, they
have no time to waste and a serious mission to
fulfill. In Montgomerys words:

large roles in politics, religion, the arts, and

other aspects of human life.
In a later elaboration of the notion, Montgomery contended that there are also extraterrestrial Walk-ins, in other words the souls of
kindly space people who have possessed (after
mutual agreement) the bodies of humans. The
extraterrestrial Walk-ins are among the advanced souls that come to guide humans into
a New Age of peace, harmony, and spiritual
insight.
Further Reading
Montgomery, 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. Putnams Sons.
, 1985. Aliens among Us. New York: G. P.
Putnams Sons.

There are Walk-ins on this planet. Tens of

thousands of them. Enlightened beings, who,
after successfully completing numerous incarnations, have attained sufficient awareness of
the meaning of life that they can forego the
time-consuming process of birth and childhood, returning directly [to] the adult
bodies. . . . The motivation of the Walk-in is
humanitarian. He returns to physical being
in order to help others help themselves,
planting seed-concepts that will grow and
flourish for the benefit of mankind. (Montgomery, 1979)

Waltons abduction

Walk-ins, according to Montgomery, include Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Christopher Columbus, Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi,
Mary Baker Eddy, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and others who have played
261

Few UFO abduction cases are as spectacular

or as puzzling as one that allegedly took place
in November 1975 in a remote area of eastcentral Arizona. Forestry worker Travis Waltons five-day disappearance received worldwide attention when it occurred, and it has
since been the subject of books, television dramas, a movie, polygraph tests, and endless
controversy.

262

Waltons abduction

UFO abductee Travis Walton (Dennis Stacy/Fortean

Picture Library)

The incident began as the seven-member

crew of young men, ranging in age from seventeen to twenty-eight, were quitting work at
6 A.M. on November 5. As they left the site,
located in the Apache-Sitgreaves National
Forest, they noticed, ahead of them, a brilliant
glow, its source hidden by the trees. As their
pickup continued down the road, they observed a disc-shaped structure, approximately
one-hundred feet in diameter, twenty feet
wide, and eight feet high. It was hovering
twenty feet above a clearing. As the pickup
slowed down, Walton jumped out and ran toward the object. According to Waltons own
testimony as well as what other crew members
subsequently told law-enforcement authorities and civilian ufologists, Walton got within
six feet of the bottom of the craft. Sounds
began to come from the UFO, unnerving
Walton, who was starting to back away when
a bluish green beam hit him, shooting him
back some ten feet.

Terrified, the others fled in the truck. A few

minutes later, their panic somewhat subsided,
they returned to retrieve their coworker, only to
find no trace of him. After twenty minutes of
fruitless searching, they drove to nearby Heber,
Arizona, and reported the disappearance to the
authorities. The crew returned to the site in the
company of two sheriff s officers. They found
no clues to tip them off to Waltons whereabouts. At midnight, Waltons mother and
other family members were notified. The next
day searches resumed. By now the authorities
suspected that either the crew had murdered
Walton and concocted a wild UFO tale to
cover up the deed or Walton and his brother
Duane had engineered a hoax for monetary
reasons. No actual evidence supported either of
these suppositions, but the alternativethat a
UFO had kidnapped Travis Waltonwas too
outlandish to be taken seriously.
As publicity spread, reporters, ufologists,
and curiosity-seekers descended on the scene,
and charges and countercharges flew. The authorities insisted that the witnesses undergo
polygraph examination. According to examiner Cy Gilson, the results in five cases were
positiveindicating that the men had given a
sincere accountand in one instance inconclusive. Sheriff Marlin Gillespie declared that
he was now convinced that the UFO story
was true, after all.
Near midnight on November 10, Waltons
brother-in-law Grant Neff took a call, which
he first took to be a prank, from a weakvoiced, confused-sounding man who claimed
to be Travis Walton. The caller said he was
phoning from a gas station in Heber, thirty
miles east of Taylor, where Neff and his wife
lived. When Neff seemed ready to hang up,
the voice became desperate, and Neff realized
that he was indeed speaking with Travis. Neff
and Duane Walton drove to Heber and found
Travis at a phone both near the station, shivering in the same clothes he had been wearing
five days earlier. It was only eighteen degrees
outside.
A complex series of events followed, with
hoax charges being leveled by some (though

Waltons abduction

not all) local police officers and then by

William H. Spaulding, head of a Phoenixbased group called Ground Saucer Watch. Jim
and Coral Lorenzen, directors of Tucsons Aerial Phenomena Research Organization
(APRO), entered the investigation and, with
the National Enquirer, arranged for Walton to
take a secret polygraph test. It was administered by John J. McCarthy, who did not hide
his skepticism of Waltons claim and grilled
him about a youthful scrape with the law. Afterward, when Walton had taken the examination, McCarthy declared that he had
flunked it. Waltons critics cited the test as reason to reject Waltons story, while his defenders disputed the results as the consequence of
a hostile examiners harassment of an already
shaken witness. In any case, the results were
suppressed and did not come to light until
UFO debunker Philip J. Klass learned about
it sometime later from McCarthy.
The following February, Duane Walton
and then Travis took a polygraph, this one run
by George J. Pfeifer. Pfeifer concluded that
their responses were truthful. Mary Kellett,
their mother, whom some had accused of
being a conspirator in a hoax, also passed the
test, in Pfeifers judgment.
Walton would tell the same story without
elaboration over the next two decades and
more. He reported that after the beam hit
him, he lost consciousness and had no memory of anything until he awoke in what he
thought was a hospital. The atmosphere was
wet and heavy, and he had a hard time breathing in it. Three humanoid figures with big
staring eyes, large hairless heads, and tiny
mouths, ears, and noses, stood by the bedside.
Terrified, he leaped out of bed and pushed
one into another. Grabbing a cylindrical tube
he noticed on a shelf jutting from the wall, he
waved 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 door
behind them. Soon afterward Walton ran out
the door himself and ran to his left, through a
curving, three-feet-wide corridor. Seeing an
open room to his right, he ducked into it. The

263

A drawing by Travis Waltons boss, Michael Rogers, based

on Waltons description of the being he saw when he was
abducted (Fortean Picture Library)

room seemed empty, though Walton was

nervous about a high-backed metal chair in
the middle. Because he was observing it from
the back, he did not know if anyone was sitting in it or not. No one was. As Walton approached it, the lights in the room began to
dim. When he stepped back, the light returned. As he went forward again, the light
dimmed again, and now stars surrounded
him. He did not know if he was witnessing a
planetarium effect or if the room had become
transparent. He would recall that the experience was like sitting in a chair in the middle
of space (Walton, 1978).
On the right arm of the chair, he saw a
panel of buttons and a screen with black
lines going up and down. On the left there
was a lever. Curious, Walton pushed the
lever forward. Suddenly the lines on the
screen moved, and the stars began to spin
even while maintaining their relative positions. When he let go of the lever, everything
returned to the way it had been before. After

264

Waltons abduction

he stood up, the light returned to the room,

and the stars disappeared.
At that point, a human-looking figure
wearing a spacesuit and helmet entered the
room. He stood over six feet tall, looked to be
about two-hundred pounds, and had blond
hair long enough to cover his ears. His skin
was deeply tanned. Thinking that the stranger
was a fellow human being (even though he
would recall that the eyes were peculiar, a
strange bright golden hazel), Walton felt relieved and peppered him with questions. In
response the figure only grinned, then beckoned him to follow. He took Waltons arm,
and the two proceeded down the curving hallway. They came to a door and opened it to
enter a tiny metal cubicle of a room. They
passed through it into a huge space that Walton thought looked like a hangar of some
kind. Inside it was bright as sunshine, and
breezes blew as if they were outdoors. He realized that they had just left the craft. When he
turned to examine it, he observed that it resembled the UFO he had seen in the clearing
but this one was bigger. He also saw two other
identical but smaller craft parked near the
wall.
They then went through another door into
another hallway, strolling past a number of
closed double doors until finally they entered
yet another room. Inside this room two men
and a woman sat, not only dressed like his
companion but looking enough like him that
Walton wondered if they were related to him.
They were all good-looking, and the womans
hair was longer than the mens. The three were
not wearing helmets. Walton had assumed
that he had not been able to communicate
with the first man because the stranger could
not hear him through the helmet. But like the
first man, they did not respond to Waltons
questions, just smiled pleasantly. When the
helmeted man left, the others led him to a
table. Suddenly frightened, Walton demanded
to know what they were doing. The woman
forced something that looked like an oxygen
mask with no connecting tubes onto his face.
He passed out. The next thing he knew, he

was lying on his back near Heber, ten miles

from where he had been before all of this
started. In the darkness one of those round
craft [hovered] there for just a second. I
looked up just as a light went out. A white
light just went off on the bottom of it. The
craft was dark, and it wasnt giving off any
light (Barry, 1978).
Waltons return was an international news
event. Soon afterward, UFO debunker Philip
J. Klass embarked on what would amount to a
lifelong crusade to prove that Walton, his
family, and the logging crew had conspired to
hoax the incident. No very good evidence of a
hoax would emerge, however, even after one
of the crew was reportedly offered ten thousand dollars to expose the story. Walton went
on to marry, become a family man and respected member of his community, and write
two books on his experience, the second containing a long and pointed rejoinder to the
skeptics case. On February 1, 1993, Travis
Walton, Duane Walton, and witness Allen
Dalis (who had not seen Travis in two
decades) underwent new polygraph examinations, again administered by Cy Gilson.
Gilson judged them to be telling the truth
when they responded affirmatively to the
UFO questions and negatively to the hoax
charges. In March 1993 Paramount Pictures
released a movie drama, Fire in the Sky, based
loosely on the incident, with D. B. Sweeney
in the role of Travis.
Few students of this complex episode believe it to be a hoax. Alternative, non-UFO
explanations tend to focus on psychological
or natural causes. One theory holds that
Walton and his companions saw an earthquake lighta luminous phenomenon generated by electrical fields in rocks in fault
zonesthat triggered hallucinations. A
problem with this hypothesis is the thinly
clad Waltons survival in the woods over five
bitterly cold mountain nights. The Walton
abduction story remains one of the most intriguing cases of the UFO age.
Interestingly, Waltons is one of the first
two cases in the UFO literature to describe

Waltons abduction

265

A dramatization of the abduction of Travis Walton as seen in the movie Fire in the Sky, 1993 (Photofest)

the gray aliens that would assume a prominent role in the abduction phenomenon of
later years. The other incident was one of
which Walton could not have been aware in

November 1975. It was known to ufologists

Jim and Coral Lorenzen, who were quietly investigating it when the Walton story erupted
into the headlines. U.S. Air Force Sergeant

266

Wanderers

Charles Moody had confided to them that the

previous August 13, he saw a UFO in the
New Mexico desert and was taken aboard. In
early November, in a letter to the Lorenzens,
he had this to say of the occupants: The beings were about five feet tall and very much
like us except their heads were larger and hairless, their eyes very small[,] and the mouth
had very thin lips (Lorenzen and Lorenzen,
1977). Moodys description is virtually identical to the one Walton gave to the first group
of humanoids he allegedly encountered. Waltons also anticipated later abduction lore in
claiming to see both little gray entities and the
more humanlike beings whom some ufologists would call Nordics aboard the same ship.
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Nordics
Further Reading
Barry, 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: Comparative
Study of Abductions. Volume 2: Catalogue of Cases.
Mount Rainier, MD: Fund for UFO Research.
Clark, Jerome, 1998. Walton Abduction Case. In
Jerome Clark. The UFO Encyclopedia, Second
Edition: The Phenomenon from the Beginning,
981998. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.
Gansberg, Judith M., and Alan L. Gansberg, 1980.
Direct Encounters: The Personal Histories of UFO
Abductees. New York: Walker and Company.
Klass, Philip J., 1989. UFO Abductions: A Dangerous
Game. Updated edition. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books.
Lorenzen, Coral, and Jim Lorenzen, 1977. Abducted!
Confrontations with Beings from Outer Space. New
York: Berkley.
Persinger, Michael A., 1979. Possible Infrequent
Geophysical Sources of Close UFO Encounters:
Expected Physical and Behavioral Biological Effects. In Richard F. Haines, ed. UFO Phenomena
and the Behavioral Scientist, 396433. Metuchen,
NJ: Scarecrow Press.
Walton, Travis, 1978. The Walton Experience. New
York: Berkley Medallion Books.
, 1996. Fire in the Sky: The Walton Experi ence. New York: Marlowe and Company.

Wanderers
Wanderers are extraterrestrials who traverse
the cosmos in search of what George Hunt

Williamson calls trash can worldsin other

words, backward planets such as the Earth.
When they find such a world, they offer their
souls to the reincarnation cycle. On Earth
their leader was the Elder Brotheralso
known as the Son of Thought Incarnate and,
in a later life, Jesus Christ. The Elder Brother
came to this planet accompanied by one hundred forty-four thousand Lesser Avatars. Over
the centuries, many forgot their cosmic origins and mission, but some kept the faith.
After World War II, with the coming of flying
saucers, the seeding process accelerated. A
space friend told Williamson, Many of our
people are in your world now. There are
nearly ten million of them, with six of those
million in the United States itself.
See Also: Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.

White Eagle
White Eagle, believed to represent the New
Testaments Saint John, was channeled
through British spiritualist medium Grace
Cooke (also known as Minesta) from the
1930s until her death in 1979. By the 1950s,
White Eagles teachings had found their way
to North America. White Eagle taught an
eclectic mix of Christian-based ideas and reincarnation theories as well as the occult doctrine of the Great White Brotherhood. He advocated kindness toward ones fellows and
vegetarianism, and love for animals.
Further Reading
Melton, J. Gordon, 1996. Encyclopedia of American
Religions. Detroit, MI: Gale Research.

Whites little people

One August night in 1891, hours before he
would leave his native El Dorado, Kansas, to
move to Kansas City and become one of Americas most highly regarded journalists, William
Allen White was awakened by the bright
moonlight streaming in through his back window. He was about to turn his head in the op-

Wilcoxs Martians

posite direction when he thought he heard

music. Looking outside, he saw a group of little
peopleno more than three or four inches
highdancing under the elm tree. They also
seemed to be humming along with the melody.
The scene was clear and unmistakable.
Yet, still unable to credit his senses, he
turned away, then glanced back. The strange
tiny figures were still there. He got up and
looked through another window in case the
whole scene was simply a trick of light. He
could still see the figures. He moved about
vigorously to discharge any extant images
kept over from sleep. After five minutes the
little people began to fade away, and soon
only the grass on which they had been moving remained.
Exhausted, he returned to bed and fell
asleep. He would never forget the incident.
Recalling it many years later in his autobiography, he reflected ruefully, When I recall
that hour I am so sure that I was awake I
think maybe I am still crazy.
See Also: Fairies encountered
Further Reading
White, William Allen, 1946. Autobiography. New
York: Macmillan.

Wilcoxs Martians
As he went about his chores on the morning
of April 24, 1964, Newark Valley, New York,
dairy farmer Gary T. Wilcox had a premonition that something out of the ordinary was
going to happen that day. Driving his tractor
up a hill, he glimpsed a shiny object just inside a nearby clump of woods. He stopped the
tractor, got off, and walked toward the woods.
The closer perspective allowed him to see that
the object was an egg-shaped structure,
twenty feet long and sixteen feet wide, hovering two feet above the ground. All the while it
emitted a sound that to Wilcoxs ears was like
a car idling. Just after he touched the UFO,
two Martians came up from under it.
Wilcox did not learn of their planet of origin immediately, but the figures did not look
earthly. Four feet tall and two feet wide, they

267

were clad in silver suits that covered their entire bodies. Each carried a small tray filled
with soil and plant samples. An eerie voice addressed him, apparently from the chest of the
nearer figure (the other stood near the UFO).
The voice said, We are from what you know
as the planet Mars (Schwarz, 1983). Asked
what he was doing, Wilcox explained that he
was spreading manure. The Martian wanted
to know what manure was, and he asked a series of questions about it. He said he would
like a sample of it, but when Wilcox volunteered to go to the barn to retrieve some, the
alien changed the subject. They could come
to Earth only every two years, he said, and
warned would-be travelers from Earth to stay
away from Mars, since its conditions are inhospitable to human life. They were here to
study the Earths organic life, and they said
something that Wilcox understood to mean
that the earth and Mars, plus some other
planets, might be changed around. They also
predicted that within a year two American astronauts, John Glenn and Virgil (Gus) Grissom, and two Soviet cosmonauts would be
killed. They said that other Martian ships
were surveying the Earth.
After two hours, the conversation ended.
The Martians said that Wilcox should not tell
anyone about the exchange for your own
good, though Wilcox did not interpret this
as a threat.
All the while, Wilcox would tell family
members, he suspected that he was at the receiving end of a hoax engineered by the television show Candid Camera. He found a jellylike substance on the ground where the UFO
had been, but he could not pick it up. It
slipped through his fingers.
Wilcox confided the story to family members and friends. The matter probably would
have ended there if two local women, who
worked with Floyd Wilcox, Garys younger
brother, had not heard the story. Both belonged to a Washington-based UFO organization. They asked permission to interview
Gary Wilcox, who provided them with a short
statement. A neighbor woman interested in

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Williamson, George Hunt

UFOs spoke with him at greater length and

examined the landing site, but rain had
washed away whatever might have been there
originally. She alerted the sheriff s office,
which sent a deputy to investigate. On May 7
a detailed account appeared in the Bingham ton Press, after a reporter spoke with a reluctant Wilcox. Subsequently, Walter N. Webb,
an astronomer and field investigator for the
National Investigations Committee on Aerial
Phenomena, spoke with Wilcox and others.
Neighbors, friends, and authorities unanimously agreed that Wilcox had a good reputation in the area, Webb would write. Wilcox
had no previous history of interest in the esoteric and in fact was not much of a reader.
A psychiatric examination conducted by
Berthold Eric Schwarz, M.D., a psychotherapist, concluded that Wilcox suffered no mental abnormalities. Unlike many figures in the
contactee movement, Wilcox made no attempt to exploit his alleged experience. He
discussed it only when asked, and with notable hesitation. He made no further claims of
encounters with extraterrestrials.
See Also: Allinghams Martian; Aurora Martian;
Browns Martians; Close encounters of the third
kind; Dentonss Martians and Venusians; Hopkinss Martians; Khauga; Martian bees; MincePie Martians; Monka; Mullers Martians; Shaws
Martians
Further Reading
Hotchkiss, Olga M., 1964. New York UFO and Its
Little People. Fate 17, 9 (September): 3842.
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: Rainbow
Books.
Webb, Walter N., 1965. The Newark Valley-Conklin,
New York, Incidents: The Binghamton Area Flap of
1964. Cambridge, MA: self-published.

Williamson, George Hunt (19261986)

George Hunt Williamson was a leading figure
in the contactee movement of the 1950s. On
that fringe he even had a reputation as a
scholar and deep thinker, even if by main-

stream standards his ideas about ancient and

modern visitations from space by friendly and
hostile extraterrestrials seemed the product of
a fertile, even crankish imagination. Williamson claimed not only to have witnessed
George Adamskis meeting with a Venusian in
the California desert in November 1952 but
also to have had contacts with space people
himself. A colorful, intelligent, and educated
man, Williamson advanced many ideas that
still circulate in popular culture, though he
himself dropped out of sight in the 1960s and
died in obscurity in Long Beach, California,
in January 1986.
Born in Chicago, Williamson pursued archaeological and anthropological interests in
college. Several psychic experiences in his
youth drew him to the occult and the paranormal, and then to flying saucers. He had
close contacts with the Chippewa and the
Hopi and lived with them in the early 1950s.
In 1952, while residing in Prescott, Arizona,
he and his wife, Betty, met Alfred and Betty
Bailey. The two couples attempted to contact
saucers and soon began receiving messages,
through automatic writing and the ouija
board, from visitors from Venus, Mars,
Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune. Then one message, from Zo of Neptune, informed them
that they would be receiving Morse code signals on the radio. They were instructed to approach one of Baileys coworkers, Lyman
Streeter, who was a ham-radio operator. Soon
Streeter, his wife, and the two other couples
were hearing from extraterrestrials with colorful names: Zo, Affa, Um, and Regga. Further
communications took place through radio
and mental telepathy.
Through his reading, Williamson heard of
George Adamski, a Californian who was producing pictures of alleged spacecraft. The two
exchanged letters, and Adamski invited
Williamson to visit him at his home in Palomar Gardens. In the presence of the
Williamsons and the Baileys, Adamski channeled messages from space people. On November 20, alerted that a landing would
occur, the two couples met with Adamski and

Williamson, George Hunt

269

George Hunt Williamson (left), who received regular radio messages from extraterrestrials in the early 1950s (Fortean
Picture Library)

two associates along the California-Arizona

border. The other six would sign affidavits attesting to their observation (albeit from some
distance) of Adamskis meeting with a spaceman. (Later the Baileys would withdraw their
testimony, saying they had seen nothing out
of the ordinary.)
Williamson went on to write a series of
books both about his contacts and about his
theories about the role space people have
played in the human past and present. Such
books as Other TonguesOther Flesh (1953),
Secret Places of the Lion (1958), and Road in the
Sky (1959) anticipated themes that Erich von
Dniken and others would popularize in the
1970s during the ancient astronauts craze.
Williamson split with Adamski after the latter
urged him not to publicize his psychic contacts, since Adamski decried such methods of
communications to his followers, even while
privately practicing them. But Williamson

delved ever deeper into the occult and pursued

his own attempts at space communication by
various means. In 1955, he and Richard Miller
formed the Telonic Research Center to establish radio and other contacts with extraterrestrials, though within months he and Miller
parted amid much mutual recrimination.
The following year he joined up with the
Brotherhood of the Seven Rays, a band of psychics and contactees (including Dorothy Martin, better known as Sister Thedra), and spent
a year at its colony in a remote area of Peru,
convinced that cataclysmic Earth changes
were soon to occur. When they did not,
Williamson and everyone except Martin returned to the United States. There Williamson resumed writing books, one of them a
thinly disguised anti-Semitic work titled
UFOs Confidential! (1958). In 1958, he went
on a world tour and, in 1961, he lectured in
Japan, where he was treated as something of a

270

Wilson

celebrity. His last book, which he wrote under

the pseudonym Brother Philip, was published the same year. Soon, however, Williamsonnow calling himself Michel dObrenovicretired from a public career and was so
little heard from that many thought him
dead.
During his heyday, critics accused Williamson of a range of shortcomings and base motivations, among them bigotry, paranoia, and
charlatanism. His shrillest attackers, associated with James W. Moseleys Saucer News,
debunked Williamsons assertions about his
academic background (far from being a
Ph.D., as he said he was, he did not have even
an undergraduate degree), and one reviewer
noted similarities between the supposedly
nonfictional Road in the Sky and a science-fiction series by Isaac Asimov. After his death,
however, scientist and UFO historian Michael
D. Swords acquired the bulk of Williamsons
collection, which includes a massive amount
of private correspondence and other material.
Based on his reading of it, Swords concludes
that for all his exaggeration and credentialinflation, Williams was essentially honest. In
his estimation Williamson actually believed
all the stuffthe wild, amazing, impossibleto-believe stuffthat he wrote about. . . .
Williamson is not easy to explain and cannot
be deposited into some conveniently labeled
box (Swords, 1993).
See Also: Adamski, George; Affa; Contactees; Sister
Thedra
Further Reading
Brother 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.
Leslie, Desmond, and George Adamski, 1953. Flying
Saucers Have Landed. New York: British Book
Centre.
Moseley, James W., and Michael G. Mann, 1959.
Screwing the Lid down on Doctor
Williamson. Saucer News 6, 2 (February/
March): 35.

Swords, Michael D., 1993. UFOs and the Amish.

International UFO Reporter 18, 5 (September/
October): 1213.
Williamson, George Hunt, 1953. Other Tongues
Other Flesh. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
, 1958. Secret Places of the Lion. Amherst,
WI: Amherst Press.
, 1959. Road in the Sky. London: Neville
Spearman.
Williamson, George Hunt, and Alfred C. Bailey,
1954. The Saucers Speak! A Documentary Report of
Interstellar Communication by Radiotelegraphy.
Los Angeles: New Age Publishing Company.
Williamson, George Hunt, and John McCoy, 1958.
UFOs Confidential! The Meaning behind the
Most Closely Guarded Secret of All Time. Corpus
Christi, TX: Essene Press.

Wilson
During the spring of 1897, American newspapers reported frequently outlandish accounts of mysterious airships, dirigible- or
cigar-shaped structures whose origins were
(and still are) shrouded in mystery. Some
people speculated that they housed Martian
visitors, and indeed some spectacular hoaxes
played to that belief. The more common theory, however, held that an enterprising American had invented advanced aircraft and was
flying it around the country with a crew of
aeronauts. Stories carried in the press reported meetings with the enigmatic inventor,
though most were contradictory and dubious. Historians of aviation have ignored this
episode, and today only ufologists have examined it carefully, holding that the airship scare
was an early UFO wave. Among the more curious accounts to be published in the press of
the period were a series of ostensibly related
incidents, all but one of which occurred in
Texas, involving an aeronaut identified as
Wilson.
Someone who may have been Wilson appears first in an alleged encounter near
Greenville, Texas, late on the evening of April
16, according to a letter C. G. Williams published in the Dallas Morning News on the
nineteenth. Williams reportedly saw an immense cigar-shaped vessel as he was taking a

Wilson

walk. Three crew members stepped outside,

two to work on the structure, the third to chat
with the witness. The stranger told Williams
that he had built the ship after many years of
experiment and error at a little town in the
interior of New York.
The May 16 issue of the same newspaper
carried a letter forwarded by Dr. D. H.
Tucker. Tucker said that a young man who
subsequently drowned in a flood in Mississippi had written the original, recounting an
experience that occurred on April 19 in the
Lake Charles, Louisiana, area. While riding in
his buggy, he spotted an airship approaching.
A high-pitched whistle from the vessel
spooked his horses, and he was thrown to the
ground. When the ship landed, two men
rushed from it to help him to his feet and to
extend their apologies. One introduced himself as Mr. Wilson, though the witness
doubted that was his real name. Wilson stated
that he and his companion, Scott Warren, had
invented a fleet of ships. They were now seeking to demonstrate that long-distance airship
travel was safe and economical. The young
man was invited to tour the vehicle, where he
met two other crew members.
That same day, at around 11 P.M., at Beaumont, Texas, according to an account published in the Houston Daily Post of April 21,
lights in a neighbors pasture caught the eyes
of J. R. Ligon and his son Charley. They observed four men moving around a large dark
object that they recognized, as they approached it, as an airship. Its crew asked for
water and accompanied the two to the house,
where they filled their buckets. I accosted
one of the men, the elder Ligon reported,
and he told me his name was Wilson. . . .
They were returning from a trip out on the
Gulf and were now headed toward Iowa,
where the airship was built. It was one of five
that had been constructed there. The Ligons
accompanied them back to the ship, a huge
structure 136 feet long and 20 feet wide, with
four large wings and propellers attached to
bow and stern. Wilson explained it was powered by electricity.

271

On April 25 the New Orleans Daily Pica yune carried an interview with a visitor, Rabbi
A. Levy of Beaumont. Levi recalled that about
10 days ago, on hearing that an airship had
landed late that night on a farm just outside
town, he hastened to the site. There sat an airship some 150 feet long with 100-foot wings.
I spoke to one of the men when he went into
the farmers house, and shook hands with
him, Levy claimed. Yes, I did hear him say
where it was built, but I cant remember the
name of the place, or the name of the inventor.
He said that they had been traveling a great
deal, and were testing the machine. I was do
dumbfounded that I could not frame an intelligent question to ask. He did remember,
though, that electricity powered the craft.
At Uvalde, three hundred miles southwest
of Beaumont, twenty-three hours after the
Ligonss alleged encounter, Sheriff H. W. Baylor witnessed an airship landing near his home.
Baylor saw three crew members and spoke
with one, a Mr. Wilson, a native of Goshen,
New York. The aeronaut recalled an old friend,
Captain C. C. Akers, whom he said he had
known in Fort Worth. Now, he understood,
Akers lived in the area. Baylor replied that he
knew Akers, who was employed as a customs
officer in Eagle Pass but who frequently visited
Uvalde. After asking the sheriff to give his best
to Akers, Wilson and his crew flew away. The
Houston Daily Post, which reported the story
in its April 21 issue, mentioned the sighting,
the same night as Baylors alleged encounter
with Wilson, of an airship passing just north
of the Baylor residence. Contacted by the Gal veston Daily News (April 28), Akers confirmed
that twenty years earlier he had known a man
by the name of Wilson from New York
state. . . . He was of a mechanical turn of mind
and was then working on aerial navigation and
something 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 (April
26). On investigating, he spotted a large, brilliantly lighted airship in his cornfield. Two

272

Wilson

crew members asked if they could draw water

from his well. Afterward, they invited him
into the craft, which had a six- or eight-man
crew. One told him that highly condensed
electricity powered it. It was one of five built
in a small Iowa town.
The following evening an airship landed at
Kountze, twenty miles northwest of Beaumont. Onlookers talked with its pilots, Wilson
and Jackson, who said it would take a few days
to complete necessary repairs. The Houston
Daily Post (April 25) assured readers that anyone who wanted to see the marvelous machine
may do so by coming to Kountze any time
before Monday night. This is the one Wilson
story that was an obvious practical joke.
On April 30, the Daily Post carried a letter
from H. C. Legrone of Deadwood, 130 miles
north of Beaumont. Legrone wrote that after
something disturbed his horses on the evening
of April 28, he stepped outside to observe an
approaching airship. It descended on a nearby
field. He related,
Its crew was composed of five men, three of
whom entertained me, while the other two
took rubber bags and went for a supply of
water at my well, 100 yards off. They informed
me that this was one of five ships that had been
traveling the country over recently, and that
this individual ship was the same one recently
landed near Beaumont . . . after having traveled pretty well all over the Northwest. They
stated that these ships were put up in an interior town in Illinois. They were rather reticent
about giving out information in regards to the
ship, manufacture, etc., since they had not yet
secured everything by patent.

Whatever the airships may or may not

have been, they were nobodys inventions,
and the name of the mysterious Mr. Wilson is
not to be found in any history of aviation.
Put bluntly, the stories make no sense. They
could not have happened in any way in
which the verb happened is ordinarily understood. In light of the numerous hoaxes,
journalistic and other, the Wilson stories,
however intriguing, must be viewed with a
fair degree of suspicion. Nonetheless, occultoriented writers such as John A. Keel argue
that the seemingly normal American pilots
reported in 1897 press accounts were actually
supernatural entitiesKeel calls them ultraterrestrialsin disguise. According to Keel,
the ultraterrestrials staged encounters in relatively remote places, contacting a few witnesses and passing on bogus tales which
would discredit not only them but the whole
mystery. Knowing how we think and how we
search for consistencies, the ultraterrestrials
were careful to sow inconsistencies in their
wake (Keel, 1970).
See Also: Keel, John Alva; Smith; Ultraterrestrials
Further Reading
Bullard, Thomas E., ed., 1982. The Airship File: A
Collection of Texts Concerning Phantom Airships
and Other UFOs, Gathered from Newspapers and
Periodicals Mostly during the Hundred Years Prior
to Kenneth Arnolds Sighting. Bloomington, IN:
self-published.
Chariton, Wallace O., 1991. The Great Texas Airship
Mystery. Plano, TX: Wordware Publishing.
Cohen, Daniel, 1981. The G reat Airship Mystery: A
UFO of the 1890s. New York: Dodd, Mead, and
Company.
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnams Sons.

Xeno
In the early morning hours of January 30,
1965, while walking along a beach near Watsonville, California, Sid Padrick saw a flying
saucer descend and hover a foot or two above
the sand. A voice speaking from the craft assured him that he was not in danger. When a
door opened, Padrick entered and soon met a
human-looking figure in a two-piece uniform.
The figure, speaking in unaccented English,
introduced himself as Xeno. He took Padrick
on a tour of the craft, during which he saw
eight other crew members, one a very pretty
young woman. They paid little attention to
Padrick, and all his communication was with
Xeno.
Xeno and his companions were lightskinned and resembled human beings except
for unusually sharp chins and noses. Xeno explained that the ship and its crew came from a
planet behind a planet visible from Earth.
Their own planet, however, was always hidden from earthly view. They lived in a communal society without war, disease, or crime.
They also had a religion that worshipped the
Supreme Deity. During the tour Padrick was
shown a consultation room used for worship
and invited to go inside. After he prayed
there, Padrick experienced a kind of religious
awakening.
273

During their interaction, he noticed that

whenever he would ask Xeno a question,
Xeno would hesitate for as long as half a
minute before answering. Patrick speculated
that he was getting telepathic instructions on
how to reply. He was shown a photograph of a
city on Xenos planet. Through a telescopelike
device he observed a cigar-shaped mother ship
which had brought the smaller craft through
space.
Padrick was told that Xenos people were
here only to explore. They had no desire for
contact because of earthlings hostility and
generally primitive attitudes. After about two
hours, Padrick left the craft with a promise
that he would meet the space people again
soon.
On February 4, Padrick informed Hamilton Air Force Base of his experience. A U.S.
Air Force officer, Major D. B. Reeder, interviewed him four days later, and the two went
to the encounter site. Though the officer interviewed several locals who said Padrick was
trustworthy, the officer did not believe his testimony and urged Project Blue Book, the U.S.
Air Forces UFO-investigative group, to take
no further action.
Nonetheless, after seeing the story in a San
Francisco newspaper, L. D. Cody, the civilian
director of aerospace education at Hamilton,

274

Xeno

requested a full briefing from Reeder. Later

that month, Cody personally interviewed
Padrick and his family. In his estimation
Padrick seemed sincere. He thought Padrick
had either had the experience or dreamed it
(Cody, 1967).
After accounts of Padricks alleged experience were published in the press, he was besieged by letters and calls from UFO buffs.
One pointed out that Xenoheretofore
Padrick had spelled the name phonetically as
Zenois Greek for stranger.
Following the initial publicity, Padrick did
a few lectures and spoke at several contactee
conferences, sticking to his basic story without elaboration, but then dropped out of
sight. In 1970, local newspapers reported that
a friend was suing Padrick, who had borrowed
one thousand dollars to write a book detailing
his experience but had not repaid it or even

been able to produce evidence that a manuscript existed. Padrick insisted that a third
person had borrowed the manuscript and
never returned it. The San Jose Municipal
Court decreed that Padrick had to make good
on the loan.
From some accounts Padrick had further
alien contacts after the January 1965 incident, but he has never spoken about them in
public.
See Also: Contactees
Further Reading
Cody, 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): 25.
Watsonvilles Weird StoryA Ride on a Spaceship, 1965. San Francisco News Call Bulletin
(February 12).

Yada di Shiite
Yada di Shiite lived five-hundred thousand
years ago, a member of the ancient civilization
of Yu, located in the Himalayas, or so he told
San Diego medium Mark Probert, through
whom he channeled from the 1940s until
Proberts death in 1969. Yada di Shiite was
one of several entities who composed the
Inner Circle.
Probert, a man with little formal education, entered the metaphysical realm when he
started talking in his sleep. His wife, Irene,
took note of what he was saying. Soon the
episode became known to a local man, veteran
occultist N. Meade Layne. Layne took over
Proberts spiritual education, and soon Yada di
Shiite and others were speaking through the
medium. The others included Ramon Natalli,
in life a lawyer and a friend of Galileo; Professor Alfred Luntz, a nineteenth-century Anglican clergyman; and Charles Lingford, in life a
dancer and artist.
Through Proberts Inner Circle Kethra
EDa Foundation and Laynes better-known
Borderland Sciences Research Associates, the
channelings of Yada di Shiite and associateseventually their number expanded to
elevenfound an international audience. In
the early age of flying saucers, the late 1940s
and early 1950s, the Circles pronouncements

on the subject were particularly influential,

and they founded the basis of Laynes The
Ether Ship and Its Solution (1950), which was
widely read in fringe circles and is still an influence on latter-day occult saucer theorists
such as John A. Keel.
See Also: Channeling; Keel, John Alva
Further Reading
Barker, 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 Research Associates.

Yamski
On April 24, 1965, just a day after the death
of George Adamski, a flying saucer allegedly
landed near the Devonshire village of Scoriton. Three humanlike beings clad in spacesuits emerged. One, who looked like a youth
of thirteen or fourteen, identified himself as
Yamski to the sole witness, a groundskeeper
and handyman named Ernest Arthur Bryant.
Yamski, who spoke in Eastern European
inflected English, expressed the wish that
Des or Les could be there. Bryant was
given a brief tour of the craft and a promise of
further contacts.
Some of Adamskis partisans had been expecting him to reincarnate and return to

275

276

Yhova

Earth. In fact, his associate and onetime coauthor Desmond Leslie openly predicted it in
an obituary he wrote for Englands Flying
Saucer Review. Bryant, who claimed never to
have heard of this famous contactee, produced
a sketch of Yamski, who bore some resemblance to a youthful Adamski. Subsequently,
Bryant brought forth physical evidence that
he said the space people had given him.
In 1967, Eileen Buckle, who had investigated the case, wrote about it in a thick book
that essentially endorsed the case, notwithstanding growing evidence that Bryant had a
hard time telling the truth even about the
most mundane aspects of his life. Bryant died
just after Buckles book was published. British
ufologist Norman Oliver, who interviewed
Bryants wife around that time, was told that
Bryants story was bogus. He had based it on
his considerable reading of UFO and occult
literature and his extensive knowledge of
Adamskis claims. Oliver exposed the many
dubious elements of the case in a self-published monograph.
See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees
Further Reading
Buckle, Eileen, 1967. The Scoriton Mystery. London:
Neville Spearman.
Leslie, Desmond, 1965. Obituary: George Adamski. Flying Saucer Review 11, 4 (July/August):
1819.
Oliver, Norman, 1968. Sequel to Scoriton. London:
self-published.

Yhova
According to the extraterrestrialism theories
of Yonah Fortner (who wrote under the pseudonym Y. N. ibn Aharon), visitors from other

worlds landed on Earth and interacted with

its most advanced ancient civilizations, notably those of the Chaldeans and the Atlanteans. The Chaldeans, who possessed an
advanced technology, were especially close to
aliens, even intermarrying with one group, the
Elohim. Another group was the Titans, who
helped the Chaldeans vanquish the malevolent alien race known as the Serpent People.
Eventually, warfare among alien races broke
out on the Earths surface. In the midst of this
conflict, one alien showed up around 1340
B.C. Shaday Elili Athunu, otherwise known
as Yhova, befriended a local malcontent
named Abraham, whom he promised to protect if he, his family, and his people followed
him. Yhova is known to humans as God.
Fortner stated that the God of Israel
should not be confused with the general run
of space visitors because he was either unique
or very nearly unique in his decision to make
a career among the people of earth. . . . [He]
is a very august and ancient being . . . who
comes from a higher order of being, a dimension beyond all known dimensions (Steinberg, 1977).
Fortner outlined his theories in a series of
articles published in Saucer News between
1957 and 1960. His sources, he insisted, were
rare and arcane Middle Eastern documents,
but when challenged, he was unable to prove
that they existed.
Further Reading
Ibn Aharon, Y. N. [pseud. of Yonah Fortner], 1960.
A Note on the Evolution of Extraterrestrialism.
Saucer News 7, 4 (December): 69.
Steinberg, Gene, 1977. Dr. Yonah AharonOriginator of the Ancient Astronaut Theory. UFO
Report 4, 2 (June): 2627, 7478.

Zagga

Zandark

Zagga hails from the planet Zakton at the far

side of the Milky Way galaxy. Zakton is some
seventy-five thousand light years beyond
Gemini. One of the twelve members of the
Galactic Council, he was sent to Saturn. From
there he transited to Earth, entering the body
of a boy at the instant of birth. Zagga claims
that on his home planet children are conceived not by sexual intercourse but by pure
thought. People do not have names. He was
given the appellation Zagga only after he
volunteered for the Earth mission. In letters
to saucerian writer John W. Dean, Zagga attested to the authenticity of George Adamskis
claim to have attended an interplanetary conference on Saturn in March 1962.
According to Dean, Zagga was a fine looking young man of about twenty-five years of
age in 1961 when Dean met him at Buck
Nelsons contactee convention in Missouri.
Zagga told Dean, I had known the one you
call Jesus before and after his incarnation on
earth. I know Him as a great friend (Dean,
1964). Dean said he knew Zaggas earthly
name and address but was not to reveal them.

In the fall of 1973, an anonymous woman received psychic communications from Zandark, a member of the United Cosmic Council; a Commander in Chief in Charge of
Directing Technical Transmissions Via Mental
Telepathy of the Combination of Mediumistic Telepathy under the Direction of the
Confederation of Cosmic Space Beings
(Keel, 1975). Zandarks people are here to
bring peace, and they have been here a long
time. They built the Sphinx, the pyramids,
and other classic ancient structures.

See Also: Adamski, George; Contactees

Further Reading
Dean, John W., 1964. Flying Saucers and the Scrip tures. New York: Vantage Press.

277

Further Reading
Keel, John A., 1975. The Mothman Prophecies. New
York: Saturday Review Press/E. P. Dutton and
Company.

Zolton
In a registered letter sent to U.S. Air Force Intelligence on November 20, 1953, an unidentified woman mailed a recently channeled
message from an Ashtar associate named
Zolton, Commander from the center of the
Sector System of Vela. Zolton sought to alert
the authorities in Washington to the space
peoples purpose.
He warned the Pentagon that visiting extraterrestrials knew of destructive plans for-

278

Zolton

mulated for offensive and defensive war and

were prepared to stop them by crippling
earthly weapons technology without hurting
any person or thing. The visitors would not
hesitate, however, to control minds . . . in

order to secure this solar system. This is a

friendly warning (Wilkins, 1955).
See Also: Ashtar
Further Reading
Wilkins, Harold T., 1955. Flying Saucers Uncensored.
New York: Citadel Press.

Index

A, 1
Abducted! (Lorenzen and
Lorenzen), 2
Abduction (Mack), 5
Abductions, xii, xiii, 16,
184185
from automobiles, 3536
Buff Ledge, 5253
calf-rustling aliens, 5557
of cars, 20
of celebrities, 124
of children, 26, 53, 139,
212213
dual reference experience,
8890, 192, 221,
258259
early contactee movement,
72
extraterrestrials among us,
9697
Hill, Betty and Barney, 2,
3(fig.), 66
humans on UFOs, 207
hybrid entities, 126127
imaginal beings, 129
increasing reports of, 6667
by insectoids, 130
Malaysian Bunians, 5354
medical examinations during,
169
men in black, 171
missing time, 15

physical evidence of, 1718

pregnancies, 126
by reptoids, 212213
time travelers, 244245
unaware abductees, 18
Waltons five-day
disappearance, 261266
witnesses to, 204205
Aboard a Flying Saucer
(Bethurum), 43
Abraham, 7
Abram, 7
Active imagination, 7
Adama, 7, 58
Adamski, George, 810, 9(fig.),
71(fig.), 150, 229
Allinghams Martian, 19
contacted extraterrestrials,
165166
early contactee movement, 70
EBEs, 94
as extraterrestrial, 11
extraterrestrials among us,
9596
Space Brothers, 187
traveling with Ramu,
210211
Venusian contact, 195196
Villanuevas visitors, 258
Wilcoxs Martians, 268269
Yamski as reincarnation of,
275276
279

Aenstrians, 1011
Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization (APRO),
82, 263
Aetherius, 1112
Aetherius Society, 12
Aetherius Speaks to Earth (King),
12
Affa, 1213
Agents, 13
Agharta: The Subterranean World
(Dickhoff ), 1415, 209
Agharti, 1315
Ahab, 15
Aho, Wayne S., 76
Akon, 15
Alamogordo, New Mexico, 105
Alana, 36
Alans Message: To Men of Earth
(Fry), 105
Alien diners, 1617
Alien DNA, 1718, 25
Aliens and the dead, 18
Alla-An, Jyoti, 170
Allan, Christopher, 19
Allingham, Cedric, 19
Allinghams Martian, 19
Alpert, Richard. See Baba Ram
Dass
Alpha Zoo Loo, 1920
Altisi, Jackie, 61
Alyn, 2021

280 Index
Ameboids, 21
Amnesia associated with
abductions, 1, 4
Amun, Scott, 211212
Anchor (pseud.). See Grevler,
Ann
Ancient Three, 208
Anderson, Dean, 239
Anderson, Harry, 102
Anderson, Rodger I., 6061
Andolo, 21
Andra-o-leeka and Mondra-oleeka, 2122
Angel of the Dark, 22
Angels, 22, 40, 107, 217, 221,
242
Angelucci, Orfeo, 2223,
22(fig.)
Animals
bird aliens, 44
cetaceans, 58
channeling of, 3637
dolphins, 238
Kappa, 139140, 140(fig.)
mutilation of, 5557, 173,
227
mystical animals, 146
octopus aliens, 191
reptoids, 56, 144145,
212214, 213(fig.), 259
Sasquatch, 217219
talking mongoose, 107111
Venusian puppies, 154
See also Insectoids; Reptoids
Anka, Darryl, 3940, 211
Anoah, 2324
Antarctica, 207208
Anthon, 24
Anti-Semitism, 117118, 123,
153, 210, 269
Antron, 24
Anunnaki, 2425
Apol, Mr., 25
Appelle, Stuart, 6
Applewhite, Marshall Herff,
246248
APRO. See Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization
Argentina, 82, 83
Arising Suns Interplanetary
Class of Thee Elohim,
242

Arizona, 36, 134, 199, 200, 227

Arna and Parz, 26
Arnold, Kenneth, 70, 82, 94
Artemis, 2627
Arthea, 36
Ascended Masters, 27, 5961,
201
Ascensions, 28
Ashtar, 2729, 30, 70, 94, 145,
178, 201, 255, 277278
Asmitor, 2930
Association of Love and Light,
211
Athena, 30, 201
Atlantis, xvi, 3134, 31(fig.),
182183
channeling people from, 209
destruction of, 47
extraterrestrials settling, 146
Jessups little people, 135
as part of Lemuria, 156
Root Races, 216
Shaver mystery, 225
as site of Satanism, 114
The Source, 234
Atlantis: The Antediluvian World
(Donnelly), 31(fig.), 32
Aura Rhanes, 22, 34, 4344, 96,
150
Aurora Encounter (film), 35
Aurora Martian, 3435
Aurora (planet), 47
Ausso, 3536
Australia as site of occurrence,
204205
Automatic writing, 12, 113
Avinash, 36
Ayala, 3637
Ayres, Toraya (Carly), 3637,
227228
Azelia, 3738
Baba Ram Dass, 94
Back, 39
Bacon, Francis, 32
Bailey, Alfred, 268
Bailey, Betty, 268
Ballard, Guy Warren, 69, 122,
183, 229
Barclay, John, 233234
Barker, Gray, 83, 141, 170, 257
Bartholomew, 39

Bashar, 3940, 211

Basterfield, Keith, 205
Bauer, Henry H., xi
Baxter, Marla. See Weber,
Constance
Beasts, Men and Gods
(Ossendowski), 13
Beckley, Timothy Green, 153
Behind the Flying Saucers
(Scully), 63, 82, 195
Being of Light, 40
Beirne, Mary, 164
Bell, Art, 244
Bell, Fred, 221
Bellringer, Patrick J. (pseud.),
222223
Bender, Albert K., 141142, 170
Berlitz, Charles, 42, 85
Bermuda Triangle, xii, 14, 33,
4142, 92, 104
The Bermuda Triangle (Berlitz),
42
The Bermuda Triangle Mystery
Solved (Kusche), 42
Bernard, Raymond (pseud.). See
Siegmeister, Walter
Bethurum, Truman, 22, 34,
4344, 43(fig.), 70, 96,
150, 229, 231
Bigfoot. See Sasquatch
Bird aliens, 44
Birmingham, Frederick William,
4445
Birminghams ark, 4445
Blavatsky, Helene Petrovna, 32,
69, 122, 156, 215(fig.),
216
Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM),
162165
Blodget, Charlotte, 195
Blowing Cave, 4547
Blue John Caves, 165
Bo. See Applewhite, Marshall
Herff
Bolivia, 227
Bonnie, 47
The Book of Knowledge: The Keys
of Enoch (Hurtak), 173
The Book of the Damned (Fort),
69
Boone, Dan, 257
Bord, Janet, xiii, 99

Index
Borderland Sciences Research
Associates, 208, 275
Boys from Topside, 4748
Brady, Enid, 7677
Brazil, 64, 140
Brodie, Steve, 49
Brodies deros, 4850
Brodu, Jean-Louis, 162
Brookesmith, Peter, 198(fig.)
Brotherhood of the Seven Rays,
231, 269
Brown, Courtney, 5051
Brown, Michael F., 61, 174
Brown Mountain lights, 187
Browning, Frederick, 134
Browns Martians, 5051
Bryant, Alice, 22
Bryant, Ernest Arthur,
275276
Buckle, Eileen, 276
Bucky, 5152
Buff Ledge abduction, 5253
Bullard, Thomas E., 2, 4, 56
Bunians, 5354
Bush, George, 214
Burden, Brian, 142
BVM. See Blessed Virgin Mary
Byrd, Richard E., xvi, 151
Byrne, John, 101
Calf-rustling aliens, 5557
California as site of occurrence,
195196, 226, 273
Campbell, Lady Archibald,
103
Campbell, Steuart, 19
Canada, 200
Canadian government, 4748
Captive extraterrestrials, 57
Carey, Ken, 211
Carpenter, John S., 212214
Carrington, Hereward, 107
Cataclysmic events, 2729, 30,
31, 3334, 47
Cayce, Edgar, 3233, 234
CE3. See Close encounters of
the third kind
Cetaceans, 58
Chaldeans, 276
Chalker, Bill, 17, 18, 44
Chamberlin, Richard, 209
Chaneques, 5859

Channeling, xii, xiii, xvxvi,

2324, 5961
abraham, 7
through alien implants, 24,
125126
alien women, 24
ancient civilizations, 275
Andolo, 21
animals, 227
Anoah, 2324
Ashtar and Ashtar
Command, 201, 244
Atlanteans, 3233
biblical figures, 7, 12
cetaceans, 58
Germane, 211
God-figures, 73, 75, 9394,
117118, 119, 211,
241242, 266
group energies and entities,
111, 154155, 170, 174,
207, 234
Higher Being, 88
for instructional purposes, 161
intelligences from beyond,
130
Metatron, 173174
military as witnesses, 1213
multiple entities, 7981
Nostradamus, 188189
from other planets, 130131,
145, 146147, 191, 200
philosophical and
technological, 4748
for prophetic purposes, 21,
2627, 2729, 3233,
3940, 211212
pure channeling, 228
Ramtha, 209210
reincarnated beings, 158,
161, 222
Seth, 221
Star People, 237238
Van Tassel, 256
Venusians, 7677
Chapman, Robert, 19
Chief Joseph, 61, 61(fig.)
Childers, Lee, 202203
Children, 212
as abductees, 26, 53, 139,
212213
close encounters, 133134

281

as contactees, 26, 67, 134, 143

fairies and, 7375, 101
Chorvinsky, Mark, 115117
Christianity, 113, 221
Elvis as Jesus, 9293
Marian apparitions, 162165
Master plans, 8081
reaction to Ashtar, 28
See also Demons and
Demonology; God-figures
Christopher, 61
Chung Fu, 6162
Church Universal and
Triumphant, 153154
Churchward, James, xvi, 156
Circle of Inner Truth, 62
Circle of Power Foundation, 241
Civilizations, lost. See Atlantis;
Blowing Cave; Hollow
earth; Lemuria
Clamar, Aphrodite, 2
Clarion (planet), 2122, 43
Clark, Jerome, 5556, 95,
198(fig.)
Close encounters of the third
kind (CE3), xv, xvi,
6267
Aenstrians, 1011
alien diners, 1617
Angelucci, Orfeo, 23
bird aliens, 44
Birminghams ark, 4445
calf-rustling aliens, 5557
disappearing aliens, 245
giant beings, 175
Hill, Barney and Betty, 2
Jahrmin and Jana, 133134
Lethbridges aeronauts,
157158
miniature pilots, 177
Mothman, 178179
Nordics, 187188
octopus aliens, 191
reptoids, 212214
Shaws Martians, 226227
sheep-killing aliens, 227
shopping for aliens, 233234
space travel, 2122
Villanuevas visitors, 257258
Wilcoxs Martians, 267268
See also Contactees; Fairies;
Martians; Men in black

282 Index
Cocoon people, 6768
Cody, L. D., 273274
Cole, Yvonne, 94
Collins, Brian, 101
Columbus, Christopher, 261
Colver, Mervin Beaver, 228
The Coming of Seth (Roberts),
221
The Coming of the Fairies
(Doyle), 74
Communication, 6465
from other planets, 150151
spoken, 158, 177178,
195196
telepathic, 17, 39, 90, 187,
196197, 229230, 241,
277
written, 12, 113, 249
See also Telephone calls from
extraterrestrials
Communion: A True Story
(Strieber), xii, 45, 17,
9697, 238
Conspiracy theories, 118, 121,
123, 153, 210
Constable, Trevor James, 21,
71
Contactees, 1, 15, 6872,
134135, 144145,
234235, 268270
Adamski, George, 810
agents, 13
angels, 242
Angelucci, Orfeo, 2223,
22(fig.)
children, 123
early movement, 105106
giant aliens, 194195
godlike figures, 112113
Grim Reaper, 115116
Heavens Gate, 246248
hoaxes, 184
lifesaving experiences,
111112
from other planets, 141142
recollection under hypnosis,
136137, 241
repeat experiences, 195
tape recording, 177178
Venusians, 5152, 8788,
105, 149150
Warminster Mystery, 1012

See also Abductions;

Adamski, George; Close
encounters of the third
kind; Flying saucers;
Meier, Eduard Billy;
Radio messages; Sprinkle,
Ronald Leo; Williamson,
George Hunt
Contacts OVNI Cergy-Pontoise
(Prevost), 130
Cookes, Grace, 266
Cooper, Milton William, 95, 121
Cosmic awareness, 7273,
7981, 88
Cosmic Awareness
Communications, 73
Cosmic language, 1
Cottingley fairies, 7375
The Council, 75
Cox, Norma, 123
Creighton, Gordon, 136
Crenshaw, Dennis G., 153
Critias (Plato), 31
Crombie, R. Ogilvie, 146
Curry, 7576
Cyclopeans, 76
Cymatrili, 7677
Dagousset, Henri, 250
DAL Universe, 220
Dalis, Allen, 264
Dancing in the Light (Maclaine),
209
von Dniken, Erich, 269
Darkness over Tibet (Illion), 14
Darr, Lorraine, 159160
Darrah, Adele, 28
Dash, Mike, 236
Davenport, Marc, 244245
David of Landa, 7981
David-Neel, Alexandra, 245
Davies, Peter, 19
Davis, Isabel L., 83, 255
Dead extraterrestrials, 8187,
84(fig.), 120, 194195
Dean, John W., 22, 277
Death, xiii
dead extraterrestrials, 8187,
84(fig.), 120, 194195
fourth dimension, 104105
Grim Reaper, 115116,
115117

Lee, Gloria, 133

suicides, xiii, 30, 246248
DeLong, Maris, 145
Demons and demonology, 71,
143, 170172, 214, 221,
222223, 24. See also
Satanism
Denton, Sherman, 87
Denton, William, 87
Dentons Martians and
Venusians, 87
Department of Interplanetary
Affairs, 33
Derenberger, Woodrew, 253
DERN Universe, 220
Deros, 4546, 4849
Devas, 3637
The Devils Triangle
(documentary), 42
Diane, 8788
Dickhoff, Robert Ernst, 1415
Disch, Thomas M., 238
Divine Fire, 88
DLight, Joy, 144
DNA, 1718, 25
Docker, Beth, 203
Donnelly, Ignatius, 32
Doran, Jerry, 238
Doraty, Judy, 56
Doreal, Maurice, 183
Doty, Richard, 120
Dove, Lonzo, 172
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 7374
Drake, W. R., 161162
Druffel, Ann, 136, 217
Drugs, psychedelic, 2930
Dual reference, 8890, 192,
221, 258259
Dugja, 90
Duncan, James, 19
Durby, William, 7273
A Dweller on Two Planets
(Oliver), 181182
The Earth Chronicles (Stitchin),
24
Earth Coincidence Control
Office, 9192
Earths in the Solar World
(Swedenborg), 68
EBEs. See Extraterrestrial
biological entities

Index
Eddy, Mary Baker, 261
Ekker, Doris, 117
Elder Race, 92, 208
Ellis, Richard, 3334
Elvis as Jesus, 9293
Emenegger, Robert, 119, 120
Emmanuel, 9394
Escape from Destruction
(Bernard), 113114
Eternal life theories, 7
The Ether Ship and Its Solution
(Layne), 275
Eunethia, 9495
Evans, Hilary, 34, 252
Evans-Wentz, W. Y., 99
Extraterrestrial biological entities
(EBEs), 57, 9495
Extraterrestrial Earth Mission,
36
Extraterrestrials among us,
9597
Fabares, Shelley, 209
Fairies encountered, xii, xiii,
99103
Chaneques, 5859
Cottingley fairies, 7375
Jessups little people, 135
Jinns, 135136
Kappa, 139140
Malaysian Bunians, 5354
Whites little people,
266267
See also Ultraterrestrials
Fairies: Real Encounters with
Little People (Bord), xiii
Fairy captures, 103104
The Fairy Faith in Celtic
Countries (Evans-Wentz),
99
Fairy Tale: A True Story (film),
75
Farewell, Good Brothers
(documentary), 173
Farrell, Mike, 209
Fatima, Our Lady of, 162163
Fellowship of the Inner Light,
234
Ferguson, William, 143
Ferreira, Antonio Carlos, 3738
Fields, Ralph B., 179181
Fire in the Sky (film), 264

Fletcher, Candy, 241

Fletcher, Rey, 241
Flournoy, Theodore, 69, 185
Flying Saucer from Mars
(Allingham), 19
Flying saucers. See Spaceships
Flying Saucers and the Three Men
(Bender), 141
The Flying Saucers Are Real
(Keyhoe), 63
Flying Saucers Have Landed
(Leslie and Adamski), 8
Fodor, Nandor, 108, 110
Fontaine, Franck, 130
Fontes, Olavo T., 64
Food, alien, 6465
Ford, Richard, 248
Fort, Charles, 69, 142
Fortner, Yonah, 276
Fossilized aliens, 104
Fourth dimension, 104105
Frank and Frances, 105
Franklin, Benjamin, 261
Frederick, Jennings, 256257
Friedman, Stanton T., 84
Friend, Robert, 13
From India to the Planet Mars
(Flournoy), 69, 185
From Outer Space to You
(Menger), 172
Fry, Daniel William, 105106
Fuller, Curtis, 224
Fuller, John G., 2
Gabriel, 107
Gaddis, Vincent H., 14, 42
Gaia, 36
Gandhi, Mahatma, 261
Gardner, Edward, 7374
Gardner, Marshall B., 122
GeBauer, Leo, 82
Gef, 107111
Geller, Uri, 234235, 235(fig.)
Gentzel, Charles Boyd, 119
Germane, 111, 160, 211
Giannini, F. Amadeo, 151
Giant Rock Interplanetary
Spacecraft Convention,
166, 255
Gill, William Booth, 63
Gilson, Cy, 262, 264
Girvan, Waveney, 19

283

Gnosticism, 210
Goblin Universe, 111
God-figures, 73, 75, 9394,
113, 117118, 119, 211,
241242, 242, 266
Godfrey, Alan, 136137,
137(fig.)
Godfrey, Cinda, 9293
Goldberg, Bruce, 244
Good, Timothy, 134135, 165
Gordon, 111112
Gray Face, 112113
Gray-skinned aliens, 2, 15, 50,
56, 6768, 79, 112113,
203(fig.), 261266
Great Mother, 113114
Great White Brotherhood, 23,
27, 114115
Greater Nibiruan Council,
2425, 115
Green, Gabriel, 178
Green-skinned aliens, 37
Grevler, Ann, 1
Grey, Margot, 40
Griffiths, Frances, 7375
Grim Reaper, 115117
Grise, Allan, 159
Gross, Germana, 39
Grosso, Michael, 129, 203
Gyeorgos Ceres Hatonn,
117118
Haeckel, Ernst, 155156
Halley, Edmond, 122
Hallucinations, 205
Hamilton, Alex, 55
Hamilton, William, 47, 167
Hansen, Myrna, 56
Hanson, Nuria, 111112
Harris, Melvin, 110
Hatonn. See Gyeorgos Ceres
Hatonn
Hawaii as site of occurrence,
202, 242
Haydon, S. E., 35
Heard, Gerald, 166
Heavens Gate, xiii, 246248
Hefferlin, W. C. and Gladys,
207209
Hewes, Hayden, 35, 246247
Hicks, Esther, 7
Hierarchal Board, 119

284

Index

Higdon, E. Carl, Jr., 3536

Higher Being, 88
Hill, Barney and Betty, 2,
3(fig.), 66
Hill, James, 154
Hilton, James, 13
Hind, Cynthia, 15, 67, 169
Hingley, Jean, 176177
Hoaxes, xvi, 184
Adamski, George, 810
alien autopsy film, xii, 85
Allinghams Martian, 19
Bethurum, Truman, 43
controversy over Aura
Rhanes, 34
Cottingley fairies, 7375
dead extraterrestrials, 8183
Fontaine abduction, 130
fourth dimension, 104105
Holloman aliens, 120
Menger and Weber, 172173
Shaws Martians, 226227
Ummo, 249252
unconfirmed hoaxes,
177178, 234
use of ventriloquism, 110
Vadig, 253254
Vegetable Man, 257
Yamski, 276
Hodson, Geoffrey, 74
Holiday, F. W., 111
Holloman aliens, 119121
Hollow earth, xii, xvi, 121123
Agharti, 1315
Atlantis, 33
Blowing Cave, 4547
land beyond the Pole,
151153
Mount Lassen, 179181
Mount Shasta, 181184
See also Atlantis; Lemuria;
Shaver mystery
The Hollow Earth (Bernard), xvi,
123
The Hollow Globe (Sherman),
122
Honey, C. A., 10, 96
Honor, 123124
Hood, Hedy, 133
Hopkins, Budd, xiii, 23, 56,
124125, 126, 238239
Hopkinss Martians, 125

Horsley, Peter, 134135

How to Develop Your ESP Power
(Roberts), 221
Howard, Dana, 8788
Howe, Linda Moulton, 56, 120
Hubbard, Harold W., 253
Hufford, David J., 193
Human-alien hybrids. See
Hybrid beings
Humphrey, Hubert, 10
Hurtak, James, 84, 173
Hutson, John, 12
Hweig, 125126
Hybrid beings, 26, 96, 126127
Azelia, 3738
as motive for abduction, 4
nonhuman hybrids,
212214, 222
Nordics as, 188
reptoids, 212214
See also Pregnancy; Sexual
contact
Hynek, J. Allen, xv, 64, 65
Hyperborea, 216
Hypnosis, xii, 191
aliens and the dead, 18
Buff Ledge abduction, 53
channeling during, 39, 79,
234, 244
dual reference, 8890
recalling abduction
experience, 4, 24, 66,
112113, 136, 228, 241
remembering reptoids, 214,
259
used on abductees, 12
Hyslop, James, 233
I AM Activity. See Ballard, Guy
Warren
I Rode a Flying Saucer! (Van
Tassel), 70, 255
Ibn Aharon, Y. N. (pseud.). See
Fortner, Yonah
Icke, David, 214
Idaho as site of occurrence, 199,
228
Illion, Theodore, 14
Imaginal beings, 129
Imagining Atlantis (Ellis), 3334
Impersonations of
extraterrestrials, 28

Inner Light Consciousness, 234

The Inner World (Culmer), 122
Insectoids, 130, 184185
Insects, 166
Inside the Space Ships (Adamski),
8, 196
Intelligences du Dehors, 130
Intelligences from Beyond, 130
Intergalactic councils, 21, 61
International Flying Saucer
Bureau, 141142
Internet information, xii, 33
Interplanetary Connections, 40
Interplanetary Parliament,
1112
The Interrupted Journey (Fuller),
2
Intruders (Hopkins), 4, 124
Invisible Horizons (Gaddis), 42
Invisible Residents (Sanderson),
42, 192
Ireland as site of occurrence,
103104, 164
Irving, James, 107111
Ishkomar, 130131
Isis Unveiled (Blavatsky), 122
J. W., 133
Jacobs, David M., xiii, 56, 13,
18, 96, 126, 188
Jadoo (Keel), 143
Jahrmin and Jana, 133134
Jamaludin, Ahmad, 5354
James, William, 221
Janus, 134135
Jefferson, Thomas, 261
Jehovah, 232
Jerhoam, 135
Jessup, Morris Ketchum, 135
Jessups little people, 135
Jesus, 12, 24, 9293, 154, 241,
261, 277. See also
Sananda
Jewish mysticism, 173174
Jews, 234235
Jinns, 135136
John XXIII, 10
Jonerson, Ellen, 102
Jordan Pena, Jose Luis, 250, 251
Joseph, 136137, 137(fig.)
A Journey to the Earths Interior
(Gardner), 122

Index
Juliana, Queen of Holland, 10
Jung, C. G., 23, 203204
Jupiter, 22, 239
Kafton-Minkel, Walter,
225226
Kaiser, Elaine, 241
Kannenberg, Ida M., 125126
Kantarians, 139
Kappa, 139140, 140(fig.)
Karen, 140
Karmic Board, 140141
Katchongva, Chief Dan, 199
Kazik, 141142
Keach, Marian (pseud.). See
Martin, Dorothy
Keel, John A., 142143, 275
alien telephone calls, 25
hybridization, 4
hysterical pregnancies, xvii,
126
men in black, 171
occult entities, 66, 71
personal encounters with
ultraterrestrials, 194
Texas airships, 272
Vadig hoax, 253
Keely, John, 101
Kellett, Mary, 263
Kennedy, John F., 10
Kerin, Dermot, 115
Keyhoe, Donald E., 48
Khauga, 143
Khoury, Peter, 1718
Kidnapping. See Abductions
Kihief, 143144
Kinder, Gary, 168
King, George, 12
King Leo, 144145
King of the World, 14
Kingdoms within Earth (Cox),
123
Kirk, Robert, 99
Klarer, Elizabeth, 15
Klass, Philip J., 5, 263, 264
Klein, Donald F., 238
Klimo, Jon, 154155
Knight, J. Z., 161, 209210
Knowles, Herbert B., 12
Korff, Kal, 168
Korsholm, Celeste, 200
Korsholm, Jananda, 133134

Korton, 28, 30, 145

Kronin, 145
Kuiper, Gerard, 166
Kuran, 145146
Kurmos, 146
Kusche, Larry, 42
Kwan Ti Laslo, 146147
Laan-Deeka and Sharanna,
149150
Lady of Pluto, 150151
Lael, Ralph, 187
Lake Titicaca, Peru, 231
Land beyond the Pole, 151153
Landa, xiii, xiv, 7981
Lanello, 153154
Lanser, Edward, 183
Larsen, Julius, 12
Laskon, 154
Laughead, Charles and Lillian,
229232
Lawson, Alvin H., 3
Layne, N. Meade, 6970, 143,
275
Lazaris, 154155
Le Plongeon, Augustus, 156
Leander, John, 194
Leary, Timothy, 94
Lee, Gloria, 61, 119, 133
Lemuria, xvi, 7, 155157,
182184
Atlantis and, 33
channeling people from, 209
destruction of, 47
Jessups little people, 135
purported locations of, 173,
202
queen of, 90
Root Races, 216
Shaver mystery, 223226
as site of Satanism, 114
See also Atlantis; Hollow
earth
Lemuria: Lost Continent of the
Pacific (Lewis), 156, 182
LePar, William, 75
Leslie, Desmond, 8, 258, 276
Lethbridge aeronauts, 157158
Lever, Marshall, 6162
Lewis, H. Spencer, 122, 156,
182
Li Sung, 158

285

Lie-detector tests. See Polygraph

examinations
Life after Life (Moody), 40
Light, heavenly, 40
Ligon, J. R., 271
Lilly, John, 91
Limbo of the Lost (Spencer), 42
Lincoln, Abraham, 261
Linn-Erri, 158159
Lleget, Marius, 250251
London, England, 135
Lorenzen, Coral, 2, 82, 263,
265266
Lorenzen, Jim, 2, 82, 263,
265266
Lost civilizations. See Atlantis;
Blowing Cave; Hollow
earth; Lemuria
Lost Horizon (Hilton), 13
Loveland Frogman, 213(fig.)
Lundahl, Arthur, 1213
Luno, 159160
Lyrans, 160
Macdonald, Keith, xiii, xiv, xv,
7981
Mack, John E., xiixiii, 5, 72,
89
Maclaine, Shirley, 209
MacLeod, Melissa, 217
Mafu, 161
Magee, Judith, 205
Magonia, 161162
Malaysia, 5354
Maldek (planet), 24
Marcoux, Charles A., 4547
Marian apparitions, 162165
Mark, 165166
Mars, visits to, 2122
Marshall, George C., 94
Martian bees, 166
Martians, 143
as Adamic man, 232233
Allinghams Martian, 19
Aurora Martian, 3435
Browns Martians, 5051
communication through
writing, 249
Dentons Martians and
Venusians, 87
early contactee movement,
6869

286

Index

Hopkinss Martians, 125

Mince-pie Martians,
175177
Monka, 28, 30, 177178
Mullers Martians, 185
as root race, 1415
Shaws Martians, 226227
Smeads Martians, 233
Snake People, 208
Wilcoxs Martians, 267268
Martin, Dorothy, 217, 229, 269
Martins, Joao, 64
Mary, 166167
Mary, Blessed Virgin. See
Marian apparitions
Massari, Thomas, 221
Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, 220
Matthews, Arthur Henry, 105
Maui, Hawaii, 202
Mayer, Harry, 166167
McCarthy, John J., 263
McGraw, Walter, 109
McHale, John, 164
McLean, Ken, 24
McLoughlin, Mary, 164
Me-leelah, 169170
Media
radio messages, 1213,
157158, 177178, 255
telephone calls from
extraterrestrials, 1011,
25, 7981, 145
television and newspaper
reporting, xii, xiii
Meier, Eduard Billy, 7172,
167169, 188, 220221
Melchizedek Order of the White
Brotherhood, 23
Melora, 170
Melton, J. Gordon, 69, 210
Memories of Tomorrow
(Woodrew), 192
Men in black (MIB), 25,
141142, 170172, 197,
203, 245, 254
Menger, Connie. See Weber,
Constance
Menger, Howard, 2021,
20(fig.), 172173, 187
Merk, 173
Mersch, 173
Metatron, 173174

Meton (planet), 15
Mexico as site of occurrence,
163164, 212, 257258
MIB. See Men in Black
Michael, 174175, 242
Michigan giant, 174
Migrants, 175
Military involvement
Benders men in black, 141
Boys from Topside, 4748
captive extraterrestrials, 57
dead extraterrestrials, 8185
EBEs, 9495
Holloman aliens, 119121
land beyond the Pole,
151152
men in black, 171
Padricks Xeno, 273274
witnesses to channeling,
1213
Zolton, 277278
Miller, Dick, 177178, 269
Mince-pie Martians, 175177
Miniature pilots, 177
Ministry of Universal Wisdom,
28
Minnesota, 245
Miranda (planet), 2627
Missing time, 13
Missing Time (Hopkins), 3, 124
Mission Rama, 196
Missouri as site of occurrence,
16, 125
Mohammed, 261
Monka, 28, 30, 177178
Monteleone, Thomas F.,
253254
Montgomery, Ruth, 88, 261
Moody, Charles, 266
Moody, Raymond A., 40
Moore, Mary-Margaret, 39
Moore, Patrick, 19
Moore, William L., 57, 84
Moseley, James W., 43
Moses, 261
Motels, aliens staying in,
1617
Mothman, 4, 143, 178179
The Mothman Prophecies (Keel), 4
Mount Lassen, 179181
Mount Shasta, 33, 156,
181184, 182(fig.)

as entrance to hollow earth,

122
inhabitants of, 47
Lemurian queen residing at,
90
Martin, Dorothy, and, 229,
232
Mr. X, 184
Mu. See Lemuria
MU the Mantis Being, 184185
Muller, Catherine Elise, 69, 185
Mullers Martians, 185
My Saturnian Lover (Baxter),
172
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym (Poe), 122
Native religions, 199
Nazi sympathizers, 123, 153
Near-death experiences, 40
Neasham, Robert, 1213
Nebel, Long John, 50, 51,
71(fig.), 172, 203,
256(fig.)
Neff, Grant, 262
Nelson, Arlene, 228
Nelson, Buck, 5152
Nettles, Bonnie Lu, 246248
Nevada as site of occurrence, 34
New Age movements, xii,
9293, 102103, 161,
209210, 221
New Mexico as site of
occurrence, 57, 65, 82,
83, 8485, 85, 86(fig.),
94, 105, 119121, 195,
266
Newbrough, John Ballough, 69,
229
Newfoundland as site of
occurrence, 102
Newton, Silas, 82
Noma, 187
Nordics, 187188, 266
Norman, Paul, 205
North Pole, 151153
Nostradamus, 188189,
189(fig.)
Nyman, Joseph, 8890
Oahspe (Newbrough), 2829,
69, 229

Index
OBarski, George, 67
Observers, multiple, xvi
Adamski, George, 8
Allinghams Martian, 19
Buff Ledge abduction, 5253
Hill, Barney and Betty, 2
Octopus aliens, 191
Office of Naval Intelligence, 12
Ogatta, 191192
Ohio as site of occurrence,
178179
OINTS, 42, 192
Old Hag, 192194
Olesons giants, 194195
Oliver, Frederick Spencer,
181184
Oliver, John, 135
Oliver, Norman, 276
Olliana Olliana Alliano, 195
Oregon as site of occurrence, 15,
102
Oreon (planet), 22
Ortenheim, Bjorn, 201202
Orthon, 70, 195196
Ossendowski, Ferdinand, 1314
Other Intelligences. See OINTs
Other TonguesOther Flesh
(Williamson), 157, 175,
269
Ottawa Flying Saucer Club, 48
Otto, John, 230
Our Haunted Planet (Keel), 25
Out-of-body experiences, 26,
40, 87, 143, 159, 200,
238
Owen, A. R. G., 200
Owen, Iris, 200
Oxalc, 196197
Oz Factor, 197198
Padrick, Sid, 273274
Paladin, David, 139
Palmer, Ray, 46, 151, 207208,
223, 224, 226
Pancakes, 6465
Pardo, Antonio, 250251
Partise, Joyce, 219
Parz, 26
Paschal, Francie. See Steiger,
Francie Paschal
Passport to Magonia (Vallee),
102, 161162

Paul 2, 199
Peep. See Nettles, Bonnie Lu
Pfeifer, George J., 263
Pflock, Karl T., 254
The Phantom of the Poles (Reed),
122
Philip, 200
Phoenix Project, 117
Photographs, 8, 7375,
167168, 250, 251, 254
Picasso, Fabio, 76, 139140
Planetary Council, 200,
200201
Planetary Light Association, 23
Plato, 31
Pleiadeans, 7172, 167168,
169, 187188, 200,
220221
Pluto, 150151
Poe, Edgar Allan, 122
POL. See Power of Light
Polygraph examinations, 3536,
43, 97, 105, 172, 261, 263
Poppen, Nicholas von, 83
Portla, 28, 201
Portugal, 162163
Possession by extraterrestrials,
2930
Power of Light (POL), 201203
Pregnancy
impregnation by
extraterrestrials, 4, 15, 96,
126, 212
See also Hybrid beings; Sexual
contact
Presley, Elvis, 9293
Preston, Clyde, 112113
Prevost, Jean-Pierre, 130
Price, Harry, 110
Price, Thomas W., 245
Prince Neosom, 202203
Priority of All Saints, 231
Probert, Mark, 6970, 275
Project Alert, 30
Project Blue Book, 1314,
6365, 171, 273
Project Magnet, 4748
Prophecies, 188189, 195
Atlantis, 3233
cataclysmic events, 130131,
169
of extraterrestrials, 11

287

of human future, 91
Second Coming, 113
Martin, Dorothy, and failed,
229232
telepathic communication,
2627
Wilcoxs Martians, 267268
Prophet, Mark L., 153154
Psychic experiments, 87, 200
Psychic manifestations,
245246, 259
Psychic projections. See
Psychoterrestrials
Psychological issues, 184
causes of abduction stories,
34
imaginal beings, 129
Jung on Orfeo Angelucci, 23
nightmares, 192194
research, xv
sanity of experients, xivxv,
3536, 268
Psychoterrestrials, 203204
Puddy, Maureen, 204205
Puddys abduction, 204205
Puharich, Andrija, 191
Pursel, Jach, 154155
R. D., 207
Ra, 207
Radio messages, 1213,
157158, 177178, 255
Rahm, Peter, 99100
Rainbow City, 207209
Rainbow City and the Inner
Earth People (Barton), 209
Ramtha, 154, 161, 209210
Ramu, 196, 210211
Randles, Jenny, 171, 197198,
198(fig.)
Raphael, 211
Ratliff, Buffard, 104
Raydia, 211
Reed, William, 122
Reeder, D. B., 273
Reeves, Kathy, 245
Reincarnated beings, 23, 24,
6162, 153154, 158,
199, 208
Renata, 211212
Renaud, Robert P., 158159
Reptoid child, 212

288

Index

Reptoids, 56, 144145, 145,

212214, 213(fig.), 259
The Republic (Plato), 3132
Restaurants, aliens in, 1617
Revelation: The Divine Fire
(Steiger), 29
Reyes, Luis Ramirez, 212
Rhode Island as site of
occurrence, 241
Rhodes, John, 214
Ribera, Antonio, 250
Rice, Ted, 259
Ring, Kenneth, 40, 129
Road in the Sky (Williamson),
157, 269, 270
Robbins, Dianne, 7, 58
Roberts, Jane, 221
Robinson, John J., 49
Rocky Mountain Conference on
UFO Investigation,
xivxv, 24, 72, 236
Rogo, D. Scott, 164165
Rohre, Joseph, 57
Rojcewicz, Peter M., 7, 197
Rolfe, Jessica (pseud.), 145146
Roman, Sanaya, 242
Root races, 216
Roper poll, 6
Rosas, Lester, 149150
Rosicrucians, 114115, 183
Rosing, Christopher, 129
Roswell, New Mexico, 8485
The Roswell Incident (Moore), 85
Rowe, Kelvin, 150151
Royal, Lyssa, 211
Royal Order of Tibet, 8
Rueckert, Carla, 207
Ruwa, Zimbabwe, 67
Sagan, Carl, xi, 184
Sagrada Familia, Brazil, 76
Saint Michael, 217
San Antonio, Antonio, 250
Sananda, 28, 117118, 119,
154, 217, 229, 231, 232
Sanderson, Ivan T., 42, 192
Sandler, Allan, 119
Santana, Carlos, 173, 174(fig.)
Sasquatch, 217219
Satanism, 113114. See also
Demons and demonology
Satonians, 220

Saturn, 2021, 172, 210, 239

Scarberry, Linda, 179
Scarberry, Roger, 178
Schattler, Philip L., 155157
Schiff, Steve, 85
Schirmer, Herbert, 2
Schmidt, Reinhold, 184
Schroeder, John E., 16, 17
Schultz, Dave, 173, 195
Schwartz, Stephen A., 217
Schwarz, Berthold Eric, 268
Scott-Elliot, W., 156
Scully, Frank, 82, 195
Second Coming, 112113
Secret Chiefs, 220
The Secret Common-Wealth
(Kirk), 99
The Secret Doctrine (Blavatsky),
122, 156
Secret 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), 240
Sedona, Arizona, 36, 134, 200,
227
Seewaldt, David, 212213
Semjase, 167168, 220221
Seth, 154, 221
The Seth Material (Roberts), 221
Sewall, Mary, 245
Sexual contact with aliens, 124
Aura Rhanes, 34, 43
evidence of, 1718
hysterical pregnancies, 126
with jinns, 136
with Pleiadeans, 221
producing offspring, 3738,
64
reptoids, 214
Webers Saturnian lover,
2021
See also Hybrid beings;
Pregnancy
Shaari, 222
Shambhala, 13
Shan, 222223
Shan-Chea satellite, 21
Shangri-La, 1315, 14(fig.)

Shartle, Paul, 119120

Shaver, Richard Sharpe, 4849,
123, 156, 223226
Shaver mystery, 14, 45, 4850,
207, 223226
Shaw, H. G., 226227
Shaws Martians, 226227
Sheaffer, Robert, 102
Shearer, Carolyn, 154
Sheep-killing alien, 227
Shell, Robert, 2930
Sherman, M. L., 122
Shiva, 3637, 227228
Shockley, Paul, 73
Short, Robert, 28
Shoush, Tawani, 151153
Shovar, 228
Shuttlewood, Arthur, 1011
Shuttlewood, Graham, 11
Siegmeister, Walter, xvi, 123
Silence Group, 910
Simon, Benjamin, 2
Simonton, Joe, 64
Simpson, Dorothy, 16
Sinat Schirah, 228
Sister Thedra, 229232
Sitchin, Zecharia, 2425, 115
Sky people, 232233
Slade, Henry, 104
Smeads Martians, 233
Smith, 233234
Smith, Helene (pseud.). See
Muller, Catherine Elise
Smith, Wilbert B., 4748
Snake People, 208
Sneide, Ole J., 70
Socorro, New Mexico, 65
Solar Cross Foundation, 220
Solem, Paul, 199
Solomon, Paul, 234
Source, 234
Space Brothers, 159, 187188,
210211, 254
Space travel
early contactee movement,
6869
out-of-body experiences,
143
Standing Horses travels,
2122
with Venusians, 149150,
159160, 242243

Index
Spaceships, xvi, 6264
abductions by, 16
Adamski, George, and,
810
aliens from, 239
Angelucci, Orfeo, and, 23
Birminghams ark, 4445
blueprints for, 133
cigar-shaped spacecraft, 26
contact with, 3940, 154,
157158
dead extraterrestrials, 8184,
82
disc-shaped, 124
early contactee movement,
70
EBEs, 95
failure to appear, 199
hoaxes, 249252
humans on UFOs, 207
landings in Texas, 270271
manned craft, 275276
Martians in, 19, 226227
pancake-shaped, 67, 106(fig.)
from Saturn, 210
See also Abductions; Close
encounters of the third
kind
Sparrow, Margaret, 200
Spaulding, William H., 263
Spears, Terry, 115
SPECTRA, 234235
Spence, Lewis, 32
Spencer, John Wallace, 42
Spooner, Camille, 226
Springheel Jack, 235236
Sprinkle, Ronald Leo, 36, 72,
79, 228, 236, 244
St. Louis, Missouri, 16
Stalnaker, Lydia, 24
Stan. See Sinat Schirah
Standing Horse, Frank Buck,
2122, 154
Star People, 96, 143144,
237238
The Star People (Steiger and
Steiger), 237
Starr, Jelaila, 115
Starseed transmissions, 211, 237
Steen, Claude E., 57
Steiger, Brad, 29, 88, 96, 131,
143144, 237238, 242

289

Steiger, Francie Paschal,

143144
Steinman, William, 57
Stellar Community of
Enlightened Ecosystems,
238
Stevens, Wendelle C., 168, 221
Stirling, Allan Alexander, 94
Stockholm Syndrome, 89
Stonebrooke, Pamela, 214
Stranges, Frank E., 254
Strieber, Whitley, xii, 45,
9697, 238239
Stringfield, Leonard H., 8384
Subterranean kingdoms. See
Hollow earth
Suicides, xiii, 30, 246248
Sumerian writings, 25
Sunar and Treena, 239
Sunderland, Gaynor, 26
Swan, Frances, 12
Swedenborg, Emanuel, 6869
Swords, Michael D., 4, 270
Sydney, Australia, 1718
Symmes, John Cleves, xvi, 122

Thompsons Venusians,
242243
Thorner, W. E., 101
The Threat (Jacobs), 96
Tibus, 244
Timaeus (Plato), 31
Time travelers, 244245
Tin-can aliens, 245
Toews, Edmoana, 111112
Toronto Society for Psychical
Research, 200
Torrent, Argentina, 76
Torres, Penny, 161
Townsend, James, 245
Transformation (Strieber), 238
Traum, Artie, 101
Tree-stump aliens, 245
Trench, Brinsley le Poer, 225,
232
Trigano, Lyonel, 44
Tulpa, 245246
Turner, Harry Joe, 1920
Turner, Karla, 6768, 214
Turrell, Thelma B., 30
The Two, 246248

Tabar, 241
Taken (Turner), 67
Tawa, 241
Taylor, Charles, 4142
Tecu, 241242
Teed, Cyrus, 122
Telephone calls from
extraterrestrials, 1011,
25, 7981, 145
Telonic Research Center, 269
Telos, 47
Teros, 4546
The Terror That Comes in the
Night (Hufford), 193
Tessman, Diane, 244
Texas as site of occurrence,
3435, 233234
Thayer, Velma, 210
Thee Elohim, 242
Theosophists, 104, 114115,
122, 133, 215(fig.), 229
They Knew Too Much about
Flying Saucers (Barker),
141, 170
Thompson, Samuel Eaton,
242243

UFO and the Bible (Jessup), 135

The UFO Experience (Hynek),
62
UFO Experience Support
Association, 17
The UFO Incident (film),
204(fig.)
UFO Project, 236
UFO-Abductions: A Dangerous
Game (Klass), 5
UFOs Confidential! (Williamson
and McCoy), 269
Ulkt, 249
Ultraterrestrials, 2526, 245
Ummo, 249252
Unaware abductees, 18
Unconscious, role in paranormal
experience, xiv
The Under-People (Norman),
225
Unholy Six, 252
Unveiled Mysteries (Ballard), 183
Uranus, 12
Vadig, 253254
Val Thor, 254

290

Index

Valdar, 255
Vallee, Jacques, 66, 102,
161162, 251
Van Tassel, George W., 2729,
70, 201, 255256,
256(fig.), 257
Vaughan, Alan, 158
Vegetable Man, 256257
Venudo, 257
Venus, visits to, 2122,
149150
Venusians, 1
Adamskis contact, 8,
195196
Agharti, 15
channeling, 7677
as Christians, 254
contactees, 5152, 8788,
105, 149150
dead extraterrestrials, 82
Dentons Martians and
Venusians, 87
reincarnated angel, 199
Thompsons Venusians,
242243
traveling with, 149150,
242243
Venusian puppies, 154
visiting Lemuria, 173
Weber as, 21, 172173
See also VIVenus
Villanueva Medina, Salvador,
257258
Villanuevas visitors, 257258
Villas-Boas, Antonio, 64
VIVenus, 258259
Volmo, 259
Volpe, Anthony and Lynn,
2627
Wales as site of occurrence, 26,
157158, 170

Walk-ins, 36, 88, 261

Walton, Duane, 262263
Walton, Travis, 2, 261266
Waltons abduction, 261266
Wanderers, 95, 266
Wardrop, Dennis, 117
Warminster mystery, 1011
The Warminster Mystery
(Shuttlewood), 1011
Watson, Ron and Paula, 56
Webb, Walter N., 5253, 268
Weber, Constance, 2021,
20(fig.), 172173
Weiss, Jann, 23
Wettlaufer, Brianna, 28
Whales. See Cetaceans
When Prophecy Fails (Festinger,
Riecken, and Schachter),
229, 230
White, William Allen,
266267
White Eagle, 266
The White Sands Incident (Fry),
105
Whites little people, 266267
Why We Are Here (Lee), 133
Wight, George D., 4547
Wilcox, Gary T., 6566,
267268
Wilcoxs Martians, 6566,
267268
Williams, Edward, 100101
Williamson, George Hunt, 199,
268270, 269(fig.)
Adamski, George, and, 8
communication by automatic
writing, 1213
early contactee movement,
70
EBEs, 94
extraterrestrials among us,
95

Lemuria, 157
and Martins failed
prophecies, 231
migrants, 175
subversive aliens on Earth,
252
Venusians visiting Lemuria,
173
Wilson, 270272
Wisconsin as site of occurrence,
64, 239
With Mystics and Magicians in
Tibet (David-Neel),
245246
Witnessed (Hopkins), 124
Woodrew, Greta, 191
Woods, William, 170
Worlds beyond the Poles
(Giannini), 151
Wright, Elsie, 7375
Wyoming as site of occurrence,
3536
Xeno, 273274
Yada di Shiite, 275
Yamski, 275276
Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn, 174
Yeats, W. B., 103104
Yhova, 276
Young, June, 242
Young, Kenny, 57
Zagga, 277
Zamora, Lonnie, 65
Zandark, 277
Ziff-Davis publications, 156
Zinsstag, Lou, 95, 196
Zollner, Johann F. C., 104
Zolton, 277278
Zundel, Ernst, 123