WHY UFOS

Operation Trojan Horse

JOHN A. KEEL

"There is no plot to cover up the truth, but a

sensible decision made by men whose minds
have been boggled by just a glimpse of the over-
whelming reality they encountered in their
search for evidence to prove or disprove the
existence of UFOs."
A MANOR BOOK

Manor Books, Inc.

432 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10016

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-105593

Copyright, ©, 1970, by John A. Keel.

All rights reserved.
Published by arrangement with G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Printed in the U.S.A.
Contents

Foreword 6

1. The Secret War 8

2. To Hell with the Answer!

What's the Question? 23
3. The World of Illusion 41
4. Machines from Beyond Time 58
5. The Grand Deception 69
6. Flexible Phantoms of the Sky 94
7. Unidentified Airplanes 112
8. Charting the Enigma 133
9. The Physical Non-Evidence 155
10. "What Is Your Time Cycle?" 171
11. "You Are Endangering the
183
Balance of the Universe!"
200
12. The Cosmic Jokers
233
13. A Sure Cure for Alligator Bites
255
14. Breakthrough!
15. You Can't Tell the Players
Without a Scorecard 273
Acknowledgments

This book could not have been written without the

unselfish, dedicated, and knowledgeable assistance of
hundreds of people throughout the world who offered me
immeasurable support in my research and provided me
with rare documents, reports, forgotten files, and back
issues of early journals and publications. The back issues of
the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO)
Bulletin (3910 E. Kleindale Road, Tucson, Arizona 85716)
and the British journal Flying Saucer Review (49a Kings
Grove, London SE 15, England) were especially valuable,
since they had carefully recorded the general history of the
UFO phenomenon for the past fifteen years.
I also owe a large debt to those people who have worked
for many years without reward, often suffering consider-
able ridicule and even persecution for their perseverance.
There are many who have asked to remain anonymous,
such as police officers, sheriffs, and local officials who
quietly kept me informed of developments in their areas.
And there were also several hundred local newspaper
editors, reporters, and stringers who cooperated with me in
every possible way and provided me with much valuable
background information. In addition to this group, there
were thousands of readers of my newspaper features and
magazine articles who wrote thoughtful letters offering me
testimony of their own sightings and experiences.
Obviously, it is impossible to give full credit to all my
sources or to personally acknowledge the help of so many
people. Some parts of this book have appeared in slightly
different form in True, Saga, Flying Saucer Review, Flying
Saucers, Flying Saucers-UFO Reports, Male, Men, and in
my syndicated newspaper features distributed by the North
American Newspaper Alliance (NANA).
Lastly, this book is dedicated to Laocoön. In these past
four years I have learned how he must have felt.

J. A. K.

5
Foreword

Any appraisal of the "flying saucer mystery" must be all

inclusive and must attempt a study of the apparent hoaxes,
as well as an examination of the many events now generally
accepted as being totally authentic. The data must be
reviewed quantitatively, no matter how arduous the task
becomes. There is a natural tendency to concentrate on
only those facets which seem most interesting, or which
seem to provide the best evidence. The phenomenon of
unidentified flying objects is a gigantic iceberg, and the
truly important aspects are hidden far beneath the surface.
Nearly all of the UFO literature of the past twenty years
has leaned toward the trivia, the random sightings which
are actually irrelevant to the whole, and to the meaningless
side issues of government policy, dissection of personali-
ties, and the conflicts which have arisen within the various
factions of the UFO cultists.
For the past four years I have worked full time, seven
days a week, without a vacation, to investigate and
research UFO events in total depth, hacking my way
systematically through all of the myths and beliefs which
surround this fascinating subject. This book is a summa-
tion of that effort. The original manuscript was more
than 2,000 pages long. It has been boiled down and
carefully edited to its present length. In the process, a good
deal of documentation and many details have been deleted
or heavily condensed. I had hoped to include full
acknowledgment of my many sources and of the many
people who helped me in this task. But that proved to be
impossible.
More than 2,000 books were reviewed in the course of
this study, in addition to uncounted thousands of
magazines, newsletters, and newspapers. Since it is not
feasible to list them all, I have included a selected
bibliography, listing those works which proved to be the
most valid and useful. Very few of these books deal with
the subject of flying saucers directly. History, psychiatry,
religion, and the occult have proven to be far more
important to an understanding of the whole than the many
books which simply recount the endless sightings of aerial
anomalies.

6
 I have tried to apply the standard rules of scholarship
wherever possible, going directly to the original sources in
most cases instead of relying upon the distilled and often
distorted versions of these events which were later
published in various media. This involved tracking down
and interviewing, either by phone or in person, the people
who had the experiences or, at least, conferring with the
investigators who personally checked into some cases and
were able to supply taped interviews with the witnesses and
other documentation. In the earlier, historical cases I have
tried to accumulate at least three independent published
citations for each event. Many possibly important events
were rejected simply because it proved impossible to
uncover satisfactory documentation.
My files include thousands of letters, affidavits, and
other materials encompassing many unpublished cases
which correlated with and confirmed the events and
conclusions discussed in this book. Numerous other
researchers around the world have confirmed my findings
through events in their own areas.
The real problems hidden behind the UFO phenome-
non are staggering and so complex that they will seem
almost incomprehensible at first. The popular beliefs and
speculations are largely founded upon biased reporting,
gross misinterpretations, and the inability to see beyond
the limits of any one of many frames of reference. Cunning
techniques of deception and psychological warfare have
been employed by the UFO source to keep us confused and
skeptical. Man's tendency to create a deep and inflexible
belief on the basis of little or no evidence has been
exploited. These beliefs have created tunnel vision and
blinded many to the real nature of the phenomenon,
making it necessary for me to examine and analyze many
of these beliefs in this text.
Some readers will be offended and enraged by what I
have to say and how I have chosen to say it. It is not my
intention to attack any belief or frame of reference. Rather,
I have tried to demonstrate how all of these things blend
together into a larger whole.

JOHN A. KEEL

7
1. The Secret War

On Wednesday, October 5, 1960, a formation of

unidentified flying objects was picked up on the sophisti-
cated computerized radar screens of an early-warning
station at Thule, Greenland. Its exact course was quickly
charted. It appeared to be heading toward North America
from the direction of the Soviet Union. Within minutes the
red telephones at Strategic Air Command headquarters in
Omaha, Nebraska, were jangling, and the well-trained
crews of SAC were galloping to their planes at airfields all
over the world. Atomic-bomb-laden B-52's already in the
air were circling tensely, their crews waiting for the final
signal to head for predetermined targets deep within the
Soviet Union.
SAC headquarters broadcast an anxious signal to Thule
for further confirmation. There was no answer. Generals
chewed on their cigars nervously. Had Thule already been
hit?
Suddenly the mysterious blips on the radar screens
changed course and disappeared. Later it was learned that
"an iceberg had cut the submarine cable" connecting Thule
to the United States. It was a very odd coincidence that the
"iceberg" chose that precise time to strike. But the mystery
of unidentified flying objects is filled with remarkable
and seemingly unrelated coincidences.
World War III did not start that day. But it might have.
Weeks later, when news of the enigmatic radar signals
leaked out, three Labor members of the British House of
Commons, Mr. Emrys-Hughes, Mrs. Hart, and Mr.
Swingler, stood up and demanded an explanation. The
U.S. Air Force replied that the radar signals had actually
bounced off the moon and had been misinterpreted. The
story appeared in the Guardian, a leading newspaper in
Manchester, England, on November 30, and a week later it
was buried on page 71 of the New York Times.
Could modern military radar really convert the moon
into a formation of flying saucers? I have excellent reasons
for doubting it. In May, 1967, I toured a secret radar
installation in New Jersey at the Air Force's own
invitation, and I was extremely impressed by the
 complexity and efficiency of the equipment there. By
pressing a few buttons, the radar operators can not only
instantly detect every aircraft within range, but giant
computers also provide complete and instant information
on the speed, altitude, direction, and ETA (estimated time
of arrival) of each plane. Even the aircraft's flight number
appears on the radar screen! Unknown objects can be
immediately picked out in the maze of air traffic, and a
routine procedure is followed to identify them quickly. If
these procedures fail, jet fighters are scrambled to take a
look. It is improbable, if not impossible altogether, for the
moon or any other distant celestial object to fool this
elaborate system.
There have been frequent radar sightings of UFOs for
the past twenty years, not only on military radar but on the
sets of weather bureaus and airports. Often in these cases
ground witnesses have also reported seeing the objects
visually. When the Federal Aviation Agency tower at the
Greensboro-High Point Airport in Greensboro, North
Carolina, picked up an unidentified flying object early on
the morning of July 27, 1966, several police officers in the
High Point-Randolph County area also reported seeing
unidentifiable objects buzzing the vicinity. They said the
objects appeared to be at an altitude of 500 feet and
described them as being round, brilliant red-green, and
appeared to be emitting flashes of light.
The government's official position toward flying
saucers has been totally negative since 1953, although a
great deal of attention has been paid to the subject behind
the scenes. Obviously any phenomenon which could
possibly trigger off World War III accidentally has to be
taken seriously.
An extensive flying saucer "flap" (numerous sightings
occurring simultaneously in many widely scattered areas)
broke in March, 1966, and the then Secretary of Defense,
Robert S. McNamara, had been well briefed by the Air
Force before the subject was interjected into a hearing of
the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 30, 1966.
Representative Cornelius E. Gallagher of New Jersey, a
state where scores of UFO sightings had been reported that
month, asked Secretary McNamara if he thought there was
"anything at all" to the flying saucer mystery.
"I think not," McNamara replied. "I have talked to the
Secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force Director of
Research and Engineering, and neither of them places any
9
 credence in the reports we have received to date."
Ironically, at 8 A.M. that very morning, C. Phillip
Lambert and Donny Russell Rose, both stable men with
good reputations, were driving to work outside of
Charleston, South Carolina, when they reportedly noticed
a strange circular object spinning in the clear sky above the
Southern Trucking Company terminal on Meeting Street
Road. They stopped their car and watched the object for
about eight minutes.
"It looked like a sterling-silver disk," Lambert said. "It
was about fourteen feet tall and twenty feet in diameter.
We just happened to look up into the sky; it was such a
pretty day. I know we saw it; we were both wide awake, and
neither of us drinks."
A veteran of eight years in the airborne infantry,
Lambert estimated that the object was 800 or 900 feet
above the ground when they first saw it. It appeared to be
spinning rapidly and was constantly shifting from one
position to another.
This was what ufologists call a Type I sighting —a low-
level object observed and reported by reliable witnesses.
March 30, 1966, was a flap date, and local newspapers
from coast to coast carried dozens of other Type I sightings
that day. Many of them involved police officers, pilots, and
other above-average witnesses. Weeks later, when all of the
clippings and reports for that day had been collected by the
author, we found that extensive sightings had also been
reported in the following states: Michigan, New York
(Long Island), Ohio, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Iowa, and
other sections of South Carolina. This was a typical minor
flap, and like most flaps, it received no national publicity,
and none of the sightings was published outside of its place
of origin.
While all of this was going on, Secretary McNamara
was blithely repeating the long-established Air Force line
behind the closed doors at the House hearing.
"People are beginning to attach significance to this
matter," Representative Gallagher told the Secretary that
day.
"There is no indication that they are anything other than
illusions," McNamara responded blandly.
How do you suppose those two men in South Carolina
responded when they read that statement? For years now
thousands of witnesses have been reacting with anger and
bewilderment to the official pronouncements and explana-

10
tions. The governmental attitude has succeeded in main-
taining skepticism among those who have never seen
a UFO and has helped foster the general disinterest of the
press in the subject. As a result, most of the reported UFO
activity has gone unnoticed, and the alarming scope of the
phenomenon is unknown except to the relatively small
handful of organizations and individuals who have tried to
keep tabs on the sightings.
When I first decided to look into these matters, in
March, 1966, I subscribed to several newspaper clipping
services, and I was stunned by the results. I often received
as many as 150 clippings for a single day! My immediate
reaction, of course, was one of disbelief. I thought that all
of the newspapers in the country had thrown objectivity
out the window and were participating in some kind of
gigantic put-on. It seemed impossible that so many
unidentifiable things were flying around our sacred skies
without being seriously noticed by both the military and
the scientific community.

Reliability of Reports

My first task, therefore, was to determine just how

reliable all of these reports were. I began by placing
frequent long-distance calls to the reporters and editors of
some of the newspapers which seemed to be carrying UFO
stories week after week. Not only did they sound like
reasonable men, but they all assured me that they were only
publishing the more interesting or best-validated stories
that were being reported to them. Many were concentrat-
ing only on those sightings reported by police officers and
local officials. It quickly became clear that literally
thousands of sightings were being reported by ordinary
citizens but were going completely unpublished. The
published sightings represented only a fraction of the
whole!
I also called many of the witnesses in the published
accounts and learned, to my further dismay, that the
newspaper stories had only outlined a part of their total
experiences. Some of them claimed the objects had
pursued their cars, had landed briefly beside the road near
them, or had even reappeared later over their homes.
Innumerable witnesses complained that their eyes had
become red and swollen after their sighting and had

11
remained that way for days afterward. Others said they had
experienced peculiar tingling sensations or waves of heat as
the objects passed over. I must admit that I experienced an
emotional reaction to all of this at first, trying to convince
myself that the phenomenon was more hysterical in nature
than physical, but the more I heard the more I was forced
to realize that all of these people were coming up with the
same incredible details.
It became apparent that the only way to properly
investigate this situation was to travel to the various flap
areas personally and interview the witnesses in depth,
applying the standard journalistic techniques that I had
learned from being a reporter and writer for two long
decades. So in the spring of 1966 I began a long series of
treks which eventually took me through twenty states,
where I interviewed thousands of people, hundreds of them
in depth. Occasionally I encountered a publicity seeker or
an outright liar, but such people were easy to spot. The
majority of the people I met were ordinary, honest human
beings. Many were reluctant to discuss their experiences
with me at all until I had won their confidence and assured
them that I was not going to ridicule or slander them. Some
had had such unusual and unbelievable sightings that they
were afraid to recount them until they were certain that I
would give them a sincere hearing. In my typical reporter
fashion I only extracted information and gave little or none
in return. I seldom let the witnesses know that other people
in other sections of the country had told me identical
stories which seemed to corroborate their own experiences.
The details of many of these stories were unpublished and
unknown to even hard-core UFO buffs. By maintaining
this secrecy, I was able to make unique correlations that
might not otherwise have been possible.
As I traveled, I naturally visited local newspapers and
spent time with the editors and reporters who had been
handling the UFO reports in their area. They were all
competent newsmen, many with years of experience
behind them, and when I met the witnesses whose stories
they had written and published, I realized what a skillful
and objective job they had done. So I developed a new
respect for the clippings that were pouring into my
mailbox. Most newspaper stories were reliable sources for
basic information.
Likewise, I found that most of the material being
published by the various civilian UFO organizations had
12
been carefully sifted and investigated to the best of their
ability, even though some of these organizations did tend
to overinterpret their material, overspeculate, and add the
coloring of their own beliefs. They also had an exasperat-
ing tendency to delete reported details which they felt were
objectionable or detracted from their "cause."
The witnesses, I concluded, have been giving honest
descriptions of what they have seen, and their local
newspapers have been giving objective accounts of what
they reported. The nature and the meaning of what they
saw is another matter. And the answer could not be found
in newspaper clippings. However, it was possible that those
clippings could supply some broad data about the overall
phenomenon. None of the UFO organizations had made
any effort at all to extract such data. The U.S. Air Force
had tried in the early 1950's but had apparently given up in
despair. So my next job was to translate the seemingly
random clippings and reports of investigated cases into
some form of statistical information.

Patterns in the Phenomenon

More than 10,000 clippings and reports reached me in

1966 (in contrast with the 1,060 reports allegedly received
by the Air Force during that same period). I had checked
out many of these cases personally and had become
convinced of their validity. Throughout 1967, I devoted my
spare time to sorting this great mass of material,
categorizing it, and boiling it down into valid statistical
form. It was an enormous job, and I had to do it alone. I
threw out most of the "lights in the sky" types of reports
and concentrated on the Type I cases. I obtained
astronomical data on meteors, etc., for the year, and from
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration I
obtained information on all of the year's rocket launches.
By checking the UFO reports against this data, I was able
to sift out the possible or probable misinterpretations that
were bound to occur.
My first interest was to uncover whatever patterns or
cycles that might exist in the flap dates. I ended up with two
files: one containing the Type I sightings (730 in all, or 7.3
percent of the total); and the other, the best of the Type II
sightings (high-altitude objects performing in a controlled
manner and distinct from normal aircraft and natural
13
phenomena). There were 2,600 reports in the second
group. Thus I was working with 33.3 percent of the total.
(Radio and TV surveys which rule the industry work on a
far smaller sampling, claiming that a survey of 1,500 TV
viewers represents the viewing habits of the whole
country.)
As soon as I had organized the sightings by dates, the
first significant pattern became apparent. This was that
sightings tended to collect around specific days of the
week. Wednesday had the greatest number of sightings,
and these were usually reported between the hours of 8 to
11 P.M.

Of the sampling used, .5 percent were not dated.

If the UFO phenomenon had a purely psychological
basis, then there should be more sightings on Saturday
night when more people are out of doors, traveling to and
from entertainments, etc. Instead we find that the greatest
number of sightings are reported on Wednesday, and then
they slowly taper off through the rest of week. The lowest
number occurs on Tuesday. This inexplicable "Wednesday
phenomenon" proved very valid and was repeated
throughout 1967 and 1968.
This does not mean that flying saucers are out in force
every Wednesday night. But when there is a large flap, it
nearly always takes place on Wednesday. The one notable
exception is the flap of August 16, 1966, a Tuesday night, in
which thousands of people in five states witnessed unusual
aerial phenomena.
By carefully studying the geographical locations of the
reported sightings during these flaps, we came upon
another puzzling factor. The reports seemed to cluster
within the boundaries of specific states. For example,
during the flap of August 16 there were hundreds of
sightings in Arkansas. These seemed to be concentrated
14
 into two belts which ran the length of the state from north
to south. Yet we did not receive a single report from the
neighboring states of Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee,
or Louisiana that night. Minnesota and Wisconsin, both
far to the north of Arkansas, participated in that same flap.
But the majority of the sightings seemed to be concentrated
in Minnesota, and the UFOs seemed to confine their
activities within the political boundaries of that state, too.
Random sightings were also reported in distant New Jersey
that night, and a few sightings were reported in South
Dakota, right on the border with Minnesota.
Certainly if the UFOs were meteors or other natural
phenomena, they would also be reported in adjoining
states. Cross-state sightings are not as common as the
skeptics would like to believe. In addition, the objects often
linger for hours in one area. At Fort Smith, Arkansas,
newsman John Garner took his KFSA microphone into
the streets and broadcast a description of the strange
multicolored lights that cavorted over the city for hours as
great crowds of people watched. Another newsman, Ken
Bock of KDRS, Paragould, Arkansas, did the same that
night.
In my studies of several other flaps I have discovered
this same baffling geographical factor. If the UFOs are
actually machines of some sort, their pilots seem to be
familiar not only with our calendar but also with the
political boundaries of our states. They not only concen-
trate their activities on Wednesday nights, they also
carefully explore our states methodically from border to
border.
Does this sound like the work of Martians or
extraterrestrial strangers? Or does it sound like the work of
someone who is using our maps and our calendars and
may, therefore, know a great deal about us, even though we
know little about "them"?
The skeptics try to explain away the published UFO
stories by saying that a mass hysteria builds up in flap areas
and that everyone starts seeing the things once a few
reports have been published. This is patently untrue.
Nearly all the published reports of flap dates appear on the
same day. There is no time lag, no building up of reports.
Random individuals in widely separated areas all appar-
ently see unidentifiable objects on the same night and
dutifully report their observations to their local police or
newspapers, seldom realizing that anyone else has seen

15
something that night. The next day the newspapers in
several areas, or even several different states, carry the
reports. The flap has come and gone in a single day. Even
then, people reading the Arkansas Gazette never learn that
other papers in other states have been filled with UFO
accounts on that same day. Most UFO buffs, who depend
upon one another and assorted friends for clippings, are
never aware of the full extent of the flap. With the
exception of the North American Newspaper Alliance, no
news service assigns men to keep track of these things and
tabulate them. So while an occasional sighting may be sent
out by a wire service, data on the overall situation are
simply not available.

Anatomy of a Flap
In March-April, 1967, the published UFO sightings
outstripped all previous years. I received more than 2,000
clippings and reports in March alone and was able to
investigate many of them at firsthand. Yet the major news
media ignored this flap, perhaps because none of the
editors realized it was happening. Instead of the mythical
censorship so lovingly expounded in some cultist circles,
we have a lack of communication and a complete lack of
research. The indifference so long fostered by the official
government position has resulted in a general indifference.
The biggest flap in March, 1967 occurred on a
Wednesday—March 8. Let's review briefly some of the
sightings reported on that day:
1. Minnesota: "A strange object in the sky hovering
around above our homes here is giving some of us folks the
shivers. It's becoming such a mysterious light or flying
saucer that we can almost work our imaginations into
seeing it land some green men from outer space into our
backyard. The thing moves with a gliding motion with
brilliant light and sometimes just hovering and sometimes
moving with utmost speed. It appears each night at 8
o'clock and stays for about one hour before it fades away."
(Floodwood, Minnesota, Rural Forum, March 9, 1967.)
2. Michigan: "Police said they received eight reports
that a UFO hovered over Liggett School about 8 P.M.
Wednesday." The Air Force and Grosse Pointe Woods
police were investigating reports of a "burning orange
oval" which had been photographed by two persons that

16
 week. "There was definitely something out there," said
Major Raymond Nyls, Selfridge Air Force Base opera-
tions officer. "Too many people saw it." (Detroit,
Michigan, Free Press, March 11, 1967.)
3. Oklahoma: At 8:45 P.M. on Wednesday night Mrs.
Homer Smith stepped onto her back porch and "was
astounded to see a twirling object with colored lights"
going over Ninth Street headed south. She called her ten-
year-old son, and he saw it, too. She said the UFO was
traveling and twirling so fast that it was difficult to count
the lights on it, but they were colored, and what she
believed to be the rear of the ship had what looked like
"spits of fire coming from it." (Henryetta, Oklahoma,
Daily Free Lance, March 19, 1967.)
4. Arkansas: Mrs. Ned Warnock of Brinkley,
Arkansas, viewed an object from her kitchen window that
night. "It was a reddish orange," she said. "And it changed
to a silver-white color just before it took off. It was round
and pretty large. It was real low but gained height and
speed as it took off. It was moving too fast for a star." She
alerted her neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Folkerts, and
they also saw the object. (Clarendon, Arkansas, The
Monroe County Sun, March 16, 1967.)
5. Maryland: Two residents and a police officer
observed an object which appeared circular, with "a shiny
gold bottom." When it hovered, the top glowed red. It flew
an oval-shaped path, going back and forth from Fort
Meade to Laurel three times before taking off. (Laurel,
Maryland, Prince George's County News, March 16,
1967.)
6. Montana: Mr. Richard Haagland of Stevensville,
Montana, reported to the Missoula County sheriff's office
that he had seen a circular flying object which "dropped
three balls of fire before disappearing" at 8:20 P.M.
Wednesday night. (Missoula, Montana, Missoulian-
Sentinel, March 9, 1967.)
7. Montana: "Many people have seen unidentified
flying objects in the Ekalaka, Lame Jones, and Willard
areas. The report is that they seem to hover about a mile
from the ground, 'fly' up and down, or in any direction that
seems to pleasure them. They are lit up with red and green
lights and are apt to be seen in the early night.
"The report to the Times office by Mrs. Harry Hanson
of Willard relates that Stanley Ketchum has seen them at
17
 what seems to be a closer range than most, and any attempt
at trying to get close to them makes them literally
disappear into thin air." (Baker, Montana, Fallon County
Times, March 9, 1967.)
8. Missouri: Mr. J. Sloan Muir of Caledonia,
Missouri, observed a flashing light from his kitchen
window at 7:15 P.M. last Wednesday and called his wife.
They said it was "a shiny, metal, oblong globe, shaped
something like a watermelon. Around the perimeter were
many beautiful multicolored lights—green and red mostly,
but also white, blue, and yellow, running into orange."
They estimated that it was about 35 feet long and said they
watched it for fifteen or twenty minutes before it flew out of
sight. (Bardstown, Kentucky, Kentucky Standard, March
16, 1967.)
9. Missouri: "In the past two and one half weeks 75 to
100 persons have reported sightings in the Osage Beach
and Linn Creek areas." (Versailles, Missouri, Versailles
Leader-Statesman, March 16, 1967.)
10. Missouri: Mrs. Phyllis Rowles of Bunceton,
Missouri, reported seeing a multicolored object at 8 P.M.,
Wednesday. She described it as having flashing blue,
green, and white lights. It hovered for two hours, moving in
an up-and-down motion. Many others in the area had
similar sightings, including Leo Case, a newsman for
station KRMS. (Boonville, Missouri, Daily News, March
9, 1967.)
11. Illinois: Mr. and Mrs. Lonnie Davis were driving
on Route 30 around noon when "they saw a beam of light
come from a wide-open area south of them." They stopped
and observed a strange object for three or four minutes. "It
was very brilliant," Mrs. Davis said. "And cast a red and
blue color. It was circle-shaped. It seemed to come toward
us but gained height until it went in back of a small cloud.
We watched for about ten minutes more, but it never
appeared again."
Ronald Kolberg of Aurora, Illinois, said he and other
residents of his neighborhood "have noticed an unusual
light in the sky west of their area every night for a few
months." (Aurora, Illinois, Beacon-News, March 9,1967.)
12. Illinois: Several witnesses in Pontiac, Illinois,
reported sightings to the state police on Wednesday. They
said a white light flashed occasionally with a less frequent
red light and a periodic green light. The object appeared
between 10 P.M. and midnight and moved up and down

18
 slowly. "More than a dozen people have seen the object this
week." (Pontiac, Illinois, Leader, March 10, 1967.)
13. Illinois: Knox County Deputy Sheriff Frank
Courson and twenty other persons watched a pulsating
white and red circular object for several hours on
Wednesday night. The object resembled an upside-down
bowl and appeared to be about 2,000 feet off the ground.
Deputy Courson added that "a similar object crossed over
his car Monday as he drove along Interstate 74 near
Galesburg, Illinois, but he was scared to tell anyone about
it then."
There were also reports of UFO sightings Wednesday
night in Warren and Henry counties, west of Galesburg.
(Associated Press story, widely circulated, March 10,
1967.)
14. Illinois: State police and scores of others watched
UFOs near Flanagan, Illinois, on Wednesday night. A
state trooper named Kennedy said he had followed the
object to U . S . 51 where he met two Woodford County
deputies who had been watching it approach Minonk from
the east. The object was a brilliant bluish-white and red.
(Bloomington, Illinois, Pantagraph, March 10, 1967.)
15. Illinois: "Flying saucer reports, one of them from a
veteran policeman and pilot, flooded the Knox County
sheriff's office in Galesburg Thursday. Dozens of similar
reports poured into police departments in Moline,
Illinois." (Chicago, Illinois, News, March 9, 1967.)
16. Iowa: "On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday
nights of last week unidentified flying objects were
reported by several persons... including Dr. and Mrs. W.
G. Tietz, Connie Dagit and her younger brother, Jack
Chadwick, and John Kiwala. The UFOs west of Eldora
were all reported at approximately the same time nightly,
at about 8:30 P.M. U F O S have also been reported in the
Steamboat Rock area." (Eldora, Iowa, Herald-Ledger,
March 14, 1967.)
17. Iowa: A "saucer-shaped blue light" was observed
Wednesday night hovering above Dam 18 north of
Burlington, Iowa. Deputy Sheriff Homer Dickson said he
thought it might have been a "reflection of a spotlight on
the ice." "Wednesday's sighting was the latest of several
reported in the Burlington area the past two weeks."
(Burlington, Iowa, newspaper. Name obliterated. March
9, 1967.)
18. Iowa: Mrs. L. E. Koppenhaver reported seeing "a
19
 big red ball" sailing over her house at 9:45 P.M.,
Wednesday. "You know how the setting sun gets a red glow
on it?" she said. "Well, that was what this thing looked
like. Only this object was very mobile, moving almost out
of sight, the bright glow diminishing to a small light. I've
seen satellites before, but this was nothing like them. It
moved so fast and maneuvered so quickly." Her father,
Walter Engstrom, said he also saw the same object.
(Boone, Iowa, News-Republican, March 10, 1967.)
19. Kansas: Mr. Jake Jansonius of Prairie View,
Kansas, was driving home about 10 P.M. Wednesday night
"when the sky lit up and a bright blue object of some kind
appeared." While he was watching it, it shot straight up in
the air, and half of it turned fiery red as "three blazing tails
reached toward the ground." It moved to the west and then
dropped down, out of his line of vision. He drove a short
distance when "the sky lit up poof in one big flash, and
immediately ahead of me the saucer-shaped object began
to spread apart—one half still blue, the other fiery red. As
the distance widened between the two parts, a connecting
band which appeared to be about one and a half feet thick
formed, and while I watched, the object broke up and
disappeared in a flash." (Phillipsburg, Kansas, Review,
March 16, 1967.)
20. Kansas: Several police officers in Marion,
Kansas, watched an unidentified flying object Wednesday
night between 8 and 8:30 P.M. Marion police dispatcher
Sterling Frame and others viewed it through binoculars
and stated it changed color: red, green, and yellow. "They
all agree they saw it. There's no question about that."
(Marion, Kansas, Marion County Record, March 9, 1967.)
21. Kansas: "Around nine o'clock Wednesday night,
several Towanda youths were parked along the road
northwest of town when they observed revolving red,
white, and blue lights flashing in the sky above the Wilson
field in the vicinity of a city water well." The boys fetched
City Marshal Virgil Osborne, and he went with them to the
area and viewed the lights himself. Osborne said, "The
trees along the river were lighted up from the reflection as
the mysterious object moved over them." A line of cars led
by Osborne followed the object as it continued its course
without changing direction or altitude until it was out of
sight. (Whitewater, Kansas, Independent, March 9, 1967.)
22. Kansas: Sheriff G. L. Sullivan and Police Chief Al
Kisner watched a hovering object for more than an hour on

20
 Wednesday evening near Goodland, Kansas. They said the
thing resembled a sphere from 12 to 14 feet long with an
object attached to the bottom which appeared to be about
12 feet in diameter. There were three lights on it—red,
green, and amber.
A Goodland policeman, Ron Weehunt, reported seeing
an oval-shaped, domed object about 50 feet long that same
evening. He said it flew over the city at moderate speed and
appeared at an altitude of 1,000 to 1,500 feet. (Norton,
Kansas, Telegram, March 14, 1967.)
These twenty-two reports are a mere sampling, but they
provide an idea of what happened on a single Wednesday
night in March, 1967. This was not an exceptional flap. It
was, in fact, a rather ordinary one, and none of these
incidents is of special interest. There were seventy-four flap
dates in 1966, many of them much larger than that of
March 8, 1967.
The flap of March 8 seemed to be largely concentrated
in the states of Kansas and Illinois. In fact, much of the
UFO activity in recent years has been focused on the
Midwestern states. Until the fall of 1967, a simple pattern
seems to have emerged: Less densely populated areas had a
higher ratio of sightings than heavily populated sections.
The Air Force discovered this odd fact back in the late
1940's. If this were a purely psychological phenomenon,
then there should be more reports in the more densely
populated areas. Instead, the reverse has been true. The
objects still apparently prefer remote sectors such as hill
country, deserts, forested areas, swamplands, and places
where the risk of being observed is the least. As you will
note from the sample cases mentioned previously, the
majority of the sightings were made between 7:30 and 9:30
P.M. But throughout rural America, most of the population
is at home and planted in front of the TV sets at that hour,
particularly on weekday nights. In other studies we have
determined that the majority of the reported landings
occur very late at night in very isolated locales, where the
chances of being observed are very slight. In most farming
areas, the people are early risers, and therefore most of the
population is in bed before 10 P.M. It is after 10 P.M. that the
unidentified flying objects cut loose. When they do happen
to be observed on the ground, it is either by accident or
design. And usually they take off the moment they have
been discovered, or they inexplicably disappear into thin
air!

21
 Already we can arrive at one disturbing conclusion
based upon these basic factors of behavior. If these lights
are actually machines operated by intelligent entities, they
obviously don't want to be caught. They come in the dead
of night, operating in areas where the risks of being
observed are slight. They pick the middle of the week for
their peak activities, and they confine themselves rather
methodically to the political boundaries of specific states at
specific times. All of this smacks uneasily of a covert
military operation, a secret buildup in remote areas.
Unfortunately, it is not all this simple. The first major
UFO flap in the Midwest took place in 1897. There's
something else going on here. If secrecy is "their" goal, then
both our newspaper wire services and our government
have happily been obliging them. What are the reasons?
And, more important, what are the pitfalls? If strange
unidentified flying machines are operating freely in our
midst, I wonder if we can really accept what Secretary of
Defense McNamara told the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs on March 30, 1966: "I think that every report so far
has been investigated," he said. "And in every instance we
have found a more reasonable explanation than that it
represents an object from outer space or a potential threat
to our security."
The newspapers of March 9, 1967, quoted Dr. J. Allen
Hynek as dismissing a number of the March 8 sightings as
being the planet Venus. But I worry about the report of two
Erie, Pennsylvania, policemen, William Rutledge and
Donald Peck, who said they watched a strange light over
Lake Erie for two hours on Wednesday, August 3, 1966. It
appeared as a bright light when they first noticed it at 4:45
A.M. It moved east, they said, stopped, turned red, and
disappeared. A moment later it reappeared and was now a
bluish white. They watched it until 6:55 A.M. As the sun
came up and dawn flooded the sky, the object ceased to be
a mere light. It became a definite silvery object, possibly
metallic, and finally it headed north toward Canada and
disappeared.
Could all of these other strange lights in the sky also be
silver metallic objects when viewed in daylight? If so, then
we can forget about all of the theories of swamp gas,
meteors, plasma, and natural phenomena that have been
bandied about by the skeptics for the past twenty years.

22
2. To Hell with the Answer!
What's the Question?

At 8 P.M. on the evening of Wednesday, October 4, 1967,

I was driving a rented car along the Long Island
Expressway about twenty miles outside of New York City
when I noticed a large brilliant sphere of light bouncing
through the sky on a course parallel to my own. It caught
my eye because I had seen many such lights in many places
for the preceding two years. There was something special
and very familiar about the crystallike purity of its
whiteness, and it was brighter than any star in the sky. On
top of it I could make out a second light, a smaller fiercely
red glow which flickered slightly in contrast with the
steadiness of the larger sphere beneath it. Although
Kennedy Airport was nearby, I knew that this was not the
bright strobe landing light of an airplane. I've seen many of
those, too, in my travels.
When I reached Huntington, Long Island, that night, I
found cars parked along the roads and scores of people,
including several police officers, standing in the fields
staring at the sky in wonder. The enigmatic light that had
"followed" me was joining four others overhead. All were
low, hovering silently, slowly bobbing and weaving like
illuminated yo-yos tethered to invisible strings.
"What do you think they are?" one elderly gentleman
asked me.
"I think they're unidentified flying objects," I an-
swered with a shrug.
"I've never seen anything like it before," the man
muttered, marveling that such things could be. "I always
thought they were just so much nonsense."
I nodded and got back into my car. I had a long way to
go that night and many problems on my mind. I seem to
have had nothing but problems since I got into the flying
saucer business.
A few miles south of Huntington, in the tiny hamlet of
Melville, another man had problems. The night before, on
October 3, 1 9 6 7 , Phillip Burkhardt, an aerospace comput-

23
er systems engineer who holds a bachelor of science degree
in mathematics and a master's in philosophy, was alerted
by two teen-agers, Shawn Kearns, thirteen, and Donald
Burkhardt, fourteen, his son. They called him outside his
home on Roundtree Drive to look at an odd machine
hovering just above the trees a few yards away.
"It was disk-shaped," Burkhardt said later. "It was
silvery or metallic white in color and seemed to be
illuminated by lights—a set of rectangular-shaped lights
that blinked on and off and seemed to be revolving across
the lower portion of the object, from left to right. Another
light emanated from the top but was not blinking. There
was no noise such as an engine would make."
The object dropped down behind the crest of a ridge,
and Burkhardt returned to his house to get a pair of
binoculars. Then he and several others set out to find the
thing again. They drove to a nearby road, spotted it, and
watched it as it flew out of sight. Burkhardt tried to
determine if the object was running the legally required red
and green lights which even experimental craft must
display. If it did, he couldn't see them.
After phoning the Suffolk Air Force Base in Westhamp-
ton Beach, Long Island, and answering questions for half
an hour, the scientist and the two boys returned to the area
of the sighting and examined the ground with flashlights.
"We detected a peculiar odor," Mr. Burkhardt noted.
"It was comparable to burning chemicals or electrical
wiring and confined to the immediate a r e a . . . a sand and
gravel-covered clearing."
Since this sighting was not made public until a month
later, few people outside of the immediate vicinity knew of
it. But within days after the incident, Mrs. Burkhardt told
me, they began to receive a series of peculiar phone calls.
The phone would ring, but there would be no one on the
other end. Sometimes the phone would continue to ring
even after the receiver was picked up. Also, the Burkhardt
phone bill began to show a puzzling increase over the
previous monthly average.
Melville, we might note, had frequent and inexplicable
power failures throughout 1967, as did Huntington. For
Phillip Burkhardt, unidentified flying objects are no longer
a controversial subject or a matter of belief or disbelief. He
knows they exist.

24
 How Long Has This Been Going On?

History prefers fantasy to fact. Legend endures while

truth coughs up blood which dries and fades. We prefer to
teach our children that Christopher Columbus was a hero
and have buried his glaring faults. We choose to pass on the
nonsense that the Great Chicago Fire of October 8, 1871
was ignited when Mrs. O'Leary's discontented cow kicked
over a lantern, and we forget that that fire was actually
caused by a gigantic still-unexplained fireball which swept
l o w across the skies of several states, destroying dozens of
communities and creating a kind of death and havoc which
would not be seen again until the great fire raids of World
War II.*
A thousand years from now Hitler may be remembered
as a somewhat eccentric manufacturer of soap. And man's
clumsy, stiff-legged attempt to leap into space may merely
supplement the older tale of Icarus flying too close to the
sun on wings of wax.
We are more enthralled with our interpretations of great
events than with the events themselves, and we gingerly
alter the facts generation after generation until history
reads the way we think it should read.
If you want to believe the fancy-ridden scribes who have
painstakingly recorded their versions of man's long
history, you may be ready to accept the fact that
unidentified flying objects have always been up there.
Certainly the histories and legends of every country and
every race, including the isolated Eskimos, are filled with
stories of inexplicable aerial happenings.
How valid is our history, and where is the point that
history and myth intermingle and become one?
Several great religions have been founded on the
contents of the Holy Bible. Billions of people have
accepted it as truth—as the Gospel—for the past 2,000
years. Yet the Bible gives us several different and
contradictory versions of the same events, including the life
and death of Christ, all purportedly written by eyewit-
nesses and all of them different in many significant details.
*In Chapter F o u r of his book Mysterious Fires and Lights, researcher
Vincent H. Gaddis documented the spectacular and disastrous fires
w h i c h swept across I o w a , M i n n e s o t a , Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and
the Dakotas. Wisconsin suffered the greatest loss of life, w i t h 1,500 deaths
recorded in Green Bay alone on that horrible night. F o u r times as many
people were killed in Peshtigo, Wisconsin, as in Chicago.

25
Which is the true account? The devout accept them all. Few
believers would reject the existence of Christ because of
these differences.
Like most UFO researchers, I have read the Bible
carefully several times. In view of what we now know—or
suspect—about flying saucers, many of the Biblical
accounts of things in the sky take on a new meaning and
even corroborate some of the things happening today.
They were given a religious interpretation in those ancient
days when all natural phenomena and all catastrophes
were blamed on a Superior Being.
Today we kneel before the altar of science, and our
scientific ignorance receives the blame for what we do not
know or cannot understand. The game's the same, only the
rules have changed slightly.
We no longer run to the temple when we see a strange,
unearthly object in the sky. We run to the Air Force or to
the learned astronomers. In ancient times the priests would
tell us that we had sinned, and therefore God was showing
us signs in the sky. Today our learned leaders simply tell us
that we are mistaken—or crazy—or both. The next time we
see something in the sky, we keep it to ourselves.
But the damnable things keep coming back anyway.
Maybe they never went away.
The first photograph of an unidentified flying object
was taken way back in 1883 by a Mexican astronomer
named Jose Bonilla. He had been observing the sun from
his observatory at Zacatecas on August 12 of that year
when he was taken aback by the sudden appearance of a
long parade of circular objects which slowly flitted across
the solar disk. Altogether he counted 143 of the things, and
since his telescope was equipped with a newfangled gadget
called a camera, he shot some pictures of them. When
developed, the film showed a series of cigar- and spindle-
shaped objects which were obviously solid and nonceles-
tial. Professor Bonilla dutifully wrote up a scholarly report
of the event filled with mathematical calculations (he
estimated that the objects had actually passed over the
earth at an altitude of about 200,000 miles), attached
copies of his pictures, and sent the whole thing off to the
French journal L'Astronomie. His colleagues no doubt
read it with chagrin, and since they could not explain what
he had seen, they forgot about the whole business and
turned to more fruitful pursuits—such as counting the
rings of Saturn.

26
 Five years before Professor Bonilla's embarrassing
observation, a farmer in Texas reported seeing a large
circular object pass overhead at high speed. His name was
John Martin, and when he told a reporter from the
Dennison, Texas, Daily News about it, he made history of
sorts by describing it as a "saucer." The date of his sighting
was Thursday, January 24, 1878. His neighbors probably
called him Crazy John after that, never realizing that he
was not the first, and certainly would not be the last, to see
what had been up there all along.
In April, 1897, thousands of people throughout the
United States were seeing huge "airships" over their towns
and farms. Scores of witnesses even claimed to have met
and talked with the pilots. According to the New York
Herald, Monday, April 12, 1897, a news dealer in Rogers
Park, Illinois, took two photographs of a cigar-shaped
craft. "I had read for some days about the airship," the
news dealer, Walter McCann, was quoted as saying. "But I
thought it must be a fake."
Because so many people were coming up with airship
stories, and many of them were even signing affidavits
swearing to the truth of what they had seen, newspapermen
naturally turned to the greatest scientific authority of the
time, Thomas Alva Edison.
"You can take it from me that it is a pure fake," Edison
declared on April 22, 1897. "I have no doubt that airships
will be successfully constructed in the near future b u t . . . it
is absolutely impossible to imagine that a man could
construct a successful airship and keep the matter a secret.
When I was young, we used to construct big colored paper
balloons, inflate them with gas, and they would float about
for days. I guess someone has been up to that fine game out
west.
"Whenever an airship is made, it will not be in the form
of a balloon. It will be a mechanical contrivance, which will
be raised by means of a powerful motor, which must be
made of a very light weight. At present no one has
discovered such a motor, but we never know what will
happen. We may wake up tomorrow morning and hear of
some invention which sets us all eagerly to work within a
few hours, as was the case with the Roentgen rays. Then
success may come. I am not, however, figuring on
inventing an airship. I prefer to devote my time to objects
which have some commercial value. At the best, airships
would only be toys."

27
 Forty-one years later, however, a young man named
Orson Welles disagreed with Edison. The opening lines of
his historic "War of the Worlds" broadcast on October 30,
1938, were almost prophetic: "We know now that in the
early years of the twentieth century this world was being
watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet
as mortal as his own," Welles' sonorous voice declared.
"We know now that as human beings busied themselves
about their various concerns they were scrutinized and
studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a
microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that
swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite
complacence people went to and fro over the earth about
their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion
over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood,
which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark
mystery of time and space. Yet across an immense ethereal
gulf, minds that are to our minds as ours are to the beasts in
the jungle, intellects vast, cool, and unsympathetic,
regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely
drew their plans against us."
Until the last few years no real effort was made to dig
out and examine the many published accounts of those
1897 "airships." And even now the work is being done by a
small, dedicated band of ufologists. There are great lessons
to be learned from those early incidents, and many
interesting clues scattered among the accounts. Ufology is
just now beginning to come into being as an inexact
science, and the field is a disorganized bedlam of egos and
controversies and divergent opinions.
The most popular theory is that the flying saucers are
born and bred on some other planet and that they visit us
occasionally to drink our water and bask in our sun. But all
of the available evidence and all of the patterns indicated in
the now massive sighting data tend to negate this charming
theory.

The Lightning and the Thunder

When a bolt of lightning lashes across the sky, it exists

for only a fraction of a second, but it is often followed by a
deep rumble which can persist for several seconds. We
know that the lightning produced the thunder, and we do
not separate the two. However, during the twenty-three

28
 years of the UFO controversy there has been a tendency to
pay more attention to the thunder than to the sightings
which precipitated the noise. In a way, the thunder has
drowned out and obscured the cause. For years scientists
and skeptics questioned the reliability of the witnesses,
forcing the UFO researchers to spend inordinate amounts
of effort on trying to prove that the witnesses did, indeed,
see something instead of trying to ascertain exactly what it
was that was seen.
The problem was escalated by the fact that the witnesses
to seemingly solid ("hard") objects rarely produced details
which could be matched with other "hard" sightings. Thus
the basic data—the descriptions of the objects seen—were
filled with puzzling contradictions which weakened rather
than supported the popular explanations and hypotheses.
But there are actually definite hidden correlations within
those contradictions, and we will be dealing with them at
length in future chapters.
In Chapter 1 we outlined twenty-two typical reports.
Most of these were of luminous objects which behaved in
peculiar, unnatural ways. The great majority of all
sightings throughout history have been of "soft" luminous
objects, or objects which were transparent, translucent,
changed size and shape, or appeared and disappeared
suddenly. Sightings of seemingly solid metallic objects
have always been quite rare. The "soft" sightings, being
more numerous, comprise the real phenomenon and
deserve the most study. The scope, frequency, and
distribution of the sightings make the popular extraterres-
trial (interplanetary) hypothesis completely untenable.
These important negative factors will also be explored in
depth further on.
Apparently the U.S. Air Force intelligence teams
realized early in the game (1947-49) that it would be
logistically impossible for any foreign power, or even any
extraterrestrial source, to maintain such a huge force of
flying machines in the Western Hemisphere without
suffering an accident which would expose the whole
operation, or without producing patterns which would
reveal their bases. There was never any real question about
the reliability of the witnesses. Pilots, top military men,
and the whole crews of ships had seen unidentified flying
objects during World War II and had submitted excellent
technical reports to military intelligence.
The real problem remained: What had these people

29
 seen? The general behavior of the objects clearly indicated
that they were paraphysical (i.e., not composed of solid
matter). They were clocked at incredible speeds within the
atmosphere but did not produce sonic booms. They
performed impossible maneuvers which defied the laws
of inertia. They appeared and disappeared suddenly, like
ghosts. Since there was no way in which their paraphysical-
ity could be supported and explained scientifically, the Air
Force specialists were obliged to settle upon an alternate
hypothesis which could be accepted by the public and the
scientific community. They chose the "natural phenome-
na" explanation and found they could successfully fit most
of the sighting descriptions into explanations of meteors,
swamp gas, weather balloons, and the like, to everyone's
satisfaction—except the original witnesses. This left them
with only a small residue of inexplicable "hard" sightings,
which they shelved with a shrug.
Captain Edward Ruppelt, head of the Air Force's
Project Blue Book in the early 1950's, wrote a book,
Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, in which he freely
discussed all of this. That book, published in 1956, still
stands as the best standard reference of the subject.
The explosion of public interest in the UFO phenome-
non in 1947 attracted many highly qualified professional
scientists, researchers, and authors. Working independent-
ly, they quietly assessed the incoming evidence and slowly
evolved complex theories which accounted for the
paraphysicality of the objects. Unfortunately for them, the
idea of extraterrestrial visitants had very strong emotional
appeal, and the many amateur enthusiasts who were drawn
to the subject quickly accepted the ET hypothesis on the
strength of superficial, circumstantial evidence and
pseudoscientific speculation. Their growing beliefs were
augmented by the appearance of the "contactees"—people
who professed that they had actually met the UFO pilots
and had even flown to other planets aboard the objects.
Ironically, the UFO enthusiasts divided into factions
over the contactee issue. Some accepted the contactees
totally, while others rejected such stories and concentrated
on trying to prove the reliability of witnesses and on the
search for some kind of solid physical evidence that the
UFOs were machines representing "a superior intelligence
with an advanced technology." Friction between these
factions increased over the years and added to the
burgeoning controversy.

30
 In the early years the Air Force was relatively free with
UFO information, and Captain Ruppelt lent considerable
support to Donald E. Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps
major-turned-author, providing him with many official
reports for his books and magazine articles. The Pentagon
spokesman for Project Blue Book, Albert M. Chop, even
went so far as to write the cover blurb for a Keyhoe book in
1953, stating:

We in the Air Force recognize Major Keyhoe as a

responsible, accurate reporter. His long association and
cooperation with the Air Force, in our study of unidentified
flying objects, qualifies him as a leading civilian authority on
this investigation.
All the sighting reports and other information he has listed
have been cleared and made available to Major Keyhoe from
Air Technical Intelligence records, at his request.
The Air Force, and its investigating agency, Project Blue
Book, is aware of Major Keyhoe's conclusion that the "flying
saucers" are from another planet. The Air Force has never
denied that this possibility exists. Some of the personnel believe
that there may be some strange natural phenomena completely
unknown to us, but that if the apparently controlled maneuvers
reported by competent observers are correct, then the only
remaining explanation is the interplanetary answer.

Ruppelt's book suggests that his investigators made a

strenuous effort to fit their evidence into an extraterrestrial
framework. In January, 1953, a panel of top scientists and
C I A officials reviewed this evidence and rejected it. Instead
of grandly announcing that flying saucers from another
planet were visiting us, the panel suggested that the public
be reeducated to believe that the sightings were inspired by
natural phenomena, misinterpretations of known objects,
a n d so o n . The Air Force files were buttoned u p , and an
order was issued to forbid Air Force personnel from
discussing UFO data. The move inspired the cry of "UFO
censorship!" which persists to this day.
There was even division within the government on the
true nature of the phenomenon!
On the West Coast, a brilliant man named Dr. Meade
Layne had launched his own UFO study in 1947, and he
was soon exploring the then little-known contactee
aspects. By 1950, he was issuing privately published books
explaining and defining the paraphysical nature of the
objects and the parapsychological elements of the
31
 contactee syndrome. The ET believers rejected his theories
and continued their fruitless search for physical evidence.
In England, the RAF had established a UFO study
project in 1943 under the direction of Lieutenant General
Massey. In 1944, a Chicago editor named Ray Palmer
started to publish UFO-oriented fiction in his magazine
Amazing Stories, and he was quickly inundated with
thousands of letters from people who claimed to have seen
the objects or had some kind of close experience with them.
Palmer was later the cofounder of Fate magazine and has
devoted his life to the subject.
Other thoroughgoing researchers started to move
toward the paraphysical concept in the early 1950's. The
British science writer Gerald Heard published Is Another
World Watching? in 1950, in which he examined the
extraterrestrial theory pro and con and postulated his
"bee" concept, suggesting that the objects might represent
a mindless order organized by some larger intelligence.
Another famous English science writer, Arthur C. Clarke,
turned his attention to UFOs in 1953 and wrote articles
pointing out that the general data suggested the objects
were paraphysical and not too likely to be extraterrestrial.
If there was an actual turning point in ufology, it
occurred in the year 1955. That year the "secret" was widely
and repeatedly published by many superbly qualified
investigators. Many UFO students reviewed this well-
documented material and quietly abandoned the subject,
feeling that the mystery had been competently solved. A
few held on until they were able to confirm the published
evidence to their own satisfaction. Then they dropped out,
leaving a vacuum in the field which was erratically filled by
cultists and the emotionally disturbed types who were
attracted more by the cloak-and-dagger aspects and the
anarchistic possibilities of the allegations of official
censorship.
A new UFO wave over England in 1950 inspired a new
RAF investigation which was continued behind the scenes
for five years. On April 24, 1955, an RAF spokesman told
the press that the UFO study was completed but that the
findings would be withheld from the public because they
would only create more controversy and could not be
adequately explained without revealing "certain top
secrets." This enigmatic statement hardly satisfied anyone,
but soon afterward RAF Air Marshal Lord Dowding, the
man who had directed the Battle of Britain in 1940, gave a

32
public lecture in which he openly discussed the paraphysi-
cal aspects of the phenomenon and declared the UFO
occupants were immortal, could render themselves
invisible to human eyes, and could even take on human
form and walk and work among us unnoticed. This was
very strong stuff in 1955, and the UFO enthusiasts didn't
quite know what to make of it. The cultists still circulate his
earlier pro-extraterrestrial statements made before he
reached the paraphysical stage.
Still another excellent British researcher and reputable
author, Harold T. Wilkins, stressed the paraphysical
aspects in his 1955 book, Flying Saucers Uncensored. In
the earlier stages of his research he had concluded that
much of the evidence pointed to hostile intent, but later, as
he developed a better understanding of the paraphysical
factors, he modified this conclusion.
An astrophysicist, Morris K. Jessup, published a series
of books from 1954 to 1957, filled with historical
correlations and mind-bending theories about the para-
physical side of the phenomenon. R. De Witt Miller, a
columnist for Coronet magazine, also spent years studying
the subject and drawing upon the testimony submitted by
thousands of his readers. He produced a well-documented
summary of his paraphysical conclusions in a 1955 book
called You Do Take It with You. An unfortunate title,
perhaps, but the book is a fine examination of the
implications of the main phenomenon.
The U.S. Air Force made its major contribution to the
subject in 1955 with the publication of Project Blue Book
Special Report No. 14. This was undoubtedly the most
important single contribution to the UFO problem. It was
a statistical survey and computer study prepared for the
Air Force by the Battelle Memorial Institute, containing
2 4 0 charts and graphs detailing the geographical distribu-
tion of sightings and other vital data. It was the only
quantitative study ever produced by anyone. Many
dismissed Special Report No. 14 as "another whitewash,"
because the basic conclusion of the study was that there
was no evidence of extraterrestrial origin and no
suggestion that an advanced technology was involved.
When I carried out my own statistical studies, I was
startled to discover that my findings merely verified the
material in Special Report No. 14. It was embarrassing, at
first, to realize that an objective examination of the
evidence proved that the UFO enthusiasts were wrong and
33
the Air Force was right.
Sensible research must be dictated by this basic precept:
Any acceptable theory must offer an explanation for all the
data. The paraphysical hypothesis meets this criterion. The
extraterrestrial hypothesis does not. The UFO enthusiasts
have solved this problem by selecting only those sightings
and events which seem to fit the extraterrestrial thesis.
They have rejected a major portion of the real evidence for
this reason and, in many cases, have actually suppressed
(by ignoring and not publishing) events which point to
some other conclusion. Once this process of selection
began, the problem became more confusing and the
mystery more mysterious. The UFO publications were
filled with selected sightings, and professional writers
preparing books and magazine articles sifted out the best
of those sightings, unaware that a major part of the real
data was being deliberately ignored.
After the 1955 explosion of paraphysical information,
ufology slipped into the dark ages. The Air Force paid only
token attention to the phenomenon, explaining it away
successfully for years as natural phenomena. The UFO en-
thusiasts became convinced of "Air Force suppression of
the truth," and a considerable part of the UFO literature
published after 1955 was devoted to wild-eyed speculations
about why the government was trying to keep UFOs a
secret from the public. Since the professional writers and
researchers had deserted the subject, the general quality of
UFO literature hit a new low; most of it filled with
pseudoscience and amateurish speculation. The factions
within the UFO camp spent most of their efforts on feuding
and fussing with the Air Force and with one another. There
was very little actual research into UFO matters at all
between 1955 and 1966.
There are other fine examples of sensible researchers
who managed to penetrate the thunder of the UFO
enthusiasts and reach the lightning. In 1954, Wilbert B.
Smith, superintendent of Radio Regulations Engineering,
Department of Transport, Ottawa, Canada, became the
head of a semiofficial Canadian UFO study dubbed
Project Magnet. Smith had fine credentials, and the UFO
enthusiasts were thrilled with the announcement. But as
the years passed, Smith began to realize that the quickest
way to the source of the problem was through a study of the
contactees. In some cases the UFO "entities" had actually
passed on scientific information which Smith was able to
34
 check and confirm in his laboratory. Toward the end of his
life (he died of cancer on December 27, 1962) he gave
lectures and wrote papers about what he had learned.
"I began for the first time in my life to realize the basic
oneness of the universe—science, philosophy, and all that
is in it," he remarked in 1958. "Substance and energy are all
facets of the same jewel, and before any one facet can be
appreciated, the form of the jewel itself must be perceived."
As usual, the extraterrestrial believers thought their
scientist had gone crackers. They didn't want to hear about
philosophy and energy. They wanted to discuss Venusians
and the Air Force plot to hide the truth. It is unfortunate
that a large part of Smith's papers and findings are still
unpublished and undiscussed.
Another engineer, a graduate of Yale and the Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology, became interested in
flying saucers in 1953. Upon his retirement in 1954, he and
his wife toured the country interviewing UFO witnesses
and, inevitably, contactee claimants. His name is Bryant
Reeve. Like the rest of us, he began with the hope and
expectation of finding evidence for the extraterrestrial
hypothesis. He thought in the same physical terms of all
engineers and scientists. But as he plunged deeper and
deeper into this complex subject, he reached into
philosophy and metaphysics just as Smith had. Finally, in
1965, he published a book called The Advent of the Cosmic
Viewpoint. After long and careful investigation, he had
concluded that the UFO sightings themselves were actually
irrelevant and were merely part of the larger paraphysical
phenomenon.
Kenneth Arnold, the private pilot whose sighting on
June 24, 1947, set off the first modern flying saucer scare,
quietly investigated UFOs in depth for years, and then in
1955 he, too, issued public statements expressing his belief
that the objects were actually some form of living energy
and were not necessarily marvelous spaceships.
In 1957, Ray Palmer started a new magazine called
Flying Saucers. In the early issues he titillated his readers
by hinting that he knew the secret. Then, in 1958, he
published his conclusion that UFOs were not from some
other planet, offering, as an alternative, a complex theory
about secret civilizations with paraphysical or psychic ties
to the human race. He has stubbornly stuck to his guns and
still publishes a number of small magazines devoted largely
to the psychical aspects of the phenomenon. After a twelve-
35
year struggle, his Flying Saucers has managed to build up a
meager readership of only 4,000 paid subscribers and 6,000
newsstand sales despite nationwide distribution.
Palmer's antiextraterrestrial stand has isolated him
from the ufological mainstream, and he has been widely
criticized and ostracized by the ET believers.
Dr. Leon Davidson, a physicist who worked on the
atomic-bomb project, became interested in UFOs in the
early 1950's. Because of his status, the Air Force permitted
him to view official UFO photos and movies. Eventually he
turned to investigating the bewildering contactee cases,
and his trained mind soon detected a hoax. Like other
objective researchers, he conceded that the controversial
contactees were telling the truth as they knew it. He
recognized that these people were being tricked through
some hypnotic process, but he was unable to accept any
paraphysical explanation. Instead, he finally evolved a
theory pointing the finger of guilt at the CIA. He
speculated that the CIA was deliberately creating these
events as a diversionary tactic in the Cold War. A very
small proportion of the data did seem to fit this conclusion,
but ultimately it proved to be insupportable.
For many years Al Chop, an Air Force information
officer, lent his name to the board of governors of Major
Keyhoe's organization, the National Investigation Com-
mittees on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). But in 1966, he
withdrew his name, and in personal correspondence and in
appearances on radio programs he declared that he no
longer accepted the idea that flying saucers were real,
physical machines. He explained the turn of mind with the
wry statement, "I used to believe in Santa Claus, too."
Many other early UFO investigators, most of them far
above average in education and intellectual capacity,
arrived at similar negative conclusions after long and
careful independent study. Some, such as Dr. Donald
Menzel, a Harvard astronomer, recognized that people
were seeing something and had tried to explain the
phenomenon within the restrictions of their own scientific
disciplines. Dr. Menzel argued convincingly for a mirage
and air-inversion theory.
Two authorities well known to the UFO field, Ivan T.
Sanderson, a noted biologist and anthropologist, and Dr.
Jacques Vallee, a NASA astronomer and computer expert,
studied the extraterrestrial theory for years and finally
turned toward the paraphysical hypothesis.
36
 What exactly is the paraphysical hypothesis? It is the
central theme of this book. It can best be summarized by
the recent remarks of RAF Air Marshal Sir Victor
Goddard, KCB, CBE, MA. Sir Victor is of cabinet rank
and was active in the RAF's 1950-55 UFO investigations.
On May 3, 1969, he gave a public lecture at Caxton Hall in
London, in which he cited these main points:
"That while it may be that some operators of UFO are
normally the paraphysical denizens of a planet other than
Earth, there is no logical need for this to be so. For, if the
materiality of UFO is paraphysical (and consequently
normally invisible), UFO could more plausibly be
creations of an invisible world coincident with the space of
our physical Earth planet than creations in the paraphysi-
cal realms of any other physical planet in the solar
system.... Given that real UFO are paraphysical, capable
of reflecting light like ghosts; and given also that
(according to many observers) they remain visible as they
change position at ultrahigh speeds from one point to
another, it follows that those that remain visible in
transition do not dematerialize for that swift transition,
and therefore, their mass must be of a diaphanous (very
diffuse) nature, and their substance relatively etheric.
. . . The observed validity of this supports the paraphysi-
cal assertion and makes the likelihood of UFO being
Earth-created greater than the likelihood of their creation
on another planet.... The astral world of illusion which
(on psychical evidence) is greatly inhabited by illusion-
prone spirits, is well known for its multifarious imaginative
activities and exhortations. Seemingly some of its denizens
are eager to exemplify principalities and powers. Others
pronounce upon morality, spirituality, Deity, etc. All of
these astral exponents who invoke human consciousness
may be sincere, but many of their theses may be framed to
propagate some special phantasm, perhaps of an earlier
incarnation, or to indulge an inveterate and continuing
technological urge toward materialistic progress, or simply
to astonish and disturb the gullible for the devil of it."
Sir Victor's remarks are, admittedly, even harder to
believe than the claims of the various UFO cults. If you are
not familiar with the massive, well-documented occult and
religious literature, his words may be incomprehensible to
you. In essence, he means that the UFO phenomenon is
actually a staggering cosmic put-on; a joke perpetrated by
invisible entities who have always delighted in frightening,
37
confusing, and misleading the human race. The activities
of these entities have been carefully recorded throughout
history, and we will be leaning heavily on those historical
records in this book.
Recently the U.S. Government Printing Office issued a
publication compiled by the Library of Congress for the
Air Force Office of Scientific Research: UFOs and Related
Subjects: An Annotated Bibliography. In preparing this
work, the senior bibliographer, Miss Lynn E. Catoe,
actually read thousands of UFO articles, books, and
publications. In her preface to this 400-page book she
states:

A large part of the available UFO literature is closely linked

with mysticism and the metaphysical. It deals with subjects like
mental telepathy, automatic writing, and invisible entities, as
well as phenomena like poltergeist manifestations and
possession.... Many of the UFO reports now being published
in the popular press recount alleged incidents that are strikingly
similar to demoniac possession and psychic phenomena which
has long been known to theologians and parapsychologists.

Dr. Edward U. Condon, the physicist who headed

Colorado University's Air Force-financed two-year UFO
study, has been criticized because he devoted part of his
time to examining the claims of the controversial
contactees. He earned the undying wrath of the cultists
when his final report was published in January, 1969, and
he stressed an antiextraterrestrial conclusion. He asserted
that his scientific teams had failed to find any evidence of
extraterrestrial origin or of serious UFO censorship on the
part of the government. But both of these myths have been
implanted too deeply in the UFO literature to be killed off
so easily. The Library of Congress' objective bibliography
even had sections devoted to news management, censor-
ship, and CIA plots. Was all of this just another
government whitewash, as the cultists contend?
In April, 1969, Dr. Condon delivered a speech before
the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, in
which he was gently derisive of the popular UFO beliefs:
"Some UFOs may be such [extraterrestrial] visitors, it
may be postulated," Dr. Condon said, "and some writers
go so far as to say that they actually are. To discover clear,
unambiguous evidence on this point would be a scientific
discovery of the first magnitude, one which I would be

38
 quite happy to make. We found no such evidence, and so
state in our report.... We concluded that it is not
worthwhile to carry on a continuing study of UFOs in the
manner which has been done so far: that of going out into
the field to interview persons who say they have seen
something peculiar. The difficulty about using objective
means of study lies in the rarity of the apparitions, their
short duration, and the tendency of observers not to report
their experience until long after it has ended.... These
difficulties led us to conclude that it is quite unproductive
of results of scientific value to study UFOs in the
traditional manner. But, contrary to popular belief, we do
not rule out all future study.
"Perhaps we need a National Magic Agency (pro-
nounced 'enema') to make a large and expensive study of
all these matters, including the future scientific study of
UFOs, if any," he concluded.
The real UFO story must encompass all of the many
manifestations being observed. It is a story of ghosts and
phantoms and strange mental aberrations; of an invisible
world which surrounds us and occasionally engulfs us; of
prophets and prophecies, and gods and demons. It is a
world of illusion and hallucination where the unreal seems
very real, and where reality itself is distorted by strange
forces which can seemingly manipulate space, time, and
physical matter—forces which are almost entirely beyond
our powers of comprehension.
Nearly all of those who have finally come to an
understanding of the true nature of the phenomenon have
quietly abandoned the subject because they found it
impossible to articulate their findings and make the
incredible credible. They were not silenced by the Air
Force or the CIA, as the cultists believe. They were
rendered mute by the awesome and overwhelming
realization that man is not alone; that the human race is
merely a trifling part of something much bigger.
That something is at the core of all human beliefs,
ranging from the ancient myths of Greece, India, and
China to the modern myths of the friendly Venusians.
Whatever "it" is, it is often inimical to the human race,
and the manifestations range from childish mischief to acts
of horrifying destruction. The phenomenon has driven
many people mad; but it has also produced miraculous
cures. A cosmic system of checks and balances seems to be
an actual fact. There are now well-documented cases of
39
people being seriously injured, even killed, by flying
saucers. But there are equally well-documented events in
which the mysterious objects and their enterprising
occupants have interceded directly in human affairs and
thwarted disaster.
Many flying saucers seem to be nothing more than a
disguise for some hidden phenomenon. They are like
Trojan horses descending into our forests and farmfields,
promising salvation and offering us the splendor of some
great supercivilization in the sky. But while the statuesque
long-haired "Venusians" have been chatting benignly with
isolated traveling salesmen and farm wives, a multitude of
shimmering lights and metallic disks have been silently
busying themselves in the forests of Canada, the Outback
country of Australia, and the swamps of Michigan.
Before we can find any answers, we must first find the
right questions to ask. We must understand the exact
nature of these visitors, and of ourselves.

40
3. The World of Illusion

There have been hundreds of incidents in which

electromagnetic effects, such as the stalling of automobile
engines and power failures, have been noted and
documented. Early ufologists were already aware of the
fact that electromagnetism played a large role in many
UFO events. The late Frank Scully, a reporter for Variety,
wrote a contactee-oriented book in 1950, Behind the
Flying Saucers, which contained a long chapter on
electromagnetism.
Now we have enough data to properly interpret the
overall meaning of this force in the phenomenon. We will
try to simplify it here, going a step at a time, before we
outline the material which verifies these conclusions.
Radio beams are waves of electromagnetic energy. They
vibrate at various frequencies, and we separate them or
tune them by adjusting the length of the waves with coils
and condensers. Your local radio station is broadcasting a
signal of electrical pulses, each pulse adjusted to a specific
length. When you tune your radio to the station, you move
a series of metal plates which sort out the various
wavelengths and enable your radio to pick up and amplify
only the signal coming in at a certain point—or
frequency—of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Your eyes are also receivers tuned to very specific
wavelengths of the spectrum, and they turn the signals
from those wavelengths into pulses which are fed to your
brain. Your brain, in turn, is also a very sophisticated,
little-understood receiver, and it is tuned to wavelengths
far beyond the receiving capabilities of manufactured
electronic instruments. Most people are running around
with crude biological "crystal sets" in their heads and are
not consciously receiving any of the sophisticated signals.
However, about one-third of the" world's population
possesses a more finely tuned instrument. These people
experience telepathy, prophetic dreams, and other bizarre
signals from some central source. If you are one of that 30
percent, you know precisely what I mean. If you belong to
the larger, ungifted two-thirds, you probably regard all this
as nonsense, and we may never be able to convince you
41
otherwise.
Now let's try to define this whole process.
When moving electrons pass through a wire, a small
magnetic field is created around the wire. If the current
fluctuates, or vibrates, this fluctuation will also appear in
the magnetic field. A voice speaking through a telephone
mouthpiece (or microphone) causes the current flowing
through the phone to fluctuate, or oscillate. Your voice
thus causes a flow of electrons to vibrate. At the other end,
a magnet in the receiver responds to this fluctuation, and
the minute vibrations are magnified. A thin piece of metal
in the earpiece is vibrated in turn by the magnet, and these
vibrations oscillate the air in the form of sound waves
which can be sensed by your ears and auditory system.
Technicians are undoubtedly gnashing their teeth over
my explanations here, but again, I am trying to oversimpli-
fy these things. It is necessary to understand elemental
electronics before we can move on to our next point.
Your voice causes the electricity in your telephone to
vibrate at a very specific frequency. When that metal plate
(diaphragm) at the other end responds to the magnet, it
vibrates at this same frequency and duplicates your voice
almost exactly. A part of you—your individual voice—has
been transformed into electrical waves, transferred to a
distant point, and then reassembled into sound waves
which duplicate exactly every inflection and nuance in
your voice. This is a very primitive form of teleportation.
The wire carrying your voice is surrounded by a
magnetic field which is also vibrating at your own personal
frequency. If there are, say, twenty telephone wires on a
pole, all conducting signals, we now have the technology to
tune in a device to your personal frequency and interpret
your telephone conversation instantly without cutting into
any wires or tapping any lines. In other words, a panel
truck carrying the necessary equipment need only park
near a telephone pole bearing a wire hooked up to your
phone. The operator can then tune in to your line (your
personal frequency) in the same way that you tune into
your favorite radio program by adjusting a condenser
which cuts out all other frequencies.
This method for tapping telephones is absolutely
indetectable. It does not produce any clicks or noises on the
phone at either end. However, the process can be reversed,
and an operator can tune into the frequency of your
telephone line and talk to you by radio waves vibrating at
42
the very low frequency of the telephone current. Or, if he so
desires, he can insert static, strange sounds, etc., onto your
line. He can even place phone calls through the telephone
system using your line (and you will be billed for them).
The equipment needed for this kind of tampering is
most complicated and expensive. It is highly unlikely that
any ordinary practical joker would be able to obtain and
operate such equipment. But my studies, investigations,
and nationwide polls prove that somebody is using such
equipment or is exploiting these principles.
The telephone companies themselves now utilize high-
frequency radio for long-distance telephone calls. Micro-
wave relay towers now dot the countryside. Telephone
signals are stepped up to high-frequency radio waves and
projected from tower to tower across the country. In the
past few years there have been thousands of reports of low-
level UFOs hovering directly above these microwave relay
towers. Some researchers, such as Ivan T. Sanderson, have
perused similar reports and suggested that perhaps the
objects were tapping the power from power lines and
telephone systems for their own purposes. I do not feel this
is a valid theory.
Rather, I now believe that the UFO phenomenon is
primarily electromagnetic in origin and that it possesses
the ability to adjust beams of electromagnetic energy to
any given frequency, ranging from ultrahigh-frequencies
(UHF) radio signals like those of the astronauts, to very
low frequencies (VLF) which can be picked up only by
special equipment, to very, very low frequencies identical
to the magnetic fields surrounding telephone wires or the
outputs of public address systems in schools and churches.
I also believe that this same phenomenon is flexible to
an unbelievable degree. It can create and manipulate
matter through electromagnetic fields above and below the
range of our perceptions and our own technical equipment.
The phenomenon is mostly invisible to us because it
consists of energy rather than solid earthly matter. It is
guided by a great intelligence and has concentrated itself in
the areas of magnetic faults throughout history. It makes
itself visible to us from time to time by manipulating
patterns of frequency. It can take any form it desires,
ranging from the shapes of airplanes to gigantic cylindrical
spaceships. It can manifest itself into seemingly living
entities ranging from little green men to awesome one-eyed
giants. But none of these configurations is its true form.
43
 The UFO sighting data confirm this theory, but we lack
the necessary technology to prove it conclusively.

Energy and Illusion

Any high school student of physics can tell you that our
reality is an illusion. The occultists have been saying this
same thing for centuries. All matter is composed of
confined energy. Tiny moving electrons and energy
particles form atoms of varying weights and densities.
These atoms are joined together to form molecules of
specific substances. They are so tiny that the atom
remained only a theory for many years. We cannot
perceive the atom but now can prove scientifically that it
exists and that it is made up of energy.
Atoms and molecules form larger structures, even
though they do not touch. If we could reduce ourselves to
the size of an electron in an atom, the next nearest atom
would seem like a distant star. We are so much larger than
the atom that a collection of atoms seems to form solid
matter to us. This page seems solid to you, but it is made up
of billions of atoms. So are you. If you try to poke your
finger through this page, you will tear it. But you can easily
poke your finger into a cloud of cigarette smoke because its
molecules are farther apart.
We learned to reshape molecules long ago through
chemical and physical manipulation. We can melt a bar of
steel and mold it into a sword or a plowshare. We can cut
down a tree and build a chair out of it—or a piece of paper.
Such manipulations are primitive processes. But our
industries and sciences have been built around them.
Now we are beginning to learn how to manipulate
energy itself. We started by finding ways to peel electrons
off atoms and release the basic energy hidden in the atom.
We naturally applied this important discovery to melting
cities and disintegrating human beings.
The chair you sit in is composed of billions and billions
of molecules made up of atoms. Each cell of your body is
also composed of millions of atoms. If the energy patterns
or frequencies of the atoms of your body were radically
different from the atoms of your chair, it is conceivable
that they would intermix and you would sink right through
the chair somewhat in the same way that your finger passes
through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
44
 Our reality is based entirely upon what we can perceive
with our physical senses. If we can touch something and
feel it, we say that it is real and exists. If we can see it, smell
it, hear it, and taste it, then we know definitely that it exists.
But actually you may be sensing only a small portion of the
existing universe. At this very moment you are surrounded
by a wall of electromagnetic waves from dozens of radio
and television transmitters. You cannot see or sense these
waves, but you can transform them into movements of air
with a radio receiver. You have the instrumentation
necessary to perceive waves which exist beyond the
limitations of your sensual perceptions. There are other
waves around you which you can't detect.
There are thousands of microscopic life forms in a drop
of water. You can't see them, feel them, or taste them
because they are too small. A teen-aged boy with a cheap
microscope can peer into that drop of water and invade the
privacy of those microbes. But the microbes don't know he
is there. They swim about in their liquid environment
totally unaware that their tiny world is actually an
insignificant part of a much larger, and very different,
whole.
Our world may also be a part of something bigger,
something beyond our senses and abilities to comprehend.
That bigger something is undoubtedly made of energies,
too. But energies of a different frequency, forming atoms
radically different from the atoms of our own world. These
energies could coexist with us and even share the same
space without our becoming acutely aware of them.
The evidence we have outlined in this book does clearly
point to this unperceived coexistence, and now we must
come to terms with "it" or "them" or the Great Whatzit in
the sky.

Secrets of the Spectrums

For thousands of years the occultists, spiritualists, and

religionists have talked about and written about auras,
frequencies, vibrations, and other planes of existence.
Each group developed its own complex vocabulary for
explaining and defining these things. Each tried to fit its
theories into its own particular frame of reference. Thus,
these "other planes" became the Valhalla where worthy
spirits ascend upon death. The casual browser leafing
45
 through this mountain of literature is usually repelled by
the nonsensical terminology and the abstract theories, yet,
underneath all of the belief-ridden folderol, there lies a
thread of truth which is now being verified by the many
manifestations surrounding the UFO phenomenon.
I will try to demonstrate that the UFO entities are
directly related to the entities and manifestations involved
in religious miracles and spiritual seances. There are many
thousands of published messages from both the ufonauts
and the spirits, all of which employ the same techniques for
burying information deep in simple-minded descriptions
about life on other planets or other planes. One of the most
important correlations is that many of these messages have
discussed in depth the existence of another reality which is
formed by energies operating on another frequency, or
vibrationary level.
There has also been a great deal of discussion about
light and rays of light. The lore of the "seven rays" goes
back to the most ancient of times. The Bible's Book of
Revelation repeats the number seven in many ways, and
the Seven Sisters, or the Pleiades (seven stars in the sky),
form an important part of this ancient lore. The color
spectrum is also most important in the context of the
overall picture painted by religion and occultism. God and
Christ are "The Light" in most of this literature.
The "source" has made repeated attempts to explain all
of this in terms that we might understand. On January 8,
1968, "Mr. Orlon" of the Ashtar Intergalactic Command,
passed this message along to a contactee: "The saucers
which you speak of as such are in reality the space bodies of
certain aggregates of consciousness. They exist duodimen-
sionally; that is, they penetrate both the third and fourth
dimensions simultaneously or can, if they wish, confine
themselves to either one of these. Their purpose has been,
and still is, for the time being, to interlace these two realms
of consciousness which are seemingly separate. However,
the time quickly comes when the veil is torn aside and what
is One is perceived as One. It is at this moment that the
saucers seen by the few will be seen by the many. It will
appear that they have suddenly arrived in your skies in
great number. In reality this is untrue. For in reality they
are where they have always been, but man sees with new
eyes."
Man's old eyes aren't very good. We can actually see
only a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

46
Light waves are really visible vibrations of the spectrum,
somewhat akin to radio waves. The different frequencies
register as different colors on the cones in our eyes. You
could say that our visual apparatus really consists of
thousands of tiny radio receivers carefully tuned to a
minute portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. We really
can't see very much at all, but we can see enough to cope
adequately with our immediate environment.
The accompanying chart is a rough outline of the basic
electromagnetic spectrum. Cosmic rays—high-intensity,
high-frequency rays of energy which radiate throughout
the universe—occupy one end of the spectrum. They are
followed by potent gamma rays, the energy forms which do
so much damage when we set off our atomic bombs. Next
we have X rays, short waves which penetrate matter, ionize
gases, and cloud up photographic film. These blend in with
gamma rays on our scale.

Ultraviolet rays come next, and they are tremendously

important to the UFO phenomenon. These are also
invisible but can burn the flesh and the eyes. A neglected
part of the UFO evidence consists of the hundreds of
sightings in which the witnesses suffered all of the
symptoms of klieg conjunctivitis afterward. Actors
performing on movie sets brightly illuminated by arc lights
sometimes experience these same symptoms. The eyes
redden, itch, and feel sore. This is caused by the ultraviolet
radiation (also called actinic rays). These same rays give
you a sunburn on the beach. If you don't cover your eyes
when lying on the sand, you can burn your eyes from the
sun's rays.
The many cases of skin burn and conjunctivitis
following nighttime UFO sightings give absolute proof
that ultraviolet waves are radiating from some of the
objects. Stars, space satellites, and other natural or man-
made aerial objects could not possibly produce this effect. I
have interviewed many people shortly after their sightings
47
 when their eyes were still swollen and reddish from
conjunctivitis. I suffered this ailment myself after a close
sighting in 1967.
Visible light is sandwiched in between—5 and —6 on
our scale. This is the only portion of the spectrum which we
can see and utilize. These visible rays are divided into the
basic frequencies of blue, yellow, and red. When
combined, they form white.
Beyond red there is infrared, the visible rays radiated by
heat. Many UFO witnesses have complained of feeling
oppressive waves of heat, even when the objects seemed to
be many yards away. Concentrated infrared can also hurt
the eyes. Infrared rays are shorter than microwave radio
signals and longer than the waves of visible light.
Man-made radio signals are last on the scale. These
range from microwaves to UHF(ultrahigh frequencies) on
one end, to VLF (very low frequencies) on the other.
The Van Allen belt, a belt of radiation circling the earth,
and the atmosphere strain out most of the cosmic rays
which are constantly bombarding us. The ultraviolet and
infrared rays of the sun penetrate this barrier, fortunately,
and plant and animal life have adjusted to absorb and
utilize these energies.

48
 If our eyes were tuned to see beyond the infrared rays,
we could look at a telephone microwave relay tower and
see a steady stream of brilliant reddish light pouring from
it. If we were tuned in visually to the longer radio waves, we
would see ourselves bathed in multicolored light (because
of the many different frequencies), and it would be like
living in the end of a rainbow.
We are surrounded by energies we cannot see. It is
possible that some of these energies form objects, entities,
and even worlds that we can't see, either. But just because
we can't see, hear, feel or taste them doesn't mean that they
aren't there.
Let's recap this basic lesson in physics. (1) All solid
matter in our environment (or reality) is composed of
energy. (2) All energies are of an electromagnetic nature.
(3) The human eye can perceive only a very small portion of
the electromagnetic spectrum. (4) Electromagnetic waves
of many different frequencies permeate the known
universe. We live in a sea of such radiations, and the space
through which our planet travels is an ocean of radiation.
In recent years, specially equipped satellites, and our
radio telescopes, have discovered that space is filled with
infrared rays of unknown origin. Invisible stars have now
been detected with infrared devices. They are invisible
because they do not issue rays within the limited
frequencies of the visible light spectrum. Instead, their
energies are being radiated in the higher frequencies of X
rays and the lower frequencies of radio waves. Thanks to
the excellent work now being done by radio telescopes all
over the world, we are rapidly learning more about these
invisible objects. It is extremely unlikely that these radio
signals are being deliberately broadcast to us by a superior
intelligence.
Somewhere in this tangled mass of electromagnetic
frequencies there lies an omnipotent intelligence, however.
This intelligence is able to manipulate energy. It can, quite
literally, manipulate any kind of object into existence on
our plane. For centuries the occultists and religionists have
called this process transmutation or transmogrification.
Thousands of books have been published on this process,
many of them serving as secret texts for alchemists and
sorcerers. The early occultists understood, at least
partially, that energy was the key to the whole. Since fire
has always been a basic source of energy, many of their
rites centered around candle flames and bonfires. Early
49
religious rites involved the offering of sacrifices by fire to
the unseen gods. In Biblical times, animals were consigned
to the flames as offerings. In other cultures, human beings
were sacrificed on pyres.
Essentially, fire breaks down the molecules of the
substance being burned, freeing some of the energy
contained therein and producing intense infrared radia-
tion.
One well-known, heavily documented type of polter-
geist (noisy ghost) manifestation produces mysterious
fires. "Haunted" houses often burn to the ground
eventually. Fires of undetermined origin erupt suddenly
throughout UFO flap areas. Many pyromaniacs set fires
because "a voice" in their head told them to do so.
Although I have had neither the means nor the time to
study adequately and confirm this fire factor, my
experiences in flap areas have led me to believe that the
energies of these mysterious conflagrations are being
utilized by the UFO phenomenon. There may be a definite
relationship between the numbers of fires and the numbers
of UFOs seen in a specific sector. A community suddenly
beset with fifteen or twenty major fires within the short
span of a week or two seems to produce more UFO
sightings in that same period than a place with no fires.
Either the UFOs are somehow indirectly causing these
fires, or they are directly feasting upon the energies
produced by the flames.

The Mystery of the Aura

You are a chemical machine made up of electromagnet-

ic energy. Your brain is actually an electrical computer
connected to all parts of your body by a wiring system of
nerves. Constant chemical reactions are taking place
throughout your body. The food you eat is being burned
off continuously in the form of heat and energy. Although
you can't see it, your body is surrounded by self-generated
fields of radiation. The occultists have always called this
radiation the aura. There have been many people—
mediums and sensitives—who have claimed that they
could actually see this human aura. Some amazing
demonstrations and tests have been performed before large
groups of witnesses in which sensitives were able to look at
a stranger's aura, and by supposedly noting various

50
 shadings in that aura, they could accurately announce,
"You have a scar on your abdomen, and there's a black
cloud over your liver. You've been having liver trouble."
Special eyeglasses have been on the market for years so
that almost anyone could see the aura. Since the human
body does radiate infrared, the glasses do work!
In recent years, science has begun to take the aura
seriously. The Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadel-
phia has been conducting experiments with infrared
devices for some time, with surprising results. They have,
for example, photographed a man's arms and hands with
the devices before and after he smoked a cigarette. The
"after" shot showed how his arms had darkened because
the nicotine had constricted the blood vessels and lowered
the temperature in his limbs. Tumors and other disorders
readily show up in these thermogram photos. (See
Scientific American, February, 1967.) These studies have
confirmed the wild claims of the occult aura watchers.
The Biomedical Engineering Center at Northwestern
University's Technological Institute has also been experi-
menting with an ultrasound system which has produced
similar results. A hand dipped in water agitated by a special
sound transducer device reveals blood vessels as green,
blue, or orange lines. It even works with metal. A spot of
defective welding appears in varying colors, while a good
weld is uniform.
What has the aura got to do with flying saucers?
Perhaps a good deal. Many contactees have been told that
they were selected because of their aura. Occultists have
long claimed that each person is surrounded by an aura
which reveals his spiritual state. An evil person has a black
aura. A saintly type has a golden radiation. There are
supposed to be blue auras, and white ones also, all with
their own meaning. Here, again, the literature on auras is
massive, and not all of it is nonsense.
A milkman was walking along a beach south of Sydney,
Australia, early one morning in the summer of 1960 when
he came upon a strange metal disk surrounded by a violet
light and making a whining sound. Two men suddenly
appeared, both dressed in space suits complete with
transparent helmets. Their eyes were blue and had an
Oriental slant. They allegedly addressed the milkman in
perfect English, although their lips did not move. He said
their voices seemed to come from square boxes on their
belts. After warning the milkman that entities from Orion
51
were preparing to take over the earth, they said that they
had been able to contact him because of his aura. They
promised to return and contact him again at some time in
the future, stating that he "was going to be used for a
certain job."
This witness told no one about his alleged contact for
two years, but finally his story leaked out and he was
investigated by Colin McCarthy and other Australian
ufologists. (A more detailed description of this case can be
found in The Scorriton Mystery by Eileen Buckle.)
Since many animals have better vision than man, it is
possible that the UFOs and the ufonauts may also have
superior vision. They may be able to perceive frequencies
of the electromagnetic spectrum which are invisible to us.
Perhaps they can even see the entire spectrum and can
clearly view not only our limited world, but the more vast
invisible worlds which surround us.
There have been numerous confirmed radar sightings of
UFOs which could not be seen by the naked eye. We also
have the thousands of soft sightings in which the objects
suddenly appeared and/ or disappeared instantaneously in
front of the witnesses. All of these events seem to prove that
a large part of the UFO phenomenon is hidden from us and
is taking place beyond the limited range of our eyes. We
can only see the objects and the entities under certain
circumstances, and perhaps only certain types of people
can see them at all.
Thus, by all the standards of our sciences (and our
common sense), the UFOs do not really exist as solid
objects. They may be a constant part of our environment,
but they are not an actual part of our reality. We cannot,
therefore, catalog them as manufactured products of some
extraterrestrial civilization sharing our own dimensions of
time and space. They are extradimensional, able to move
through our spatial coordinates at will but also able to
enter and leave our three-dimensional world. If this is a
true hypothesis, then they may also be operating beyond
the limitations of our time coordinates. Our years may be
minutes to them. Our future may be their past, and thus
they have total knowledge of the things in store for us.

The Purple Blobs

Among the most neglected of all the soft sightings are

52
the strange purple blobs, some so faint that they can barely
be seen with the naked eye. Such blobs were frequently
reported in the earlier days of the saucer scare, but
newspapers were soon diverted by the more intriguing hard
sightings of seemingly solid disks. The purple blobs have
been busy throughout the world, but the published
sightings have become increasingly rare. People who see
these things often dismiss them as some kind of illusion or
natural phenomenon, or they feel they are not worthy of
being reported.
Between 9:15 and 11 P.M. on the night of June 24, 1947,
scores of people in Seattle, Washington, watched peculiar
purple and light-blue spots of light dancing around the
skies. That was the same day that Kenneth Arnold saw his
famous flying saucers.
I have seen many strange blue lights and purple spots in
my travels. The first time I was roaming around the hills
behind Gallipolis Ferry, West Virginia, early in 1967, and
when the spots first appeared, I thought my eyes were
playing tricks. They were barely visible in the darkness and
seemed to be small clouds of glowing gas. I climbed a steep
hill, accompanied by two local teen-agers, hoping to find a
better vantage point to view a sector where many objects
had been sighted previously. The purple spots were moving
all around us; there were twenty or more. The sky was
overcast, and at first I suspected the phenomenon might be
caused by stars faintly shining through the clouds. But they
seemed very close by, maneuvering around at treetop level.
I blinked my huge flashlight at them and was startled when
these things actually leaped out of the way of the beam.
When we reached the summit of the hill, I experimented
further, aiming my light at spots which had remained
perfectly stationary since we had first noticed them. The
instant my beam struck them, these spots skittered across
the sky, some of them darting 25 or 30 degrees before they
paused again.
After much more experimentation, on other nights in
other places, I concluded that the purple spots were part of
the UFO phenomenon and were being controlled by, or
possessed, some kind of intelligence.
Return now to our two charts of the electromagnetic
and color spectrums. You will see that ultraviolet rays
immediately precede the visible spectrum. The first visible
frequencies are of purple or violet light.
Let us assume that UFOs exist at frequencies beyond
53
 visible light but that they can adjust their frequency and
descend the electromagnetic spectrum—just as you can
turn the dial of your radio and move a variable condenser
up and down the scale of radio frequencies. When a UFO's
frequency nears that of visible light, it would first appear as
a purplish blob of violet. As it moves farther down the
scale, it would seem to change to blue, and then to cyan
(bluish green). In our chapter on meteors we note that they
most often appear as bluish-green objects.
I have therefore classified that section of the color
spectrum as the UFO entry field. When the objects begin to
move into our spatial and time coordinates, they gear
down from the higher frequencies, passing progressively
from ultraviolet to violet to bluish green. When they
stabilize within our dimensions, they radiate energy on all
frequencies and become a glaring white.
In the white condition the object can traverse distances
visibly, but radical maneuvers of ascent or descent require
it to alter its frequencies again, and this process produces
new color changes. In the majority of all landing reports,
the objects were said to have turned orange (red and
yellow) or red before descending. When they settle to the
ground they "solidify," and the light dims or goes out
altogether. On takeoff, they begin to glow red again.
Sometimes they reportedly turn a brilliant red and vanish.
Other times they shift through all of the colors of the
spectrum, turn white, and fly off into the night sky until
they look like just another star.*
Since the color red is so closely associated with the
landing and takeoff processes, I term this end of the color
spectrum the UFO departure field.
The great mass of observational data fully supports
these hypotheses. Our glowing objects change color, size,
and form, and this fact indicates that they are comprised of
energy which can be manipulated to temporarily simulate
terrestrial matter. Such energies must be somehow
collected together at the invisible frequencies, and then
frequency changes are brought about to "lower" them into
the visible spectrum. Once they become visible, they can
then organize themselves into atoms and produce any
desired form.

* B a c k i n 1952, t h e late D a n t o n W a l k e r ' s s y n d i c a t e d n e w s p a p e r

c o l u m n s t a t e d , " C o n f i d e n t i a l A i r F o r c e r e p o r t s i n d i c a t e t h a t flying
s a u c e r s r e m a i n s t a t i o n a r y a t night t o get lost i n t h e s t a r s . "

54
 Barney and Betty Hill, the couple who were allegedly
taken aboard a UFO in New Hampshire in 1961, first
observed a brilliant moving "star." As it drew closer, the
brilliance faded and it became a seemingly material flying
saucer occupied by small men in uniforms. Brazil's Villa-
Boas, who claimed he was taken aboard a UFO in 1957,
first saw a reddish object which then became a grounded
saucer. When it took off again, the object first surrounded
itself with a red glow. The glow intensified, and the reddish
object sailed off into the stars.
Those who have tried to investigate the UFO phenom-
enon in purely physical terms have speculated on the
possible mechanics of such objects. The general consensus
has been that the UFOs utilize an antigravity device which
surrounds them with a magnetic field, and this magnetism
ionizes the nitrogen in the air around the object causing it
to glow. On the surface, this has seemed like a plausible
theory. But in reality it is not workable. A tremendous
amount of magnetism would be required to produce the
magnetic effects blamed on the objects, such as the stalling
of automobiles. The Ford Motor Company, working with
the UFO-investigating group at Colorado University,
discovered that simple magnetism could not stall an auto
engine encased in the protective steel body of a car. Afield
strong enough to accomplish this would also be strong
enough to bend the car itself and possibly affect the
passengers as well.
Continuous ionization of the air is also a difficult feat. It
is more likely that the objects are composed of electromag-
netic energy themselves. Witnesses are observing frequen-
cy changes rather than ionization. In some cases, the
ground has been found radioactive after an object has
landed. This might be the by-product of the gamma rays,
which are one of the energy constituents of the objects, not
just an effect of some mechanical process.
We also have a considerable body of testimonial
evidence in which the objects were transparent, even
though they appeared to be mechanical in some way. For
example, at 7:30 P.M. on Friday, October 18, 1968, the
McMullen family in Medulla, Florida, looked outside
their home when their dog began to howl and bark. They
reportedly saw a purplish-red object hovering about 10 feet
in the air. It was completely transparent, and two normal-
sized men were visible inside it. A strong odor of ammonia
was in the air. The two men were pumping a horizontal bar
55
 up and down. As they watched, the 30-foot sphere slowly
ascended and flew off. A few minutes earlier, two other
witnesses saw a bright light rising from the grounds of the
Medulla school, just north of the McMullen home. There
were also some mysterious explosions in the area during
that period.
Was this transparent sphere a spaceship from another
planet? Not very likely. The witnesses saw nothing inside it
except the men and the bar. No machinery. No wonderful
apparatus.
There have been many bewildering accounts of shell-
like objects with no visible means of propulsion, no signs of
any kinds of technology. Contactee Reinhold Schmidt's
German-speaking ufonauts. who invited him aboard their
saucer in Nebraska in 1957, didn't walk but glided across
the floor of their spaceship as if they were on roller skates.
Other sober and baffled witnesses have described how the
UFO occupants seemed to fly from the ground to their
waiting saucers. Still others have claimed that the ufonauts
simply walked through the sides of their craft like ghosts.
In story after story we have testimonial proof that the
objects and their occupants are not made of normal
substances.
The hard (seemingly solid) objects are another
problem. Bullets have been fired at them and have
ricocheted off. They sometimes leave imprints on the
ground where they land. If they are the product of a
superior intelligence with an advanced technology, they
seem to be suffering from faulty workmanship. Since 1896
there have been hundreds of reports in which lone
witnesses have stumbled onto grounded hard objects being
repaired by their pilots. In flight, they have an astounding
habit of losing pieces of metal. They seem to be ill-made,
always falling apart, frequently exploding in midair. There
are so many of these incidents that we must wonder if they
aren't really deliberate. Maybe they are meant to foster the
belief that the objects are real and mechanical.
In the foregoing I have tried to demonstrate how the soft
objects seem to be directly related to the electromagnetic
spectrum. This is hardly a new theory. Not only have the
occultists, spiritualists, and religionists been telling us
about frequencies, vibrations, and the color spectrum for
centuries, but modern researchers such as Dr. Meade
Layne worked all of this out years ago. Dr. Layne evolved a
theory of "mat" and "demat" (materialization and

56
dematerialization) of extradimensional objects. His
findings were privately published and not very widely
circulated.
Others, such as the British ufologist, Harold T. Wilkins,
also worked this out and published books about it in the
early 1950's. But the spectrum theory lacks the strong
emotional appeal of the extraterrestrial thesis.
There is a rather curious entry in Project Blue Book
Report No. 14 (1955) on page 295. In the section showing
how various sightings are classified, number 8 in Code
79-80 Final Identifcation is "Electromagnetic Phenome-
non." This is crossed out (the report was reproduced by
photo offset), and the now well-known classification of
"Unknown" was substituted.

57
4. Machines from Beyond Time

"It was shaped like a disk about the size of a boxcar,

with a domed top and square red and green windows,"
Mrs. Rita Malley recalled. "And it made a humming
sound, something like the vibration of a television antenna
in the wind."
Mrs. Malley, a pretty young blond mother of two, was
recounting her science-fictionlike experience of Tuesday,
December 12, 1967. She was driving home along Route 34
to Ithaca, New York, with her five-year-old son, Dana, in
the back seat. Around 7 P.M. she became aware of a red
light that seemed to be following her.
"I was speeding slightly," she explained later. "So
naturally I assumed that I was just about to be pulled over
by the state police."
She glanced out of the window and discovered that
instead of a police car she was being paced by an eerie
illuminated flying object that was traveling along just
above the power lines to the left of the car. At this same
moment, she said, she was horrified to find that she could
no longer control the automobile. She shouted anxiously
to her young son to brace himself, but he remained
motionless. "It was as if he were in some kind of a trance,"
she continued. "The car pulled over to the shoulder of the
road by itself, ran over an embankment into an alfalfa
field, and stopped.
"A white twirling beam of light flashed down from the
object... and I heard the humming sound. Then I began to
hear voices. They didn't sound like male or female voices
but were weird, the words broken and jerky, like the way a
translator sounds when he is repeating a speech at the
United Nations. But it was like a weird chorus of several
voices.
"I became hysterical," she admitted frankly. "My son
would not respond to my cries. I knew the radio wasn't on.
The voices named someone I knew and said that at that
moment my friend was involved in a terrible accident miles
away. They said my son would not remember any of this.
Then the car began to move again, although still not under
my control. We came up out of that field and over the ditch
58
 as if it were nothing, and then back onto the road."
She said she got control of the car again and jammed her
foot down on the accelerator, speeding all the way home.
"I knew something was wrong the moment she walked
into the house," her husband, John Malley, told reporters.
"I thought maybe she had had an accident with the car or
something."
The next day Mrs. Malley learned that her friend had
been in a serious automobile accident the night before. She
told her incredible story to local civilian UFO investiga-
tors, and later the Syracuse, New York, Herald-Journal
(December 21, 1967) published a brief outline without
revealing her name.
For years now apparently sincere people have been
relating unbelievable experiences similar to Mrs. Malley's.
Some of the UFO factions have battled to ridicule and
suppress such contactee tales, fearing that they serve to
discredit the situation. But they keep coming in, year after
year, from every corner of the globe. Reporters and
investigators who interviewed Mrs. Malley came away
convinced that she was telling the truth as she knew it.
"Days later, when memories of the episode would flood
her mind," the Syracuse Herald-American noted, "she
would break down sobbing all over again."
Her story does contain several important details which
have cropped up in many other little-known UFO
encounters. A large percentage of these events seem to
occur when a small child is present. In this case, the child
went into a kind of trance. Such trances are frequently
reported. The car itself was taken out of Mrs. Malley's
hands. This seizure of control of mechanical objects—even
of airplanes in midflight—is also a common factor. Mrs.
Malley's extreme emotional reaction to the event, even
days afterward, is still another key point. Finally, if her
story is true, she was given absolute proof (to her) that the
UFO not only knew her identity but knew of her
relationship to a distant person and even knew that that
other party was involved in an accident.
All of this is a pretty big pill to swallow for those who
have not followed events like this carefully over a long
period of time. In many cases, the ufonauts have
convincingly demonstrated that they have total knowledge
of the individual percipients and that they can even foretell
their future.
There is a superabundance of historical documentation

59
which plainly indicates that these objects and their elusive
occupants have always been a part of the environment of
earth and that they seem to know everything about us, are
able to speak our languages, and are even familiar with the
total lives of some—if not all—human beings.
So long as we adhere to the notion that we are dealing
with random extraterrestrial visitors, none of these
contactee stories makes any sense. So I ask you to place the
UFOs into a terrestrial or ultraterrestrial framework.
Think of them as you might think of a next-door neighbor
who is hooked up to your party line. The pieces of this
puzzle will begin to fall into place.

Of Prophets and Prophecy

Most theologists reject any suggestion that unidentified

flying objects may be even remotely connected with
religion, but many leading ufologists suspect that innumer-
able historical incidents branded as religious phenomena
may actually be misunderstood UFO activity.
The Bible was completely suppressed for centuries
during the Dark Ages, and then it was heavily edited and
censored, whole sections being deleted altogether before
the modern version was released. Scores of translators
contributed to the muddle by altering meanings with high-
flown poetry, and by subtly interjecting their own
comments and opinions. As a result, the contents of
modern translations vary widely, and many of the original
meanings and descriptions of what were probably actual
events have been mutilated beyond interpretation. Theolo-
gists recognize this and freely comment upon it. The late
Pope John XXIII once made a wry remark about the
confusion brought about by all these translations.
Try to shelve your own religious beliefs for a moment,
and look at the Bible stories objectively. The prophet
Elijah was well protected by balls of fire which came out of
the heavens and consumed 100 soldiers and their captains
(Kings II, Chapter 1). In Chapter 2 of the Second Book of
Kings, Elijah leads Elisha into the desert where a fish-
shaped object spitting fire from its tail descends from the
sky to carry him away forever. (Most translations of the
Bible have somehow managed to turn this object into a
chariot of fire drawn by fiery horses.) Read this section
carefully, and the implications are startlingly clear: Was
60
 Elijah somehow connected with an aerial race who
protected him and who finally took him away?
Fireballs and thunderbolts from the angry skies
apparently wreaked a lot of havoc in Biblical times. Some
scholarly scientists have suggested that these accounts
sound suspiciously like atomic explosions. A Soviet
physicist, Professor M. Agrest, has even proposed that
Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by an atomic bomb.
Lot's wife, he asserts, did not turn into a pillar of salt but
was reduced to a pile of ashes when she ignored a warning
not to linger behind Lot's fleeing party. Furthermore, in an
article in Moscow's Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1959,
Professor Agrest offered the startling theory that ancient
Baalbek was the Cape Kennedy of its day, serving as a
launching platform for spaceships from another civiliza-
tion. His "proof" consisted of the tektites and fused crystals
found there. Such substances are the by-products of
atomic explosions.
A "flying roll" measuring 15 feet by 8 feet is described in
the Bible's Book of Zechariah, Chapter 5, and the children
of Israel were said to have been led out of Egypt by a pillar
of fire in the sky (Exodus, Chapter 13). According to the
detailed Bible story, Moses not only held conversations
with a brightly burning bush ("And the angel of the Lord
appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a
bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush burned with
fire, and the bush was not consumed." Exodus 3:2), but he
was called to the summit of Mount Sinai after a "cloud"
appeared and covered it. Moses climbed the mount and
disappeared into "the midst of the cloud." He was gone for
forty days and forty nights while his people waited below
(Exodus, Chapter 24). Mount Sinai is actually just a high
and rugged hill, and we might ask how Moses managed to
survive alone on its summit for more than a month without
food. Perhaps there was more to that "cloud" than the
children of Israel suspected. When Moses finally returned,
he brought with him orders for the construction of an ark
to be filled with gold artifacts and left as a token to the
Lord. Among the instructions were directions for building
a "mercy seat" of pure gold measuring 50 inches long and
30 inches wide. Gold plays an important part in many Bible
stories, and it also seems to have an interesting role in the
UFO mystery.
That "pillar of fire" not only led the Israelites out of
Egypt, it also intervened and protected them from the
61
pursuing Egyptian army (Exodus, Chapter 14). But the
most graphic account of all is detailed in the first chapter of
Ezekiel and is so well known and so frequently quoted that
we need only mention here that Ezekiel claimed an
encounter with four strange beings who got out of some
kind of flying object. "Their appearance," he said, "was like
burning coals of fire, and like the appearance of lamps."
In a paper presented before the American Rocket
Society on November 15, 1962, Dr. Carl Sagan, a young
Harvard astronomer, repeated some of Professor Agrest's
speculations and urged that ancient myths and legends be
reexamined for possible clues to an early visit by an
extraterrestrial civilization. The Biblical story of Enoch,
for example, relates how he dreamed of "two men, very
tall, such as I have never seen on earth. And their faces
shone like the sun, and their eyes were like burning
lamps... They stood at the head of my bed and called me
by my name. I awoke from my sleep and saw clearly these
men standing in front of me."
These tall men took him into the sky and conducted him
on a tour of "seven heavens." When he returned to earth, he
wrote 366 books about what he had seen and learned.
Although The Book of the Secrets of Enoch has been
widely published, the Bible grants him only a few lines of
Chapter 5, Genesis.
Another book, a latter-day Bible, was created in the
nineteenth century by a young man who claimed an
experience similar to Enoch's, except that he did not go off
to other worlds. It is the Book of Mormon, the Mormon
Bible, and is purportedly a history of North America in
Biblical times. Therein lies another remarkable story.
On Tuesday, September 23, 1823, a young man named
Joseph Smith awoke in his bedroom in Palmyra, New
York, to find a strange luminous being standing over his
bed. This being, he said, was dressed in a white robe and
had a brilliantly glowing face. He called the youth by name
and told him where he would find some gold plates buried
nearby. When the proper time arrived, the entity is
supposed to have told him, he was to dig the plates up.
Then the figure floated upward and vanished.
Sometime later the boy was crossing a field when, in his
own words, "my strength entirely failed me, and I fell
helplessly to the ground, and for a time was quite
unconscious of anything." When he came to, he said the
same "messenger" was standing over him and gave him
62
 further instructions about the gold tablets. He was to dig
them up four years later.
So on Saturday, September 22, 1827, Joseph Smith
went to the appointed spot and started digging. Sure
enough, he actually found a stone box containing several
plates of gold bearing a strange, neatly engraved writing.
Later eleven of his friends and neighbors examined the
plates and signed affidavits swearing that they had seen
them and that they contained writing "which has the
appearance of ancient work, and of curious workman-
ship."
Smith was not a well-educated man. He worked for
years deciphering and translating the writing on these
tablets, and when he was finished, he had an intriguing
historical document which was, apparently, a history of
North America in very ancient times—predating the
Indians. This document became the Book of Mormon, for
Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church. The tablets
later disappeared or were somehow destroyed, and Joseph
Smith was brutally murdered by a hostile mob in Illinois in
1846. Today the Mormon Church has more than 2,500,000
followers.
Was Joseph Smith's strange nocturnal visitor a UFO
type of entity? Was some strange psychic force at work
there, trying to pass along information about those gold
tablets?
Consider the prophet Daniel. Like Ezekiel, Daniel
reported seeing "wheels as burning fire" (Daniel 7:9). He
describes in some detail his encounters with an entity who
came down from a "throne" in the sky and whose hair was
"like pure wool." This being was dressed in a white robe
with a gold belt and had a luminous face with two bright
glowing eyes. He spoke to Daniel in a thundering voice that
terrified the earthman. "And I Daniel alone saw the vision:
For the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a
great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide
themselves" (Daniel 10:5—9). "Yet I heard the voice of his
words; and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I
in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the
ground."
Like Joseph Smith, and even like Dana Malley, Daniel
apparently passed into some kind of hypnotic trance. Later
he was given specific prophecies about contemporary
problems, and they came true.

63
Angels and Spacemen

In his book A Guest from the Universe, Alexander

Kazentsev theorized that the angels mentioned in the Bible
might actually have been extraterrestrials. British ufologist
Brinsley Le Poer Trench, author of The Sky People,
supports this notion, as does Paul Misraki in Les
Extraterrestres. They all cite the Biblical stories in Genesis
in which Lot meets two angels and takes them into his
home, where they feasted like ordinary men (Genesis 19:3).
The Bible never describes angels as being winged creatures,
although artists usually depict them that way. Indeed, the
angels seem to have been manlike, though gifted with
extraordinary powers. When they appeared before
Abraham (Genesis 18:2), they were described as "three
men" who ate and drank with him. Again and again "three
men" play important roles in Biblical events. "Three men"
repeatedly turn up in modern UFO events, too, and
provide still one more puzzling aspect of the problem.
Misraki notes that the Church did not accept the
spiritual nature of angels until the sixth century A.D. Before
that, theologists considered angels to be physical beings. A
few years ago the Reverend H. Wipprecht of Cobalt,
Canada, stated that "the Bible's description of angels fits
'intelligent beings' from other planets." More aptly, the
descriptions fit intelligent beings from this planet: beings
that look like us but possess the peculiar special qualities of
ultraterrestrials who share our world yet are a species apart
from us.
We must also note that these "angels" were, according
to the Bible, frequently concerned with the propagation of
the human race. Abraham's elderly wife, well past
childbearing age, is said to have given birth to Isaac after a
visit from the three men (Genesis, Chapter 21). So we are
told that these "men" possess the power of life and death.
They are credited with the destruction of Sodom and
Gomorrah, yet they restored Abraham's Sarah to fertility.
The Book of Revelation, the last section of the New
Testament, is especially important to this study. At first
reading it may seem to be filled with vague poetry and may
defy interpretation, but if you take many of the passages
literally, and avoid a symbolic or religious interpretation,
new meanings will open up to you. For example, in
Chapter 4 we are told that "a door was opened in heaven,"
and there is a description of the interior of a place occupied

64
by creatures similar to those reported by Ezekiel, together
with a throne apparently surrounded by glass ("And before
the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal" 4:5).
Twenty-four beings in white robes sat around this
"throne." "They had on their heads crowns of gold" (4:4).
We must remember that the men who wrote the Bible had
no knowledge of machinery or technology, and so they
were forced to describe things in terms that were familiar to
them. Those "crowns of gold" could have been helmets of
some kind. In Chapter 10, John declares, "And I saw
another mighty angel come down from heaven clothed
with a cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face
was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire." It
sounds as if he were describing a brilliantly glowing sphere
surrounded by vapors ("cloud") and colored lights ("a
rainbow") and two beams of light or flame were jetting
down beneath it ("pillars of fire").
A well-known astrophysicist, Morris K. Jessup, sought
links between UFOs and religion in his book The UFO and
the Bible. Were the flaming crosses and other objects seen
in ancient skies really religious omens, he wondered, or
were they actually machines from some alien civilization?
Dr. Carl Jung, the celebrated psychiatrist, and astronomer
Dr. Jacques Vallee also wondered if the historical reports
of these objects might not have been distorted by
interpretations created by the climate of the times. Thus, in
Biblical days when men were seeking some indication that
there was a higher power, they almost automatically
considered objects in the sky to be of religious import.
During wartime, such objects were regarded with suspicion
as possible weapons of the enemy. And in this present era,
when space flight is the national goal of two major nations,
there is a strong tendency to accept unidentified flying
objects as extraterrestrial visitants.
Many of the Egyptian and Biblical accounts are
supported by other histories written during the same
period. Early Greek and Roman historians dutifully
recorded many strange things seen in the sky. A light "so
bright it seemed to be full day" descended over the temple
in Jerusalem during the Feast of Unleavened Bread in A.D.
70, and Josephus describes a "demonic phantom of incred-
ible size" which appeared in that same year on May 21.
Before sunset on that date "there appeared in the air over
the whole country [Jerusalem] chariots and armed troops
coursing through the clouds...." Livy reported "phantom
65
ships" in the sky in 214 B . C . , and Pliny, the most notable of
ancient historians, recorded several instances in which
"three suns" were seen in the sky at one time. A "flaming
cross" appeared over the heads of Constantine and his
army in A.D. 312, and the army of Alexander the Great was
thrown into a panic when two shining silvery "shields"
spitting fire around the rims buzzed their encampment.
Scholars and researchers have now uncovered hundreds
of ancient UFO accounts. Pick out any century and you
will be able to find several good reports of disks, fireballs,
and cigar-shaped objects in the sky. Historian W. R. Drake
has unearthed references to "Magonia," a strange country
that was a legend among the peasants of medieval France.
They believed that the Magonians rode about in "cloud
ships" and frequently raided their crops. Agobard,
Archbishop of Lyons, wrote that one of these ships is
supposed to have fallen from the sky around A.D. 840, and
its occupants, three men and a woman, were stoned to
death by the angry farmers.
Italian ufologist Alberto Fengolio uncovered another
intriguing "touchdown" story which is supposed to have
occurred near Alencon, France, at 5 A.M. on June 12,1790.
A police inspector named Liabeuf was sent from Paris to
investigate, and his final report has been preserved. The
witnesses, a group of French peasants, told him that an
enormous globe had appeared that morning, moving with
a rocking motion, and that it crashed into the top of a hill,
uprooting the vegetation. Heat from the object started
grass fires, and the peasants rushed to put them out before
they spread. The huge globe was warm to the touch.
"The eyewitnesses of this event were two mayors, a
physician, and three other local authorities who confirm
my report," Liabeuf wrote. "Not to mention the dozens of
peasants who were present."
As the crowd gathered around the mysterious object, "a
sort of door opened, and there came out a person, just like
us, but dressed in a strange manner, in clothes adhering
completely to the body, and seeing this crowd of people,
this person murmured something incomprehensible and
ran into the wood."
The peasants backed away from the object fearfully,
and a few moments later it exploded silently and nothing
was left but a fine powder. A search for the mysterious man
was launched, "but he seemed to have dissolved in thin
air...."

66
 Here, in 1790, we have a description comparable to the
modern ufonaut reports—a man wearing a tight-fitting
coverall type of garment.
(According to a story filed by the Lusitania News
Service in April, 1960, hundreds of villagers in Beira,
Mozambique, East Africa, saw a whistling orange object
land in a field, and "tiny little men" leaped out of it and ran
into the forest just as the thing exploded violently. Those
"little men" could not be found, either.)
The Zurich Central Library has an old drawing of the
strange event that took place over Germany on April 14,
1561. A large number of "plates," "blood-colored crosses,"
and "two great tubes" staged an aerial dogfight on that
date, enthralling and frightening the whole population of
Nuremberg. Five years later a similar group of objects is
said to have appeared over Basel, Switzerland. Some of
them turned red and faded away, just as modern UFOs
have been reported to do. A sketch of this incident is also in
Zurich's Wickiana collection.
The late Charles Fort, an eccentric but indefatigable
researcher, spent much of his life wading through
yellowing newspapers and forgotten history books to ferret
out Ripleyesque items. Without realizing it, he became the
first ufologist, and his Book of the Damned and other
works are treasure troves of unexplained aerial phenome-
na. He discovered that 1846, for example, was a most
peculiar year. It rained blood—real blood according to the
newspaper accounts of the day—in several areas around
the world. And all kinds of odd lights and shapes were seen
in the sky. Some very peculiar people also turned up in
Europe at that time, prancing around the English
countryside in silver uniforms, capes, and helmets, with red
lights on their chests. These beings were human in size but
seemed to possess the ability to leap great distances. So the
British newspapers referred to them as "spring-heeled
Jacks." Old Jack got plumb away from all those who
turned out to search for him after each one of his puzzling
appearances.
On Tuesday, October 3, 1843, a "remarkable cloud"
passed over Warwick, England, and one Charles Cooper
reported seeing three white, human-shaped figures in the
sky. Another person, six miles away, is supposed to have
also seen these flying beings. The sighting was added to the
constantly growing "angel" lore.
A very important contact with ultraterrestrials took
67
place in France in 1846, when a luminous being descended
in a glowing sphere and passed along some prophecies
which later proved to be very accurate. This case will be
discussed in another chapter.
The whole nineteenth century was a busy one for
unidentified flying objects. It was also the century in which
man made his first faltering attempts to fly.
A French engineer, Henri Giffard, built the first
controllable dirigible in 1852. Powered by a steam engine,
it was 144 feet long and whizzed through the sky at a
breathtaking seven miles per hour. Paul Haenlein, a
German, built a gas-powered dirigible in 1872. And a
Hungarian named David Schwartz constructed the first
metal dirigible and took off from Berlin on November 13,
1897. He managed to fly several miles before a gas leak
brought him down.
While these pioneers were struggling to go a few miles in
their slow, clumsy, cigar-shaped machines, thousands of
people around the world were reporting the presence of
larger, faster dirigible-shaped objects. Astronomers, such
as Trouvelot of the Observatory of Meudon, first claimed
notice of the things in the early 1870's. They were high in
the atmosphere, he said, and didn't resemble anything
within his experience. Trouvelot described his August 29,
1871, sighting in L'Ann'ee Scientifique and observed that
one of a formation of objects appeared to descend "like a
disk falling in water." This was the first description of the
"falling-leaf motion" which appears in so many modern
reports and has even been recorded on film.
Newspaper accounts of these aerial objects were
frequent and widespread during the last three decades of
the nineteenth century. But the dam really broke in
1896-97 when giant cigars were reportedly viewed by
thousands of people as they flew over many of the major
cities on earth. Leading newspapers of the day carried
extensive descriptions and drawings of them. Their
mysterious journeys created the first important UFO flap
and inspired H. G. Wells to write his classic novel, The War
of the Worlds.

68
5. The Grand Deception

The "secret" of the flying saucers was exposed in 1896.

not by the phenomenon itself but by the hidden patterns
now revealed in UFO activity of a single week that
November. The pattern was a classic of carefully planned
confusion and deception.
Thanksgiving week, 1896, marked the beginning of the
great "airship mystery" in the United States. Strange
luminous objects and cigar-shaped craft were first reported
over California. The mayors of both Oakland and San
Francisco went on record as having seen the things. All the
descriptions as published by the San Francisco Call, and
San Francisco Chronicle, and other leading journals of the
period fell into the now familiar categories. Brilliant
multicolored lights, bobbing and weaving as if they were
on yo-yo strings, were seen over Sacramento. People in
Oakland reported an egg-shaped vessel about 150 feet long
with four rotorlike arms; a giant light mounted underneath
it lit up the ground below.
A San Jose, California, electrician named J. A. Heron
claimed that the airship pilots enlisted him to make some
repairs on the machine. He was taken to a desolate field
north of San Francisco for the job and was rewarded by
being taken on a flight to Hawaii. He said the craft made
the 4,400-mile trip in twenty-four hours. Later his wife told
reporters that he had been home in bed on the night of the
alleged trip.
Another man, William Bull Meek of Comptonville,
California, told reporters that the airship landed near his
home and that he enjoyed a brief chat with the pilot—a
bearded man who told him that the ship "had come from
the Montezuma Mountains."
Crews on ships were seeing glowing spheres and saucer-
shaped machines rising out of the water and flying away
while the Wright brothers were still fussing with gliders.
These ocean bound disks and "wheels" apparently
concentrated their activities around the coasts of Japan
and China throughout the Gay Nineties, but they were also
Seen in Europe. News traveled slowly in those days, so it is
unlikely that the witnesses in one area had ever heard of the
69
 identical sightings that had occurred thousands of miles
away. As is still the case today, no newspaper or journalist
made an effort to collect all of these reports and collate
them into a whole.
In March and April of 1897, the airship reports began to
spread across the country but seemed to concentrate in the
Midwest from Texas to Michigan, the same areas which
still account for the largest number of reports.
We are indebted to Dr. Jacques Vallee, Mr. Lucius
Farish, Charles Flood, and Mr. Jerome Clark who have
spent many tedious hours examining dusty newspaper files
and microfilm collections throughout the country in their
search for the published accounts of the 1897 flap. They
have unearthed hundreds of forgotten reports, many of
them quite startling in content. A study of these reports
reveals the same patterns that seem to be present today.
Many of the local newspapers assumed that only one
airship was involved and that it was the product of some
secret inventor who was taking it out for a trial run across
the country. But we find that many of the airship sightings
took place on the same day in dozens of widely scattered
areas, indicating that a whole armada of these objects must
have been in the air at the time.
Quite a few of these accounts are as incredible as the
reports of modern witnesses. Yet many of the 1897
witnesses were distinguished members of their communi-
ties and often signed sworn affidavits to back up their
beliefs in what they had seen. There were a number of
remarkable consistencies in the reports, and many detailed
contactee stories.
Judge Lawrence A. Byrne was, to quote a reporter for
the Daily Texarkanian, Texarkana, Arkansas, "known
here for his truthfulness by his fellowmen." On April 25,
1897, that paper published this amazing story:

I was down on McKinney bayou Friday looking after the

surveying of a tract of land and, in passing through a thicket to
an open space, saw a strange-looking object anchored to the
ground. On approaching I found it to be the airship I have read
so much about of late. It was manned by three men who spoke a
foreign language, but judging from their looks, would take
them to be Japs. They saw my astonishment and beckoned me
to follow them, and on complying. I was shown through the
ship.

The judge then explained "about the machinery being

70
made of aluminum and the gas to raise and lower the
monster was pumped into an aluminum tank when the ship
was to be raised and let out when to be lowered." There is
no further description in the account. The most interesting
thing about this story is that the judge mistook the pilots
for Japanese, perhaps meaning that they were small men
with Oriental features similar to the men described in the
controversial modern contact story of Betty and Barney
Hill.
Can we assume that Judge Byrne was a reliable and
responsible witness? One yellowing newspaper clipping
doesn't offer much evidence. But his was not the only 1897
contactee tale. There were scores of others, although no
one else reported meeting "Japs."
Most of the people who claimed to glimpse the airship
pilots described them as being bearded. Michigan was very
much involved in the 1897 flap, and the Courier-Herald of
Saginaw followed the reports closely. On April 16 it ran
this story:

Bell Plains, Iowa, April 16—The citizens of Linn Grove

declare there is no longer any doubt among them of the
existence of an airship. Yesterday morning a large object was
seen slowly moving in the heavens in a northerly direction and
seemed to be making preparations to alight. James Evans,
liveryman; F. G. Ellis, harness dealer; Ben Buland, stock
dealer; David Evans, and Joe Croskey jumped into a rig and
started in pursuit. They found the airship had alighted four
miles north of town, and when within 700 yards, it spread its
four monstrous wings and flew off toward the north. Its
occupants threw out two large boulders of unknown composi-
tion, which were taken to the village and are now on exhibition.
There were two queer-looking persons on board, who made
desperate attempts to conceal themselves. Evans and Croskey
say they had the longest whiskers they ever saw in their lives.
Nearly every citizen in Linn Grove saw the airship as it sailed
over the town, and the excitement is intense.

The Argus-Leader of Sioux Falls, South Dakota,

together with many other papers, ran an account on April
15 datelined Springfield, Illinois. Two farmhands, Adolph
Winkle and John Hulle, signed affidavits stating that the
airship had landed 2 miles outside of Springfield to repair
some electrical apparatus on board. The farmhands said
they talked to the occupants, two men and a woman. They
were told that the machine had flown to Springfield from
71
Quincy (a distance of about 100 miles) in thirty minutes
and would "make a report to the government when Cuba is
declared free."
Two lawmen, Constable John J. Sumpter, Jr., and
Deputy Sheriff John McLemore of Garland County,
Arkansas, signed affidavits on May 8, 1897, testifying that
they had also conversed with the airship occupants. Their
account was published in the Helena, Arkansas, Weekly
World on May 13:

While riding northwest from this city on the night of May 6,

1897, we noticed a brilliant light high in the heavens. Suddenly
it disappeared and we said nothing about it, as we were looking
for parties and did not want to make any noise. After riding
four or five miles around through the hills we again saw the
light, which now appeared to be much nearer the earth. We
stopped our horses and watched it coming down, until all at
once it disappeared behind another hill. We rode on about half
a mile further, when our horses refused to go further. About a
hundred yards distant we saw two persons moving around with
lights. Drawing our Winchesters—for we were now thoroughly
aroused to the importance of the situation—we demanded,
"Who is that, and what are you doing?" A man with a long dark
beard came forth with a lantern in his hand, and on being
informed who we were proceeded to tell us that he and the
others—a young man and a woman—were traveling through
the country in an airship. We could plainly distinguish the
outlines of the vessel, which was cigar-shaped and about sixty
feet long, and looking just like the cuts that have appeared in
the papers recently. It was dark and raining and the young man
was filling a big sack with water about thirty yards away, and
the woman was particular to keep back in the dark. She was
holding an umbrella over her head. The man with the whiskers
invited us to take a ride, saying that he could take us where it
was not raining. We told him we preferred to get wet.
Asking the man why the brilliant light was turned on and off
so much, he replied that the light was so powerful that it
consumed a great deal of his motive power. He said he would
like to stop off in Hot Springs for a few days and take the hot
baths, but his time was limited and he could not. He said they
were going to wind up at Nashville, Tennessee, after
thoroughly seeing the country. Being in a hurry we left and
upon our return, about forty minutes later, nothing was to be
seen. We did not hear or see the airship when it departed.
[Signed] John J. Sumpter. Jr.
John McLemore

72
 Subscribed and sworn to before me on the 8th day of May,
1897.
C. G. Bush, JP

As the airship sightings increased, another familiar

phase began. The explainers and hoaxsters moved in.
Professor George Hough of Northwestern University
blamed Venus at first. But later he said, "Alpha Orionis has
been roaming through its regular course in the firmament
ten million years, and why it should have been settled upon
in the last three weeks, and pointed out as the headlight of a
mysterious aerial vehicle, is hard to explain." (Chicago
Tribune, April 11, 1897.)
An electrician named A. H. Babcock built a large box
kite and sent it skyward on November 26, 1896 over
Oakland, California, setting off a new rash of airship
reports there. (San Francisco, California, Chronicle,
November 27, 1896.) And paper balloons filled with gas
entertained others all over the country.
"Anything from Jupiter to the moon was picked out as
an airship by the credulous people," the Portland, Oregon,
Oregonian observed on November 25, 1896. "Early in the
evening a fire balloon went sailing through the air, and the
newspapers were overwhelmed by telephone messages
from people in various parts of the city who thought they
had discovered the mysterious airship."
Newspapers that weren't receiving any reports blithely
made up some to fill the gap. The Hudson Gazette at
Hudson, Michigan, ran a long piece which quoted every
prominent citizen in the town ("It was quite a bit larger
than the Republican majority in Hudson," said Plim
Gilman). When the editor of the Adrian, Michigan,
Weekly Times and Expositor received his copy of the
Gazette, he ordered his Hudson correspondent to look into
the matter. On April 17, the Weekly Times and Expositor
printed (with relish, no doubt):

The sensational report of the airship having been seen by

many reputable citizens of this place turns out to be a huge
fake. Hudson did not propose to be behind the times, so one of
our enterprising editors set his imagination to work and
produced a half-column sensation. The airship is very likely as
filmy as the aforesaid article.

More bizarre explanations were offered, too. In

73
discussing the "moving lights of fires... said to have been
seen nightly on Saginaw Bay off Caseville during the past
week," the Benton Harbor, Michigan, Evening News noted
on April 1, 1897 that "the superstitious believe that they are
produced by the ghosts of those who were lost with the
steamer Oconto which was wrecked on Big Charity Island
a few years ago."
A "wheel" fell out of the sky near Battle Creek,
Michigan, and was retrieved by a well-to-do farmer named
George Parks. Parks and his wife were crossing a field
when they saw "a very bright object that appeared to be
about 100 feet from the earth and swiftly approaching." As
it flew low over them, emitting a humming sound,
something fell to the earth and buried itself in the ground.
Mr. Parks reportedly dug it up the next morning and
"found it to be a large wheel made of aluminum, about
three feet in diameter, and a turbine in shape." He kept the
object as a memento and displayed it on his farm in
Pennfield, Michigan. (Detroit, Michigan, Evening News,
April 15, 1897.)
A Mrs. Wyngate "residing just over the line of
Charleston township" was one of the witnesses who
reported seeing a brilliant white light around 10 P.M. on the
night of March 31. She said that "she distinctly heard
human voices from above at the time of the occurrence."
(Detroit Evening News, April 1, 1897.)
Others around the country were also hearing voices in
the sky. "I saw the airship last night at 10:30 P.M. over my
barn," one Bid Osborne wrote to the Lansing, Michigan,
State Republican (April 17, 1897). "About 800 feet long—
big brute—row of Japanese lanterns all along top—large
wide sail like a fantail dove—dark bay in color—and I
heard voices from above—sounded like Jim Baird and
Charlie Bicher—no fake—make affidavit."
Another man in nearby Pine Lake, Michigan, named
William Megiveron, told the same newspaper that he was
awakened by a tap on his window and the glare of light that
at first blinded him. The Republican continues:

On stepping out into the night, he was accosted by a voice

from above, which told him that the light was from the airship;
that during the afternoon the ship had been lying concealed
behind a bank of clouds over the lake, and that a stray shot
from the gun of some duck hunters had injured one of the ship's
wings, and they were laying by for repairs. William then says

74
 that he was directed to prepare four-dozen egg sandwiches and
a kettle of coffee for the crew, and when prepared, the
provender was hoisted on board with a scoop fully as large as a
freight car and paid for in Canadian quarters. William further
says that the aerial monster appeared about 300 feet above
the lake, but only the outlines were visible on account of the
brilliant searchlight which made everything below as bright as
day and above as dark as midnight during a cyclone. He
observed a red light at each end and thinks the ship was fully a
half a mile long. All appeals to be taken aboard were met with a
merry "Ha! Ha!" But William says he thinks the occupants
hailed from either Kentucky or Milwaukee as they asked for a
corkscrew. Bill said if he knew their address, he would have the
whole crew arrested for violating the fish law, for the light
reflected so strongly on the lake that it was no trouble for the
occupants to pick out the biggest and best fish in the lake with a
long-handled spear. Just before daylight, the ship sailed off
toward the city. The whir of machinery was plainly discernible
for several moments.

It sounds as if Megiveron were pulling somebody's leg,

or maybe the editor of the Republican was doing it for him.
The editor of the Daily Chronicle, Muskegon, Michi-
gan, may have been doing some leg pulling, too, with this
next item, published on April 30. But there is also a chance
that he may have taken a real report and added a few
touches. It's difficult to decide:

Last night at 11:30 this town [Holton] received a visit from

the wonderful airship. It came from the north and descended
till it was about 200 feet from the ground, directly over the
bridge. It was lighted with electricity and loaded with revellers
who were making a good deal of noise.
The music was entrancing, the like of which never was heard
in this place. It wasn't long before everybody was on the street
to look and listen, many in their nightclothes. Not a few
thought the Judgment Day had come. It was about 300 feet
long, tail about 40 feet. Its breadth and depth about 90 feet. It
stayed fifty-five minutes. Its tail commenced whirling and it
moved off toward Fremont. But just as it began to move, a
grappling hook was let down and caught one of our most
truthful citizens who was instantly hoisted on board and
carried away. The truthful citizen came back on the 11:30 train
from White Cloud and has been talking ever since about aerial
navigation.

Such hoary tales provided comedy relief during the flap.

75
The newspapers generally took the matter lightly when the
stories first started to appear, making wry comments about
the quality of the whiskey in the flap areas, etc. But as the
reports poured in and the objects began to appear over the
cities where the skeptical newspapers were based, the tone
of the published reports grew more serious. Something
strange was going on, and the more responsible newspa-
pers began to wonder what it was really all about.
One of the most celebrated cases of the period, the story
of Alexander Hamilton's cow, has been widely reprinted in
practically every UFO book extant, and we will therefore
just summarize it here. Hamilton claimed that he and his
family saw a cigar-shaped object swoop down over his
farm near Vernon, Kansas, sometime in the middle of
April. "It was occupied by six of the strangest beings I ever
saw," he declared. "They were jabbering together, but we
could not understand a syllable they said."
He described the object as being 300 feet long with a
transparent glass carriage underneath. "It was brilliantly
lighted within, and everything was clearly visible. There
were three lights: one like an immense searchlight and two
smaller, one red, the other green. The large one was
susceptible of being turned in every direction.... Every
part of the vessel which was not transparent was of a dark
reddish color." A "great turbine wheel about 30 feet in
diameter" revolved underneath.
As his little group watched, the machine began to buzz
and rise upward. Then it paused directly over a three-year-
old heifer, which apparently was caught in the fence.
"Going to her," Hamilton said, "we found a cable about
half an inch in thickness, made of the same red material,
fastened in a slip knot around her neck, one end passing up
to the vessel and tangled in the wire [fence]."
He tried to free the calf but couldn't. So he cut the wire
and watched helplessly as the ship and calf rose slowly into
the air and sailed away. The next day the branded hide,
legs, and head of the animal were found on the property of
Lank Thomas, who lived about four miles away.
Farmer Hamilton not only signed an affidavit, but he
collected the town's most prominent citizens, including the
local sheriff, justice of the peace, doctor, and postmaster,
and had them all sign a statement testifying that they had
known him for from fifteen to thirty years "and that for
truth and veracity we have never heard his word
questioned and that we do verily believe his statement to be
76
true and correct." (Yates Center, Kansas, The Farmer's
Advocate, April 23, 1897.)
This case is significant not only because of the detailed
description of the transparency of the object, but because it
was the first of a long line of cattle-rustling reports
concerning UFOs. The theft and mutilation of dogs, cattle,
and horses have become unpleasantly commonplace in
flap areas.
Texas had more than its share of sightings during 1897,
and many of them were concentrated in the region where
John Martin had reported seeing a flying saucer in 1878.
On April 22, 1897, Mr. John M. Barclay conversed,
allegedly, with a man from an oblong machine with wings
and brilliant lights "which appeared much brighter than
electric lights." He had been awakened about 11 P.M. by
his furiously barking dog, and when he looked outside, he
saw the object hovering stationary about 15 feet above
the ground. It circled a few times and landed in a nearby
pasture. Barclay grabbed his rifle and went to investigate.
When he was about 30 yards from the ship, he was met "by
an ordinary mortal" who asked him to put his gun aside.
"Who are you?" Mr. Barclay asked.
"Never mind about my name; call it Smith," the man
replied. "I want some lubricating oil and a couple of cold
chisels if you can get them, and some bluestone. I suppose
the saw mill hard by has the two former articles, and the
telegraph operator has the bluestone. Here's a ten-dollar
bill; take it and get us those articles and keep the change for
your trouble."
Mr. Barclay reportedly asked him, "What have you got
down there? Let me go and see it."
"No," the man said quickly. "We cannot permit you to
approach any nearer, but do as we request you and your
kindness will be appreciated, and we will call you some
future day and reciprocate your kindness by taking you on
a trip."
Barclay located some oil and the chisels but he couldn't
get the bluestone. He returned and tried to give the man
back the ten-dollar bill, but it was refused. "Smith" shook
hands with the Texan, thanked him, and asked him not to
follow him to the object. Barclay asked him where he was
from and where he was going.
"From anywhere," Smith answered. "But we will be in
Greece day after tomorrow."
He climbed aboard the object, there was a whirring
77
 noise, and it was gone "like a shot," according to Barclay.
The newspapers in Rockland, Texas, said that he was
"perfectly reliable."
That same night "a prominent farmer" near Josserand,
Texas, also had a confrontation with the airship pilots. Mr.
Frank Nichols claimed that he was awakened around
midnight by the whirring of machinery. "Upon looking
out, he was startled upon beholding brilliant lights
streaming from a ponderous vessel of strange proportions,
which rested upon the ground in his cornfield." Like
Barclay, he went outside to investigate.
Before he'd gotten very far he was met by two men with
buckets who asked for permission to draw water from his
well. He told them to go ahead, and they invited him to visit
their ship. There he said he conversed freely with six or
eight individuals and apparently was shown the machinery
which "was so complicated that in his short interview he
could gain no knowledge of its workings."
Nichols said that they told him that "five of these ships
were built in a small town in Iowa. Soon the invention will
be given to the public. An immense stock company is now
being formed and within the next year the machines will be
in general use." The motive power was supposedly
"condensed electricity." Mr. Nichols, the newspapers said,
was "a man of unquestioned veracity."
This "invention" story spread, as you will see, and
appears to support the possibility of an unexpected hoax.
But before we explore the hoax question, there are two
more contact cases that deserve examination.
An apparently well-known and highly reputable man
identified as "Ex-Senator Harris" said that he had been
awakened at 1 A.M., Wednesday, April 21,1897, by a strange
noise, and he was astonished to see the celebrated airship
descending on his property outside of Harrisburg,
Arkansas. He stepped outside and was met by the craft's
occupants, conversing with them as they busied themselves
"taking on a supply of fresh well water." Senator Harris
said there were two young men, a woman, and an elderly
man on board.
"The old gentleman," the Senator is quoted as saying
(Harrisburg, Arkansas, Modern News, April 23, 1897),
"wore a heavy set of dark, silken whiskers, which hung
down near his waist. He had jet black eyes and a deep, firm
expression."
Whereas the airship occupants did not seem especially
78
informative in the other contact cases of the period, this
elderly gentleman talked his head off. He seemed to be
familiar with the newspapers in St. Louis, Missouri, and
referred to a story which had appeared in the St. Louis
Republic "about twenty-six years ago." Here's the way
Senator Harris quoted him:

In that paper there was an account of a scientific invention

made by a gentleman whose name I will not mention, by which
the laws of gravitation were entirely and completely sus-
pended. He was offered big sums of money for it by several
syndicates in this country and also had large offers from Paris,
London, and many other places. During the time he was
considering offers he had the invention securely locked in a
safety deposit vault in New York City. Before he had accepted
any of the offers he was taken violently ill, and after lingering a
few weeks died, leaving his invention in the vault. This man was
my uncle, and he had partially confided the secret to me, but
not sufficiently for me to do anything without the original
invention. After the lapse of about nineteen years I managed to
secure the original, and having plenty of money at my disposal
and having devoted my time and talent during the past seven
years to experimenting, I have an airship which is almost
perfection, but I am not quite through experimenting, and so I
continue to travel at night to keep from being detected. I will
make an attempt to visit the planet Mars before I put the
airship on public exhibition. Weight is no object to me. I
suspend all gravitation by placing a small wire around an
object. You see I have a 4-ton improved Hotchkiss gun on
board, besides about ten tons of ammunition. I was making
preparations to go over to Cuba and kill off the Spanish army if
hostilities had not ceased, but now my plans are changed and I
may go to the aid of the Armenians. To use this improved gun
we only have to pour the cartridges into a hopper and press a
button and it fires 63,000 times per minute. No, gravitation is
not in my way. I place my wire around this 4-ton gun and hold it
with one hand and take aim. Oh, I could place my anti-
gravitation wire around the national Capitol building and take
it by the dome and bring it over and set it down in Harrisburg as
easy as I could an inkstand. Distance is almost overcome; why,
we came over the suburbs of Dallas at 12:10, less than an hour
ago, and we have traveled very slowly. I could take breakfast
here, do my shopping in Paris and be back here for dinner
without inconvenience, as soon as I get my new propellers
completed.

He offered Senator Harris a ride in the craft, but Harris

79
declined. So the man and his crew of three climbed back
aboard, and the object rose into the night.
Now this whole tale sounds like another editorial
concoction. There has never been any kind of gun that
could fire 63,000 times per minute, and all of the talk about
antigravity smells of a put-on. Yet the story contains some
interesting ingredients. The interjection of the Cuban crisis
that then existed, and which later led to the Spanish-
American War, and the mention of the Armenians who
were then being slaughtered by the Turks, falls into a
familiar pattern found in all contactee stories; i.e., the total
awareness of contemporary events. And if the story isn't a
fabrication, then the bearded man chose, either by accident
or design, a first-rate witness to tell it to—an ex-Senator. In
the story he carefully planted the important points that the
airship was a secret terrestrial invention that would soon be
made public. Other contactees in other areas were
repeating the same thing.
Our final contactee is that "well-known Iron Mountain
railroad conductor," the redoubtable Captain James
Hooton, who claimed to have seen the airship, talked to
men aboard it, and who drew an elaborate sketch for the
newspapers which showed a cigar-shaped vehicle covered
with vanes, wings, and propellers. "Those who know Mr.
Hooton will vouch for the truth of his statement," the
Arkansas Gazette of April 22, 1897, noted:
It seems that Captain Hooton was hunting near
Homan, Arkansas (no date is given for the incident) when
he heard a familiar sound, "a sound for all the world like
the workings of an air pump on a locomotive." He walked
in the direction of the sound and came upon an open field
containing the magnificent airship.

There was a medium-sized-looking man aboard and I

noticed that he was wearing smoked glasses [sunglasses]. He
was tinkering around what seemed to be the back end of the
ship, and as I approached I was too dumbfounded to speak. He
looked at me in surprise, and said, "Good day, sir; good day." I
asked, "Is this the airship?" and he replied, "Yes, sir,"
whereupon three or four other men came out of what was
apparently the keel of the ship. A close examination showed
that the keel was divided into two parts, terminating in front
like the sharp edge of a knife; in fact, the entire front end of the
ship terminated in a knife-like edge, while the sides of the ship
bulged gradually toward the middle, and then receded. There
were three large wheels upon each side made of some bending
80
 metal and arranged so that they became concave as they moved
forward. "I beg pardon, sir," I said. "The noise sounds a good
deal like a Westinghouse air brake." "Perhaps it does, my
friend. We are using condensed air and aeroplanes, but you will
know more later on." "All ready, sir," someone called out,
when the party all disappeared below. I observed that just in
front of each wheel a two-inch tube began to spurt air on the
wheels and they commenced revolving. The ship gradually
arose with a hissing sound. The aeroplanes [wings] suddenly
sprang forward, turning their sharp edges skyward, then the
rudders at the end of the ship began to veer to one side, and the
wheels revolved so fast that one could scarcely see the blades. In
less time than it takes to tell you, the ship had gone out of sight.

There are many fascinating details in Captain Hooton's

narrative. Again and again in modern contactee stories we
are told that the UFO occupants wear goggles or ordinary
sunglasses, perhaps to hide distinctive Oriental eyes.
Hooton was apparently told very little except that he
would "know more later on." His description of the craft
makes it sound like a Rube Goldberg contraption, but
rotating disks have been described on modern UFOs, too.
And some equally strange-looking objects have apparently
been sighted.
Enough of these reports have now been uncovered so
that we can safely assume that some of these airships did
land and that, at least, bearded men were aboard them.
Some researchers point to 1897 as proof that we were being
visited by Martians or Venusians at that time. This not
only seems unlikely; in view of these stories it seems
impossible. No, there has to be another answer to all of
this.

Analysis of the 1897 Flap

Working purely from newspaper accounts is not easy,

particularly since the standards of journalism in 1897 left
much to be desired. But we weeded out 126 accounts which
seemed reliable, named witnesses, and appeared to be
responsibly written. All of these sample cases were
reported in April, 1897, and came from fourteen states.
Actually the spring flap began in March in several states
and tapered off in May. There were mass sightings in
Omaha, Nebraska, in March, and in April an airship
passed directly over Chicago, Illinois, and was reportedly
81
 viewed by thousands. A few days before that sighting
(April 9) the Chicago papers had carried articles ridiculing
the reports that were coming in from other sections of the
country. Maybe the bearded "inventor" decided to put on a
show for the skeptical Chicagoans.
In my outline of the flap of March 8, 1967, in Chapter 1
of this book, you will note that case No. 16 was reported in
Eldora, Iowa, a small town of about 3000 souls smack in
the middle of Iowa. On April 9, 1897, they also had
sightings in this unlikely place! In fact, if we compare the
1897 flap with the things that are going on now, we find
that the sightings have been concentrated in many specific
areas for many years. The area around Dallas, Texas, is
one. Michigan is another. There was a well-publicized flap
in Michigan in March, 1966, around Ann Arbor and
Hillsdale. There were sightings in Ann Arbor on Aprii 17,
1897. Michigan had, in fact, 30.5 percent of all the sightings
used in our 1897 study. There is still constant UFO activity
in that state, despite the dearth of publicity.
In 1897, when people saw actual objects, they described
them as being cigar-shaped or being large dark forms with
lights attached. No flying saucers turned up in the reports I
have collected. But the night-time observations then were
exactly the same as they are now: bright lights with colored
lights flashing around them, often moving in an erratic
fashion but apparently controlled. It is possible that the
airship was nothing more than a decoy—a cover for the
real activity that was taking place in 1897. Certainly these
objects did not consist of one or two clumsy balloons
shuffling across the country.
On the night of Saturday, April 17, 1897, alone, there
were reported sightings in seven scattered towns and cities
in Michigan. That same night, twelve towns in Texas, far,
far from Michigan, had sightings, as did Waterloo, Iowa,
and St. Louis, Missouri. There were hundreds, if not
thousands, of people involved in some of these sightings.
We cannot dismiss them all, nor can we explain them.
Texas had more than 20 percent of all the sightings in 1897,
and that state has had continuous sightings for the past
twenty years.
Iowa, Illinois, Michigan. South Dakota, Texas, and
Washington, D.C., had sightings on April 15, 1897. About
25 percent of all the 1897 sightings occurred at approxi-
mately 9 P.M.; 20 percent at 8 P.M.; 20 percent at 10 P.M..;
15 percent at midnight. Others were scattered in the early-

82
morning hours. Most of the reported landings took place
at 11 P.M. or later. This time pattern still holds true today.
Obviously, the great 1897 flap had much in common
with the sightings of 1968. In short, nothing much has
changed.
We have no way of knowing how many sightings went
unreported, or how many published reports have been lost
or still remain undiscovered. New ones are coming to light
all the time. Each new flap since 1964 seems to have begun
somewhere in the Midwest, in those mysteriously favored
states and spread out from there. Of course, since the
activity seems to cluster in the more thinly populated areas,
the reports are reduced to an unsatisfactory trickle.
Despite all the collections of descriptions of lights and
wheels in the sky, we suffer from a real shortage of
geographical data and are only just now beginning to learn
how to properly analyze what little "hard" data is
available.
If the newspapers of 1897 had not been so willing to
ridicule the sightings and the sighters and had not indulged
in devising nonsensical and misleading sightings of their
own, we might have been able to untangle some of this
sooner. There was no one crying "Censorship!" in 1897, yet
many skeptical editors probably chose to ignore the
phenomenon altogether, just as many of their modern
counterparts do. A great cigar equipped with a powerful
beacon is supposed to have passed over Sistersville, West
Virginia, on April 19, 1897, but when I visited Sistersville
in 1967, I learned to my dismay that the old newspaper
office—and all of its files—had been destroyed by fire in
the early 1950's.* Incidentally, many of the 1897 reports
refer to powerful beacons or searchlights with which the
objects sprayed blinding light over the ground they passed.
This is still another thing that turns up repeatedly in
modern UFO reports.
* F l y i n g saucers were still being seen regularly in Sistersville in 1966-
67. The town's leading attorney, Robert W r i g h t , t o l d me, " W e ' v e been
seeing these things f o r months. In fact, since last summer they've been
showing up here almost every Wednesday like c l o c k w o r k . Everybody's
been watching t h e m . . . but not everybody likes to talk about them....
One Wednesday a few weeks back, my wife and I watched one of these
things for an hour just over that h i l l . " He pointed to a high ridge visible
f r o m his office w i n d o w . " T h e n it seemed to split into t h r e e . . . and all three
of them took o f f like a herd of turtles." Characteristically, the local press
had not commented on the numerous sightings.

83
 I do not doubt that someone was carefully flying over
the United States in 1897, paying great attention to special
isolated areas. We can lay out on the map the actual
courses of some of these objects and find that they often
flew an almost straight line over several towns on a given
night until they reached a place where a landing was later
reported. Meteorites and swamp gas don't fit into these
patterns. But neither do the Martians and Venusians.
Whoever was involved in these activities knew precisely
what they were doing, and they set up a careful
smokescreen to cover their real activities. They engineered
much of the ridicule, confusion, and disbelief that followed
in their wake. By applying the techniques of what we now
call psychological warfare, they managed to deceive a
whole generation—and they're still doing it.

Patterns of Deception

The operators of the wonderful 1896 airship(s) followed

a careful plan which becomes transparent now that we are
able to apply hindsight to the huge pile of newspaper
reports. Here is a summary of the staged events, pieced
together from the many newspaper clippings of the period.
Early in November, 1896, before the California airship
excitement had erupted, an impressive stranger visited the
office of a prominent attorney in San Francisco named
George D. Collins. This man, never identified in the
numerous newspaper accounts, told Collins that he was the
inventor of a marvelous new airship which operated on
compressed air. He asked Collins to represent him and help
him obtain a patent. The lawyer was shown detailed
drawings of the invention and was duly impressed. The
mystery man seemed intelligent and articulate, appeared to
be in his late forties, was "of dark complexion, dark-eyed,
and about 5 feet 7 inches in height and weighed about 140
pounds." He was described as being very well dressed and
projected an aura of wealth.
A few days after the first airship sightings hit the San
Francisco newspapers, Collins told reporters that he had
met the inventor of the craft and that he knew all about the
airship. Reporters were unable to locate the mystery man.
However, he soon visited an even better-known legal
advisor, one William Henry Harrison Hart, who had once
run for the office of state attorney general.

84
 Soon after the flap peaked, a statement signed by Hart
appeared on page 1 of the San Francisco Call (Sunday,
November 29, 1896):

I have not seen it [the airship] personally but have talked

with the man who claims to be the inventor. I have spent several
hours with him. He has shown me drawings and diagrams of his
invention, and I am convinced that they are more adapted for
the purpose for which he claims them than any other invention
making such claims that I have ever seen.... I asked the
gentleman who claims to be the inventor what his desires were
in regard to carrying on the business, and he stated that he did
not desire any money; that he didn't ask or want anyone to
invest in it; that he was not a citizen of California, and that he
had come here to perfect and test his airship.... I will admit
that this is the first time to my knowledge that anybody had
anything in California in which he did not want anybody to
invest money.

According to Hart, the invention operated on gas and

electricity, and the inventor expressed interest in using his
machine to fly to Cuba and drive out the Spaniards. Some
of the local newspapers apparently misquoted both Collins
and Hart badly, and this probably led to Hart's issuance of
a signed statement. By the end of November, Collins was so
disgusted that he refused to see reporters or discuss the
matter further.
The mysterious inventor had managed to single out two
of the most respected men in California. They had, in good
faith, served as his spokesmen, and their reports were
widely circulated. The flap of that Thanksgiving week
supported their stories, but the inventor never came
forward to enjoy his triumph. He simply vanished after the
sightings subsided.
The description of the mystery man—dark-
complexioned, dark-eyed, slight in stature—bears a
remarkable resemblance to the numerous descriptions of
the airship occupants as published five months later during
the wave of April, 1897. Also, witnesses to some of the 1897
landings claimed that the occupants discussed the situation
in Cuba. Some of the minor discrepancies in the published
stories of Hart and Collins may have been journalistic
errors or may have been based on understandable
misinterpretations of the technical data offered by the
inventor. Collins thought the objects operated on
compressed air, while Hart said they ran on gas and
85
electricity. Compressed air was a favorite with inventors in
those days. Gasoline and steam engines and electric motors
were primitive, heavy, and inefficient. A few years
previously one man, John Keely of Philadelphia, had built
a strange contraption which could bend bars of steel and
do other things considered impossible for ordinary
machines of the period. Detractors claimed that the Keely
engine really operated on compressed air. Actually,
compressed-air motors required large, heavy tanks and
pumps, spent their energy very quickly, and would be
completely impractical for use in any flying machines
where weight was an important consideration. The only
effective use of compressed air was in World War I
torpedoes which had to travel relatively short distances
and were expendable.
A summary of the mystery inventor affair appears in
Mysteries of the Skies: UFOs in Perspective by Gordon I.
R. Lore and Harold H. Deneault, Jr. UFO historian
Lucius Farish has uncovered hundreds of other clippings
and reports. When all of this material is carefully studied, it
seems, in retrospect, that the "inventor" was actually some
kind of front man for the phenomenon and that he had
prior knowledge of the impending flap. He therefore
planted his airship story convincingly with Collins and
Hart, knowing that their reputations would carry it a long
way. It did seem like a reasonable explanation for the
sightings which occurred, even though none of the
witnesses reported an object which fitted Collins' descrip-
tion of a winged aluminum craft exactly. And as I have
already pointed out, the frequency and distribution of the
sightings indicated that several objects were actually in
operation at one time.
In hundreds of modern UFO events we have repetitions
of this tactic, which I call the press-agent game. In these
events, small, dark-skinned, dark-eyed gentlemen appear
in an area immediately before or immediately after a flying
saucer flap. These cases are not widely known and have
been poorly investigated because the hard-core cultists
have found it impossible to reconcile such seemingly
normal beings with "extraterrestrial visitants."
Striking examples of the press-agent game can be found
in the religious and occult lore, going back thousands of
years. Weeks before the birth of Christ, three dark-skinned
men with Oriental features arrived in King Herod's court.
They were obviously men of wealth and breeding, just like

86
our mystery inventor. The various records say that they
generated great excitement with their revelation that a very
special child would soon be born somewhere in Judea. By
making this appearance before King Herod and spreading
this story, they made certain that the impending birth
would be recorded in the court records and preserved for
the ages. After successfully carrying out this mission, the
trio "from the East" proceeded to Bethlehem, where they
created another stir and focused attention on the Christ
Child. Then, instead of returning to King Herod to report,
as they had promised, they "went home by another way."
If these men had come from India or even farther away,
it would have taken them many months or even years to
travel by sea and land to Jerusalem. This would have taken
considerable planning and expense and would have
demanded that they have advance knowledge of the event.
If they had been mortal men, they would almost certainly
have created a similar stir when they arrived home in India
or wherever, and it is likely that some written record of
their story would have been preserved. There seems to be
no such record.
Like our mystery inventor, they appeared in the area of
the action prior to the event. They visited the most
important personage they could find. They circulated their
story. And then they vanished.
Our UFO mystery men usually travel in threes, also, and
have become popularly known as the three men in black.
They usually wear somber clothing, have olive complex-
ions, and in most cases, high cheekbones and Oriental eyes.
According to Hart, the 1896 inventor had "three
assistants with him, all of whom are mechanics."
The secret inventor was a tremendously successful ploy
in 1896, and it was reused again, with many added
embellishments in 1897. The story was carefully sustained
through a series of landings and occasional planted
messages.
Saturday, April 17, 1897, two boys were playing in
Chicago's Lincoln Park when they spotted a package
wrapped in brown paper resting high in the limbs of a tree.
Daniel J. Schroeder, twelve, shinnied up the tree and
retrieved it. When they unwrapped their prize, they found a
pasteboard box "containing the remnants of a luncheon,"
and attached to the box there was a beautifully engraved
card on which was printed the following inscription:
"Dropped from the airship Saratoga, Friday, April 16,

87
 1897." The card was folded and had "an embellished front
page." In the upper corner were printed the words "air
ship" and below them was a gilded ensign of a boy standing
on a pair of outstretched wings. It was made of fine
cardboard and looked expensive. Besides the printed
words on the first page, this memo was written in blue
pencil on the inside: "9:41 P.M.—Due northwest, 2,000 ft.;
61 N. Lat., 33 Long. Descending. Dense fog. Drizzling
'spods.' " If this message was not a complete hoax these
figures would have placed the Saratoga over Greenland.*

The Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Argus-Leader commented

hopefully on April 21: There were no names or other useful
information on the card, but it is expected that by it the persons
operating the aerial navigation scheme may be located. The
lunch box was either dropped from the airship and lodged in
the branches of the tree or was placed there to hoax
p e o p l e . . . . Many persons looked at the strange find yesterday.
It was not generally denounced as a hoax, because as some
observing men pointed out, anyone who had fancy airship
cards printed was going to unnecessary expense to carry out a
joke, while the package could just as well have been placed in
some busy thoroughfare.

Who, indeed, would go to such elaborate lengths to pull

off another airship joke? Perhaps the Chicago prankster—
if a prankster was responsible—was trying to outdo
another prankster in Appleton, Wisconsin, who had
planted a similar note only two days before.
The Grand Rapids, Michigan, Evening Press of April
16, 1897 carried this article:
Appleton, Wisconsin, April 15—Many persons in this
city declare that they saw an airship pass over the city last
Sunday night. Last night on the farm of N. B. Clark, north
of the city, a letter was picked up attached to an iron rod
eighteen inches long sticking in the ground. The letter,
which was not signed, is as follows:

Aboard the airship Pegasus, April 9, 1897 -The problem of

aerial naviagation has been solved. The writers have spent the
past month cruising about in the airship Pegasus and have
demonstrated to their entire satisfaction that the ship is a

*Greenland is the world's only source of natural cryolite, important in

the manufacture of a l u m i n u m , a substance w h i c h plays an i m p o r t a n t role
in the U F O mystery.

88
 thorough success. We have been able to attain a speed of 150
miles an hour and have risen to a height of 2,500 feet above sea
level.
The Pegasus was erected at a secluded point ten miles from
Lafayette, Tennesee. and the various parts of the machine were
carried overland from Glasgow. Kentucky to that point, being
shipped from Chicago, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. We have
made regular trips of three days each from Lafayette to
Yaukon, and no harm has come to the Pegasus thus far.
Within a month our application for the patents for a parallel
plane airship will be filed simultaniously at Washington and
the European capitals. The ship is propelled by steam and is
lighted by electricity, and has a carrying power of 1,000
pounds.

So now there were two airships—the noble Pegasus and

the Saratoga. This second note confirmed what the
contactees claimed they were being told—that it was a
secret invention and soon patents would be filed and the
whole world would know. Even today it would be difficult
to build a steam-powered lighter-than-air craft. For
steam you need lots of water—well, apparently the airship
crews were draining wells all around the country -but you
also need lots of fuel:heavy coal or wood with which to heat
the water. And if your airship can lift only 1,000 pounds,
you wouldn't be able to carry much of either. No, the story
has the smell of dead fish to it.
The very day after the Grand Rapids Evening Press
published the above, a new message from the airship
turned up—in Grand Rapids. A man named C. T. Smith,
an employee of a furniture company "who has always been
considered honorable and truthful," was on his way to
work at 6:15 A. M. when he found a piece of stiff wire about
five inches long. At one end was attached "one of the iron
combination stoppers and bottle openers commonly used
to open beer bottles," apparently as a weight, and on the
other end an envelope was fastened. "From the Airship
Travelers" was scrawled on the outside, and it contained a
piece of notepaper bearing a new message written in purple
indelible pencil. It read:

To whoever finds this:

[We are] 2,500 feet above the level of the sea, headed
north at this writing, testing the airship. Afraid we are lost.
We are unable to control our engine. Please notify our
people. Think we are somewhere over Michigan.
89
 A r t h u r B. Coats, Laurel, Mississippi
C. C. Harris, Gulfport, Mississippi
C. W. Rich, Richburg, Mississippi
April 16, 1897. 9 P.M.
The Grand Rapids paper added:

That the airship is a wonderful reality is now assured, and

that it passed through the vicinity of the corner of South
Division and Williams streets is a fact that is founded upon the
most irrefragable proof [that is apparently where the note was
found]. Mr. Smith, who found the letter, positively avers that
he is not a drinking man and never owned a beer stopper in his
life.
Three of the night men employed by the Wallin Leather
Company are very sure they saw the airship last night.

In Omaha, Nebraska, preparations were under way for

a large Transmississippi Exposition, so it was only logical
for the great airship inventor to bid for attention there. On
April 13, the secretary of the Exposition received the
following tidbit in his mail:

To the Exposition Director:

My identity up to date has been u n k n o w n , but I will
come to the front now; i.e., if you will guarantee me
870,000 square feet of space. I am the famous airship
constructor and will guarantee you positively of this fact in
a week. T h e airship is my own invention and I am an
O m a h a man. I wish it to be held as an O m a h a invention. It
will safely carry twenty people to a height of from 10,000 to
20,000 feet. I truly believe I have the greatest invention and
discovery ever m a d e . Will see you April 17, 1897 at the
headquarters.
[Signed] A. C. Clinton

Perhaps Mr. Clinton was aboard the ill-fated, out-of-

control craft that sailed over Michigan into limbo. In any
case, he didn't show up on the seventeenth, but several
UFOs and airships were busy in five states that night.
Aside from bottle openers and half-eaten lunches, a
number of other odd objects were dumped by the
mysterious airship pilots. A half-peeled potato fell
overboard above Atchinson, Kansas, and a Canadian
newspaper dated October 5, 1896 was dropped at the feet
of Daniel Gray, a farmer, in Burton, Michigan. Gray said

90
 he had been working in his field on Friday, April 23, when
he heard a rumbling sound in the sky and saw a dark object
rushing past. The paper fluttered down from it and "was
dry and well preserved and suffered little, if any, injury in
its flight from the heavens." (Saginaw, Michigan, Globe,
April 26, 1897.)
All of these things could have been simple hoaxes, of
course, but in forthcoming chapters we will describe some
uneasily similar incidents that have happened in more
recent years. Part of my research in the past four years has
been devoted to a reexamination of the alleged UFO
hoaxes, and I am now convinced that many of these hoaxes
were actually engineered deliberately—and successfully—
to discredit the UFO phenomenon.
Let's review briefly some of the salient points in this
chapter: (1) It is obvious that a great many unidentified
flying objects were present in our skies in 1897. (2) It is also
obvious that they were manned by at least three different
types of beings: (a) the normal types, some with beards and
including women, as reported by several of the contactees
of the period; (b) the Oriental type, the "Japs" as reported
by Judge Byrne; (c) the unidentifiable creatures described
by Alexander Hamilton. (3) It sounds as if some of them,
the stranger types, made a real effort to hide from witnesses
who stumbled upon them accidentally. (4) The occupants
of these craft knew a great deal about us, were able to speak
and possibly write our languages. If they were just fresh in
from Mars, this would have been very unlikely.
Allow me now to do some educated speculating based
upon my experiences with more recent situations. Let us
assume that an unknown group of well-organized
individuals, some of them quite alien from us in
appearance, speech, etc., found it expedient to conduct a
large-scale "survey" of the midwestern United States in
1897 by air. Since no aircraft existed in the United States at
that time, they knew that they might attract undue
attention, and attention was the one thing they did not
want. They didn't want us even to know that they existed,
and if we became conscious of their aircraft, we would
automatically become aware of them. So they had to devise
a plan by which this "invasion" would go relatively
unnoticed, or at least seem harmless.
In 1897, everyone had at least heard of lighter-than-air
craft. Crude dirigibles had already been flown in Europe,
and pictures and drawings had appeared in American
91
newspapers and magazines. So the obvious ploy for the
people I call ultraterrestrials would be to construct a few
craft that at least resembled dirigibles and make sure that
they were seen in several places by many people, such as
Chicago. These decoys would get a lot of publicity, and
from then on everything that anyone saw in the sky would
be classed as "the airship," even if it were shaped like a
doughnut and had a big hole in the middle.
Such a plan had to go further, however, since the aerial
activity was going to be most intense in some areas. Some
kind of explanation for the mystery airship had to be
tendered. This could best be done by staging deliberate
landings in relatively remote places and contacting a few
random individuals, telling them the "secret invention"
story, and letting them spread the word. To add support to
it, notes would be dropped occasionally confirming what
the contactees were saying, and even a few ordinary
artifacts such as half-peeled potatoes and foreign newspa-
pers could be added to the stew.
Since some—or maybe most—of the ultraterrestrials
looked very much like us, they would be assigned to man
the decoys. The other objects, the real vehicles to be
employed in this operation, would carefully remain aloof.
To lend further confusion to the situation, some of the
contactees would be told ridiculous things 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. And they staged some outrageous stunts, such as
singing loudly as they flew over Farmersville, Texas, on
April 19, or playing a phonograph or other instruments
over Fontanelle, Iowa, on April 12. When the startled
townspeople reported hearing an orchestra playing in the
sky, newspapers whooped and heaped ridicule on the
story.
Was there an airship or wasn't there? Thousands saw it
and became convinced, but millions read all of these
conflicting tales and remained skeptical. Obviously, to the
uninformed reader in 1897, there was only one airship and
it was experimental—it was always breaking down
somewhere. But what were those great, multilighted forms
hurtling back and forth across the sky every night? Oh, just
the airship.
Where were they going? Where were they coming from?
Well, they were built by a secret inventor in Nebraska—or

92
Tennessee—or Iowa—or Boston. Take your pick. That
inventor kept his secret well. He never filed for his patents.
Like a gentleman, he waited until Count Zeppelin took off
in his first rigid airship on July 2, 1900, and flew 3½ miles at
18 mph before his steering gear failed.
Recently a great British authority, Charles H. Gibbs-
Smith, MA, FMA, stated: "Speaking as an aeronautical
historian who specializes in the periods before 1910, I can
say with certainty that the only airborne vehicles, carrying
passengers, which could possibly have been seen anywhere
in North America in 1897 were free spherical balloons, and
it is highly unlikely for these to be mistaken for anything
else. No form of dirigible [i.e., a gasbag propelled by an
airscrew] or heavier-than-air flying machine was flying—
or indeed could fly—at this time in America."
But if there was no secret inventor, and if there's no such
thing as unidentified fying objects, then who or what was
buzzing Eldora, Iowa, in 1897? And why have they chosen
to go back there again and again ever since?
If I lived in Eldora, I'd sure as hell demand that
somebody find out.

93
6. Flexible Phantoms of the Sky

The Wednesday phenomenon is quite evident in the

historical events as well as in the contemporary sightings.
A disproportionate number of UFO events seem to be
concentrated on Wednesdays and Saturdays, particularly
the landing and contact cases. The frequency of the
Wednesday-Saturday events immediately removes the
phenomenon from a framework of chance or coincidence.
After I discovered this basic pattern in 1966-67, other
researchers checked it with their own data and verified it.
Historian Lucius Farish uncovered a number of early
statements and cases which further indicated that this
Wednesday phenomenon had been observed and reported
upon long ago.
In Myth and Legend of Ancient Israel, by Angelo S.
Rappaport, the following statement appears:

Concerning "demons": They lodge in trees, caper bushes,

in gardens, vineyards, in ruined and desolate houses, and dirty
places. To go alone into such places is dangerous, and the eves
of Wednesday and Saturday were considered dangerous times.
Agrath [daughter of the she-demon Makhlath] commands
hosts of evil spirits and demons and rides in a big chariot. Her
power is paramount on Wednesdays and Saturdays, for on
these days Agrath, the daughter of Makhlath, roves about in
the air accompanied by eighteen myriads of evil spirits.

Not only do our unusual events show a decided

preference for Wednesdays and Saturdays, but the early
cases contain many of the same features found in the
modern events. Blinding searchlights were frequently
described in the reports of the nineteenth century, and such
searchlights remain one of the consistent features of the
modern sightings. The arc light had been invented in the
nineteenth century, but searchlights utilizing it required
considerable power either in the form of many heavy
batteries or a powerful generator driven by a steam or
gasoline engine. This kind of equipment would add too
much weight to any known aircraft of the period and
would have been completely impractical. The only

94
available lights in the 1890's and early 1900's were dim
incandescent lights, and they would not have produced the
blinding glare so often described in these reports. The few
automobiles of that time used kerosine or gasoline lanterns
as headlights. It was not until the middle 1960's that
airliners and military planes began regularly to employ
powerful strobe lights and new, more brilliant landing
lights. The landing lights are, of course, used only during
takeoffs and descents. The strobe lights are now often
mounted on the tops and bottoms of the fuselage and flash
off and on with a brilliant white glare. They are easily
recognizable and seldom mistaken for the prismatic UFO
lights. There has also been some recent experimentation
with searchlights mounted on helicopters. Let's compare a
searchlight story of 1875 with a more recent one.
Harold I. Velt's The Sacred Book of Ancient America
quotes from a contemporary account by J. J. Cornish:

On account of working at daily labor this baptism was

performed on Wednesday, late in the evening of December 29,
1875, an intensely dark night. After our prayer meeting Mrs.
John Taylor and Miss Sarah Lively were baptized by me in the
River Thames [in London. Ontario, Canada*] when suddenly
there came a very beautiful light from heaven, which rested on
all—both members and nonmembers—brighter than the sun at
noonday.... It came down with a sound like a mighty rushing
wind. We could hear it far above in the distance, and as it
reached the place where we stood we were enveloped in the
brightest and most beautiful light I ever saw—the glory of the
Lord. The light was round, straight up and down, like a shaft
from heaven to earth, and just as bright on the inside edge as it
was in the center, and so far as we could see it was just as dark
on the outer edge as it was a mile away.... After baptism and
dismissal the light did not go out, but gradually went up until it
vanished from our sight....

Here we seem to have had a directed and controlled

beam of electromagnetic energy (which is what light is)
which did not reflect on the area outside of the immediate
beam. This is commonly described by UFO witnesses. The
witnesses to the Presque Isle, Pennsylvania, landing in
1966 reported that the angular object which settled onto a
beach was projecting several beams of concentrated light in
* L o n d o n , O n t a r i o , has been the site of many interesting U F O events
in the past twenty years.

95
all directions. The peculiar thing about these beams was
that they seemed to go out from the object and extend to
different lengths, not fading into the darkness but
terminating suddenly like poles or rods of light. Some of
these beams were said to have darted into the forests on the
edge of the beach as if they were "looking for something."
In April, 1966, Robert Howard was visiting some
friends on a farm outside Sinclairville, New York, when a
UFO showed up at 8:30 P.M. on a Sunday evening. Howard
and several others stepped outside to watch what they
described as "a saucer-shaped object about 12 feet in
diameter, with flashing red lights set in its edge." It settled
in a nearby swamp. Howard headed across the fields
toward the object while more people gathered. The thing
appeared to be beaming a very narrow stream of brilliant
white light into a nearby woods. As Howard neared it, he
says it bobbed to the right and took off over the treetops.
For days after the incident his right eye was puffy,
bloodshot, and watery.
Cherry Creek, New York, only a few miles from
Sinclairville, was the site of an alleged landing on
Thursday, August 19, 1965. Presque Isle in Erie,
Pennsylvania, is just south of this area.
The UFO wave in Australia and New Zealand has been
most intense, and another interesting "light beam" story
was investigated there by researcher Dr. Paul Zeck, a
psychiatrist, in 1967. The witness, a prominent business-
man named A. R. Spargo ("an employer of a large labor
force"), was driving alone near Boyup Brook in Western
Australia when the incident reportedly occurred. It was
about 9 P.M. on the night of Monday, October 30. 1967.
Suddenly his car stopped, and his lights and radio went
dead. A brilliant beam of light seemed to be focused upon
him. It came from "a mushroom-shaped craft, 30 feet or
more in diameter, hovering above the treetops at an
estimated 100 feet above the ground." The object itself was
glowing with an iridescent bluish light. The beam seemed
to be coming from the underside at an angle of 40 degrees.
"I seemed to be surrounded by the beam," Spargo said.
"It was two to three feet in diameter, and brilliant on the
outside. Yet I could see up it, and there was no glare or
anything inside the tube.... I had the most extraordinary
feeling that I was being observed through the tube. I
couldn't see anyone—I could just make out the shape of the
glowing craft. I felt compelled to look up the tube. But I
96
didn't feel any fear, and I don't remember thinking of
anything in particular.
"After about five minutes it was switched off—just like
someone switching off an ordinary electric light. The color
of the craft seemed to darken, then it accelerated very
swiftly and disappeared toward the west at terrific speed."
The next thing he knew, he was speeding along the road.
He had absolutely no recollection of starting up the car and
driving off again. Later he discovered that his watch—an
expensive Omega chronometer—was unaccountably five
minutes slow. He decided to report the incident to the
authorities and voluntarily submitted to a psychiatric
testing. His story was published in the West Australian,
November 1, 1967, but his name was not used.
Unearthly beams of light; sudden automobile failures;
disturbing lapses of time and memory; all of these are
commonplace minor elements in our UFO mystery.
But let's go back to the puzzling historical sightings so
that we may gain a better view of the overall picture.

The Flap of 1909

There were, of course, many observations of unusual

aerial objects between 1897 and 1909. Thanks to the efforts
of Lucius Farish and his colleagues we have an impressive
sampling of these early reports to work with. The reliability
of some of the newspaper accounts can certainly be
questioned, but the tongue-in-cheek journalistic jokes are
quite transparent, at least to someone who grew up in the
newspaper business.
A minor airship flap broke out in California in 1905. On
Wednesday, August 2, 1905, J. A. Jackson, "a well-known
resident of Silshee," was out at 1:30 in the morning when a
bright light appeared in the sky and headed for him.
According to the account published in the Brawley,
California, News (August 4, 1905):

He watched it closely until behind the light there appeared

the form of an airship, apparently about 70 feet in length, with a
searchlight in front and several other lights aboard. The
mysterious machine appeared to be propelled by wings alone
and rose and fell as the wings flapped like a gigantic bird.
Apparently there was no balloon attachment as is usually the
case with airships.

97
 Mr. Jackson, being close to the home of W. E. Wilsie, woke
him up in time to see the lights of the machine before it
disappeared.... The same night, H. E. Allatt, postmaster at
Imperial, was awakened from sleep by a bright light shining
into his room. There was no moon, the light was thought to be a
fire, and Mr. Allatt rose to investigate, but no fire was found.
Looking at his watch, the time was discovered to be 1:30
o'clock, and it is believed that the brilliant light was caused by
the searchlight from this mysterious airship.

Other witnesses in the same area reported seeing strange

lights maneuvering over some nearby mountains. And one
group said they had seen "a titanic white bird" at a distance
of about five miles. "As it was clearly impossible, even in
the desert air, to see a bird at that distance, they, too, have
been pondering the case and come to the conclusion that
what they saw was the airship making its way over the
desert," the newspaper remarked.
Winged objects, things with tail fins and propellers, had
been reported during the 1896-97 wave, too. The "flapping
wings" is a rather unique feature, however, and perhaps the
bobbing falling-leaf motion created some kind of illusion.
There is no way of reaching a final assessment on most of
these early cases.
Based upon my study of modern sightings versus
published reports, it is very possible that many people on
the West Coast were seeing UFOs throughout the early
1900's but that very few of these ever made their way into
print. The spotty clippings that have been uncovered to
date do suggest a continuing flap of unsuspected propor-
tions.
The year 1908 brought a minor flap to Tacoma,
Washington, and the same area of the Puget Sound which
would play an important part in the Maury Island "hoax"
(a sighting which preceded Kenneth Arnold's by three
days) thirty-nine years later. On Saturday, February 1,
1908, and again on the next night between the hours of 7
and 9, a brilliant reddish object "two or three times as
bright as Jupiter" passed over Kent, Washington, and was
seen by many. Some described it as being cigar-shaped. A
story in the Tacoma, Washington, Daily Ledger (February
4, 1908) added, "During the same week, on clear nights,
colored lights were displayed at high altitudes, and on one
occasion a rocket was discharged high in the air, it is
asserted." The light was viewed by the populaces of many

98
 of the towns along its route. Some newspapers suggested
that it was a Japanese spy craft of some sort. (The Russo-
Japanese war had taken place three years earlier, and the
"Yellow Peril" was a popular topic of racial bigots on the
West Coast.)
On June 30, 1908, the now-famous "meteor" exploded
over Siberia.
The next summer, in mid-July, 1909, residents in the
thinly populated Blue Mountains of New Zealand began to
see a "cigar-shaped or boat-shaped" object cruising their
skies. One account from the Otago, New Zealand, Daily
Times described it this way: "It did not appear to be very
long but was very broad.... It flew over and past the school
grounds, turned around, and went back the way it came. It
was flying along very easily and had no trouble in turning."
Unusual flying lights were reportedly observed in the same
areas at night.
On Friday, August 6, 1909, "ten hitherto skeptical
workmen" saw a "cigar-shaped balloon with a carriage
suspended below. It had a powerful white headlight and
changed altitude steadily several times."
The mystery airship of 1896-97 had returned! This time
halfway around the world from Europe and the United
States. We have found no mention of the New Zealand
sightings in the American press of the period and assume
that the news did not travel far. The airship itself did travel
very far, however.
Late in August, 1909, the Russian correspondent of the
London Daily Mail filed a dispatch about "an unknown
controllable airship" which had appeared over the city of
Reval, making two wide circles before disappearing in the
direction of Finland. The event was said to have caused
great excitement.
A month later a machine "of great size, elliptical-
shaped, and equipped with wings of some kind" passed
over the Castle Forest near Gothenburg. Sweden, at an
altitude of 300 feet. The time of the sighting was 6 P. M. That
morning another object—or possibly the same one—flew
over the Swedish city of Östhammer at an altitude of 300
feet, coming from the northeast and disappearing in a
westerly direction. The date was Friday, September 24,
1909.
Gothenburg was revisited at 8:30 P.M., Thursday,
December 2, 1909, when an "illuminated balloon"
appeared high in the sky and moved swiftly toward the sea.

99
The Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter noted:
"Suddenly a rocket of some kind was thrown from the
gondola into a garden named Redbergs Park. This took
place a few minutes before the balloon went out of sight."
The events of 1909, 1913, and 1934 are crucial to our
overall understanding of the phenomenon. They provide
vital links in the long and tangled chain which we are trying
to unravel. These early reports are especially meaningful
because they were written as human interest items and
routine news stories long before the appearance of the
UFO controversy or before any government had issued a
denial. The people of Sweden were completely unaware of
the sightings in New Zealand. And Americans had not
heard of either group of events. Skeptical explanations of
mass hysteria simply cannot be applied to these early
reports. Some mechanical-like object—or group of
objects—was circling the globe at a time when the number
of known existing dirigibles could be counted on one hand
and only a few crude airplanes, homemade and of very
limited range and capabilities, could be found. In fact, the
development of the airplane was very slow until World
War I came along and it became necessary to make
improvements in design quickly.
The first European airplane flight (Santos-Dumont)
took place in 1906 in Paris. Except for one or two
experimental models, all of the planes of 1909 were
fashioned after the Wright brothers' model, with the pilot
sitting on the fore edge of the lower wing, his feet dangling
in space, and a modified automobile engine coughing and
sputtering behind him. It was almost a tradition for these
machines to crash after flying a few miles at low altitude.
Lieutenant Thomas E. Selfridge earned the unhappy
distinction of being the first man to die in an airplane crash
in 1908 when be was a passenger on a plane piloted by
Orville Wright which went out of control and plummeted
to earth from an altitude of 75 feet. Wright was badly
injured, too.
In 1910, there were thirty-six licensed pilots, and they
outnumbered the available airplanes.
So all of the known pilots, planes, and dirigibles of 1909
were accounted for. They were not buzzing New Zealand
and Sweden. Someone else was.
This someone else next visited the New England states
in December, 1909.

100
A New "Secret" Inventor

The story of the Massachusetts flap of 1909 is another

jigsaw puzzle which we have pieced together from dozens
of newspaper clippings. The sightings of that December
were widely published all over the United States.
Thousands of witnesses were involved, and the objects
described possessed all of the UFO characteristics of the
1896-97 flap. But there is a rather odd fly in this ointment:
a self-proclaimed inventor from Worcester, Massachu-
setts. He became the focus of many of the newspaper
stories, and he seems to have been surrounded by
considerable mystery.
The early newspaper accounts suggest that unidentified
flying machines might have been sighted with some
regularity before journalists really paid any heed to them.
First, we have an interesting coincidence. One of the
first published sightings—perhaps the very first—of the
flap appeared in New York and Long Island newspapers
on the same day that our mystery inventor held a press
conference in Worcester and revealed his marvelous
discovery to the world.
A Long Island lifeguard, William Leech, was among
those who claimed that they heard an airplane engine
passing directly overhead in the darkness while on patrol
off Long Island. They could not see the object but seemed
certain that the sound had come from the sky, not from the
water or the island. This report wouldn't mean much
ordinarily, but even while Mr. Leech was talking to New
York reporters about the incident, our mystery man was
shooting off his mouth in Worcester for the first time.
His name was Wallace E. Tillinghast, and he was the
vice-president of the Sure Seal Manufacturing Company
in Worcester. According to the newspapers, he was a man
of eminence and reputation and was the holder of several
patents. He claimed that he had invented, built, and tested
an airplane "capable of carrying three passengers with a
weight limit of 200 pounds each, a distance of at least 300
miles without a stop to replenish the supply of gasoline,
and if necessary, at a rate of 120 miles per hour."
On September 8, 1909, he said, he had flown his
machine around the Statue of Liberty and then had soared
to Boston and back to New York without landing.
The newspapers continued:

101
 Another part of this trip is still more wonderful. Mr.
Tillinghast says that when near Fire Island [off the coast of
Long Island], one of the cylinders of the flier ran irregularly, so
the motor was stopped, with the machine 4,000 feet in the air,
and sailed forty-six minutes, while two mechanics repaired it in
midair, the engine being started again when the airplane was
near enough to land to be seen by a member of the lifesaving
crew patrolling the beach.

Presto, we have an explanation for Mr. Leech's story!

Or have we? Before we can review the flap of Christmas
week, 1909, we must dissect the remarkable story of Mr.
Tillinghast. It bears many interesting resemblances to the
tales of San Francisco's mystery inventor. Unlike Lawyer
Collins' well-dressed, well-spoken, middle-aged client, Mr.
Tillinghast was located by numerous reporters. He was
interviewed. His wife was interviewed. He was well known
in Worcester, held a responsible position there, and had no
discernible motivation for making up outrageous claims.
Rather, he had everything to lose.
As soon as the sightings of the mystery airplane broke in
the newspapers, he stepped forward and offered an
explanation which was taken very seriously by the nation's
press. Although all of the known airplanes of the period
were tiny open biplanes, Mr. Tillinghast described his
invention as being a monoplane weighing 1,550 pounds,
with a wingspread of 72 feet and an engine of 120
horsepower. It could take off in a small area of about 75
feet, he said, and could travel at the unheard-of speed of
120 miles an hour—2 miles per minute. Sage scientists were
then mumbling behind their PhD's that no man could
ever travel faster than 60 miles an hour without suffering
tremendous pressures and getting his brains scrambled.
Racing car driver Barney Oldfield was taking that chance,
however. The fighter planes of World War I eventually
managed to hit speeds of 125-150 miles an hour. As for the
72-foot wingspan, American bombers of the 1950's, such as
the Douglas B-66, had spans ranging from 75 feet to 185
feet (the B-52). Most modern fighters have a span of 30-50
feet. The Douglas DC-9 transport plane (two-engined) has
a wingspan of 87 feet 6 inches.
In short, Mr. Tillinghast's machine was larger than
anything that could have been successfully flown in 1909. It
would have probably required much more than 120
horsepower to lift it, and a craft of this size could hardly

102
have taken off in the space of 25 yards. Nor is it likely that
any plane, then or now, could have glided for forty-six
minutes at the low altitude of 4,000 feet while mechanics
tinkered with a recalcitrant engine.
These facts brand Mr. Tillinghast a liar from the outset.
But why? More important, why did he choose to issue this
lie at the very moment when a massive UFO flap was about
to inundate the New England states?
He declared that he had made "over 100 successful trips,
of which 18 have been in his perfected machine. His latest
airplane is so perfect and adjusted so correctly that upon
being taken from the shop it immediately made uninter-
rupted trips covering 56 miles." (Portland, Oregon, Jour-
nal, December 23, 1909).
The same day that William Leech told his story to the
New York press and Mr. Tillinghast made his revelations
to reporters in Massachusetts, a man near Little Rock,
Arkansas, many hundreds of miles to the southwest of New
England, reported seeing an unusual light in the sky.
According to the Arkansas Gazette (December 15,
1909):

A. W. Norris of Mabelvale, road overseer of District No. 8,

is of the opinion that an airship passed over his residence at
about 10 o'clock Monday night [December 12]. Mr. Norris
states that he was standing in his doorway when a strange light
appeared, apparently about 300 feet above him, traveling south
at a rapid rate of speed and disappearing a moment or two later
in the darkness. He said that the light had the appearance of a
searchlight similar to those used on automobiles, and it rose
and fell like a bird in flight. The night was cloudy, which
precludes the possibility of the light having been a star or any
atmospheric phenomena.

Our strange aerial lights were apparently back in

Arkansas, keeping their usual 10 P.M. timetable. We
can't blame this one on Mr. Tillinghast.
Things were relatively quiet for the next few days. After
his initial press conference, Mr. Tillinghast withdrew and
refused to issue further statements. He was supposedly
laboring in his secret laboratory, preparing for the
enormous wave of sightings which occurred that Christ-
mas week, beginning on Monday, December 20.
Shortly after midnight on the morning of December 20,
those residents of Little Rock, Arkansas, who were still
awake were amazed to see a very powerful beam of light
103
probing across the southern sky. The Arkansas Gazette
(December 20,1909) said it was "a cylindrical shaft of light,
which, arising from the southeast horizon, stretched
athwart the firmament far to the east." The editor
consulted astronomers and could find no explanation for
the phenomenon.
At 1 A.M. that morning, people around the harbor of
Boston, Massachusetts, saw "a bright light passing over."
"Immigration Inspector Hoe...came to the conclusion
that it was an airship of some kind." (New York Tribune,
December 21, 1909.)
The next night, Tuesday, December 21, the real flap
began. At 1:15 A.M. that morning residents of Pawtucket.
Rhode Island, saw "two red lights proceeding south-
ward.... All were able to make out the outline of the flying
machine against the background of the stars." (New York
Tribune, December 22, 1909.)
At 5:20 P.M. on Wednesday, December 22, a brilliant
light appeared over Marlboro, Massachusetts, its powerful
"searchlight" sweeping the sky. Then it slowly proceeded to
Worcester, some sixteen miles' distance, where it hovered
above the city for a few minutes and then disappeared for
two hours. Finally it returned and circled four times above
the city, "using a searchlight of tremendous power.
Thousands of people thronged the streets to watch the
mysterious visitor."
The newspaper reports on this sequence of events are
voluminous. Reporters immediately dashed to Mr.
Tillinghast's home in Worcester, where they found the
"inventor" absent. His wife told them, "My husband
knows his business. He'll talk when the proper time
comes."
The following night everyone in New England was out
scanning the skies. They were not disappointed. Strange
flying lights seemed to be everywhere. They were seen over
Boston Common, and throngs in Marlboro, South
Framingham, Natick, Ashland, Grafton, North Grafton,
Upton, Hopedale, and Northboro witnessed them. Since
the lights moved against the wind, balloons were ruled out
as an explanation.
Something carrying a searchlight which "played from
side to side" passed over Willimantic, Connecticut.
Here is a summary from the Providence, Rhode Island,
Journal (December 24, 1909):

104
 As on Wednesday night, the light was first reported passing
over Marlboro about 6:45 o'clock. The light, which was at a
height so great as to make impossible a view of its support,
disappeared to the southwest in the direction of Westboro and
Worcester.
It was traced from North Grafton, not far from Worcester,
through Grafton, North Grafton. Hopedale. and Milford. and
then after being lost sight of reappeared in Natick about 7:30
o'clock, going in the direction of Boston. Observers arc positive
that it was a searchlight.
At 7:45 it was seen from Boston Common, by the testimony
of several persons, among them men who were at a prominent
clubhouse on Beacon Hill.
At Northboro and Ashland, early in the evening, the
population turned out en masse to watch the light pass
overhead.
Observers at several points report that while the light was
generally steady, occasionally it flashed, and once or twice it
disappeared entirely.

That night Mr. Tillinghast was not "aloft." Reporters

found him and extracted this statement from him:

I was out of Worcester last night. Where I was is my own

business. It may be that I flew over the city, but that is my own
business, too.
When I said recently that I had flown from Boston to New
York and returned, I said nothing but what was true. I have an
airship which will carry three or four persons and will make the
speed I claimed for it—that is, about one hundred twenty miles
an hour.
When I get ready, I shall speak fully and not until then.

The Mysterious Shed

An unnamed "staff correspondent for the United Press"

was reportedly arrested for trespassing when he tried to get
to the bottom of the Worcester mystery. Following up
rumors, he visited the estate of John B. Gough, six miles
outside of the city, and there he discovered a shed more
than 100 feet long concealed in a dense woods.
The widely published UPI dispatch revealed the
following:

105
 Fourteen men in the employ of the Morgan Telephone
Company of this city were at work there on some secret
occupation. Paul B. Morgan, head of the telephone company,
is a close friend of Wallace E. Tillinghast, who is supposed to be
the inventor of the mysterious flying machine.... Morgan has
been interested in aviation for several years, and two years ago
he spent $15,000 trying to perfect a machine invented by a
Swedish aviator. The Swedish invention, however, proved
unsatisfactory and was abandoned.... John D. Gough, on
whose estate the shed was found, is an old-time temperance
lecturer and is friendly with Tillinghast and Morgan. His place
is near West Boylston.
The secrecy maintained at the Gough estate and the careful
manner in which the shed discovered today is being guarded
lends new weight to the belief that a marvelous ship has been
constructed. The correspondent was taken before the justice
summarily today, and the swift manner in which he was
prosecuted for trespassing is believed to have been employed as
a warning to others who might attempt to invade the secrecy of
the airship plant.

There were many more sightings of brilliant lights

apparently under intelligent control over Rhode Island,
Connecticut, and Massachusetts on December 24, and the
"searchlight" was frequently described by the many
witnesses.
Reporters from New York and Boston converged on
Worcester and tried to interview Mr. Tillinghast, but he fell
silent again. All they could learn was that "Mr. Tillinghast
is a businessman of good standing in Worcester. He is an
experienced mechanic and has invented several devices
which are the foundation of the company of which he is
vice-president. He has made a specialty of airships for
eleven years, he says."
The Providence, Rhode Island, Journal remarked:

Tillinghast is absolutely incommunicado. The notoriety

that has followed him since the mysterious lights were seen has
seriously interfered with his business and with his homelife. He
has not been permitted an hour's peace. At his office there are
constantly two or three persons who want to know something.
At the door of his place of business and at his home he is closely
watched by mysterious men. When he is home, his telephone
rings constantly. As his wife has only recently recovered from
an illness, the constant clangor is not conducive to his good
nature.

106
 "... closely watched by mysterious men"!
A member of the Aero Club of New England, J. Walter
Flagg, managed to obtain an audience with the elusive
inventor, and he later told reporters that Mr. Tillinghast
had not only repeated his claims of the September flight to
Boston and back to New York, but that "he had done far
more wonderful things." These "far more wonderful
things" were not defined.
The good citizens of Worcester were understandably
upset by all of the furor, and a committee from the local
Board of Trade was organized to confront Tillinghast and
demand proof of his claims. He responded through a
spokesman, one William Hunt. On December 30, Hunt
told reporters in Boston that the marvelous Tillinghast
machine would be publicly displayed at the Boston Aero
Show planned for the week of February 16-23, 1910.
Sightings in the New England states ceased. The ten-day
wonder became a memory. So far as we have been able to
learn, no Tillinghast machine was displayed at the Aero
Show. He slipped back into oblivion, and the contents of
that 100-foot shed on the Gough estate were never
revealed.
On the basis of what we know, we can draw some
parallels between the 1896 flap in San Francisco and the
1909 events in New England.
Just before the San Francisco wave, an impressive
mystery man visited lawyer Collins, a prominent attorney,
and made a seemingly rational claim. He had invented a
wonderful new airship and wanted Collins to handle the
patent problems. When the UFO flap broke in the area a
few days later, Collins, in good faith, told the press that
there was no mystery. His client had perfected an airship
and was probably testing it in the San Francisco area.
The wave came and went. The "inventor" disappeared.
No patents were ever filed. The great new invention was
lost to humanity, and tinkerers like the Wright brothers
and Count Zeppelin were obliged to perfect crude
machines which were in no way as remarkable as the
objects seen in California.
In the summer of 1909, a new airship flap began in New
Zealand and northern Europe. And an even bigger wave
was planned for New England that December. The
planners had enjoyed considerable success with their
California "mystery inventor" ploy and therefore decided
to use the same gimmick again on a somewhat more
107
 sophisticated level.
Here is my theory. Sometime in the fall of 1909, Mr.
Wallace E. Tillinghast, one of the most prominent and
reputable members of his community with a track record
as an inventor, was approached by a man or a group of men
who offered to take him for a ride in a marvelous new
"secret" aircraft. Mr. Tillinghast was a man of science, and
he was far too curious to reject such an opportunity. He
went to an isolated field and climbed aboard the machine
he found there. His hosts kept their promise and flew him
around the countryside, perhaps even to Boston and back.
When they landed again, the pilots of the machine
offered a proposition to Mr. Tillinghast. They struck a
bargain (which they had no intention of keeping), and
perhaps they offered him a large interest in the profits from
their flying machine, provided he did exactly as they
ordered during the next few months. They explained that
they needed a responsible, respectable man to front for
them while they ironed the bugs out of their invention.
They appealed to his ego, saying that they were interested
only in giving their airship to the world, and they didn't
care if he took full credit for it. After the machine was fully
tested, they promised, they would turn it over to him, and
he could make all the arrangements for manufacturing
more of them. He could also claim full credit for inventing
it. They, the real inventors, would happily remain behind
the scenes.
Mr. Tillinghast accepted the proposition, visions of
glory dancing in his brain. The machine had been proven to
him. He was convinced of the reality of the trip he had
taken. When reports of mystery airplanes started to filter
into the press in early December, his mysterious friends
called upon him and told him that it was time to disclose
the existence of the invention. Tillinghast dutifully
appeared before the reporters, revealed that he had already
made a number of flights, and that the invention would be
fully unveiled at an appropriate time in the near future.
We can only guess at the contents of the shed on the
Gough estate. Perhaps it was completely unrelated to the
whole business. Or perhaps it housed special communica-
tions equipment supplied by the Morgan Telephone
Company for the real "airship inventors." Mr. Morgan
also had a known interest in aviation. He might have also
been approached by "them" and was involved in the same
deal as Tillinghast.
108
 Whatever the case, thousands of people throughout
New England observed UFO-type phenomena that
Christmas week, and most believed that they were
watching the wonderful invention of a local man. The
objects flew orderly patterns over specific geographic
points and performed maneuvers, which automatically
ruled out convenient natural explanations. Morgan and
Tillinghast were never given the promised model to back
up their earlier claims. Like so many of the modern UFO
contactees, they were used.

The 1910 Sightings

"Three huge lights of almost uniform dimensions"

appeared over Huntington, West Virginia, early on the
morning of Friday, December 31, 1909. A farmer named
Joseph Green thought they had fallen on his land, but a
thorough search failed to find any trace of them.
Then at 9 A.M. on the morning of Wednesday, January
12, 1910, thousands of people saw an unusual flying
machine passing directly over Chattanooga, Tennessee, at
great altitude. The chugging of an engine was clearly heard.
That same night an airship passed over Huntsville,
Alabama, traveling at high speed, according to the reports.
At 11 A.M. the next morning "a white dirigible balloon"
reappeared over Chattanooga, heading from south to
north. It was again seen the following day at noon, this
time coming from the north and heading southeast.
The most interesting sighting of 1910 took place directly
over New York City that summer. They are significant
because of their similarity to the sightings of Scandinavia
in 1934, which we will discuss shortly.
At 8:45 P.M. on the night of Tuesday, August 30, 1910,
"a long black object" flew low over the island of
Manhattan, accompanied by the sound of an engine.
Hundreds of people stared upward in amazement as the
object approached Madison square and the Metropoli-
tan Life Insurance Company tower. The New York
Tribune (August 31, 1910) reports:
The vague bulk, as it came into nearer view, took on the
semblance of a biplane. It swung past the tower, then turned
and described one graceful circle after another around the
illuminated structure, its outlines standing out clear in the
lights from many windows.
109
 It flew off toward the Flatiron Building and then
returned again to Madison Square, where it circled again,
swooping down so low that "it seemed to brush the top of
the trees." -
The next night (Wednesday) it came back again at 9 P.M.
and performed the same maneuvers, circling Madison
Square in view of hundreds of people lounging in the park
on that warm summer night. "Persons who saw the flying
mystery differ as to the number of lights it carried. Some
say it carried two red lights, others lean to the three-green
theory." The few known pilots in the New York area had
not been aloft that night. It was unlikely that any pilot of
the period would have even considered attempting a night
flight to perform hazardous low-level maneuvers directly
over the city. In fact, pilots avoided Manhattan even in the
daytime.
The identity of the mystery flier of 1910 was never
determined. The description of a long black biplane does
not fit any of the flimsy craft then performing Sunday
demonstrations in fields and meadows on Long Island and
in New Jersey.

South Africa: 1914

There was a good deal more to the flaps of 1909-10, but

we can't hope to cover everything here. The year 1913 also
produced a series of important sightings all over the world,
and a European ufologist, Edgar Sievers, has done
extensive research into the wholesale UFO sightings that
took place from Cape Town to Pretoria in 1914. The
powerful "headlight" of a cigar-shaped object is supposed
to have sprayed over the plains of South Africa nearly
every night that summer. One farmer reported coming
upon a landed aircraft on the veld near Greytown, Natal.
Two of its occupants, he said, were pailing water from a
stream. Sievers dug into the old records and found there
were no airplanes of any kind in South Africa at that time.
Only three or four flimsy, short-ranged biplanes existed on
the entire continent.
From New Zealand to Boston, from Arkansas to
Sweden, from Russia to South Africa, our mysterious
aviators plied the globe. All of this happened long before
any known nation had truly conquered the air, fifty years
or more before the advent of the high-flying U-2 spy planes
110
and the man-made satellites.
Were these unknown "biplanes" and "dirigible bal-
loons" space probes from some distant planet, or were they
machines operating from hidden bases or a "hidden world"
much closer to home?

1ll
7. Unidentified Airplanes

Conventional prop-driven airplanes with discernible

wings and tails are an integral part of the UFO mystery.
Although international law requires all aircraft to bear
identifying markings and license numbers on their wings,
tails, and fuselages, none of these mystery airplanes
bothers to comply. They are usually a dull gray or black
and display no insignia of any kind. Often they are seen
flying very low at night in UFO flap areas, and the pilot's
cabin is usually brightly illuminated. Customarily,
conventional planes flying at night do not have brightly
illuminated cockpits because it would interfere with the
pilot's night vision.
These "pirate" aircraft have been busy all over the world
since 1896. At 2 P.M. on the afternoon of Monday, July
22, 1968, one of them appeared in the clear skies over
the airports of San Carlos de Bariloche, outside the city
of Bahia Blanca, Argentina. It circled the field lazily at
an altitude of 200 feet, apparently preparing to land.
Innumerable witnesses, including pilots, police officers,
and airport employees, paused in whatever they were doing
and watched. The arrival of an airplane at a busy airport in
broad daylight was hardly an earth-shaking event—but
there was something very odd about this one. Something
very odd, indeed.
All of the witnesses later agreed that the plane had an
unusually long fuselage and that its delta wings seemed far
too short to support a craft of its size. Furthermore, it
moved very slowly—too slowly to stay aloft. One of the
fundamental rules of aerodynamics is that the shorter an
airplane's wings are in comparison to its overall size, the
faster it must go to maintain lift.
The airport control tower made an effort to contact the
plane by radio but received no reply. Then a green light was
flashed at it, signaling permission to land. The giant
machine continued to lope around the field. When it
reached the end of runway 28, it suddenly rolled over on its
axis, completing a 360-degree turn in remarkably little
space. Astonished viewers on the ground studied it through
binoculars and could find no markings or insignia except
112
for three small black squares and one large one on its
fuselage. None of the airport employees could identify the
make or design of the plane. They had never seen anything
like it before, even though they were familiar with
everything from Constellations to U-2's. It seemed to glide
rather than fly and made only a slight hissing noise. After a
few minutes, it picked up speed and shot away to the
southeast.
Argentine authorities were never able to identify this
stranger or explain the incident. The newspaper La Razon
carried the story on July 25, 1968, and it was investigated
by Miss Edith Greinert for England's Flying Saucer
Review. The Bahia Blanca sector of Argentina was beset by
a wide variety of UFO sightings, landings, and alleged
contacts throughout 1968.
Whole formations of unidentified delta-winged craft
have been seen over the United States. At least one case
was given careful study by the U.S. Air Force. Project Blue
Book Report No. 14 lists as "unidentified" the following
incident:

A naval aviation student, his wife, and several others were at

a drive-in movie from 2115 to 2240 hours [9:15 to 10:50 P.M.]
on Sunday, April 20, 1952. during which time they saw nine
groups of objects fly over. There were from two to nine objects
in a group, and there were about twenty groups. The groups of
objects flew in a straight line except for some changes in
direction accomplished in a manner like any standard aircraft
turn. The objects were shaped like conventional aircraft. The
unaccountable feature of the objects was that each had a red
glow surrounding it and was glowing itself, although it was a
cloudless night.

A government official in Washington, who must remain

anonymous for obvious reasons, recently told me about a
sighting he had made while living on Long Island in 1957.
His dog had started to bark and howl one night, he said,
and he stepped outside in time to see a huge delta-winged
aircraft passing swiftly overhead in total silence. It was
surrounded by an eerie reddish glow. He had never seen
anything like it before and decided to call the local Air
Force base. He reported what he had observed, and the
next day an officer called him and asked for additional
details, admitting that several other people had reported
seeing the same thing. (Except for a few experimental
types, delta-winged aircraft were very rare in the 1950's.)
113
 UFO enthusiasts and their organizations are largely
concerned with unusual configurations, such as disks and
flying sausages, but the Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization (APRO) has received one especially intrigu-
ing "mystery airplane" report which they have investigated
as thoroughly as possible. The witness voluntarily
submitted to a lie detector test, answering questions
conceived by trained psychologists. His name is William
Hertzke, a rancher in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and he
passed those tests. A full chapter is devoted to this case in
the book Ufos over the Americas, by Jim and Coral
Lorenzen.
One morning in October, 1965, Mr. Hertzke was
horseback riding in a pasture on the Circle Jay Ranch near
Calgary when he saw what looked like a small airplane
parked on the ground. It was a silver-gray color with
swept-back (delta) wings. He estimated that it was about 16
feet long, with a wingspan of about 12 feet, and the fuselage
was 4 or 5 feet deep. He rode over to it and examined it
cautiously.
The exterior, he reported, was irregular "like a waffle."
A transparent plasticlike dome covered the cockpit.
Through it he could see complicated instruments, a 14-inch
"TV screen," and two small, transparent glasslike bucket
seats. There were no visible motors, propellers, or jets, and
no insignia or identifying marks of any kind. He saw no
sign of life around the object, and his work schedule did not
permit him to return to it again later for another look.
Hertzke's description, which is much more detailed than
we can present here, is most extraordinary. Although the
object had a conventional tail and delta wings, its interior
and its wafflelike* exterior placed it in a class by itself.
Apparently it was built for very small pilots, and it flew on
some unknown principle which did not require jets or
propellers. (Incidentally, conventional sailplanes and
gliders have exceptionally long wings, while this object had
very short ones.) If you were to glimpse this kind of aircraft
passing slowly overhead, you probably wouldn't even give
it a second glance.
*There have been many U F O sightings of objects described as having
a roughened or stippled exterior. Obviously any k i n d of lumpy or
irregular surface w o u l d present considerable drag and greatly reduce the
potential speed of the object. M o d e r n airplanes are made w i t h as smooth
a surface as possible. Even exposed rivet heads can cut d o w n speed
appreciably.

114
Mystery "Cargo Planes"

There are several other types of mystery airplanes

operating in North America. Giant craft resembling
standard AF "Flying Boxcars" are frequently reported in
UFO flap areas, often performing hazardous hedge-
hopping maneuvers. One group of witnesses on the
outskirts of Gallipolis, Ohio, told me that they had been
seeing mysterious flying lights in their hills and fields for
thirty years. They also remarked, without any prompting
on my part, that "big cargo planes" came over the hills a
couple of times a month, and "sometimes they're so low we
think they're going to crash." These "cargo planes" are
multiengined and a dull gray color. The area does not lie on
the direct route between the distant Ohio AF bases and the
Charleston, West Virginia, airport. Furthermore, hedge
hopping over the treacherous hills and mountains of
Ohio-West Virginia would be foolhardy.
In his report to the Armed Services Committee Hearing
on Unidentified Flying Objects (April 5,1966), an engineer
named Raymond Fowler outlined his investigation into
the sightings around Exeter, New Hampshire, and stated:
"On my first two visits to the Carl Dining field [where
UFOs had been sighted previously] on the morning of
September 11, 1965, I saw a low-flying C-119 Flying
Boxcar pass over the area on both occasions."
During my own extended field investigations people in
many scattered areas far removed from AF bases described
Flying Boxcars to me. They were nearly all seen at very low
levels, sometimes performing intricate and hazardous
maneuvers. For a long time I suspected that the Air Force
was sending special instrument-laden planes into flap areas
to take photographs and perform various tests. But
eventually the circumstantial evidence mounted, and I had
to discard this plausible theory for an implausible one, i.e.,
that aircraft resembling C-119's were being deployed in
flap sectors, but they weren't related to the Air Force.
Smaller planes of the single-engined type are also
frequently observed at low altitudes, sometimes flying
back and forth in search patterns over places where UFOs
have been seen to alight. As usual, these little planes are
gray and unmarked. They have been reported in Texas,
Florida, and West Virginia by competent witnesses, some
of whom have studied them with binoculars. Like their
larger counterparts, they fly at night with their cabins fully

115
illuminated, and they have often been seen hedge hopping
in rainstorms and blizzards at night when no private pilot
in his right mind would even consider taking off. This
inclement-weather flying is a historical pattern.
In March, 1968, experienced UFO watchers in Point
Pleasant, West Virginia, told me of seeing a formation of
low-flying UFO-type lights over Highway 62 at night in a
raging snowstorm. Directly behind the lights there was a
small single-engined plane, keeping close on their heels
despite the high winds and billowing snow.
The year before, early in April, 1967, I had pursued a
peculiar flying light from the TNT area, an abandoned
World War II ammunition dump, north of Point Pleasant
to the steep hills behind Henderson, West Virginia. I joined
a cluster of people on a hilltop just as a twin-engined plane
circled and flew directly at us at treetop level. As it drew
closer, it cut its engines and glided over our heads—an
idiotic maneuver when flying the treacherous updrafts
surrounding the steep hills and valleys. The cabin was
brilliantly illuminated, and the pilot was visible. Since it
was about 9 P.M. and pitch-dark, this seemed doubly
stupid. Here we had a pilot who was flying at treetop level
over very dangerous terrain, yet he deliberately cut his
engines and blinded himself by turning on his cabin lights!
I sprang into a car and dashed across the Ohio River to
the little airfield at Gallipolis, Ohio, to see if the mad flier
had landed there. The field was deserted, and none of the
parked planes had a warm engine. In any case, few sensible
private pilots care to indulge in low-level night flying, and
few would be willing to risk their licenses by performing
stupid and dangerous stunts over populated areas.

The Mystery Planes of 1934

A Swedish researcher, Mr. Åke Frazen, has recently

been going through the Stockholm newspapers of the
1930's, piecing together the many fragments of the
forgotten Scandinavian flap of 1932-38. He has uncovered
more than ninety detailed reports thus far and has
tediously translated them into English for us. They form a
startling picture.
Beginning in 1932, large unmarked airplanes began to
appear over northern Sweden, Norway, and Finland. They
were always described as gray. They frequently appeared
116
during raging blizzards and circled towns, railroads, forts,
and ships at sea. Very often these planes would cut their
engines while they circled. Many of the descriptions were
of huge, multiengined machines. One group of five
witnesses declared they had seen a giant plane with eight
propellers. In several accounts, groups of three planes were
sighted at one time.
There were almost no private planes operating in
Scandinavia at that time. The giant China Clipper was still
under development in the United States, and the clumsy
Ford trimotor had cornered the market and was being used
by the few commercial airlines then operating. In 1926,
Admiral Byrd and Floyd Bennett had flown a Fokker
trimotor from Spitsbergen, Norway, to the North Pole.
Their flight had received considerable publicity in
Scandinavia at the time, and photos of their plane had been
widely published. Six years later, when the mystery planes
began to appear, many of the witnesses compared the craft
to Byrd's Fokker.
The Swedish government took these reports most
seriously. In 1934, no less than twenty-four Swedish Air
Force biplanes were sent to the isolated, thinly populated
sections where the "ghost fliers" were being reported. A
thorough search by land, sea, and air was held. Conditions
were so hazardous that two of the Swedish planes crashed
during the search.
I will try to summarize some of the main events of this
flap. Our sources are the following newspapers: Dagens
Nyheter; Stockholms- Tidningen; Vasterbottenskuriren;
Norrbottens Allehanda; Hudiksvalls Tidningen, and the
New York Times.
A dispatch published on January 22, 1934, described
some early sightings:
Piteå. The permanent cureate in Långtrask has reported
that he has been seeing mysterious airplanes in the area for the
past two years. Last summer the ghost flier passed over the
community twelve times, following the same route each time,
southwest to northeast. On four different occasions the plane
appeared at very low altitude, but no marks or insignia were
visible.
Once the plane's altitude was only a few meters above the
parsonage. For a few seconds two persons were visible in the
cabin. The machine was grayish in color and single-winged.
The curate had not reported this earlier because he thought
the flier had been reported by the coastal population.

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 Published reports are scanty until December, 1933, but,
as with the 1909 New England reports, we are led to believe
that there had been many sightings before that. Our first
item briefly describes a sighting on Christmas Eve:
"December 24, 1933. Kalix—A mysterious airplane
appeared from the direction of the Bottensea about 6
P.M. Christmas Eve, passed over Kalix, and continued
westward. Beams of light came from the machine,
searching the area."
On December 27, 1933, the New York Times devoted
almost a full column to the audible appearance of a
"mystery airplane" directly over New York City during a
fierce snowstorm. At 9:30 A.M. on December 26, people
throughout Manhattan heard the sound of an airplane
apparently circling overhead in the blinding storm. An
NBC newscast mentioned it, and reports were soon
telephoned in from all points of the island. The Times
stated:

A check of the various calls indicated the flier had gone as

far as 72d street, circled above Central Park, and then
proceeded north to the vicinity of 231st Street and Sedwick
[sic] Avenue, the Bronx. For a time no further reports came in,
but about 2:25 P.M. the sound of the motor was reported over
Riverside Drive and 155th Street.... All fields in the Metropol-
itan district reported there had been no flying during the day,
and no stray plane had dropped down from the snowy skies.

The planes of 1933 were simply not capable of operating

under such severe weather conditions, nor is it likely that
any known plane could have remained aloft for five or six
hours in a blizzard. But this one seems to have done so. It
was never identified.
There was a similar incident over London, England, in
February, 1934 (New York Times, February 4, 1934).
In Scandinavia, the ghost flier stepped up his activities
immediately after Christmas (just as the 1909 flap had
occurred during Christmas week). It was seen flying back
and forth over the Norwegian border, with reports coming
in from Tärnaby, Sweden, and Langmo Vefsn, Norway.
On December 28, 1933, the Swedish Flying Corps No. 4
was ordered to Tärnaby to begin an investigation.
A minor mystery developed when Lieutenant Georg
Engelhard Wanberg of the artillery regiment in Gotland,
Norway, set out on skis from Tannas for a trek to Storlien,

118
which would take him through the heart of ghost-flier
country. He was never heard from again. Search parties,
including planes from the Norwegian Air Force, looked for
him in vain. On January 4, 1934, a group of three men
started out to find him. They failed to return on schedule,
and new rescue parties were organized to look for them.
The trio had vanished.
Even the New York Times was licking its chops over the
growing mystery. On January 10, 1934, the Times'
Stockholm correspondent reported:

The Swedish Air Force has already lost two airplanes,

without loss of life, in efforts to locate the base of the strange
plane. Concern is now felt for Lieutenant Wanberg who
disappeared on foot on Christmas, and for a party of three
skiers forming a rescue party. Military headquarters reported
today that the search for the four along the Norwegian border
had been fruitless.

The three missing men turned up suddenly at the New

Styl Station on January 12. The newspapers did not
explain their overlong period of absence. No published
interviews with them have been located.
Lieutenant Wanberg's tent was found on January 17,
and his frozen body was discovered two or three miles from
the campsite. Although fierce blizzards had been raging in
the area, he had left his skis and all of his equipment in his
tent and had gone into the mountains on foot to meet his
death. There were no further published reports or
explanations of this sequence of events.
What impelled an experienced skier and outdoorsman
to abandon his equipment and head into the mountains on
foot? We'll never know.
While Lieutenant Wanberg was wandering around the
mountains of northern Norway, the ghost flier was busying
himself over three countries. Approximately one-third of
all the published reports of January-February, 1934, were
of sightings made on Sundays. The Swedish officials
openly referred to the ghost flier as "the Sunday flier."
Several landings were reported in scattered areas. These all
took place on Wednesdays. Traces were found in the snow
at some of these landing sites, suggesting that the mystery
planes were equipped with skis.
There were many mass sightings involving the popula-
tions of whole villages and cities. The planes frequently

119
flew over during snowstorms, sometimes circling low over
villages and projecting powerful searchlights at the
ground.
Let's run down some of the many correlative factors in
these incidents (compiled from the previously named
newspapers):

1. Sunday, December 31, 1933. Mr. Olof Hedlund, "a

reliable man with a good reputation," saw "a large gray
airplane, bigger than any Army plane" circle the Sorsele
railway station three times at 3:45 A.M. "It was single-
winged and enclosed, like a passenger plane, and was
equipped with pontoons or some sort of skis . . . No marks
or insignia were visible." (It was a night of the full moon.
Clear skies.) "The engine stopped during the turns over the
village."
2. Wednesday, January 10, 1934. At 6 P.M. people in
Tarna saw a brilliant object at an altitude of 1,000 feet.
Turned and headed toward Arjeplog. Fifteen minutes later
people in Arjeplog heard airplane engines and left their
homes to watch it pass. Then, at Rortrask, northeast
Norsjö, the plane appeared, and witnesses "observed the
engine stop three times as it passed directly over
t h e m . . . The machine was flying so low that the whole
forest was bathed in its light."
3. Wednesday, January 10, 1934. Trondheim, Nor-
way. "Two landings of the ghost fliers were reported from
northern Norway Wednesday evening. One machine
landed near the island of Gjeslingen, outside Rørvik, and
the other at a place called Kvaloj in the area Namndal. The
report from Gjeslingen says that the people there saw a
great beam of light and heard the sound of a strong engine.
The machine landed and remained on the water quietly for
an hour and a half. Its light went out after it landed."
A Norwegian cruiser, the Eagle, was sent to the area,
but the plane was gone when it arrived.
4. Sunday. January 21. 1934. "At 6 P.M. Sunday
evening a crowd of people in Bengtsforsen, Jämtland, saw
a very bright light in the sky. It was the size of a half-moon
and traveled very fast. The roar of an engine was heard
during the sighting... In Indal, west of Bengtsforsen, a
light appeared after 6 P.M. A large crowd heard it and
watched as the light circled the area for ten minutes before
vanishing in the west."

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 To the dismay of the Swedish military authorities, these
planes chose to circle railways and forts (particularly the
fort at Boden) and other strategic areas. Many of the
sightings were of lights only, often described as blinding,
and the old familiar "searchlight" was described in one
account after another.
When a large gray airplane chose to circle low over the
Norwegian freighter Tordenskiold outside of Tromsø,
Norway, on Tuesday, January 23, 1934, it projected a
blinding beam of light onto the ship's deck "lighting it up
like daylight." Captain Sigvard Olsen said the pilot was
visible in the illuminated cabin and that he wore a hood
and big eyeglasses or goggles.
The known part of the flap really began in earnest on
Saturday, January 6, with many simultaneous sightings
throughout Sweden. There were other peaks on Monday,
January 8; Wednesday, January 10; Saturday, January 20;
Sunday, January 21; Tuesday, January 23; Thursday,
January 25; Tuesday, February 6; and Sunday, February
11. Published reports in February declined sharply as the
military authorities moved into the flap areas and began in-
depth investigations. These investigations were apparently
most thorough, for the Swedish, Finnish, and Norwegian
Defense Departments took a very dim view of the whole
situation. Their air territories were being invaded. From
the sighting data it is apparent that many airplanes were
involved, not just one or two. Most of these planes were
larger than ordinary military planes, and they were able to
operate in foul weather over treacherous mountainous
territory. Such an operation called for well-equipped bases
staffed with mechanics and linked to supply lines to
provide the necessary fuel, spare parts, and logistical
needs. Despite a thorough search by the armed forces of
three countries, no such bases were ever discovered.
Aircraft carriers were still being developed, and the ones
then available could handle only a few small biplanes. In
1942, the United States modified the carrier Hornet to
transport General Doolittle's twin-engined B-25's to the
coast of Japan, where they launched their raid against
Tokyo. But the B-25's could not land again on the carrier
and had to fly on to China.
Hitler had just come into power in 1933, and the
Luftwaffe did not yet exist. The Soviet Union did not have
the planes or, more important, the motivation for such a

121
senseless series of maneuvers over Scandinavia. Besides,
the risks of an international incident were tremendous. If
one of these planes had crashed and had been found to be
the property of any foreign power, the overflights would
certainly have been regarded as an act of war.
For some peculiar reason, the New York Times
suggested that Japan was the culprit. But none of the
Scandinavian newspapers even mentioned Japan in
connection with the ghost fliers. Japan was having trouble
with China at that time and would have had neither the
capability nor the motivation for the operation.
For a time early in the flap, the Swedish newspapers
toyed with theories about liquor smugglers flying around
the North. But the official investigations completely ruled
out the smuggler theory.
As with the waves of 1896-97 and 1909, the 1934 flap
featured random low-level flights of recognizable objects
and hundreds of flights of high-altitude lights carrying
out seemingly intelligent maneuvers. The mystery airplanes
were the "hard" objects used to provide a frame of
reference for the more numerous "soft" objects being
deployed throughout the northern latitudes. Witnesses saw
and reported definite airplanes carrying red, green, and
white lights. When brilliant red, green, and white lights
were seen at higher altitudes, it was assumed that they were
attached to ghost fliers hidden by distance.
The ghost fliers were capable of astounding maneuvers.
The airplanes could cut their engines at low altitudes,
sometimes only 100 feet or so in the air, and circle not once
but three or four times without power. Try this in a
conventional airplane, and you'll end up a basket case.
On April 30, 1934, Major General Reutersward,
commanding general of upper Norrland, Sweden, issued
the following statement to the press:

Comparison of these reports shows that there can be no

doubt about illegal air traffic over our secret military areas.
There are many reports from reliable people which describe
close observations of the enigmatic fliers. And in every case the
same remark has been noted: No insignias or identifying marks
were visible on the machine.... It is impossible to explain away
the whole thing as imagination. The question is: Who are they?
And why have they been invading our air territory?

When all of the well-described ghost-flier sightings of

1934 are laid out on a map, their route becomes clear. They
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 seemed to have followed a great arc week after week,
circling southward into northern Norway, sweeping across
Sweden, and heading north again over Finland. If they
were following such an arc, the upper part of the circle had
to lie somewhere in the Arctic Ocean, perhaps in the
vicinity of the very thinly populated island of Spitsbergen.
An alternate route could have brought them from northern
Greenland. (In Chapter 1 we discussed a major event in
which a formation of objects was picked up on radar as
they swept westward over Greenland.)
The hundreds of UFO flights seemingly emanating from
the Arctic regions and following routes south have helped
reinforce the popular theory that flying saucers are coming
from a hole in the North Pole. The Aerial Phenomena
Reserach Organization has advanced the thoery that the
objects enter the earth's polar regions from space in order
to avoid the intense radiation belts which are concentrated
in space above the temperate zones.
Radio Signals from Nowhere

Enigmatic radio signals were widely received through-

out Sweden and Norway during the flights of the ghost
fliers. These also became a topic of discussion in the press.
A widely published dispatch dateline Umeå, Sweden,
January 11, 1934, noted: "Members of the headquarters of
the Air Force are of the opinion that the mystery airplanes
are equipped with wireless transmitters and radio
navigational aides.... The airplanes are part of an
extraordinary organization."
An item in the Hudiksvalls Tidningen, January 1,1934,
states:

Radio listeners in Umeå have been receiving conversations

on their loudspeakers containing information about the ghost
fliers, indicating that their intelligence service is mod-
e r n . . . . T h e conversations are on the wavelength of a popular
gramophone program in Umeå and discussed a meeting at a
special point. The broadcast concluded with a discussion of
which radio station should be used the next time.*
*Reporters investigating the claims of New Jersey U F O contactee
H o w a r d Menger, in 1956-57, allegedly discovered that he had a peculiar
radio transmitter in a tent on his f a r m . This transmitter did not project a
beam of its o w n but " h i t c h h i k e d " on the signals of conventional AM
stations in the area. This Swedish report suggests that someone in the
Umeå sector was utilizing a similar device in 1934. using the o u t p u t of a
regular radio station to power " p i r a t e " signals.

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 At 6 P.M. on Thursday, January 25, 1934, a workman
named Hjalmar Hedstrom reportedly picked up the
following message on "a lower wavelength" in Norrbyskar,
Sweden: "The sea is calm; two degrees warmly; therefore
you can go down on the water and catch what you shall
have.... Returning quarter to eight for further message."
There was also a statement on wind direction and position,
all in broken Swedish, but Hedstrom couldn't remember
all of it.
Another radio listener, in Hedesunda, picked up an
identical message that same day. And additional messages
were received at the appointed hour of 7:45.
Some messages came over the 900-meter band. Others
were received between 230-275 meters.
A majority of all the 1934 sightings took place at 6 P.M.,
no matter where the locale. The flap died down in March,
1934, but there were periodic reports throughout the
1930's. Here's one datelined Harstad, Norway, November
21, 1936:

Reports of a mysterious light have arrived from several

different places. The Norwegian Telegraphic Agency corre-
spondent learned of the sightings during an interview with the
Sixth Division. An inquiry into the reports is being conducted
by the county constabulary. The division has also received a
message about mysterious lights seen Tuesday evening outside
Tromsø.
There is every reason to believe that the observations are
real. During the last sighting in upper Norway many people
received mysterious radio signals.

The ghost fliers returned to Scandinavia in 1936,

following the same routes and patterns of the 1934
sightings. They were again accompanied by baffling radio
signals. The New York Times correspondent, who had
tried to blame Japan in 1934, now accused Germany of
broadcasting the signals. But none of the Scandinavian
newspapers mentioned Germany in connection with the
planes or the radio signals.
When a brilliant glowing object pursued a railroad train
across the Midwest in 1937, the New York Times (August
15, 1937) quoted astronomers who explained the incident
as being caused by Venus.
I hardly need mention that the populations of northern
Scandinavia are very familiar with the northern lights and

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other routine atmospheric and astronomical phenomena.
It is unlikely that they would pay too much attention to
something that seemed to have a natural explanation.
We have two widely separated reports from 1937 that
deserve notice here. On Thursday, February 11, 1937, the
crew of the fishing boat Fram started out from Kvalsvik,
Norway, at 9 P.M. Just outside of Kvalsvik there is a cape
with high hills separating it from the mainland. As the
Fram circled this cape, they discovered a very large
airplane resting on the water. Thinking the plane was in
trouble, the captain changed his course and headed for it.
Red and green lights were glowing on the machine, but as
the boat approached, the lights were suddenly extin-
guished. Then the plane was quickly enveloped in a cloud
of smoke, and it vanished!
At noon the next day, Friday, February 12, 1937, an
unknown aircraft appeared over Vienna, Austria, and
circled the city. This event was unusual enough to be widely
noted in the European press. Apparently the identity and
origin of the plane were in doubt for some reason.

Scandinavia: 1946

On June 10, 1946, objects "resembling German V

weapons" passed over Finland. Within a few short weeks
UFO-type lights, cylindrical objects, and unidentified
winged machines were being seen by thousands of people
throughout Norway and Sweden, with the greatest
concentrations taking place in the bleak, sparsely populat-
ed north country. The European press played the stories
up. "Ghost rockets" had replaced the ghost fliers of 1934.
They were seen over Greece, far to the south, and over the
mountains of Switzerland, weaving expertly through the
valleys and canyons. They were tracked on radar. They
were photographed. (One picture of an arrow-shaped
streak of light taken near Stockholm was published in the
London Morning Post, September 6, 1946.) They were
measured at speeds of from 400 to 1,000 miles per hour.
Some of them seemed to explode in midair. Some released
fragments of metal which proved to be common slag.
The British and Scandinavian newspapers openly
accused the Soviet Union of testing new rocket weapons in
the skies of northern Europe. Moscow denied it. In
September, bright green fireballs were seen over Portugal.

125
"Flying projectiles with a tail of flame" flashed over
Casablanca. Great glowing things hurtled out of the skies
over Oslo, Norway, and exploded with deafening noises.
On Wednesday, July 3, 1946, a mysterious explosion
shook central Scotland at 9 P.M., blowing out windows and
killing one man (apparently by concussion). No source or
explanation for the blast was found. Swedish authorities
collected more than 2,000 ghost-rocket reports. General
James Doolittle flew to Stockholm to join in the
investigations, even though this flap was barely mentioned
in the American press. London was shaken by a series of
explosions that no one could account for.
At the end of August, 1946, the lid came down. The
Daily Telegraph of London reported on August 22: "To
prevent technical information from being obtained from
the firing of rockets over Denmark, the Danish govern-
ment has asked newspapers not to name areas where the
missiles have been seen...." On August 31, 1946, the
Telegraph's correspondent in Oslo revealed:

The discussion of the flight of rockets over Scandinavia has

been dropped in the Norwegian newspapers since Wednesday.
On that day the Norwegian General Staff issued a memoran-
dum to the press asking it not to make any mention of the
appearance of rockets over Norwegian territory but to pass on
all reports to the Intelligence Department of the High
Command....
In Sweden the ban is limited to any mention of where the
rockets have been seen to land or explode.

In a brief fifty years we had gone from mystery inventors

to spies and smugglers and then on to Russian secret
weapons. Since none of these explanations was ever
proven valid, and since the phenomenon continued despite
all our explanations, we seemed to have only theories left—
the arrival of Martians and Venusians. Already the
erstwhile members of the Fortean Society, fans and
followers of the late Charles Fort, were warming up in the
bullpen. They had the answer even before they knew what
all the questions were. You see, it worked out this way: In
1945, we dropped our atom bombs on Japan. The bombs
sent a blast of energy into space, where it was detected by
the sensitive instruments of superintelligent beings on
other worlds. Said beings were terribly concerned that
poor, bumbling man had discovered the secrets of atomic
energy. So an expedition to the earth was formed to
126
investigate. However, some superintelligent navigator
made a slight error. Instead of leading his spaceships down
to troubled Japan, he missed by a wide margin and ended
up in Scandinavia instead. Sorry about that.

Mystery Helicopters

The thousands of sightings of phantom dirigibles and

mysterious airplanes from 1896 to 1938 provide us with a
substantial body of evidence which indicates that the
phenomenon is actually flexible and that it tailors itself to
adopt acceptable forms for the time periods in which it
operates. All of this raises a very sticky question for the
believers. Did all of these things really exist? Or were all of
these thousands of reports merely examples of mass
hysteria, journalistic jokes, and misinterpretations of some
natural phenomenon?
You can't have both. Either a very large percentage of
all these reports are honest and valid—or they are all pure
poppycock.
If I were writing a book on, say, the Civil War, I would
go to these very same sources—old newspapers, historical
records, letters of the actual participants—and I would
produce a book which would be accepted by scholars and
historians with little or no questions asked. But flying
saucers have been dragged down by the amateur theorists
and thrown into disrepute by the believers in extraterrestri-
al visitants. Their efforts have produced skeptics who have
found the obvious flaws in the beliefs and have therefore
decided that all UFO data are equally invalid.
If a farmer of the 1860's fought in the Civil War and left
behind a packet of scrawled letters describing his
experiences, historians would pounce on those letters and
quote them over and over again in scholarly tomes. But if
this same farmer saw an unusual object in the skies over
California in 1875 and reported it to the local newspaper in
the form of a letter, that printed letter would become a
source of controversy today. Skeptics would dissect every
word and debate the man's frontier semantics.
We must stop asking: Can these things be? And begin
asking: Why are there these things?
Misguided souls might make up stories about wonder-
ful spaceships from Mars. But would they make up stories
about seemingly conventional airplanes and helicopters?
Yes, we have phantom helicopters, too!
 On Tuesday, October 11, 1966, a brilliant flying light
bobbed over the Wanaque Reservoir in New Jersey. There
had been many unusually close sightings in the area prior
to this one, but this incident had an added twist. A
formation of mystery helicopters turned up minutes after
the object left.
"This thing was so bright that it blinded me so bad I
couldn't find my ear," Wanaque police sergeant Ben
Thompson, one of the many witnesses, told Dr. Berthold
Schwarz. "It was all white, like looking into a bulb and
trying to see the socket, which you can't do.... I was totally
blinded by that light for about twenty minutes."
Within fifteen minutes after the glowing object
departed, a formation of seven helicopters appeared and
circled low over the area. They were accompanied by ten or
twelve jet airplanes. Lines of cars were parked all around
the reservoir, filled with eager UFO watchers. They knew a
helicopter when they saw one. But they were all baffled by
this unexpected group of choppers. Police sergeant Robert
Gordon discussed his own bewilderment: "I've never seen
seven helicopters at one time in this area before in all my
life.... And I've lived here for forty years."
Science writer Lloyd Mallan investigated the Wanaque
incidents, and he checked with all the local Air Force bases,
airports, and even the Pentagon. All denied knowing
anything about these planes and helicopters. The Civil
Aeronautics Board was baffled, too. No one could throw
any light on the mystery. Nor did it seem plausible that the
Air Force could have acted so quickly, particularly since
no one ever formally reported any of the Wanaque
sightings to the Air Force directly. There are those, of
course, who believe that the Air Force lies about
everything connected with UFOs. But there aren't seven
helicopters available instantly and at one time at the
McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey and the Stewart Air
Force Base in New York, the two closest bases. Nor could
slow-moving, short-ranged choppers have made it from
those two points in fifteen minutes.
The people at Wanaque were convinced they saw
helicopters and jets that night. Were they all lying? If so,
why? If not, then who was flying these machines, how, and
why?
The North Vietnamese are pitifully short on aircraft,
especially helicopters. Nevertheless, late in June, 1968, a
formation of inexplicable lights appeared over the Ben Hai
128
River, and one nonexistent "helicopter" was reportedly
shot down. Robert Stokes, Newsweek's Vietnam corre-
spondent, was there. Here's his report (Newsweek, July 1,
1968):

It was 11 P.M. and U.S. Army Captain William Bates sat in

front of a radio set at his regimental headquarters at Dong Ha.
Just then, a Marine forward observer came on the air reporting
that he had spotted, through his electronic telescope, thirteen
sets of yellowish-white lights moving westerly at an altitude of
between 500 and 1,000 feet over the Ben Hai River which runs
through the middle of the DMZ. Bates immediately checked
with authorities at Dong Ha to see whether there were any
friendly aircraft in the area of the reported sightings. He was
told there were not. Then he checked with the counterbattery
radar unit at Alpha 2, the northernmost allied outpost in I
Corps. Within minutes, the answer came back from Alpha 2's
radar tracker: The "blips" were all around him, 360 degrees.
By 1 A.M., U.S. Air Force and Marine jets were scrambling
at Da Nang in pursuit of the unidentified objects. Forty-five
minutes later a Marine pilot radioed that he had just shot down
a helicopter. But when an Air Force reconnaissance plane,
equipped with infrared detectors which pick up heat, flew over
the area, it could find no evidence of burning wreckage. All it
could confirm, the plane reported, was a "burned spot."

These objects were tracked on radar "nearly every

night" over the Demilitarized Zone that June. They were
never identified, and there was little reason to believe that
they were actually Vietcong aircraft. If they were, the
North Vietnamese stopped using them very abruptly, and
they haven't been heard from since.
A few weeks after this series of incidents, the mystery
helicopters turned up in the state of Maryland. At 8:20 P . M .
on the night of Tuesday, August 19, 1968, an oval object
with a center band of red and white flashing lights hovered
above the Rosecroft Racetrack near Phelps Corner,
Maryland. One of the many witnesses, Mrs. Gwen E.
Donovan, reported that she also saw at least seven
helicopters circling the object. "It struck me as funny," she
said, "because I have never seen so many in the sky at one
time."
Is the U.S. Air Force secretly chasing flying saucers in
lumbering helicopters? We do frequently scramble jets to
pursue "unidentifieds," but I've talked with a lot of AF
personnel and have never even come across any rumors
129
about the use of helicopters.
Helicopters are expensive machines and they're difficult
to fly. The World War II predictions that there would be "a
helicopter in every garage" never came to pass because of
this. A UFO-chasing operation would demand that several
helicopters were readied and fueled at all times, and that
properly trained pilots were on constant alert and available
to fly them. I've snooped around AF bases looking for
evidence of such an operation—and have drawn a
complete blank.
I can only conclude that these unidentified helicopters
fall into the same category as the ghost fliers of 1934 and
the tiny aircraft of Calgary. They are part of the U F O
activities, not part of our UFO-chasing operations.

Do Flying Saucers Really Exist?

Thousands of UFO photos have been taken since 1882.

Many of these are of indistinct blobs and streaks of light,
but many are of apparently solid machines of some sort,
with windows, fins, and other clearly discernible features.
There's just one problem. With very few exceptions, no two
UFO photographs are alike. I have received hundreds in
the mail and have been shown hundreds more in my
travels. Since photos are too easy to fake and too hard to
authenticate, I usually avoid getting involved in an in-,
depth investigation of the pictures and their photogra-
phers. I have yet to personally handle two exactly similar
photos taken in two different areas.
During these past three years I have conducted
thousands of investigations in person, by telephone, and by
mail, and while many of the descriptions of the luminous,
flexible "soft" objects are exactly the same, I have rarely
heard two independent witnesses describe separate
seemingly solid "hard" objects in the same terms. I have
been told about tiny "buzz-saw" devices, whirling "chains"
over strip mines in Ohio, and gigantic gondola-shaped
machines with "rows and rows of windows" hovering
above the Kittatinny Mountains of northern New Jersey.
There seem to be as many different kinds of objects as there
are witnesses. Yet I have managed to reassure myself again
and again that the witnesses were reliable and were
describing the objects to the best of their abilities.
Since the witnesses seem to be telling the truth, we must

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 assume that UFOs come in myriad sizes and shapes. Or no
real shapes at all. This leads us to the old psychological
warfare gambit once more. If the phenomenon has built-in
discrepancies, then no one will take it seriously. If people in
Brazil, Iowa, and Australia all gave exactly the same
descriptions, then the scientific and military establish-
ments would have to take the subject far more seriously.
Project Blue Book Report No. 14 tackled this problem.
Air Force teams ran 434 "unidentified" reports through a
computer, hoping to come up with a basic model. They
ended up with 12 very different basic objects. From the
thousands of reports compiled since then, it is obvious that
there may be 1,200 or 12,000,000 different types. The 12
objects described in Report No. 14 have rarely been seen
since 1955.
So there may not be any types at all!
Our UFO catalog now contains flying cubes, triangles,
hexagons, doughnuts, spheres, objects shaped like giant
metal insects and transparent flying jellyfish. We've got
UFOs with wheels, with wings, with antennas, with
pointed domes, flat domes, no domes at all. We've got
objects of every color of the spectrum. There have been
giant, multiwindowed "cigars" spitting blue fire from their
tails ("Obviously a spaceship—a mother craft," the cultists
tell us). We've got wheelless automobiles cruising along
deserted backroads a few inches above the ground. And we
have unmarked airplanes and unidentified helicopters and
jets flitting about flap areas. We have just about everything
except a basic assembly-line model which has appeared
consistently in many years and in many places.
In other words, we have thousands upon thousands of
UFO sightings which force two unacceptable answers
upon us:
1. All the witnesses were mistaken or lying.
2. Some tremendous unknown civilization is exerting
an all-out effort to manufacture thousands of different
types of UFOs and is sending all of them to our planet.
The governments of the world have seized upon
variations of the first explanation. The UFO enthusiasts
accept the second.
I do not accept either one.
Instead, I propose a third alternative. I think that some
"hard" objects definitely exist as Temporary Transmogrifi-
cations. They are disk-shaped and cigar-shaped. They
leave indentations in the ground when they land. Witnesses
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have touched them and have even been inside of them.
These hard objects are decoys, just as the dirigibles and
ghost planes of yesteryear may have been decoys to cover
the activities of the multitudinous soft objects. My real
concern is with these soft objects. They hold one of the keys
to the mystery.
There are countless sightings of objects which changed
size and shape in front of the viewers or split into several
smaller objects, each going off in a different direction. In
some cases, this process was reversed, with several small
lights converging together to form a single large one which
then went dashing off. Over and over again, witnesses have
told me in hushed tones, "You know, I don't thing that
thing I saw was mechanical at all. I got the distinct
impression that it was alive."
Researchers such as John Bessor and lvan T. Sanderson
have openly discussed the possibility that some UFOs may,
indeed, be living creatures. It's a mixed bag. You can take
your choice. Every belief can be supported to some degree,
but in the final analysis, when you review all of the
evidence, none of them can be completely proven beyond a
reasonable doubt.

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8. Charting the Enigma

At approximately 8:15 P.M. on the night of Monday,

April 25, 1966, a brilliantly illuminated object flashed
across the Canadian border and sailed majestically
southward over the northeastern United States. It was seen
by millions of people along the Atlantic seaboard.
Astronomers and amateur photographers took excellent
color pictures of it, some of which were later published in
Life, Newsweek, and newspapers all across the country. It
was so bright that it lit up the countryside like daylight as it
arced gracefully overhead.
It was quickly explained as a meteor. The explanation
made sense to those who saw it, and so the whole incident
was forgotten.
However, I spent many months collecting reports of this
object and assembling the whole story. Thousands of
actual unidentified flying objects are erroneously ex-
plained away as meteors every year. Usually no one
bothers to collect these meteor reports, lay them out on a
map, and study them properly. Astronomers seem least
interested of all.
Meteors and comets are vitally important to our study
of unexplained aerial phenomena. They reveal patterns
which indicate that they follow precise routes year after
year and even operate on a predictable timetable. This
certainly suggests an intelligent plan of some sort. This
plan is part of a larger one. I must stress once again that we
cannot understand the broad spectrum of UFO events
until we have studied each of the smaller parts.
The newspapers had quite a bit of fun with that 1966
meteor. It came right on the heels of the enormous
nationwide UFO flap of March-April. Two men in
Hector, New York, said that after the object passed over,
they found rocks in their fields which were warm and "felt
funny" when they touched them. The rocks were turned
over to the sheriff in Watkins Glen, New York, for
examination. Mrs. Joseph Powlis was one of the
thousands who watched the thing from New York City.
She said, "I thought it was a jet—a Roman candlelike
thing." A woman in Baltimore, Maryland, described it as
133
"orange and blue and red, and it left sparks—oh, it was
lovely." A man in Asbury Park, New Jersey, called the
Press office and declared, "I could see a head peering out of
a porthole."
In Pikesville, Maryland, a state trooper told reporters
that there had been reports of plane crashes in sixteen
counties. "In the old days," he chuckled, "everyone would
have said, 'Oh, what a beautiful meteor,' but now everyone
is hoping that little men from Mars are landing."
On a highway near Towanda, Pennsylvania, Robert W.
Martz and a friend saw the object scoot overhead.
Simultaneously, their automobile engine stalled, and the
headlights went out. Both men complained of feeling a
wave of heat as they watched "a very awesome, huge
flaming body which lit up a large area, visible for a few
seconds. Then the second view was of a dark object. The
huge flames went out like turning off an electric bulb for a
few seconds. There was a dim light in four portholes, and
then all darkness. It looked like it was 250 feet in front of us
and 250 feet up, and it could go at terrific speed."
Something dropped out of the sky that night onto the
grounds of the Salvation Army Camp near Upland,
Pennsylvania. A group of boys watched a strange blue
light descend into the woods, and John Wesley Bloom was
the first to reach it. It smelled like burning rubber, was
about two feet long, a foot high and a foot wide when they
first saw it, the boys reported. Young Bloom claimed that
something got into his eyes and blinded him. His friends
had to help him home. His mother later told reporters that
his face "was red and his eyes were swollen" and she placed
cold compresses on his eyes. The next day there was a
crimson blotch on his cheek.
The Upland object burned itself out. The next day
searchers found a small coallike lump at the spot. Dozens
of other youngsters substantiated the story, according to a
lengthy report published in the Delaware County Times on
April 27, 1966. But Dr. I. M. Levitt, director of the
Franklin Institute's Feis Planetarium, declared, "I just
don't believe it. Meteorites do not continue to burn when
they reach earth."
Dr. Thomas C. Nicholson, chairman of the Hayden
Planetarium, said that the object "was probably ten
thousand times brighter than the brightest star seen at
night." He estimated that it must have weighed "several
hundred pounds."

134
 However, Dr. Fred L. Whipple, director of the
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, disagreed with his colleague and an-
nounced that "it must have been less than the size of a
football."
Although many of the witnesses claimed it moved
slowly across the sky—slow enough so that photographers
were able to snap pictures of it—one scientist estimated
that it was traveling at thirty-five miles a second. It
disappeared over the Atlantic after coursing across the
Carolinas.
Thousands of miles away, in the far-off Soviet state of
Tashkent, a Soviet scientist named Galina Lazarenko was
awakened at 5:23 A.M. on April 26. 1966, by a brilliant
flash of light.
"The courtyard and my room were brightly lighted up,"
she said later. "It was so bright that I could clearly see all
the objects in my room."
Simultaneously, an engineer named Alexei Melnichuk
was walking down a Tashkent street when he heard a loud
rumble followed by a blinding flash.
"I seemed to be bathed in white light that extended as far
as I could see," he recalled. "I was forced to shield my face
with my hands. After a few seconds, I took my hands away
from my face, and the light was gone."
Moments later the great Tashkent earth fault shuddered
and buckled, and a tremendous earthquake struck, killing
10 and leaving 200,000 people homeless. As the dazed and
terrified residents staggered into the rubble-strewn streets,
they saw strange "glowing spheres floating through the air
like lighted balloons."
There is a nine-hour time difference between our
Atlantic seaboard and Tashkent. Furthermore, Tashkent
is at exactly the same latitude and longitude as the
northeastern United States, precisely on the opposite side
of the earth. We were watching that "meteor" cruising
overhead at exactly the same time that a brilliant and
inexplicable flash of light was announcing the impending
disaster in Tashkent. These correlations are exact. Our
"meteor" and the Tashkent earthquake occurred simul-
taneously on opposite sides of the earth!
What kind of coincidence was this?
An hour before the Tashkent quake, a schoolteacher
living near the fault said that her dog began to howl, and
that when the quake began, the dog ran to the door before

135
each shock struck. Scientists have long been puzzled by the
apparent ability of animals—particularly dogs and
horses—to sense impending disasters.
Is it possible that unidentified flying objects may have
some tenuous relationship to natural disasters? There are
many baffling cases which seem to point to such a
relationship, particularly in Europe and South America.
Dr. Martin D. Altschuler contributed an interesting paper
on earthquake-related UFOs to the Colorado University:
Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects. He cited
several Japanese cases in which spheres of light, powerful
beams of light, and assorted fireballs appeared before,
during, or after Japanese earthquakes. He suggested that
these phenomena resulted from friction—the slippage of
rocks, which is as far-out an explanation as visitors from
Mars. If static electricity does build up from the slippage of
rocks in fault zones, we should easily be able to detect it
and thereby predict forthcoming quakes. Alas, this is not
the case.
Large numbers of UFOs were reported over Algeria
shortly after the tragic quakes of September 9 and 26,1954
(1,100 dead; 2,000 injured). When a very heavy quake
shook eleven counties in England on February l l , 1957,
five "tadpolelike objects" were reported over the towns of
Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire. The former was the
epicenter of the quake. The descriptions of the witnesses
hardly sound like descriptions of electrical phenomena
produced by rocks rubbing together.
Flying saucer sightings have been numerous and
spectacular around the great San Andreas Fault in
California since 1896.
Another "meteor" was followed by earth tremors when
it zipped in over the Gulf of Mexico early on the morning
of Wednesday, March 2 7 , 1968. It was first sighted by the
crew of the tanker Alfa Mex ll who described "two or three
objects in the center of a bright ball of fire." The crew of the
Mexican warship Guanajuato also reported seeing a
flaming object, and the men of both ships said the waters of
the Gulf were churned into fountains of spray after the
object passed. This could mean that whatever it was, it was
exerting a direct gravitational pull.
At 2:10 A.M. that morning, residents in Veracruz,
Mexico, about twenty-five miles from the ships' positions,
were awakened by a deafening rumbling noise.
"Before I had a chance to realize what was happening,"

136
Senora Angelita de Villalobos Arana, forty, told investiga-
tors, "it was as bright as day—and the terrible noise kept
o n . . . I felt cool, then cold. The light got brighter."
Within minutes, the streets of Veracruz were filled with
hysterical people. They thought the end of the world had
arrived as the sky filled with unearthly light and the ground
trembled. The strange "meteor" loomed over the scene,
seemed to dip toward the ground, then rose again and shot
off.'
Mr. Ernesto Dominquez, head of the Mexican
Department of Meteorology of Veracruz, conducted a
careful investigation and collected all of the reports.
"This probably was not a meteorite," he stated in his
official summary. "We cannot say for sure just what it was.
We do know that it did not fall to earth or collide with the
earth.
"Its trajectory was curved. Imagine a jet or a spaceship
suddenly going out of control and plunging down directly
toward earth. Then—as if control was regained suddenly—
the object or objects suddenly veered away from the earth,
only moments before collision point, and went out over the
Gulf of Mexico. But I think it did not fall into the sea. It
could have gone upward.
"A meteorite would hardly do such a thing."
These peculiar "meteors" and green fireballs have been
turning up in increasing numbers for the past fifteen years.
They usually look like the astronomer's concept of meteors
and comets, with a long tail dangling behind, but their
maneuvers and the many physical effects accompanying
their passage rule out a simple natural explanation. They
are far more numerous than the intriguing flying saucer-
type reports of metallic circular objects. In fact, the reports
of mysterious lights and unlikely meteors form the major
body of our neglected "soft" sightings. Furthermore, they
pop up year after year in the same isolated, thinly
populated areas. Natural meteors could hardly be so
selective. And meteors don't change direction or angle of
descent.
The object seen and photographed over the Northeast in
April, 1966 had a long corkscrewlike tail. This is a
commonly reported feature. There are innumerable
historical references to this same identical phenomenon. A
member of the North Jersey Highland Historical Society
recently came across an interesting meteor report pub-
lished in The Journal of Thomas Hughes, the daily diary

137
of a British officer who served with General Burgoyne
during the Revolutionary War. On page 76 he stated:
"November 21, 1779. A strange meteor was seen in the
south, just as the sun went down. It appear'd like a ball of
fire and left a long trail of light—something like the
turnings of a corkscrew—visible for near an hour."
A meteor visible for "near an hour"!
Our nonconforming "meteors" appear repeatedly in
places like Nebraska, Michigan, Canada, New Mexico,
and Arizona. Professor C. A. Chant of the University of
Toronto made a study of a train of meteors that roared
across Canada on the night of Sunday, February 9, 1913.
Unlike natural meteors, the fiery red objects traveled
slowly across the sky in a straight horizontal line. They
glided majestically out of the northwest and soared away to
the southeast.
"Other bodies were seen coming from the northwest,"
the professor wrote, "emerging from precisely the same
place as the first one. Onward they moved at the same
deliberate pace. In twos or threes or fours, with tails
streaming behind them they came.... They traversed the
same path and headed for the same point in the
southeastern sky...."
Very odd meteors, indeed!
The year 1913 was just one of the recently rediscovered
UFO flap years, with all kinds of strange objects being
reported in the sky.
The late Morris K. Jessup, a professional astrophysicist,
was especially interested in the fireball-comet-meteor
reports and studied them extensively. In his book, The
UFO Annual (1956), he described many of the meteor
reports of 1955 and had this to say:

We are having an influx of fireballs, and these have had an

unusual amount of attention because of their number,
brilliance, and the Kelly-green color of some of them. There
does, indeed, seem to be something queer about them.... For
the record, it might be stated that the green fireball flurry did
not originate in the United States, but apparently in Sweden
[1946]. This was a few years ago and essentially before the
greatest intensity of interest in UFO or saucers. They were then
thought to be Russian rockets or missiles; and to this day we
cannot prove that they were not Russian. In the United States
the green fireballs made their debut in New Mexico and were
thought to be associated with atomic energy experiments.

138
 Now, however, they have spread over much of North America
and, frankly, we don't know what they are nor why, nor from
where.

Odd "Meteor" Patterns

Toward sunset on the evening of Wednesday, April 18,

1962, a giant reddish object appeared over the northern
part of New York State, apparently moving down from
Canada in a south-westerly direction. Air Force radar
locked onto the object and carefully followed it across a
dozen states as it sped westward. Then, at 7:30 P.M., a
brilliant flash followed by deep rumbles and earth tremors
occurred in southwestern Nevada. Shortly afterward an
unidentified circular object landed near a power station
outside of Eureka, Nevada, and the lights went out for
thirty minutes.
Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Rolph of the North
American Air Defense Command Center at Colorado
Springs, Colorado, faced a throng of excited newsmen that
night. He admitted that NORAD's radar had tracked the
object all the way across the United States and added, "A
meteor can't be tracked on radar—but this thing was!"
What are these "things," and why don't we know more
about them? The real problem lies in the scientific attitude.
Because the objects do resemble meteors in appearance,
astronomers have automatically dismissed them as such
and apparently have never made a concerted effort to study
these piles of reports filled with embarrassing contradic-
tions. If the "thing" passes over at a high altitude, glows,
and hauls a tail, then it must be a meteor, according to their
reasoning.
Biologist Ivan T. Sanderson went through the trouble of
collecting and analyzing the many reports of another
"meteor" in 1965. Late on the afternoon of December 9
(Thursday) of that year, sirens screamed and lines of police
cars, jeeps, and army trucks converged on a thickly
forested area about thirty miles south of Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania. Cordons were set up as teams of men from
an unidentified military unit plunged into the woods with
Geiger counters and other instruments.
"We don't know what we have here," an army
spokesman told the gathering cluster of reporters and
curiosity seekers. "But it looks as if there's an unidentified

139
flying object in these woods."
That was the first, last, and only official statement
issued on the luminous blob which had sailed silently over
several states, executed a deft 25-degree turn over Ohio,
and then plummeted or crashed into a forest outside of
Pittsburgh. It first appeared over Michigan and was
apparently high enough to be seen in Indiana, then it
scooted across Lake Erie, passing over the tip of Ontario,
Canada, and seemed to alter its course in the Ohio sector,
shifting toward Pittsburgh. Sanderson estimated that it
was traveling about 1,425 miles an hour and that it was less
than 50 miles high. The slowest speed ever recorded for a
genuine meteor was 27,000 miles an hour.
Most of the numerous witnesses scattered in the flight
path of this one described it as a brilliant orange sphere.
Not only do our "meteors" refuse to obey the laws and
regulations set down for them by our learned astronomers,
but they also have an unnerving habit of traveling in
formations with a military-like precision.
Northern Texas had its first big UFO flap in 1897, and
the darned things have been hanging around the Panhan-
dle State ever since. During the summer of 1951, the
citizens of Lubbock, Texas, were enthralled by the aerial
lights which were visiting their city night after night. These
glowing somethings flew in perfect V formations and were
photographed by a young man named Carl Hart on
Saturday, August 25, 1951. His series of pictures were
widely published and became known as the Lubbock
lights. Although the Air Force took the sightings, and the
pictures, very seriously at the time, they later attempted to
explain them away as merely being the reflection of the city
lights on the bellies of birds flying overhead. Think about
this one for a minute. Mr. Hart's little Kodak must have
had a most remarkable lens, for it is unlikely that such
minor "reflections" would pick up on film at all.

The Great Circle Route

The state of Nebraska has a long and complicated

history of UFO sightings. During the heavy but little-
publicized flap of July-August, 1966, some very definite
patterns emerged. On Tuesday, July 5, 1966, at 10 P.M.
a group of four witnesses reportedly viewed "a large
octagon-shaped object with colored lights.... The lights

140
dimmed and brightened, and the object swooped twice
over a field and then went back into the air." This took
place about 3 miles northwest of Norfolk, Nebraska.
On the ninth and tenth of July, there were sightings in
North and South Dakota, the states north of Nebraska.
On July 11 there were several sightings in Iowa, the state
bordering Nebraska on the east. The South Dakota
sightings took place in the southwest corner of the state,
close to the northwest corner of the Nebraskan border. If
we had been able to collect this data fast enough, we could
have successfully predicted that a flap was due in
Nebraska, and statistically the odds were that it would take
place on a Wednesday night at 10 P.M.
Shortly after 10 P.M. on Wednesday, July 13, 1966, a
blazing object hurtled across the skies, heading southward
from the northwest. About 10:10 P . M . scores of people in
Muny Park, Cozad, Nebraska, saw "a very bright object
with multicolored smaller bright stars trailing it."
If it had remained on that course, it would have angled
straight across Kansas, and all of the later Kansan reports
would have described a northwest to southeast course.
However, a flood of reports from Kansas, including
sightings by policemen, attorneys, and many others,
described the "meteor" as passing from northwest to
northeast. This meant it had to be skirting the Nebraska-
Kansas border.
There was a particularly heavy concentration of reports
from central Nebraska from small communities such as
Scotia, Ord, Burwell, Comstock, Arcadia, and North
Loup. All of these were consistent, describing the object as
passing from southwest to southeast. Another cluster of
sightings was reported from the Omaha area on the eastern
tip of the state. These all stated that the object was going
from southwest to southeast.
A larger picture can be drawn from this. The "meteor"
came from the northwest, perhaps from Wyoming or
South Dakota; it then executed a turn somewhere south of
Cozad, bringing it over Kearney, Nebraska, and moved
along the Nebraska-Kansas border toward Missouri-Iowa.
Then it turned again and headed northward toward
Illinois.
The sheriff of Warren County, Illinois, was sitting in
front of the police station in Monmouth, Illinois, that night
when he observed a fiery orange ball arcing across the sky
toward the northeast. A few minutes later he received an
141
 excited phone call from a Galesburg, Illinois, woman who
said she and her three children had been driving along the
U.S. 34 bypass when they saw a green light seemingly
skirting the treetops. A white-colored fire seemed to burst
from it, she reported, and it appeared to dive toward the
ground in the northeast. Thinking that a small plane might
have crashed, she stopped at the nearest farmhouse and
called the sheriff. He rushed to Monmouth Park, the area
of the sighting, but found nothing. Eight other persons in
the region called radio stations and newspapers to report
similar sightings. All agreed that the object was green with
a red ring around it and trailed a short red tail. One other
person besides the sheriff reported seeing an orange object.
Everyone reported that it first appeared in the southwest
and traveled northeast.
What lies to the northeast of Illinois? Michigan, of
course.
A few minutes after 11 P.M. Michigan time (10 P.M.
Nebraska time), Jack Westbrook and Charles Frye of
Willis, Michigan, were walking across Rawsonville Road
when Mr. Frye exclaimed, "Look at that!"
Both men saw what appeared to be a silver disk with one
red and one white light on it. They estimated that it was no
more than 1,000 feet high. The object moved forward
swiftly, stopped, seemed to reverse itself, circled around,
moved up and down, and finally shot out of sight. They
said they watched it for about seven minutes and heard no
sound.
"This is not a swampy area," the Ypsilanti, Michigan,
Press noted when it recounted the sighting on July 15.
"And the only possibility of reflection would be from the
microwave relay tower which has three red lights, but the
object went over the top of it when it left."
Were all the Nebraska, Illinois, and Michigan sightings
of completely different objects independent of one
another? This remains a possibility, of course, but once
more we are confronted with surprising and unlikely
coincidences involving correlations of time and geographi-
cal movement. It is highly possible that a UFO—or a group
of UFOs—passed from Wyoming, crossed Nebraska, and
then turned northward into Illinois and Michigan.
Charles Tougas of the Meteorite Recovery Project at
Lincoln, Nebraska, was the man the press turned to for the
answer. He said that special cameras had recorded the
event, and he estimated that the "meteor" had appeared

142
 somewhere near McCook, Nebraska, and had plummeted
to earth somewhere outside of Phillipsburg, Kansas, a few
miles to the southeast. A search for it was launched at
Phillipsburg, but the object was never found. If the
"meteor" had enjoyed such a very brief life-span and had
traveled such a very short distance in the western part of
the state, it is very unlikely that it would have been so
clearly seen in the Omaha sector hundreds of miles
eastward and that all of the witnesses would have described
it as moving to the southeast. And it certainly would not
have turned up in Illinois—still farther to the northeast.
The "meteor" explanation simply does not work in this
case. There are too many ifs and too many unnatural
coincidences.
All of the descriptions were uniform. A newsman in
Brewster, Nebraska, described it as being "the size of a
basketball; the white fore end changed colors, going from
blue to green, trailing a long tail." A young witness on a
ranch near Scotia said it was "round like a basketball, with
a brilliant band of orange light encircling it." He said it
crossed the southern skies and was visible for about half a
minute. Witnesses in York, Nebraska, said it was green,
while one report from near Pleasanton, Nebraska,
described it as being a "bright, whitish-yellow light."
Brilliant white lights were mentioned in a scattering of
reports, but the overall consensus was that it was green or
"blue-green with a red band around it." Viewers in Kansas
thought it was green.
Only two groups of witnesses reported hearing any
sound. Both were located in the central Nebraskan cluster.
People driving near Arcadia said they saw "a flashing red
light" and heard "more than one explosion." George
Bremer of Ord reported the same thing. (Viewers of that
1913 "meteor" chain in Canada said that the objects
produced a heavy rumbling sound, indicating that they
were low enough in the atmosphere to displace the air as
they passed.)
One week prior to the Nebraska flap, a "green object
with a long white tail" appeared over Muskegon,
Michigan, traveling a horizontal path from east to west. It
was seen by police officers and other reliable witnesses. The
date was Wednesday, July 6, 1966. The time, 11 P.M.
At 10 P.M.., Monday, July 11, a round blue object was
observed over Lake Erie by witnesses in Ashtabula, Ohio,
facing in the direction of Michigan. Some noted that it
143
seemed to have a long tail. One person described it as "a
round ball of bright blue light with an outer rim of pale
gold." It appeared to descend westward.
When we drew a great circle on a map of the United
States, looping through Nebraska and curving up through
Monmouth-Galesburg, Illinois, to Michigan, we found
that the other end of the curve cut across the northeastern
part of Wyoming. A quick review of our clippings and
general report data revealed that that very section of
Wyoming had a UFO flap a few days before the Nebraskan
"meteor" arrived. Extensive UFO activity was also
reported farther to the northwest around the Glacier
National Park in Montana that month. (Great Falls,
Montana, has been the site of many UFO spectaculars for
the past twenty years.) Brilliant, fast-moving lights
appeared in Glacier National Park nightly on precise
schedules, passing from the northwest to the southeast.
This course would have carried them to the Wyoming flap
area and, if extended along a perfect curve, would have
continued to Nebraska to the McCook-Cozad sector.
So the plot thickens once again. Our Nebraska "meteor"
of July 13 was merely part of an overall flap involving
several states, and all of the sightings fitted neatly into a
near-perfect circle beginning in northwestern Montana,
looping through the Central States, and curving upward
through Illinois and Michigan and back into Ontario,
Canada, with a bit of overlapping into Ohio, Pennsylvania,
and the western tip of New York State—all active flap
areas. If we continue the same circle into Canada, we find
that the uppermost part of it would rest in the densely
forested and sparsely populated regions of northern
Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Both of these provinces had
long UFO flaps in 1967-68.
Thousands of sightings can be fitted into the "great
circle route," and often the dates are staggered so that it
does appear that the phenomenon moves systematically
from point to point along the route. We were, therefore,
not surprised to receive clippings from Canada concentrat-
ed along the same circle. For example, on Wednesday,
August 7, 1968, Harold Howery, a businessman from
Hanna, British Columbia, was driving west from the
village of Revelstoke late at night when a circular object
suddenly descended about 60 feet in front of his car,
swaying from side to side like a pendulum. It was one large
light, he said, of a light-blue shade. There was no noise, and
144
his car didn't stall. The object hovered for a few moments
and then flew off southward. Southward from Revelstoke
would have taken it into the area of the Glacier National
Park in Montana.

Circles and Straight Lines

The brilliant French researcher Aime Michel made a

careful study of the French sightings of the 1950's and
discovered that the objects often pursued a straight course
across France. Sighting reports could be aligned along
these routes, and in some cases, the speeds of the objects
could be calculated, and other data could be extracted.
This finding sent ufologists all over the world scurrying to
their maps, and many attempts were made to try to figure
out a worldwide route. But eventually it was learned that
the straight-line theory was limited and unworkable on a
worldwide scale.
France is a small country compared to the United
States, and so the distances traveled are much shorter. I
made many efforts to work out similar straight-line routes
and discovered that UFO sightings within a given area
during a specific period of time were confined to sectors
with a radius of about 200 miles. The objects sometimes do
follow a straight course within these sectors, but they
vanish (or no reports are received) outside of the 200-mile
boundary.
At first I termed these sectors base areas, but this was
misunderstood by many UFO enthusiasts, and soon after
my first article on UFO base areas appeared, teen-agers
everywhere were out scouring the countryside looking for
underground UFO hangars. So I adopted the term
"windows" as a good substitute.
Every state in the United States has from two to ten
"windows." These are areas where UFOs appear repeated-
ly year after year. The objects will appear in these places
and pursue courses throughout the 200-mile limitation.
These window areas seem to form larger circles of
activities. The great circle from Canada (not to be confused
with the traditional geographic Great Circle) in the
northwest through the Central States and back into
northeast Canada is a major window. Hundreds of smaller
windows lie inside that circle. Another major window is
centered in the Gulf of Mexico and encompasses much of
145
Mexico, Texas, and the Southwest.
Many windows center directly over areas of magnetic
deviation such as Kearney, Nebraska; Wanaque, New
Jersey; Ravenna, Ohio. In the 1950's, teams from the
national Geological Survey Office quietly flew specially
equipped planes over most of the United States and
mapped all of the magnetic faults in the country. You can
obtain a magnetic map of your locale for about fifty cents
by writing to the Office of the Geological Survey,
Washington, D.C. 20242. If you have been collecting UFO
reports in your home state, you will probably find that
many of those reports are concentrated in areas where
magnetic faults or deviations exist.
UFOs seem to congregate above the highest available
hills in these window areas. They become visible in these
centers and then radiate outward, traveling sometimes
100-200 miles before disappearing again.
So if you are eager to see a genuine example of our
phenomenon, pick a good Wednesday or Saturday
evening, visit the highest ground in the area closest to you
which has a magnetic fault, and watch the sky around 10
P.M. The best times are the last two weeks in March and the
first two weeks in April, all of July-August, the last two
weeks in October, and the first weeks in November and
December.

Explanations and Contradictions

After having reached a series of conclusions and

theories in 1966-67, I was naturally obliged to test them
out and determine their validity. So a good part of my
research in 1968 was devoted to such experimentation.
There was no national UFO furor in 1968. In fact, public
interest in the subject declined sharply.
The decline of UFO publicity in 1968 did not mark a
decline in sighting reports, however. On the night of March
3-4, 1968, thousands of people in more than twenty states
watched weird lights in the sky from 8 P.M. to 4 A.M. One
group of men working on the Ohio River near Ravens-
wood, West Virginia, reported to me that they watched a
series of large, luminous globes circle and go through the
familiar falling-leaf motions for two hours that morning
between 2 and 4 A.M. People driving north on the New
Jersey Turnpike from Washington to New York told me
146
that they observed a formation of unusual aerial lights
continuously for more than an hour. Innumerable other
sightings on that date trickled in from all over the country
for months afterward.
The Colorado University report devotes several pages
to this minor March flap. Project Blue Book received a
total of seventy-eight reports for that night and explained
them as being the disintegration of a Soviet satellite—
Zond IV—reentering the atmosphere. Dr. William K.
Hartman of Colorado University noted that this alleged
rocket reentry occurred in an area inhabited by 23,000,000
people, so those seventy-eight reports represented a
microscopic percentage of the total number of probable
observers. Only thirty of those reports were deemed
detailed enough for study and analysis, meaning, no doubt,
that they occurred somewhere around the same time as the
rocket reentry. Such reentries are usually visible for no
more than five minutes. The objects quickly burn out in the
atmosphere, a process which most often requires less than
two minutes. This particular reentry took place at
approximately 9:45 P.M. on Sunday, March 3, 1968, so it
could not possibly explain the numerous sightings made
before and after 9:45—9:50 P.M.
Dr. Hartman thus attempted to explain thousands of
sightings by analyzing thirty which conformed to the
rocket reentry thesis.
This same explanation has now been used by the Air
Force for several other flaps, including the worldwide flaps
of the summer of 1967. In July, 1968, Walter Sullivan, the
New York Times science editor, published a review of the
March third sightings, using the rocket explanation and
quoting the National Investigation Committees on Aerial
Phenomena as claiming that there had been a sharp decline
in UFO reports and no significant flaps for two years.
Apparently NICAP had not heard of the massive waves in
Pennsylvania, Georgia, and New York State in the fall of
1967.
All hell broke loose in South America again in 1968,
with innumerable landings, low-level sightings over major
cities, and a wide variety of contacts. There was so much
UFO news in June, 1968, that some newspapers in
Argentina had to relegate the story of Senator Robert
Kennedy's tragic murder to the inside pages, their front
pages being devoted to flying saucers.
Spain also experienced a monumental UFO wave
147
throughout the summer of 1968. Hundreds of people
reportedly saw strange formations of flying objects over
Malaga, Madrid, and the Balearic Islands. On September
8, 1968, a Spanish Air Force jet pursued a glowing
pyramid-shaped thing over Madrid for sixty-five minutes,
finally losing it at 50,000 feet. It was tracked on radar and
photographed.
On the night of Sunday, September 15, another one of
our strange "meteors" appeared over the New England
States, following the usual northwest to southeast course
down from Canada. That week an enormous new flap
erupted in the busy Ohio-West Virginia sector. Mrs. Mary
Hyre, the Associated Press stringer in Point Pleasant, was
inundated with hundreds of phone calls and sighting
reports. She wrote only one newspaper article on the flap.
In a telephone conversation that fall, she told me, "I've
discovered that the less I write about these things now, the
more people tell me what they've seen. Most of them don't
want any publicity at all, and if they think I'm going to
write up their story, they shy away from telling it."
In Nova Scotia, four boys reported seeing a black
circular object dive out of the sky and disappear into the
waters of the Cornwallis River dike on the afternoon of
September 15. A professor from the National Research
Council's meteorite committee interviewed them, and the
story appeared in the Halifax, Nova Scotia, Chronicle-
Herald on September 18. The boys said the object first
hovered in the air, "oscillating like a spinning top," before
it dipped down into the water. They estimated it was about
15 feet across and 6 feet high. It made no noise, and the
water didn't even splash when it submerged.
Elsewhere in Canada, a wave of low-level sightings,
landings, and creature appearances took place in the
villages around Montreal, Quebec, that week. Canadian
researcher Gene Duplantier collected the many reports and
prepared a comprehensive summary for his magazine,
Saucers, Space and Science. Other close sightings occurred
on September 13, 16, and 17 in assorted areas in the
province of Ontario.
On Wednesday, November 20, 1968, another train of
strange lights traversed the British Isles, going from north-
northwest to south-southeast. These were formations of
multicolored objects with short tails in their wakes. They
appeared at approximately 7 P.M. and were seen that night
in northwestern Europe as well. One of the many witnesses,

148
Commander V. J. Chown of Woodford, Essex, said the
lights appeared "to be assembled as if around an invisible
tube, rather like the old Graf Zeppelin in shape." He was
impressed by the way the objects remained in rigid
formation "just like warships." The Royal Observatory at
Hurstmonceux watched the lights and identified them as
the Russian rocket Cosmos 253 reentering the atmosphere.
Dr. Bernard Finch checked with the Russian embassy in
London, and they flatly denied this.

The January Flap

Early in the fall of 1968, I issued a cautious prediction to

ufologists around the country, alerting them to the
possibility of a new wave of sightings early in January,
1969. I had run a thorough study of the flaps of January,
1966 and 1967, and had found that January was a neglected
flap month. Most researchers concentrated on the months
of March-April and July-August. Few were aware of the
many other cycles and time patterns involved in the
phenomenon.
The January cycle can be traced as far back as 1934,
when there was a major wave in Scandinavia. The
neglected November-December cycle began in 1896 and
was repeated in 1909.

Type I Sightings-January, 1967

(By states)

Sunday, January 1: No data

Monday, January 2: Tennessee
Tuesday, January 3: California*
Wednesday, January 4: No data
Thursday, January 5: England; Colorado; Oklahoma
Friday, January 6: West Virginia; Vermont
Saturday, January 7: No data
Sunday, January 8: England; Connecticut
Monday, January 9: California; Colorado; Kentucky;
Michigan*
Tuesday, January 10: North Carolina; Kentucky
Wednesday, January 11: Michigan; Mississippi; Missouri;
*Small flap w i t h several sightings.
**Large flap w i t h many reports throughout the state.
+Power failure in area d u r i n g sighting.

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 Wisconsin
Thursday, January 12: Colorado; Kansas; Michigan;
Minnesota; Missouri
Friday, January 13: Kansas*; Missouri
Saturday, January 14: Australia; Arkansas; Indiana;
Pennsylvania
Sunday, January 15: Connecticut; Kentucky*; Mississippi
Monday, January 16: Florida; Kentucky**; Kansas*;
Oklahoma; Michigan**; Mississippi**; Iowa; North
Carolina**; West Virginia
Tuesday, January 17: California; Connecticut; Idaho*;
Indiana*; Kansas; Missouri; Nebraska; Oklahoma
Wednesday, January 18: California; Indiana; Kansas;
Kentucky; Michigan; Pennsylvania**; Ontario, Canada
Thursday, January 19: Canada**; Illinois; Mississippi;
West Virginia; Washington
Friday, January 20: Idaho**; Colorado; Illinois; Missouri;
Pennsylvania; West Virginia
Saturday, January 21: California; Kansas*; Michigan;
Texas
Sunday, January 22: California; Hawaii
Monday, January 23: North Carolina**; Pennsylvania
Tuesday, January 24: Indiana; Missouri; Oregon; Wash-
ington; West Virginia
Wednesday, January 25: Connecticut; Kentucky; New
York
Thursday, January 26: California
Friday, January 27: Canada; Arizona; Iowa
Saturday, January 28: Kentucky; Missouri; Ohio
Sunday, January 29: Kentucky
Monday, January 30: England; Canada; Alabama;
Connecticut**; Missouri; New Jersey; Oklahoma;
Pennsylvania
Tuesday, January 31: New Hampshire

Sightings occurred simultaneously in several different

widely separated states on the same dates, and no known
natural phenomena (meteors and the like) could be applied
as a possible explanation. A rocket test in Florida at 4:30
A.M. on the morning of January 16 accounted for a very
small percentage of reports of sightings made at that time.
My prediction for 1969 was quite specific, for I expected
the flap to begin in the Midwest along the perimeter of the
great circle and radiate outward into the traditional flap
areas of Ohio, Canada, etc. I also calculated that the flap

150
would be preceded or followed by one or more "meteors"
in the window areas.
On Tuesday, January 2, 1969, hovering globes of light
were seen in three Missouri cities—Joplin, Webb City, and
Carterville. These were the usual nonstars performing
circular and falling-leaf maneuvers. Three days later, on
January 5, a wave of sightings of multicolored luminous
objects occurred around Jacksonville, Florida, beginning
about 9 P.M. They were seen by hundreds of people in
several small towns, all of whom found themselves sitting
in the dark when a scries of power failures struck at 9:30
P.M.
At 8:30 P.M. on Tuesday, January 9, a single bright light
was observed following the Mississippi River along the
border between Missouri and Iowa. The object reportedly
paced an automobile from an estimated altitude of 400
feet. It sped ahead, stopped, hovered, and changed to an
amber color before darting off.
A deputy sheriff in Green County, Missouri, reported
seeing a bright, starlike object at 9:30 P.M. on Sunday,
January 12. Other witnesses said the object hovered,
moved in circles, and then hovered again.
The beginning of the January, 1967, wave also occurred
in this region along the Mississippi, although the major
sightings of that period were concentrated farther south
around Cairo, Illinois, where the Mississippi links up with
the Ohio River.
During the first two weeks in January, 1969, additional
reports started to trickle in from Ohio. Unusual low-flying
objects were sighted around Middletown, Ohio, and
fireballs were seen by hundreds in the Cleveland area as
they seemed to plunge into Lake Erie.
Back in Florida, residents of Jacksonville Beach were
puzzled by "mystery clouds" which emitted sounds "like
someone walking on pebbles." Police Chief James Alford
heard it and ordered Captain Harold Bryan to follow the
"cloud." He pursued it to the edge of the Atlantic, where it
slowly dissolved into nothingness.
Strange nonstars were also bobbing around the skies of
northern New Jersey again. On Wednesday, January 15, a
professional man there was awakened by an odd
mechanical beeping sound outside his bedroom window.
No vehicles, police cars, or UFOs were around. But
simultaneously his wife, who was attending a civic meeting
some miles away, thought she saw an unusual aerial light in

151
the sky.
Random reports slowly built up in Ohio and Illinois.
Then, on Sunday, January 26, a "brilliant flash of light"
appeared in Wisconsin, following the predicted northwest
to southeast course from Canada into Illinois and Iowa. A
policeman in Appleton, Wisconsin, said he sighted an
orange fireball trailing a plume of blue flame at 12:55 A.M.
It seemed to pass directly overhead, he stated. A two-second
power failure accompanied the sightings, and witnesses
reported "balls of fire dripping from high tension wires."
Seven minutes later pilots at Chicago's O'Hare Airport
observed "a smoking orange fireball." One man said he saw
two brilliant flashes in succession. Although it took this
object seven minutes to travel the 200 miles or so from
Appleton, Wisconsin, to Chicago, Illinois, authorities said
it was either a meteor or space debris. Take your pick.
Man-made satellites travel from west to east (to take
advantage of the earth's rotation), not from north to south.

Sightings—January, 1969

Here are a few of the other January, 1969, sightings that

have been received. I am listing only the geographical
location, time(s) of sightings, and sources. All these
newspaper accounts named witnesses. Some of these
objects were viewed by whole communities.
Friday, January 3: Togo, Minneosta; 8 P.M.; Togo,
Minnesota, Cook News Herald (January 9, 1969).
Monday, January 6: Auburndale, Florida; 6:30 A.M.; Winter
Haven, Florida, News-Chief (January 7, 1969).
Greenwood, South Carolina; 7 P.M.; Greenwood, South
Carolina, Index-Journal (January 7, 1969).
Barnwell, South Carolina; no time listed; Barnwell, South
Carolina, People-Sentinel (January 15, 1969).
Portage-la-Prairie, Manitoba, Canada; 8-10 P.M.; Portage,
Manitoba, Leader (January 9, 1969).
Tuesday, January 7: Barnwell, South Carolina; 7 P.M.;
repeat of previous night; Barnwell, South Carolina,
People-Sentinel (January 15, 1969).
Thursday, January 9: Keokuk, Iowa; 8:30 P.M.; Keokuk,
Iowa, Gate City (January 11, 1969).
Bowling Green, Ohio; 8:30-9:30 P.M., Bowling Green, Ohio,
Daily Sentinel-Tribune (January 11, 1969).
Barrington, Cary, Algonquin, and Fox River Grove,
Illinois; many witnesses viewed reddish objects through-
152
 out the evening; Chicago, Illinois, Tribune (January
10, 1969).
Saturday, January 11: phoenix, Arizona; 10 P.M.; Phoenix,
Arizona, Republic (January 13, 1969).
Monday, January 13: Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan;
various witnesses saw object bearing red and green lights
from 10:45 to 1:30 A.M.; Sault Sainte Marie, Michi-
gan, Evening News (January 14, 1969).
Thursday, January 16; Coos Bay, Oregon; 6:45 P.M.; COOS
Bay, Oregon, World (January 18, 1969).
Portland, Oregon; 7 P.M..; green object traveling from
northwest to southeast; Portland, Oregon, The Oregoni-
an (January 18, 1969).
Friday, January 17: Jerseyville, Illinois; 12 noon; daylight
sighting of circular object; Jersey County Democrat-
News (January 23, 1969).
Saturday, January 18: Charleston, South Carolina; 7:15
P.M.; Charleston, South Carolina, Evening Post (Janu-
ary 20, 1969).
Monday, January 20: Columbia, Mississippi; 8-8:30 P.M.
Columbia, Mississippi, Columbian Progress (January
23, 1969).

On the evening of Thursday, February 6, a nauseating

unexplained fog crept over the south side of Houston,
Texas. Forty-eight hours later a blinding blue-white
fireball thundered across Arizona on a northwest-
southeast course and traveled at least 1,000 miles before
apparently descending "in the almost impassable terrain of
the Sierra Madre." A Chihuahua, Mexico, newspaper
editor, Guillermo Asunsolo, said, "The light was so
brilliant we could see an ant walking on the floor. It was so
bright we had to hide our eyes."
At 1:09 A.M. that morning the good citizens of the little
town of Pueblito de Allende were awakened by a blinding
flash and a tremendous explosion. A shower of fragments
sprayed over a 10-square-mile area, one 40-pound piece
just missing the local post office building.
Scientists from the Smithsonian Institution scurried to
Mexico to recover the fragments, which they identified as
"Type 3 carbonaceous chrondites." Translation: metal
fragments containing carbon, which is suggestive of
organic (living) matter.
Charles Fort examined many of the meteor reports of
the nineteenth century and noted that it seemed odd that
these things had a habit of appearing repeatedly in the
153
 same areas. He also questioned the validity of the theory
that these falling rocks and assorted debris were from outer
space. Our astronauts have seen very few things in space
which could be classified as rocks or meteors. Early fears
that such debris might constitute a serious hazard in space
have proven to be groundless. Yet there are quite literally
thousands of meteor falls annually, and all kinds of junk
have been falling from the sky since ancient times. Not just
chunks of rock and metal, but also huge blocks of ice, stone
pillars, vast quantities of animal and vegetable matter
(including real blood and raw meat). Where is all this
garbage really coming from?
There are many well-investigated cases in which rocks
and pebbles have actually materialized in rooms and fallen
to the floor in great quantities. We can't explain these
either, but we must seriously consider the possibility that
all—or most—of the debris plummeting out of our skies
"materializes" in somewhat the same way. Unidentified
falling objects pose as many problems as unidentified
flying objects. Perhaps the two phenomena are related in
some unfathomable way.
There is something above us. This something has always
been there, following the same prescribed courses year
after year, adhering to the same timetable for at least a
century. To claim that this something is from Mars,
Ganymede, or Tau Ceti is as absurd as to claim that
ornately carved stone pillars falling into fields in France
are debris from the asteroid belt.
We have been so preoccupied with trying to understand
and cope with our own immediate environment that we
have never really made an effort to come to grips with the
greater mysteries that lie on the doorstep of our
conventional sciences. A thing appears in the sky glowing
and dragging a fiery tail. It shows up at a predictable time
in a predictable place, follows a predictable course,
executes a deft turn, is picked up on radar, photographed,
seen by thousands or even millions of people, then it
descends, and automobiles stall and great power stations
creak to a halt. But the explanation goes that it looked like
a meteor, so it must have been one.
What is a meteor anyway?
For our answers we have turned to the same group of
experts who were quarreling among themselves over the
consistency of the moon's surface until the moment our
first successful probe landed.

154
9. The Physical Non-Evidence

The amusing little mystery of flying saucers slowly

evolves into a complicated series of coincidences and
paradoxes as we plunge deeper and deeper into the data,
excluding nothing, and considering everything as objec-
tively as possible.
Our skies have been filled with "Trojan horses"
throughout history, and like the original Trojan horse,
they seem to conceal hostile intent. Several hard facts are
now apparent: The objects have always chosen to operate
in a clandestine manner, furtively choosing the hours of
darkness for their enigmatic activities over thinly populat-
ed areas, where the possibility of being detected is slight.
Perhaps they choose to remain aloof, or perhaps they are
involved in long-range preparations for an overt take-over
of our planet at some point in the future. This hostility
theory is further supported by the fact that the objects
choose, most often, to appear in forms which we can
readily accept and explain to our own satisfaction—
ranging from dirigibles to meteors and conventional-
appearing airplanes. We (the ufologists) have really only
paid attention to the eccentrics: the objects of unusual
configurations. They undoubtedly constitute a minority,
and probably a deceptive minority, of all the paraphysical
objects flitting about in our atmosphere. In other words,
flying saucers are not at all what we have hoped they were.
They are a part of something else.
I call that something else Operation Trojan Horse.
Those students of UFOs who have made only a
superficial study of the historical data have concluded that
when ancient peoples encountered flying saucers or
"extraterrestrial visitants," they assumed that the phenom-
ena were of religious origin. However, when you really
dig into the early literature, it becomes clear that the
ultraterrestrials deliberately conveyed this impression in
much the same way that the mystery inventor tried to
create an acceptable frame of reference for the 1896—97
flap.
The phenomenon is constantly reaching down to us,
creating frames of reference which we can understand and
155
accept. Then, whenever we see something unusual in the
sky. we accept it within that frame of reference and call it a
meteor, an airplane, an angel, or a visitor from outer space.
The first step to understanding UFOs is to discard all
frames of reference and try to view the phenomenon as a
whole.
Our earliest religious and occult records fully describe
and define Operation Trojan Horse. We have been told
throughout history that ultraterrestrials, or superior
humanlike nonhumans, have been "assigned" to walk
among us. In the Bible, for example, the prophet Zechariah
states that he was visited by angels on May 24 (circa 520
B.C.) and that, "I saw by night, and behold a man riding
upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees that
were in the bottom: and behind him there were red horses,
speckled and white.
"Then I said. O my lord, what are these? And the angel
that talked with me said unto me, I will shew thee what
these be.
"And the man that stood among the myrtle trees
answered and said, These are they whom the Lord hath
sent to walk to and fro through the earth." (Zechariah
1:7-11)
Further on, Zechariah describes how he saw a cylinder-
shaped object in the sky, and the "angel" informed him,
" This is the curse that goeth forth over the face of the whole
earth." (Zechariah V:l-4) The "angel" continued by
describing how the objects literally spy upon every human
being.
Until 1848, the religious frame of reference was
constantly used by the phenomenon. But as man's
technology improved and many of our old beliefs were
discarded, the phenomenon was obliged to update its
manifestations and establish new frames of reference. The
phantom armies and angels so frequently reported in the
past were replaced by transmogrifications which appeared
to match man's own technological achievements. If huge,
multiengined airplanes of the 1934 Scandinavian type
had appeared over San Francisco in 1896, they would have
created a far greater stir than the clumsy dirigibles which
were used in that flap. By 1909, man had learned to build
and fly crude machines, so the new transmogrifications of
Operation Trojan Horse took the form of biplanes and
carefully flew over the areas where the many "soft" objects
were busily engaged in their mysterious enterprises.
156
 Still later, when the source of Operation Trojan Horse
found it necessary to deploy "eccentrics" over Scandinavia
in 1934, airplanes very carefully flew low over the remote,
thinly populated villages so the people could see them
clearly and have a frame of reference with which they could
explain the many strange lights and searchlights in the sky.
As with the earlier flaps, the true nature of the phenom-
enon was carefully hidden from us.
During World War II, and immediately thereafter, the
world's skies were cluttered with all kinds of man-made
aircraft ranging from helicopters to blimps. While
thousands of UFOs were noticed and reported, many
thousands of others probably were not. Cigar-shaped
objects were assumed to be sub-chasing blimps. Strange
"eccentrics" were regarded as secret weapons being tested.
The cessation of hostilities gave the UFO source a new
headache. When, for some reason, it became necessary to
revisit Scandinavia in 1946, near-hysteria developed. The
objects were thought to be Russian rockets. The world was
jittery, and the Cold War was just taking shape. If the
ghost-rocket transmogrifications were used in other parts
of the world, it was possible that they might even have
precipitated a new war. A new frame of reference was
therefore necessary.
We were now technologically advanced to a point where
some of us, at least, were ready to consider and accept the
possible existence of "a superior intelligence with an
advanced technology." We were a setup for the modern
myth of extraterrestrial visitants.
Beginning in 1947, the great "flying saucer" frame of
reference was carefully built up by a long series of
spectacular incidents and contacts. The whole structure of
these events carefully follows the psychological patterns
inherent in the earlier flaps. We were seeing no more—and
no fewer-anomalous aerial objects in 1947 than had been
seen in 1847. We were simply seeing them in a new way. A
new game was being played with us.
Small groups of believers quickly sprang up, even
though no one bothered to collect and study the hundreds
of UFO reports from June-July, 1947, to search objective-
ly for the hidden patterns. These believers immediately
accepted the extraterrestrial hypothesis, and they spent the
next twenty years advocating the idea. Their research
followed a singular line: They labored to prove the
reliability of witnesses. This meant that if a police officer or
157
pilot observed an unusual object from a great distance, his
report was given precedence over the report of an ordinary
housewife who saw one land in her own backyard. Some of
these cults became obsessed with the search for physical
evidence. But their criteria for evidence was very strict.
Such evidence had to be nonterrestrial. But this was a
vicious circle. If a piece of metal fell from a UFO and
proved to be ordinary aluminum, it was discarded. If it
proved to be made of a puzzling, unidentifiable alloy, it still
proved nothing unless the source could also be proven.
A new game emerged: the artifact or hardware game.
This game is well known in the Irish fairy lore. The
phenomenon has always obliged us by planting false
evidence all over the landscape.
The UFO cultists trapped themselves into a hopeless
situation almost from the outset. If the UFOs actually were
the product of a superior extraterrestrial civilization, then
final proof could only come about in one of two ways:
1. A flying saucer would have to make an error and
crash or be captured. Then we would have absolute proof
that it existed and was from a superior technology. Since
1947, there have been many rumors of such crashes.
Author Frank Scully was told by a contactee type that such
a crash had occurred in the Southwest in 1948, and that the
Air Force had recovered the object, together with some
bodies of tiny humanoids. He published this bit of hearsay,
and it has become a major ufological myth. The Air Force
still receives letters from people asking if it is true that these
bodies are pickled in a bottle somewhere in the AF
archives.
2. The ufonauts must, themselves, come forward with
the final evidence by landing in a public place, in front of
many witnesses, and by entering into direct communica-
tion with the heads of state. There have been many
reported landings, but, as with the landings of 1897, all of
these have taken place in secluded spots with a minimum of
witnesses. The apparent purpose of most of these landings
seems to have been to advance belief in the frame of
reference, not to provide absolute proof that the frame of
reference is authentic.
After twenty years of this game, it does not seem too
likely that such proof will ever be forthcoming. So we must
content ourselves with an examination of the actual
physical evidence which has been produced at UFO sites all
over the world. On the surface, many of these cases seem

158
completely absurd until we search for correlations in other
forgotten files. My own criterion is simple enough: If
similar events occur in different parts of the world and
produce similar details or physical substances, I feel it is
highly unlikely that the witnesses in one event could have
even heard about the others and could have concocted
identical hoaxes. Instead, they were victims of the artifact
game.
We can begin with the puzzle of the anomalous anchors.
The following story is from the pages of the Houston,
Texas, Daily Post (April 28, 1897):

Merkel, Texas, April 26—Some parties returning from

church last night noticed a heavy object dragging along with a
rope attached. They followed it until in crossing the railroad it
caught on a rail. On looking up they saw what they supposed
was the airship. It was not near enough to get an idea of the
dimensions. A light could be seen protruding from several
windows; one bright light in front like the headlight of a
locomotive. After some ten minutes, a man was seen
descending the rope; he came near enough to be plainly seen.
He wore a light-blue sailor suit, was small in size. He stopped
when he discovered parties at the anchor and cut the rope
below him and sailed off in a northeast direction. The anchor is
now on exhibition at the blacksmith shop of Elliott and
Miller and is attracting the attention of hundreds of people.

A small man in a blue sailor suit climbing down a rope

from the sky. Rather silly, isn't it? Sillier still, researchers
have discovered two identical stories in very obscure
historical texts. An ancient Irish manuscript, the Speculum
Regali, gives us this account from A.D. 956:

There happened in the borough of Cloera, one Sunday

while people were at mass, a marvel. In this town there is a
church to the memory of St. Kinarus. It befell that a metal
anchor was dropped from the sky, with a rope attached to it,
and one of the sharp flukes caught in the wooden arch above
the church door. The people rushed out of the church and saw
in the sky a ship with men on board, floating at the end of the
anchor cable, and they saw a man leap overboard and pull
himself down the cable to the anchor as if to unhook it. He
appeared as if he were swimming in water. The folk rushed up
and tried to seize him; but the bishop forbade the people to hold
the man for fear it might kill him. The man was freed and
hurried up the cable to the ship, where the crew cut the rope and

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 the ship rose and sailed away out of sight. But the anchor is in
the church as a testimony to this singular occurrence.

For many years a church in Bristol, England, is said to

have had a very unique grille on its doors; a grille made
from another anchor that allegedly came from the sky.
Around A.D. 1200, during the observance of a feast day, the
anchor came plummeting out of the sky trailing a rope. It
got caught in a mound of stones, according to the story,
and as a mob of churchgoers gathered around to watch, a
"sailor" came down the rope, hand over hand, to free it.
This crowd succeeded in grabbing him and pushed him
back and forth until, according to the Gervase of Tilbury's
account in Otia Imperialia, another rare manuscript, "He
suffocated by the mist of our moist atmosphere and
expired." His unseen comrades overhead wisely cut the
rope and took off. The anchor remained behind, as in the
other stories, and was installed on the church doors.
Researcher Lucius Farish remarked, "Reviewing the
similarities of these reports, one is almost tempted to
speculate that someone merely updated the ancient
accounts. Yet, a citizen of Merkel, Texas, possessing a
copy of the Speculum Regali [or the Otia Imperialia] in
1897 would be fully as fantastic as the reports themselves!"
A farmer fifteen miles north of Sioux City, Iowa,
Robert Hibbard, claimed a distressing experience with an
anchor-dragging UFO early in April, 1897. A dispatch
which appeared in the April fifth edition of the Saginaw,
Michigan, Evening News stated that "Hibbard's reputa-
tion for truth has never been bad, and the general opinion
is that either he 'had 'em' or dreamed his remarkable
experience." The article continues:

On the night in question, he says he was tramping about his

farm in the moonlight... when suddenly a dark body, lighted
on each side, with a row of what looked like incandescent
lamps, loomed up some distance to the south of him at a height
of perhaps a mile from the ground. He watched it intently until
it was directly over his head.
At this point the skipper evidently decided to turn around.
In accomplishing this maneuver the machine sank considera-
bly. Hibbard did not notice a drag rope with a grapnel attached
which dangled from the rear of the car until suddenly, as the
machine rose again from the ground, it hooked itself firmly in
his trousers and shot away again to the south. Had it risen to
any considerable height, the result, Hibbard thinks, would
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 have been disastrous. Either his weight was sufficient to keep it
near terra firma, however, or the operator did not care to
ascend to a higher level.
On the bank of the dry run, where the farmer finally made
his escape, grows a small sapling. Hibbard passed near this
obstruction in his flight, and as a last resort, grabbed it with
both hands. Instantly there was a sound of tearing cloth and the
machine went on with a section of Hibbard's unmentionables,
while Hibbard himself fell precipitately into the run. He related
his experience to several neighbors and despite their grins of
incredulity, firmly maintains the truth of the story.

We have only two choices: We can either dismiss all four

of these stories as being somehow derivative of one another
and pure poppycock; or we can assume that mysterious
airships, all dragging anchors, appeared in 956, 1200, and
1897. There are, in fact, a number of other reports in which
UFOs were said to be dragging something along the
ground. That still doesn't prove that anchors are standard
equipment on some of the objects. If they were using
anchors, what could the purpose have been? Could some of
the early UFOs have been so primitive that the only way
they could hover was by being anchored to the ground?
Would spaceships from another world require anchors?

Physical Evidence

All kinds of junk have fallen out of the sky throughout

recorded history. Ivan T. Sanderson has in his files
extensive lists of documented cases going back to Roman
times. Ridiculous things such as stone pillars and heavy
metal wheels have come crashing out of the blue, and there
are countless cases of ice falls—huge blocks of ice, some
weighing hundreds of pounds, dropping all over this
planet. Charles Fort and others have found reports of ice
falls predating the introduction of man-made aircraft, but
the popular explanation today, when new incidents occur,
is that the ice has fallen from the wings of high-altitude
airplanes.
The flying saucers have been spewing all kinds of trash
all over the landscape. In nearly every instance, these
materials always prove to be ordinary earthly substances
like magnesium, aluminum, chromium, and even plain
old tin. Each of these incidents gives the skeptics new
ammunition.
161
 Here again, I feel that these correlated "negative
factors" build into a definite positive factor. In other
words, the more negative a piece of evidence seems to be,
the more positive it actually is.
We can start with the slag dumped from the sky during
the Maury Island, Washington, "hoax" of 1947. Analysis
of this material showed it to be composed of calcium,
aluminum, silicon, iron, zinc, and other mundane
elements. Heaps of this stuff have turned up since in New
Hampshire, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and many
other places following UFO sightings. It has often been
found on hilltops and deep in trackless forests, places
where it had to be dumped from the air. And it was found
in Sweden in 1946.
When a wildly gyrating metal disk appeared over the
city of Campinas, Brazil, on Tuesday, December 14, 1954,
hundreds of witnesses reported that it dribbled a stream of
"silvery liquid" into the streets. Government scientists
collected some of this stuff, and Dr. Risvaldo Maffei later
announced that it was almost pure tin.
The egg-shaped object which police officer Lonnie
Zamorra said landed outside of Socorro, New Mexico, on
April 24, 1964, left behind a metallike material on some
rocks. It proved to be silicon.
Silicon substances have frequently been found at
touchdown sites. Sometimes it is mixed with aluminum or
other materials to form a purplish liquid. Such liquids have
been found in New York State (Cherry Creek, 1965) and
dozens of other places.
Witnesses in Texas, Maryland, claim to have watched a
shiny disk explode in the air in June, 1965. Pieces of it were
recovered and were examined at the Goddard Space Flight
Center. It proved to be ordinary ferrochromium.
Another exploding UFO, this one at Ubatuba, Brazil, in
1957, left behind particles which were nothing but pure
magnesium. And great quantities of tiny strips of
aluminum, with traces of magnesium and silicon, are now
being found all over the world. Thousands of people in
Chiba, Japan, reported seeing a circular flying object eject
a flood of these shreds above their city on September 7,
1956. Piles of it have been found in West Virginia,
Michigan, and many other places during UFO flaps. It is
frequently found laid out in neatly ordered patterns on the
ground where witnesses have seen UFOs hovering. I spent
a lot of time investigating these cases in 1967. These strips

162
 are almost identical to the chaff dispensed by high-flying
Air Force planes to jam radar, yet they do not seem to be
related to AF operations at all. The UFO chaff is often
found under trees or on porches, in places where it could
not possibly have fallen from the sky directly. Quantities of
it turned up in a burning field outside of Gastonia, North
Carolina, in 1966, simultaneously with low-level UFO
sightings.
Mysterious hollow metal spheres have also been
dropping out of the sky all over the world. Three such
spheres were found on the Australian desert in 1963. They
were about 14 inches in diameter and had a shiny, polished
surface. Australian scientists were baffled by them. On
April 30, 1963, Allen Fairhall, the Minister of Supply,
appeared before the Australian House of Representatives
and told them that all effort to open the spheres had failed.
The objects were allegedly turned over to the U.S. Air
Force, and that was the end of them.
Other metal spheres have dropped out of the sky near
Monterrey, Mexico (February 7, 1967) and Conway,
Arkansas (November, 1967). The Mexican ball was
identified as titanium; the one in Arkansas was stainless
steel. Others have been found in Argentina and Africa.
They do not seem to be rocket parts, nor would it be
possible for a piece of a rocket to go through reentry and
land intact as these things have done.
Smaller colored spheres were found scattered over the
French countryside in 1966-67, as if it had been raining
balls there. Where is all this junk coming from? Why, the
answer is simple: from the same places as the stone pillars
and the blocks of ice from earlier times.
Innumerable cases of contact and landings have been
flushed down the ufological drains because of the
deliberate "negative" factors. Sincere witnesses have
actually been ruined because the amateur UFO investiga-
tors have accused them of being liars or worse.
Consider the case of poor Joe Simonton and his outer*
space pancake. It's a classic of the negative factor.
Simonton, a sixty-year-old chicken farmer outside of
Eagle River, Wisconsin, said he heard a strange sound
outside his farmhouse at 11 A.M. on Tuesday, April 1 8 ,
1961. He looked out of the window and was startled to see a
silvery metallic machine descending in his yard. As he
stepped outside, some kind of hatch slid open in the upper
part of the object and three dark-skinned men became

163
 visible. He estimated that these men were about 5 feet tall
and between twenty-five to thirty years of age. They wore
clinging dark-blue uniforms with turtleneck tops and had
on apparently knitted headgear, such as is worn under
crash helmets. All were clean-shaven, and none of them
spoke during the brief episode which followed.
One of them stepped to the hatch, Simonton said, and
held out a shiny bucketlike affair which had a handle on
either side, indicating that he wanted the farmer to fill it
with water. Simonton took it, filled it from his pump, and
returned it to the silent man. He noticed that the interior of
the craft was black, "like wrought iron," and that one man
was busy at some kind of instrument panel, while the other
was working at what seemed to be a stove. A pile of
pancakes sat nearby. Simonton says he gestured at the
pancakes, and the man with the bucket turned, picked up
four of them, and handed them to him. He then attached
some kind of rope to his belt, and the hatch slid shut. Joe
Simonton stood with his mouth open, four warm pancakes
in his hands, as the object, which had been humming
throughout, began to make a sound like "tires on a wet
pavement" and rose slowly into the air, moving off to the
south.
At about that same time, an insurance agent named
Savino Borgo was driving along Highway 70, about a mile
from Simonton's farm, when he saw what he later
described as a saucer rising diagonally into the air and
flying parallel with the highway.
Eagle River is in a thinly populated section of northern
Wisconsin, just a few miles south of the Michigan border
and surrounded by forests and small lakes. About a month
later, on May 25, there was a widespread power failure
throughout the area which also affected local telephone
service. On February 24 of that year a B-47 bomber had
crashed near Hurley, Wisconsin, about sixty miles
northwest of Eagle River. Another B-47 crashed on May 2
only two miles from the site of the February accident. The
pilot of the second plane was later quoted in the press as
saying that "I felt this weightlessness—I was hanging by my
straps," just before his craft went out of control and headed
for the ground. There were numerous other incidents and
UFO sightings in the area during that period—which was
the "lull" from 1959 to 1963.
So once again we have a series of sightings and incidents
which corroborate an unusual story. But, unfortunately,
164
 we also had those four miserable pancakes. Simonton
turned one over to a local judge named Carter who,
incidentally, vouched for his honesty and reliability, as did
everyone else who knew him. Dr. J. Allen Hynek was given
the second one, and a third went to the National
Investigation Committees on Aerial Phenomena, which
turned it over to a New York researcher, Alex Mebane.
Simonton held onto the fourth one. He said he took a
nibble out of it, and "it tasted like cardboard."
Were the pancakes made out of exotic Martian mush?
Of course not. They were plain old cornmeal, salt, and
hydrogenated oil.
Simonton's story got a big play in the national press,
and NICAP capitalized on the publicity by issuing
statements about their "thorough investigation" which was
"under way," etc. But when the press interest died, NICAP
dropped the whole thing. The Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization investigators stuck with it, however, and
when an Eagle River businessman made a joking reference
to Simonton having been hypnotized (he later denied this),
some leaped on that as the explanation. Cecile Hess,
APRO's man in nearby Rhinelander, Wisconsin, didn't
buy the hypnotized theory. "If I ever saw a sincere and
honest man, it was Simonton," Hess commented.
"If it happened again," Simonton told a UPI reporter in
early May, "I don't think I'd tell anybody about it."
Simonton was a bewildered victim of the artifact game.
Scores of contactees have been given pieces of junk metal,
scraps of paper, and, in many cases, chunks of crystal or
tektites (pieces of glass). The contactees display these
materials almost proudly as proof of their experiences.
One would assume that outright hoaxsters would try to
construct better, more impressive, artifacts to support their
stories of encounters with the wonderful "space people."
Another fascinating game, which the ufonauts play with
a vengeance, is the "repair" gambit. Beginning in 1897,
there has been an endless stream of stories and reports,
many from police officers, schoolteachers, and other
"reliable witnesses," describing how they encountered a
grounded UFO and observed the occupants busily making
repairs of some kind. In many instances, the ufonauts
deliberately get out of the object and inspect its underside
with a flashlight. These instances have been reported in
Italy, Australia, Scandinavia, South America, and the
United States. The basic details in these stories are so
165
similar that it seems as if the ufonauts are following a
carefully rehearsed procedure.
The "superior technology" of Operation Trojan Horse
has apparently produced a line of faulty flying machines
which constantly break down. Pieces of the damned things
are always falling off where they can be grabbed up by
eager UFO investigators. If the UFOs were real, it would
be logical for a saucer in trouble to-seek out a very isolated
hilltop to make repairs. Instead, they prefer to land in the
fields of occupied farms and on major highways close to
big cities.
A fifty-six-year-old electronics engineer from Temple,
Oklahoma, William "Eddie" Laxton, became the center of
considerable attention after he reported a bizarre incident
in the gray predawn hours of March 23, 1966. At about
5:30 A.M. on that bleak March morning Laxton was driv-
ing along a deserted stretch of Highway 70 near the Texas-
Oklahoma border, on his way to work at the Sheppard Air
Force Base outside of Wichita Falls, Texas, where he
teaches electronics, when a huge fish-shaped object
suddenly loomed up in front of him. He jammed on his
brakes, he said later, and pulled to a stop about 50 yards
from where the object was blocking the road at a 45-degree
angle. The thing was, he estimated, about 75 feet long and 8
feet deep.
"There were four very brilliant lights on my side," he
said. "Bright enough so that a man could read a newspaper
by the light a mile away." He also observed that it seemed
to be lit up inside and that it "had a plastic bubble in front
which was about three feet in diameter, and you could see
light through it." It had a tail structure with horizontal
stabilizers which measured about 2½ feet from the leading
edge to the trailing edge. Friends and associates have
confirmed that Eddie has always been blessed with a
phenomenal memory, and they believe him when he says
he was able to distinguish a group of earthly numbers
painted vertically in black on the side of the fuselage. He
remembers them as reading either:

166
 Halfway along the fuselage there was a porthole about 2
feet in diameter. It was divided into four equal sections,
and there was a small door below it, measuring about 4½
feet high and 2½ feet wide. This door was open and white
light was pouring through it. Directly outside the object a
human-looking man was examining the underside of the
craft with some kind of flashlight. As Eddie climbed out of
his car, this person turned, climbed up a metal ladder, and
entered the door. "I'm sure it was aluminum," Laxton
noted. "When the door snapped shut, it sounded like when
a door closes."
He described the pilot as weighing about 180 pounds
and being 5 feet 9 inches tall with a light complexion. He
was wearing what looked like a mechanic's cap with the bill
turned up.
"I got the impression due to his stooped shoulders he
was about thirty to thirty-five years old," Eddie said. "He
wore either coveralls or a two-piece suit that looked like
green-colored fatigues. I got the idea that he had three
stripes above and three below [on his sleeve]. The above
stripes were in an arch and the below stripes were in a wide
V shape."
A few seconds later "the craft started u p . . . it sounded
like a high speed drill. It lifted off the ground about fifty
feet high and headed toward the Red River. In about five
seconds it was a mile away."
When the machine took off, Laxton reported, "The hair
on the back of my hands and neck stood up."
Admittedly excited by what he had seen, Eddie got back
into his car and drove about 100 yards when he came upon
a huge tank truck parked beside the road. The driver, C. W.
Anderson of Snyder, Oklahoma, said that he had seen
something following him in his mirror and that he had also
watched it fly away toward the Red River. After their story
appeared in local papers, other truck drivers came forward
with reports of having seen similar objects along Highway
70 earlier in the year.
Eddie Laxton faithfully reported the incident to his
employer, the Air Force, and a couple of days later a line of
jeeps pulled up in front of his office. "A colonel and other
officers wanted to see the spot where the object had been,"
Laxton said. "I went out with them and showed them the
place. They asked me a lot of questions while their men
searched the place with all kinds of instruments. They
seemed to know just what they were doing."

167
 In the Air Force files, the object Eddie Laxton saw is
officially recorded as "unidentified." As for the man, Eddie
claims, "He looked just like you or me. If I met him
tomorrow in a bar, I would know him instantly."
Among the great heaps of neglected and ignored UFO
data, we find hundreds of "minipeople" accounts. These
are very rarely published anywhere because they are so
unbelievable. Most of them are identical to the fairy and
gnome stories of yesteryear. The minipeople are only a few
inches in height. Some dress like spacemen, complete with
transparent helmets, while others are described in much
the same way as the Irish leprechauns. Witnesses to these
events can experience conjunctivitis, akinesia (paralysis),
amnesia, and the other effects often noted by witnesses to
more conventional UFO events. Many contactees admit
that they have seen minipeople cavorting about on their
furniture and even riding around in miniature flying
saucers.
One of the strangest minipeople stories I have received
came from a young woman in Seattle, Washington. In the
latter part of August. 1965, she awoke around 2 A.M. and
discovered she could not move a muscle or make a sound.
Her window was open, and suddenly a tiny, football-sized,
dull gray object appeared. It floated through the window
and hovered over the carpet near her bed. She said she felt
no desire to leap up or cry out as three tripod logs lowered
from the object, and it settled to the floor. A small ramp
descended from it, and five or six tiny people clambered
out and seemed to work on some kind of repairs on the
object. They wore tight-fitting clothing. When their job
was finished, they went up the ramp again, and the object
took off and sailed out the window. Then she was finally
able to move. She was certain she was wide awake. The
case was investigated by J. Russell Jenkins of Seattle.
You can see why very few witnesses to this type of event
would be anxious to tell anyone about their experiences.
And you can see why almost none of these stories ever
appears in print, except in occult-oriented literature.
Nevertheless, if we hope to assess the true UFO situation,
we must examine all of these stories. We can learn nothing
by considering only those episodes which are emotionally
and intellectually acceptable to us.
Fewer than 2 percent of the known UFO sightings are
reported to the Air Force at all. Likewise, the various UFO
organizations receive only a tiny residue of the data. It is

168
 most difficult to judge the situation at all on the basis of
such a small sampling. The problem is compounded by the
fact that the majority of UFO witnesses and contactees tell
no one outside of their own circle of family and friends. I
have concentrated, therefore, on the hidden incidents and
the little-known, seldom officially reported aspects of the
phenomenon.
Individually, the sighting reports are nothing more than
anecdotes. Thoroughly investigated, objectively reported
cases are very rare. Even so, when you collect together all
the available data, as I have tried to do, and view it
quantitatively, you naturally expect that this mass of
information will reveal some positive factors. Instead, an
astounding paradox is presented.
The scope of the phenomenon and the overwhelming
quantity of reports negates its validity.
The various UFO organizations and cultist groups, and
the few interested scientists, had tried to deal with all this
on an anecdotal basis, selecting those anecdotes which
seemed to contain the best descriptions and had been
reported by the most reliable witnesses. Thus, the actual
scope of the phenomenon has escaped them. And the best
reports rarely contain details which can provide correla-
tions with other reports. In short, the great bulk of all the
anecdotes are worthless and can provide little or no insight
into the real problems.
The statistical data which I have extracted, and which I
have tried to summarize briefly here, indicate that flying
saucers are not stable machines requiring fuel, mainte-
nance, and logistical support. They are, in all probability,
transmogrifications of energy and do not exist in the same
way that this book exists. They are not permanent
constructions of matter.
Operation Trojan Horse has made us believe, first, in
angels and phantom armies, later in mystery inventors,
ghost airplanes, and ghost rockets, and finally in the
splendid Venusians.
Because the scope of the phenomenon far exceeds the
limits of the tiny residue of known reports, we can learn
almost nothing from studying the observations of a minute
group of pilots and police officers.
However, by carefully investigating many flap areas in
depth, I have come up with an alternate line of research. I
discovered that the witnesses and people living in these
areas experienced direct manifestations of a different sort.
169
If we can put the witnesses themselves under our
microscope, we may find that a wide variety of psychologi-
cal and hallucinatory factors are involved. This is
something we can investigate thoroughly and systematical-
ly.
In 1897, the airships deliberately dropped peeled
potatoes, newspapers, and messages at the feet of
astonished witnesses to create and support the secret
inventor myth. In recent years the same kinds of objects
have been dispensing strips of metal and globs of purple
goo suggestive of machine oil to support the idea that we
are being visited by "a superior intelligence with an
advanced technology." Some contactees have produced
moon rocks and moon dust as proof of their experiences on
other worlds, but these substances have been discouraging-
ly like the rocks in your own backyard. The endless
messages from the space people would now fill a library,
and while the communicators claim to represent some
other world, the contents of those messages are identical to
the messages long received by mediums and mystics. I do
not believe that the Saratoga was real in 1897. Nor do I
believe that the aluminum-spewing spaceships of 1957
were any more real. The engraved message from the
Saratoga was real; the aluminum shavings are real. But I
would hate to have to go into a court of law and prove the
reality of extraterrestrial visitants on the basis of such
evidence.
Since flying saucers may not actually exist as physical
machines, we must study these people and closely examine
the experiences which led them to believe that UFOs were
real and extraterrestrial. The UFO phenomenon seems to
be largely subjective; that is, specific kinds of people
become involved and are actually manipulated by the
phenomenon in the same way that it manipulates matter.
These subjective experiences are far more important to our
study than the random, superficial sightings.
Like Canadian scientist Wilbert Smith, Dr. Condon,
and so many others, we are obliged to forget about the
meaningless sightings and concentrate on the claims and
experiences of the contactees.

170
10. "What Is Your Time Cycle?

In November, 1966, two women were standing in a field

outside of Owatonna, Minnesota, watching a familiar
sight—what they called little flashers: bright, blinking
lights that danced around the sky almost every night.
Suddenly one of the objects descended rapidly and hovered
at the far end of the field where they stood, swinging back
and forth a few feet above the ground. Colored lights
flickered around its glowing rim. One of the women let out
a little gasp and crumpled to her knees in a trancelike daze.
Her friend, Mrs. Ralph Butler, reached for her, but she was
immobile, her head dipped down. A strange voice, stilted
and metallic, came spasmodically from her lips.
" W h a t . . . i s . . . y o u r . . . t i m e . . . cycle?" The voice asked.
Mrs. Butler recovered from her surprise and tried to
explain how we measured minutes, hours, and days.
" W h a t . . constitutes... a . . . d a y . . . a n d . . . what.. .consti-
tutes . . . a . . . night?..." The voice continued.
"A day is approximately twelve hours long—and a night
is twelve hours long," Mrs. Butler replied. There were a few
more innocuous questions, and then the other woman
came out of her trance.
"Boy, I'm glad that's over," she remarked simply.
The object shot upward. Believing that they had
communicated with a flying saucer through some
incredible telepathic means, both women were naturally
excited. But later when they tried to discuss the incident
with others, they found that they suddenly came down with
blinding headaches.
Mrs. Butler wrote to me after reading one of my
magazine articles. I immediately called her and spoke to
her for almost an hour.
"It's strange," she declared, "but this is the first time I've
ever been able to talk about these things without getting a
splitting headache."
I asked her all of my weird and seemingly silly questions,
and she had all the right answers. She had been having
unusual telephone problems and had also been receiving
strange voices on her citizen's band (CB) radio.
"Tell me," she asked, "has anyone ever reported
171
receiving visits from peculiar Air Force officers?"
"I've heard a few stories about them," I said cautiously.
"Well, last May [1967] a man came by here," she
continued. "He said he was Major Richard French, and he
was interested in CB and in UFOs. He was about five feet
nine inches tall with a kind of olive complexion and
pointed face. His hair was dark and very long—too long
for an Air Force officer, we thought. He spoke perfect
English. He was well educated."
This man was nattily dressed in a gray suit, white shirt,
and black tie. "Everything he was wearing was brand-
new," she observed. He drove a white Mustang, and her
husband copied down the license number and had it
checked out later. It proved to be a rented car from
Minneapolis.
"He said his stomach was bothering him," she noted. "I
told him that what he needed was some Jello. He said if it
kept bothering him, he would come back for some."
Early the next morning Major French drove up to the
Butler's house again. His stomach was still troubling him,
so Mrs. Butler sat him down at her kitchen table and slid a
big bowl of Jello in front of him.
"Did you ever hear of anyone trying to drink Jello?" she
asked me. "Well, that's what he did. He acted like he had
never seen any before. He picked the bowl up and tried to
drink it. I had to show him how to eat it with a spoon."
Major French didn't visit any of her friends, and it is
something of a mystery why he singled the Butlers out.
Later, she said, this same man turned up in Forest City,
Iowa, and dropped in on some close friends of the Butlers
there.
There proved to be a Richard French in the Air Force in
Minnesota, but he did not even remotely answer to the
above description.
The Butlers have reportedly experienced all kinds of
poltergeist phenomena in their home since the UFO flap
began in Owatonna in 1966. Objects have been moving
about of their own accord, glass objects have suddenly and
visibly shattered without cause, and strange noises have
resounded throughout the house.
On another occasion she claimed that while she was
standing outside watching some "little flashers," she
suddenly felt a cool, comforting hand on her shoulder. She
looked around, but there was no one there.
"Sometimes I've seen some kind of activity—men

172
 moving around—in the trees behind our house at night.
But something keeps me from going near them."
No one around Owatonna reported any of the extensive
UFO sightings to the Air Force. "We're all disgusted with
the government," Mrs. Butler declared. "We know they'd
just tell us it was all swamp gas."
There were airship sightings in Owatonna in 1897. And
in 1880, the home of a Mr. Dimant was plagued with
poltergeist-like activity. Explosions of undetermined
origin took place in his house, the doorbell rang frequently
when no one was there, and so on. So perhaps this isolated
little community of 14,000 is of some special interest to the
mysterious ultraterrestrials.,
Mrs. Butler's story may sound bizarre, but I have heard
the same things too many times in too many different
places to dismiss them lightly. In case after case, I have
heard about strange men who paid pointless visits and
sometimes posed as Air Force officers. The descriptions
are always the same—slight of stature, dark olive skins,
sharp pointed features. And most of these scattered
witnesses specifically noticed that these men were dressed
in clothes that seemed brand-new. Even the soles of their
shoes appear to be unwalked on. If they have occasion to
pull out a wallet or notebook, that also is brand-new.
(Most men, even Air Force officers, carry beat-up old
wallets.) I have carefully kept many of these small details to
myself and have never published them or discussed them.
They provide a yardstick by which I can measure the
validity of new stories.
The sudden, blinding headaches described by Mrs.
Butler are also very common among percipients who have
been involved in close sightings or actual contacts.
Finally, there is the curious experience of her friend who
was seized by some kind of trance and parroted someone
else's words. This, too, has happened far more frequently
than one might imagine. But such stories rarely go very far
because they are so weird and unbelievable. The phrase
"What is your time cycle?" had special meaning to me. I
had heard it before, from other percipients.
In December, 1967, Tom Monteleone, a young student,
a psychology major in Adelphi, Maryland, allegedly had a
contact with a grounded UFO and conversed with a man in
"shiny coveralls" who identified himself as "Vadig." A few
weeks later this same Vadig appeared in a Washington
restaurant, where the student was working as a waiter. This

173
time he was dressed in conventional clothing and appeared
to be a normal human being except for his bulging "thyroid
eyes." Altogether, the student met Mr. Vadig four times,
and each time he ended the conversation with the phrase
"I'll see you in time."
Time is one of the most important aspects of the UFO
phenomenon. It plays a strange but significant role. Part of
the answer to flying saucers may lie not in the stars but in
the clock ticking on your mantelpiece.
Our world exists in three dimensions: height, width, and
breadth. We can move in many directions within these
dimensions: up, down, sideways, forward, and backward.
We measure space in relation to our own size, by inches,
feet, yards, miles, light years. If we were 25 feet tall and our
planet were the size of Jupiter (many times larger than the
earth), we would undoubtedly have adjusted our measure-
ments of space accordingly. Our inch might be equal to an
earth foot, our mile might be equal to ten earth miles.
Space does not exist except when we make it exist. To
us, the distance between atoms in matter is so minute that it
can only be calculated with hypothetical measurements.
Yet, if we lived on an atom and our size was relative to its
size, the distance to the next atom would seem awesome
and beyond reach. The ant lives in a world of giants where
even a blade of grass is a gigantic structure and a tree is a
whole universe. If ants had measurements, their inch might
be the size of the point of a pin, and their mile would be less
than a foot.
How dare we try to reduce the universe to our own
terms? We can't even see or sense a large part of the world
around us. Man is not the final, perfect end product of
evolution.
He is the beginning.
There is another man-made measurement called time.
Unlike the other three dimensions, time has us trapped. We
can move in only one direction through it—forward. This
forward motion is governed by physical laws. We cannot
leap ahead to the year 1984 any more than we can slide
back to 1848. We are all trapped in this moment of time.
This instant.
The only way we can bridge time is to create something
that will endure beyond the immediate moment. We
construct buildings, pyramids, works of art, and even laws
which become material and lasting things. Our moments
become seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Our lives

174
 revolve around clocks and calendars. Time becomes very
real to us, and it is almost inconceivable that we could live
without it.
Yet time doesn't really exist at all.
This moment exists to us. The same moment is being
shared by other planets and other stars. Or is it?
The light from a distant star may take 30 years to cross
space and reach us. We can see a nova (exploding star)
1,000 years after it has actually burst and vanished. If our
telescopes were strong enough, we could peer into the past.
We could see that event 1,000 years after it had happened.
Perhaps we could see a planet near that star, see a whole
population panic and go mad as their sun started to expand
and pour heat and radiation onto them. Perhaps long after
our own planet is a dead cinder some dispassionate
astronomer in some remote part of the universe will collect
the light from this moment and watch us groveling about in
this year.
We have learned to measure time by observing the
special characteristics of our environment. Our days and
nights are measured by the length of time it takes the earth
to rotate on its axis. Our years are the number of days it
takes to make one complete circuit around the sun. Our
lives are scaled by the number of years our delicate
organisms can survive. If the earth did not rotate, there
would be no days. If it did not circuit the sun, there would
be no years. If we were larger or smaller and lived on
Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons, our whole measure-
ment of time would be different.
Assume that a planet exists trapped in a binary (two-
star) system. Its orbit is such that all sides of the planet are
constantly bathed in light. No day/ night cycle exists there.
The inhabitants have no way of measuring time—even
years—by our standards. They would be living in a timeless
void. The Pleiades actually contain more than 200 stars,
although only seven are visible to the naked eye, many of
them forming binary systems. As close as our astronomers
can tell, those stars seem to be dying. In another few
million years of our time, the Pleiades will be no more.
From what we know about the Pleiades, the stars there
seem to be swirling among great clouds of radiant gases. If
they harbor any planetary systems, we wonder what effect
those gases might have. An early contactee, Albert K.
Bender, wrote a book containing so many far-out details
that few ufologists took it seriously. He claimed that UFO

175
entities told him that they lived underground on their home
planet because periodically they passed through masses of
deadly clouds which destroyed life and created a great
blackness.* When Bender's account, Flying Saucers and
the Three Men, was first published in 1962, it read like the
fantasies of a madman. But now many of the things he
described have repeatedly occurred all over the world, and
the book deserves a careful rereading.
If flying saucers actually exist as extraterrestrial
spaceships, then the Pleiades might deserve a place high on
the list of possible origins. It is possible that the ancients
were so enthralled with the magical number of seven that
they placed undue emphasis upon the "Seven Sisters." But
it is equally possible that they might have had access to
some particular bit of knowledge which has since been lost.
Anthropologists have been amazed to discover that the
completely isolated tribes of South America, and the
aborigines of Australia, have much folklore about the
Pleiades and even call the cluster the Seven Sisters, just as
the ancient Middle Eastern and European cultures did.
Much of this independent folklore contends that the
Pleiades was the home of the "Sky People." North
American Indian tribes have similar legends about the
Pleiades, and of all the stars and constellations named and
known by the ancient peoples it is interesting to note that
even the Bible singles out the Seven Sisters repeatedly. In
the Book of Job, 38:31, we find this enigmatic statement:
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose
the bands of Orion?"
In modern UFO-contactee lore, beginning in the early
1950's, the constellation of Orion is frequently cited as the
home of "evil spacemen" who are planning to take over the
earth. A famous British contactee, Arthur Bryant, claimed
that on April 24, 1965, a UFO occupant informed him that
"forces from Epsilon are already here in the form of

* T h e earth, t o o , has passed t h r o u g h clouds of blackness, according to

ancient t r a d i t i o n . Three days of total darkness, d u r i n g w h i c h no light or
fire could be seen, are described in the Book of Mormon, T h i r d N e p h i ,
Chapter 8. There are many other historical references to this event, not
only in the Bible (Exodus 10:22), but in E g y p t i a n , Chinese, and I n d i a n
texts also. A p p a r e n t l y the phenomenon occurred w o r l d w i d e . N o r m a l
light rays were unable to penetrate the g l o o m , and human beings found
themselves in such a lethargic state they were unable to move. See Worlds
in Collision by I m m a n u e l Velikovsky, Part 1, Chapter 2, f o r further
references and descriptions of this catastrophe.

176
poltergeists." Epsilon Orionis is the central star in the belt
of Orion. The Bible and many other ancient works seem to
imply that Orion harbors a malevolent force, while the
Pleiades is the home of the "good guys."

Stretching Time

Much has been written about the fact that astronauts

whizzing through space at 25,000 mph return to earth a
fraction of a second younger than the rest of us. This is
because Einstein discovered that the faster a particle moves
through space, the slower it moves through time. Time
becomes a hypothetical field. Trapped here on earth, we all
move through that field at the same rate. Science-fiction
writers have always made a big deal out of this, and there
are endless tales of astronauts dashing off to other planets
and, upon returning to earth, finding that hundreds of
years have actually passed, even though they are only
months or years older.
Physicists following Einstein's concepts assert that
nothing can exceed the speed of light without becoming
infinite mass and being reduced to energy. However, if we
want to blow our minds altogether, we can speculate that
an energy particle might hit such a high frequency and
move so fast that it doesn't move at all. Energies beyond
the cosmic rays on our spectrum scale would have such a
very high frequency that they would appear to be
motionless. A small group of American physicists are now
actually trying to build the equipment necessary to test this
possibility.
These super-high frequencies would be far outside our
time field, yet they could coexist all around us, and we have
no way of detecting or defining them. We could only guess
at their existence, just as men guessed for hundreds of years
about atomic structure before we developed the technolo-
gy needed to confirm the theories.
To repeat this another way: If an astronaut can move
more slowly through the time field by accelerating through
three-dimensional space, then it might be possible for a
super-high-frequency particle moving at super-high speeds
to escape or be uninfluenced by our time field altogether.
What I'm trying to do here is reduce the complex
Einstein theory to the simplest of terms.
Now then, how can all of this be applied to the UFO
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 phenomenon?
Throughout this book I have tried to explain that UFOs
seem to be transmogrifications; seemingly material
apparitions which might actually be composed of energies
from the high reaches of the electromagnetic spectrum. If
this is so, then one additional factor is necessary: order or
intelligence.
The UFO phenomenon does seem to be controlled. It
does follow intelligent patterns. If the objects themselves
are manifestations of higher energies, then something has
to manipulate those energies somehow and reduce them to
the visible frequencies. Not only do they enter the visible
frequencies, but they take forms which seem physical and
real to us, and they carry out actions which seem
intelligent.
Thus we arrive at the source. The source has to be a form
of intelligent energy operating at the very highest possible
point of the frequency spectrum. If such an energy exists at
all, it might permeate the universe and maintain equal
control over each component part. Because of its very high
frequency, so high that the energy particles are virtually
standing still, the source has no need to replenish itself in
any way that would be acceptable to our environmental
sciences. It could actually create and destroy matter by
manipulating the lower energies. It would be timeless,
because it exists beyond all time fields. It would be infinite
because it is not confined by three-dimensional space.
Within this energy structure there could be other masses
of intelligent energy existing on slightly lower frequencies.
While these masses would be ultimately under the control
of the highest intelligence, they might maintain a certain
amount of independence and be able to manipulate the
lower energies on their own. But no matter what activities
they might engage in, they would be obliged to fit their
actions into the plan of the overall intelligence.
A computer relies upon systems which store and direct
the course of electrical impulses. A complex system of
switches, or transistors which act like switches, form the
circuitry, which breaks down information into simple
negative and positive pulses. Cyberneticians work with a
system of numbers. 0 for negative and 1 for positive. A
problem is fed into the computer, and the answer comes
back in these numbers; 1 0 1 0 , for example, means 1 0 . These
are known as binary numbers.
The human brain functions in much the same way.

178
 Billions of tiny switches known as synapses are built into a
complex circuitry of nerves. If you handle and smell a rose
and prick your finger on one of its thorns, the memory of
this event is stored in your brain circuitry by the opening
and closing of billions of these synapses. The memory of
the odor takes millions, as does the memory of the pain of
the thorn and the millions of points of light which were fed
from your eyes to your brain and which registered the
beauty of the rose. Other circuits form a kind of index so
that you can instantly tune into this one particular memory
bank and remember the rose clearly.
The brains of small children are filled largely with
sensual information. As we grow older, our minds become
cluttered with millions of impressions and experiences and
with fragments of all that we read, see, and hear. The
child's mind, especially before the so-called age of reason
when the logic circuits begin to form, is therefore a clear
instrument, open and uninfluenced by opinions and
conclusions. This is an important point in our UFO
mystery.
Our computers and brains are complicated devices
developed to cope with the barrage of sensual data from
the material world around us. Perhaps if we were in a pure
energy state, each particle of energy could serve as a
synapse, and information could be stored by a slight
alteration in frequency. Thus all of the memory fragments
of that rose would be recorded at one frequency, and the
whole energy form could tune into that memory at will by
adjusting frequencies as we adjust a radio receiver. In other
words, no complex circuitry would be required. No body
would be necessary. The energy patterns would not need a
material form to augment it, circulate food, etc.
If the energy form were infinite, timeless, and permeated
the entire universe, it would have total knowledge and total
awareness. It would not need eyes and ears and nerve
endings for perception. Like Mount Everest, it would be
there and would be unaffected by whatever was happening
lower on the energy spectrum.
It could surround you completely at this very moment
and be totally aware of all the feeble pulses of low energy
passing through your brain. If it so desired, it could control
those pulses and thus control your thoughts.
Man has always been aware of this intelligent energy or
force. He has always worshiped it.

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The Modus Operandi of Prophecy

Our first conclusion is that the UFOs originate from

beyond our own time frame or time cycle. Our second
conclusion is that the source has total foreknowledge of
human events and even of individual lives. Since time and
space are not absolutes, although they seem to be to us,
these two conclusions are compatible.
Visualize a teen-aged boy with a microscope. He is
studying a tiny microbe with a total life-span of sixty
seconds. He takes a fine needle and pokes it into the liquid
environment of the microbe—a drop of water on a slide
which seems limitless to the minute creature. Suppose that
the microbe has some sort of visual or sensory apparatus.
The point of the needle would suddenly appear enigmati-
cally before it, a totally foreign object beyond the microbe's
experience and frame of reference. The bewildered
microbe swims around the object, studies it, then sits down
and writes a microbe report on the unexplained object
which he saw. When the boy withdraws the needle, the
"object" suddenly disappears in front of the microbe
because it is no longer part of his environment—or his time
cycle.
Five minutes later, by the boy's clock, he reinserts the
needle into that same drop of water. Now many
generations of microbes have passed. A new microbe
glimpses this wonder and hurries to the microbe library
and uncovers the old report. Strange foreign objects made
out of an unknown material and behaving in a most
peculiar way had been seen in ancient times, the microbe
learns. To the boy, the two events spanned a mere five
minutes. To the microbes, many generations had passed.
By our time cycle, the two events were almost simultane-
ous.
Switch things around a bit. Now we are the microbes.
Could it be possible that all UFO events are interrelated,
and although they are widely separated according to our
time cycle, they might really be almost simultaneous events
to the ufonauts?
I don't mean to imply that some giant is poking needles
at us. The microbe's world is a tiny, almost insignificant
part of the boy's world, although the microbe had
absolutely no knowledge of it. The microbe was not only
unaware of the boy's existence, but it could not have
possibly comprehended his existence.

180
 It may be that all human events occur simultaneously
when viewed by a greater intelligence. The boy peering
through the microscope can plainly see a microscopic
obstacle looming up in front of the microbe seconds before
it even becomes aware of the obstacle. He can thus predict
in a limited way the microbe's future. In a single minute of
earth time he can watch the birth, growth, reproduction,
and death of the microbe. The event is interesting to the
boy but not especially important. He can watch a larger
predatory microbe swim toward his specimen and
consume it. If he wished, he could poke his needle into the
drop again and maybe force the predator out of the way,
thus saving the microbe's life. He can manipulate the
microbe in many ways. But he cannot communicate with it.
If a gigantic superintelligence wants—or needs—to
communicate with a much lower form, all kinds of
problems are presented. The communication must be
conducted in a manner which will be meaningful and
understandable to the lower life form. An acceptable frame
of reference must be found and utilized. The superintelli-
gence may wish to convey information of a very complex
nature—so complex that it is beyond the comprehension of
the lower form. The only way to accomplish this is to pass
the information on in very small fragments over many
generations, using many modes of communication. All of
this might take only a few seconds of the superintelligence's
time but would cover thousands of years of the lower
form's time cycle.
A long chain of events would be required for such
communication. They would have to be arranged in such a
manner that they assume singular importance to the
generation involved and would be carefully recorded and
preserved for succeeding generations. At the end of the
chain the assorted fragments would form a whole which
would produce the information in toto. Call it a revelation
or an awakening if you will.
UFO events seem to occur century after century in the
same geographical locations. A majority of these events
took place on Wednesdays and Saturdays and were
concentrated around the hours of 6 P.M., 8 P.M., and 10 P.M.
These facts in themselves are proof that the phenomenon is
guided by an intelligence and that the individual events
form part of a larger plan. As we progress step by step
along this bizarre cosmic trail, that plan becomes slowly
more plain. We have misunderstood much of the material
181
 passed on to us, and we are just beginning to comprehend
the full meaning of the many manifestations of the energies
from the higher frequencies.
The UFO phenomenon is frequently reflective; that is,
the observed manifestations seem to be deliberately
tailored and adjusted to the individual beliefs and mental
attitudes of the witnesses. Both the objects and their
occupants appear to be able to adopt a multitude of forms,
and the contactees are usually given information which
conforms to their own beliefs. UFO researchers who
concentrate on one particular aspect or theory find
themselves inundated with seemingly reliable reports
which tend to substantiate that theory. My own extensive
experiences with this reflective factor have led me to carry
out weird experiments which confirmed that a large part of
the reported data is engineered and deliberately false. The
witnesses are not the perpetrators of these hoaxes but are
merely the victims.
The apparent purposes of all this false data are
multifold. Much of it is meant to create confusion and
diversion. Some of it has served to support certain beliefs
which were erroneous but which would serve as stepping-
stones to the higher, more complex truth. Whole
generations have come and gone, happily believing in the
false data, unaware that they were really mere links in the
chain. If we understood it all too soon, we might crumble
under the weight of the truth. It was first necessary to build
man's ego; to make him believe that he had some worth in
the cosmic whole. So, lies containing veiled truths were
spread among us, and events were staged to make those lies
seem valid. Many men—brilliant scholars and
philosophers—have clearly seen the truth for centuries.
Libraries all over the world are filled with books detailing
their findings. But their truths were lost in the waves of
organized belief.
This earth is covered with windows into that other
unseen world. Perhaps if we had the instruments to detect
them, we would find that these windows are the focal
points for super-high-frequency waves—the "rays" of
ancient lore. These rays might come from Orion or the
Pleiades as the ancients claimed, or they might be part of
the great force that emanates throughout the universe. The
UFOs have given us evidence that such rays exist.
Now, slowly, we are being told why.

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11. "You Are Endangering the Balance
of the Universe!"

An Air Force plane spiraled clumsily out of the sullen

Argentine sky and crashed near Quilino in August, 1957,
setting the stage for one of the hundreds of "ridiculous"
contact stories that have been appearing in newspapers
throughout the world for the past twenty years. The
Argentine Air Force dispatched three men to the site to
guard the wreck until proper equipment could be mustered
to haul it back to the base. On the evening of August 20,
1957, two of the men went into the town for supplies, while
the third man lounged in their tent.
Suddenly, according to his story, he heard an eerie high-
pitched hum. He stepped outside the tent and was
astonished to see a huge luminous metal disk hovering
directly overhead. In horror, he reached for his pistol but
could not seem to draw it from the holster for some
unknown reason, he claimed later.
Standing transfixed, tugging helplessly at his gun, the
young man heard a soft-spoken voice coming from the
humming object. It addressed him gently in his own
language and told him not to be afraid. Then it went on to
tell him that the disk was an interplanetary spacecraft and
that a base for such craft had been installed in the nearby
province of Salta (an area where UFO sightings have been
reported constantly for the past fifteen years—"UFO
Alley").
"We intend to help you," the voice is supposed to have
declared, "for the misuse of atomic energy threatens to
destroy you." The voice went on to say that very soon the
rest of the world would know about flying saucers.
Then the bushes and trees began to rustle, and the craft
ascended straight up and disappeared. The young
Argentinian was so upset by this experience that he
reported it in full to his commanding officer. The latter
took him most seriously and passed the story on to one of
Argentina's largest and most respected newspapers, Diario
de Cordoba, which carried the full account two days later.
Even though the U.S. Air Force and various civilian
groups struggle to discount and discredit contactee stories,
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they continue to turn up everywhere. Many of them
contain such ludicrous details that they are easy to
dismiss—until you realize that the same ludicrous details
are appearing in Italy, Brazil, Sweden, Africa, the Soviet
Union, Australia, and nearly every other country on earth.
Consider the improbable tale told by movie actor Stuart
Whitman, star of Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying
Machines and many other big-budget films. According to
Mr. Whitman, he was trapped in his twelfth-floor suite in a
fashionable New York hotel during the big blackout of
November, 1965, when he heard "a sound like a
whippoorwill" whistling outside his window. He looked
out and saw two luminous disk-shaped objects, one blue,
the other orange. At least that's what he later told
Hollywood columnist Vernon Scott. Then he heard a voice
which sounded as if it were coming from a loudspeaker.
"They said they were fearful of earth," Whitman
explained, "because earthlings were messing around with
unknown quantities and might disrupt the balance of the
universe or their planet... the blackout was just a little
demonstration of their power, and they could do a lot more
with almost no effort. They said they could stop our whole
planet from functioning."
No one else in the crowded streets of darkened New
York reported seeing these objects, and no one apparently
heard that loudspeaker. But Whitman sticks to his story.
Why is anybody's guess. He certainly doesn't need
publicity. At least not that kind of publicity.
Senhor Helio Aguiar didn't seem to be looking for
publicity, either, when he spun his strange story to
Brazilian journalist Joao Martins in 1959. A thirty-two-
year-old statistician employed by a bank in Bahia, Brazil,
Aguiar not only claimed to have received a message from a
UFO, but he took a series of startling pictures to back up
his story.
While riding a motorcycle near a place called Piata on
April 24, 1959, Senhor Aguiar says he observed a silvery
disk with a number of windows visible on the dome on top.
The underside of this object bore three markings or
symbols which were actually faintly visible in the originals
of his pictures but, unfortunately, do not reproduce well.
Aguiar stopped his motorcycle, unlimbered his camera,
and took three quick shots as the object performed
leisurely movements overhead. Then, according to Gordon
Creighton's translation of the photographer's original

184
testimony, "He began to feel a pressure in his brain, and a
state of progressive confusion overtook him. He felt
vaguely as though he were being ordered by somebody to
write something down. It was as though he were being
hypnotized. As he was winding the film on before
proceeding to take a fourth picture, he lost all sense of what
was happening."
Like the prophet Daniel, and Joseph Smith of the
Mormons, Senhor Aguiar passed out. The next thing he
knew, he was slumped over his motorcycle, and the UFO
was gone. But clutched in his hand was a piece of paper
bearing a message in his own handwriting: "Put an
absolute stop to all atomic tests for warlike purposes," the
message warned. "The balance of the universe is threat-
ened. We shall remain vigilant and ready to intervene."*
"The balance of the universe..." It's a very odd
coincidence how this same phrase turns up over and over
again in the stories of these "kooks and crackpots."
Two years before Senhor Aguiar's alleged communica-
tion from the UFOs, a quiet gentleman in England claimed
that he had been taken for a ride. His name is James Cook
of Runcorn, Cheshire, and he stated that he saw a strange
luminous object in the sky at 2:15 A.M. on the morning of
September 7, 1957. While he watched in fascination, the
object changed colors from blue to white, then blue again,
and finally to a dark red. It hurtled out of the sky and
settled to the ground only a few feet from him. Then, he
claimed, a voice addressed him, inviting him aboard. A
ladder descended from the craft, and a voice instructed
him, "Jump onto the ladder. Do not step onto it. The
ground is damp."
He obeyed, leaped onto the bottom rung of the ladder,
and climbed into an empty chamber illuminated by a
dazzling light from some unseen source. The voice told him
to take off his clothes and put on the plasticlike coveralls
which were in the chamber. Again, he did as he was told.
After he had changed his clothes, he was asked to leave the

* l n the summer of 1963 comedian Red Skelton was loafingalone on a

beach in California when, according to what he later told reporter Dick
Kleiner (Newspaper Enterprise Association), he lapsed into a semitrance
for about an hour. U p o n recovering full consciousness, he discovered a
terrifying message w r i t t e n in his o w n hand in the notebook he always
carries w i t h h i m . He doesn't remember w r i t i n g it or even t h i n k i n g the
words. The message was: "President Kennedy will be killed in N o v e m -
ber."

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craft and enter another one that had landed nearby. There,
he said, he found twenty people, all of them much taller
than he was, and they took him for a ride into outer space.
They told him that they were from a planet called Zomdic,
which was in another solar system and was unknown to our
scientists. Their craft could not operate in damp weather,
they allegedly explained to him, apparently because they
were surrounded by some kind of electrified field.
They also told him, he said, that the saucers were used
only in the vicinity of the earth and could not operate in
outer space.
"The inhabitants of your planet will upset the balance if
they persist in using force instead of harmony," Mr. Cook
asserts that he was told. "Warn them of the danger."
"Nobody will listen to me," he says he protested.
"Or anyone else either," one of the giant "spacemen"
snapped.
Mr. Cook was deposited several hours later in the very
spot where he had first been picked up. He related his story
to the authorities and then quietly returned to his garden in
the English countryside. Like the majority of all known
contactees, he did not write any books or go on any lecture
tours. Zomdic was never heard from again, either.
Miss Thelma Roberts of Britain's Flying Saucer Review
interviewed Mr. Cook, and he showed her a burn on the
back of his left hand and told her he had received it when he
had left the saucer and had failed to remove his hand from
the ladder's railing before his feet touched the wet ground.
Another contactee who has refused to make any fuss
over his purported experience with "the people from outer
space" is a young Italian engineer named Luciano Galli,
who runs a small company on the outskirts of Rome. His
story is far more unbelievable than Mr. Cook's, but
whether you believe it or not, it contains all of the classic
elements which appear in many similar yarns. These
elements include terrestrials—people just like you and
me—who are in some way connected with the UFO
phenomenon. Or maybe they really are our ultraterrestri-
als in disguise.
Signore Galli left his home after lunch on July 7, 1957,
and was headed back to his plant when a black Fiat pulled
up and a tall, dark-skinned man with piercing jet-black
eyes spoke to him.
"Do you remember me?" the man asked. Galli had seen
the man before on the streets of Rome and, for some

186
 reason, had felt like speaking to him, but he had
disappeared into the crowds.
"I remember you," Galli replied.
"Would you like to come with us?" the man asked.
"Where to?"
"Have confidence." The man smiled. "Nothing will
happen to you."
Galli impulsively got into the car. Another man, smaller
and with delicate features, was driving. They proceeded to
the Croara Ridge outside of Rome where, Galli says, a
saucer-shaped machine was waiting for them. A cylinder
dropped down from the center of the underside of the craft,
and a door opened in it. The tall, dark man led Galli into it,
and they rose into the interior, where two bright lights
suddenly flashed.
"Don't be afraid," the stranger laughed. "We have just
taken your picture."
There was a windowlike lens about a yard in diameter in
the bottom of the craft, Galli said, and through it he could
see the earth fall away as they shot upward. Within minutes
they were in space, where they approached a gigantic cigar-
shaped object which Galli estimated to be at least 600
meters (almost 2,000 feet) long. A very bright light
surrounded one end of it, and there were a series of ports
through which a number of saucers could be seen entering
and leaving.
"This is one of our spaceships," the stranger explained.
They flew into one of the open ports, and when Galli left
the saucer, he found himself in a huge chamber. "There
were," he said, "no less than four or five hundred people
there... standing and walking around."
He was given a tour of the ship and was shown a large
library, lounges, control rooms, and the commander's
quarters. Less than four hours later he was back on the
ridge outside of Rome. He kept the story to himself and did
not really talk about it until a reporter who had heard
rumors tracked him down in 1962.
"I don't care what anybody says," Galli declared. "The
story is true. You can believe it if you wish."
There were scores of contactee reports during the twelve
months of 1957, maybe even hundreds that are now lost to
us. One of the most notable of these involved a prominent
Brazilian lawyer, Professor Joao de Freitas Guimaraes, a
sober middle-aged military advocate in Sao Sebastiao. He
said that he went joy riding in a flying saucer on a cool

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evening in July, 1957. For a long lime afterward he kept his
experience to himself, sharing it with only a few friends
such as Sao Paulo judge Dr. Alberto Franco.
On a dull, overcast evening, Guimaraes recalled, he was
walking alone along a beach off the coast of Bela Island,
Brazil, when he saw a jet of water rise up, and then a pot-
bellied machine surfaced and moved toward shore. To his
astonishment, two men, both more than 5 feet 10 inches
tall, with long, fair hair, wearing tight-fitting green
coveralls, clambered out, he said. They approached him
directly and silently indicated that they would like him to
step aboard. He spoke to them in French, English, Italian,
and Portuguese, but they didn't seem to understand any of
these languages. Since they didn't seem hostile, and since
he was overcome with curiosity, he accepted their
unspoken invitation, climbed up a long ladder mounted
outside the craft, and with the help of the two men, stepped
into the object.
The ladder was retracted and the door eased shut. The
professor remained in a small compartment next to a
window. He could not say later how many compartments
there were in the craft. As the machine lifted into the air, he
was surprised to see water splashing against the portholes.
"Is it raining?" he asked. He claims that he received a silent
reply—he felt it was some kind of telepathy, although he
admitted knowing nothing about such matters. Somehow
his hosts told him that the water was caused by the rotation
of the craft.
For the next forty minutes or so (he said his watch
stopped during the flight) the now identified (to him) flying
object flitted about in the starlit upper atmosphere. During
the trip he noted that he felt pain and cold in his genitals.
He tried to ask the men where they were from, but they did
not answer. One of them showed him a chart, something
like a zodiac, he said, and he had the feeling that they were
trying to explain when they would return, and that they
wanted him to meet them again. Finally they delivered him
back to the spot where they had picked him up, and six
months later he told the story to a friend, Dr. Lincoln
Feliciano, who contacted a Brazilian journalist. Professor
Guimaraes quickly became a celebrity of sorts in Brazil and
was, he confessed, amazed by the grave respect his story
was accorded.
In John Fuller's account of the bizarre UFO contact of
Barney and Betty Hill, Interrupted Journey, Barney Hill

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 recalled under hypnosis that he was placed on a table
aboard a flying saucer and that he felt something cold
being lowered over his genitals. The Hills' watches also
stopped during their alleged experience.
The most famous contactee of 1956-57 was a New
Jersey signpainter named Howard Menger. He was
"discovered" by Long John Nebel, a New York radio
personality who conducted an all-night talk show over
station WOR (he is now with NBC). Long John had just
begun his career in radio, and he was looking for an angle.
He found it in flying saucers and built a huge following
with his offbeat interviews with contactees, mystics, and
assorted weirdos. Somehow he has managed to remain
detached and claims to this day that he doesn't buy most of
what his guests tell him. In any case, Menger's initial
appearances on Long John's show started a stampede to
the little town of High Bridge, New Jersey, Menger's home.
According to Howard Menger, the flying saucers were
frequently landing on his property, and the ufonauts often
dropped in for coffee.
Menger, a gentle, soft-spoken man with a sincere
manner, claimed that he had first been contacted by long-
haired blond men in automobiles back in his army days in
World War II. And in June, 1946, a glowing UFO had
landed near his parents' home in High Bridge, and two men
and a beautiful girl had stepped out. The men were dressed
in "blue-gray ski-type uniforms," were blond, fair-skinned,
and of medium height. The woman, he said, wore a similar
outfit of a soft pastel color which almost seemed to glow.
She told him she was 500 years old. Basically, she advised
him to learn to use his mental powers and to prepare for the
important days ahead. She also is supposed to have told
him to keep his mouth shut about all of this until 1957.
So he waited. And in 1957, the UFOs began to come to
High Bridge. They were seen by many. There were even
several witnesses who claimed they had stood by and
watched as Howard went out to meet and chat with the
"space people."
Menger's book, From Outer Space to You, tells an even
more bizarre story than George Adamski's. He relates
frequent visits with apparent terrestrials who introduced
him into the unbelievable underworld of the "silent
contactees": ordinary men and women who seemed
exceptionally knowledgeable about the UFO situation and
who posed as businessmen, real estate dealers, and the like.

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 He was, he said, called out in the middle of the night to take
long trips to desolate landing areas. On one occasion he
was allegedly instructed to buy a box of sunglasses and
leave them in an isolated field at night.
His book is filled with strange stories, most of them
completely unpalatable to the UFO researchers who were
seeking hardware and solid evidence that the UFOs were
from outer space. Stories that hinted of occultism,
telepathy, extrasensory perception, and, as always, a
simplified philosophy based upon the Golden Rule.
Although there is some religious commentary in the book,
Menger seemed obsessed with health foods and offered
diet information which, presumably, had some relation to
what he was learning from the ufonauts. The last sixty-
three pages are devoted to a treatise titled, "A New
Concept in Nutrition."
Sandwiched in between the landings and contacts,
which he tells in a direct and convincing manner, Menger
relates things like how a Sergeant Cramer in the village of
Bedminister, New Jersey, had pursued a speeding light-
green station wagon bearing the license number WR E79.
Menger had once owned such a vehicle, and with that
license number. He was hauled into court to answer the
charges. He had actually been nowhere near Bedminister
on the night in question, and Sergeant Cramer's testimony,
as quoted by Menger, was most unusual.
Cramer told the judge that he had pursued the station
wagon to a red light at an intersection where it simply
"disappeared." Since visibility at that particular intersec-
tion was good in all directions for some distance, it's a
mystery how that car could have been one that Menger had
junked years before.
"Well, what do we have around here? A phantom car!"
the judge allegedly remarked. "I feel like either putting a
man in jail for perjury or breaking a sergeant. This is the
strangest case I have heard in all my years on the bench!"
The good judge didn't know the half of it!
One of Menger's terrestrial contacts is supposed to have
told him, "My friend, this earth is the battlefield of
Armageddon, and the battle is for men's minds and
souls... there is a very powerful group on this planet,
which possesses tremendous knowledge of technology,
psychology, and most unfortunate of all, advanced brain
therapy.... They use people not only from this planet, but
people from Mars as well. And also other people of your

190
 own planet—people you don't know about. People who
live unobserved and undiscovered as yet...."
The Menger book was published by Gray Barker in
1959 and enjoyed a small sale of a few thousand. The UFO
hard core at the time was no more than 30,000, and if a
UFO book, particularly a contactee book, sold 3,000
copies it was practically a best seller. Menger didn't stop
with the book. He issued a phonograph record which, he
claimed, contained music composed by the space people—
but it sounded more like Howard Menger plucking
clumsily at a badly tuned piano.
Then came the freakish climax, which was almost as
fantastic as all that had gone on before.
At one of his early broadcasts with Long John a crowd
had gathered in front of the studio, and in it there was a
striking blond girl named Maria. She and Menger met, and
he later divorced his wife so he could marry her. Maria,
Howard confided to friends, was from another planet.
Maria's real name was Constance Weber. "Maria" was her
space name, she explained, and was the pseudonym which
appeared on her book, My Saturnian Lover. Her
Saturnian was Howard, for, you see, the space people
informed him that he was originally from the planet
Saturn.
In the early 1960's, Long John Nebel landed a television
show, and it was natural that he should invite Howard
Menger to be one of his first guests. Menger was certain to
be controversial, articulate, and enthralling. Or so
producer Parris Flammonde thought.
On the night of the show, according to Mr. Flammonde,
an unusually quiet and nervous Howard Menger walked
into the studio. "I knew that his natural manner could be
boyish, even shy," Flammonde commented later, "but on
this particular occasion he just seemed vague."
Long John sensed this, too, and broke his usual rule of
never speaking to a guest before going on the air ("Let's not
do the show now," Long John will admonish. "Let's wait
until we're on the air."). He said a few kidding words to his
old friend, and then the red lights blinked on, and millions
of viewers around the Northeast settled back to hear
Howard Menger tell about his experiences with the
friendly "brothers from outer space."
Instead, Flammonde recalls, "Vaguely, aimlessly,
rather embarrassingly, he avoided and vacillated.... How-
ard Menger, Saturnian husband to a Venusian traveler in

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 space, friend of extraterrestrials, annotator of 'authentic
music from another planet,' master of teleportation, and
saucerological sage extraordinaire—recanted! Denied
almost everything.... His saucers might have been
psychic, his space people visions, his and Maria's other
planethood. metaphoric.
"As a matter of fact, so did he retreat from his tales of
the unreal, the reality of the immediate surroundings
seemed to fade momentarily.... If he had exuded a sort of
translucent indefiniteness when he arrived, he was close to
invisible when he left.... To this day, the transition of the
myth and personality of Howard Menger remains one of
the most captivating enigmas of contactology."
Later, in letters to Gray Barker and Saucer News editor
Jim Moseley, Menger termed his book "fiction-fact" and
implied that the Pentagon had given him the films and
asked him to participate in an experiment to test the
public's reaction to extraterrestrial contact.
He has helped us, therefore, to dismiss his entire story as
not only a hoax, but a hoax perpetrated by the U.S.
government!
Moseley staged a circuslike Congress of Scientific
Ufblogists in New York in 1967 and flew Howard and
Maria up from their current home in Florida. Howard, Jim
reasoned, would be a strong drawing card for the far-out
fringe. I met Menger briefly backstage the day he spoke to
some 1,500 people gathered at the Congress. Long John
introduced him from the stage. Menger was still shy and
boyish, and his palms were covered with sweat. Although
he had given many lectures and appeared frequently on
radio and TV, his nerves were visibly raw that afternoon.
"Here," I thought to myself, "is a very scared man."
His brief lecture was a bitter disappointment to the little
old ladies who had come to hear a message of hope and
faith. His retraction on the Long John show a few years
earlier was forgotten, and he made a conscious effort to
please the crowd of believers by sticking to a positive pro-
extraterrestrial line. He avoided discussing the CIA's
alleged experiment and his own misgivings about the
reality of UFOs. Instead, he talked about the saucer he was
trying to build in his basement, presumably from plans
given to him by you-know-who, then he spent several
minutes knocking the National Investigation Committees
on Aerial Phenomena and its deputy director, Richard
Hall, for their attempts to thwart his plans for a UFO

192
convention in Florida, and finally, he got around to his
controversial contacts.
"I think the most important thing that happened to me,"
he said, "was in High Bridge, New Jersey, in the summer of
1956. It was in August. The craft came down from the west.
It looked like a huge fireball. I was frightened. Gradually,
as it came closer, it slowed down. The pulsations subsided.
A metallic appearance was plainly visible. It was no longer
a ball of fire, it turned into what looked like a man-made
craft, reflecting the sun as it came close to the ground. It
was a beautiful sight, very similar to the one on the screen
here. [He was showing a UFO movie.] It stopped about a
foot and a half from the ground. An opening appeared in
the side of the craft. There was a small incline or platform.
Two men stepped out, very nicely dressed in shiny space
suits, such as what we have today for our astronauts, very
similar. Of course, in those days—this was way ahead of
the time. One man stepped to the left, and the other stepped
to the right, and then another man stepped out, a man I will
never forget as long as I live. He was approximately six feet
one, maybe six feet two. He had long blond hair over his
shoulders—yes, long blond hair. He stepped toward me,
and the message he gave, of course, was what most people
don't want to hear, a message of love and understanding.
He said he had come from outer space, which is what most
people really don't believe in. Someday they will.
"I often wonder what would happen to these people who
say, 'Well, what proof do you have? If I could see a flying
saucer or someone step out of a craft, boy, I would make
sure the people knew about it.' Well, I just wonder about
that. If you realize what people go through when this
happens to them. If you really think you have guts enough
to come out and tell people. Of course, nowadays it might
be a little easier, but in the early fifties it was very, very
rough, especially when you are in business and you are
trying to act like a reputable citizen and bring up a family
and, you know, things like this in your community."
Yes, it must have been tough. And it must have required
more than just a little guts for Howard Menger to first
come forward with such a story and then later to publicly
recant on television. I have talked with several different
people who were around High Bridge in 1956-57. One of
them is Ivan T. Sanderson who lives nearby and who knew
Howard before, during, and after these episodes. Some-
thing strange was definitely happening to Menger and the

193
people around him at that time.
Did Howard Menger get rich from all this? On the
contrary. He lost his sign-painting business and his
reputation. In the end he had to flee to another state, where
he is just barely eking out a living at his old trade..
Howard Menger is not alone. There are many other
tormented victims in this incredible drama. One of them
was a traveling grain buyer named Reinhold Schmidt. Late
on the afternoon of November 5, 1957, Schmidt entered
the office of Sheriff Dave Drage in Kearney, Nebraska,
and unfolded a tale of contact that was classical in every
detail. He said his engine had stalled outside of Kearney,
and when he got out of his car to check it, he saw a silver
"blimp" in a nearby field. Curious, he walked toward it and
was surprised when a kind of staircase opened up and
unreeled toward him. A man in conventional terrestrial
clothes stepped out to meet him, speaking in perfect
German, a language which Schmidt understood.
Repairs were being made, the man explained, and
Schmidt was welcome to look around until the work was
completed. Schmidt said there were four people aboard,
two men and two women, all apparently normal except for
one bewildering detail. They did not seem to walk, he
noted; rather they seemed to glide across the floor of the
craft as if they were on casters. He described glowing tubes
of colored liquids inside the craft, but overall, it was as
stark and as simple as the interiors described by other
contactees.
The four people were not very informative, as usual, but
told Schmidt that he would know all about it—and them—
eventually. The whole episode sounds very much like the
"chance" encounters reported by the 1897 contactees.
After about thirty minutes, Schmidt was asked to leave.
The "repairs" were finished. The object took off, and the
now excited grain buyer headed for Kearney. Within
twenty-four hours the authorities had him locked up in a
nearby mental institution for observation. Air Force
officers materialized and branded the poor man as a nut. A
search of the alleged landing site revealed puddles of the
purple liquid so common at such spots all over the world,
and there were indentations in the ground where the object
stood. But when the sheriff searched Schmidt's car, he
found an open can of oil in the trunk and accused him of
having spread it around the site. Schmidt not only denied
ownership of the can but pointed out, reasonably, that it

194
 would be rather foolish to drive around with an open oil
can in the back of any car.
Later, after he was released, Schmidt lectured widely
and howled loud and long about the treatment he had
received. Ufologists noted that his story improved with
age, and new embellishments were added each time he told
it. Apparently he claimed other contacts of some sort and
revealed that he knew the location of a wonderful quartz
mine in California. The space people had told him that this
quartz would cure cancer. He started to raise money to
mine trie quartz, and eventually some of his investors
hauled him into court, where he was indicted as a swindler.
Thus, Reinhold Schmidt joined the unhappy ranks of the
contactees—a thoroughly discredited man. Yet, his
original story made as much sense as any other contactee
story, and he seemed to experience many of the same
problems reported by the other pawns in this ultraterrestri-
al game. There were repeated contacts and manipulations
which convinced him of the apparent validity of the
ufonaut claims and led him down the long road to total
disaster.
A massive flap condition existed throughout the world
during the week of Schmidt's unfortunate encounter. And
there were a number of other contacts, all grouped within
thirty-six hours of Schmidt's. Some of these contacts
produced details which tended to corroborate the others.
On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union hurled the first
man-made satellite into space. It was not visible to the
naked eye. A month later, on November 3,1957, Sputnik II
carried the ill-fated Russian dog, Laika, into orbit. Three
days after that, at 6:30 A.M. on the morning of November 6,
a twelve-year-old farmboy, Everett Clark of Dante,
Tennessee, got up to let out his dog, Frisky, and was
nonplussed to see a strange glowing object resting in a field
about 300 feet from the house. Thinking that he was
dreaming, young Clark shuffled back to bed.
A few minutes later he returned to the door to call his
dog, and he saw that the object was still there. Several of
the neighborhood dogs, Frisky included, were clustered
around it, barking at four people, two men and two
women, all normally dressed, who were moving around
outside the oblong thing.
One of the men, Clark later told reporters and
investigators from the Aerial Phenomena Research
Organization, was trying to grab Frisky, but the dog

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growled and backed away. He said that these people were
talking in a guttural tongue which sounded like the
German soldiers he had seen in the movies. The man did
catch one of the other dogs, but it snarled and snapped at
him, and he let it go. Then the strange quartet turned and
seemed to walk right through the walls of the craft, "like
walking through glass," Clark said. One of the men had
seen the boy watching them and had made a motion for
him to approach, but Clark declined.
Dante, Tennessee, lies outside of Knoxville and is a
long, long way from Kearney, Nebraska. Schmidt's story
of the day before did not appear in the area until after
Everett Clark had made his initial report. Reporter Carson
Brewer of the Knoxville News-Sentinel found an elongated
impression in the field where the grass had been pressed
down in area 24 feet by 5 feet. APRO's investigators found
that Clark was regarded as "a serious and honest boy" by
his high school principal, and his grandmother said he had
called her immediately after the incident (his parents had
already gone to work) and that he was "hysterical."
Later that very night another farmer, John Trasco of
Everittstown, New Jersey, reportedly went outside to feed
his dog, King, when he saw a brightly glowing egg-shaped
object hovering above the ground near his barn. A weird
"little man" stepped timidly toward him, he said. He was
about 3½ feet tall, had a putty-colored face with large,
bulging froglike eyes, and was dressed in green coveralls.
"We are a peaceful people," Trasco quoted the little man
as saying in a high "scary" voice. "We don't want no
trouble. We just want your dog."
The taken-aback farmer said he managed to snap, "Get
the hell out of here!" The "little man" scurried back to the
object, and it shot off into the evening sky.
On Wednesday night, November 6, true to the
Wednesday-phenomenon pattern, there were the landings
in Montville, Ohio; Dante, Tennessee; and Everittstown,
New Jersey. Another weird contact took place near Playa
del Rey, California, when three cars stalled along a
highway called Vista del Mar. The drivers, Richard Kehoe,
Ronald Burke, and Joe Thomas, got out to see what was
wrong. The answer seemed to lie in the egg-shaped
machine sitting on a nearby beach, surrounded by a blue
haze. Two men apparently came from the object and spoke
to the trio in difficult-to-understand English. According to
Kehoe, the men were about 5 feet 5 inches tall, dressed in

196
black leather trousers and light-colored jerseys. Their skin,
he said, appeared to be yellowish green. They asked some
very ordinary questions, Kehoe reported, such as, "What
time is it? Who were we? Where were we going? And so on."
Chalk up still another apparently meaningless contact.
After the men flew off in their strange machine, the
motorists were able to get their cars started again.
A final contact Was reported that morning by a truck
driver named Malvan Stevens. He said he was driving near
House, Mississippi, about 7:25 A.M. when a large egg-
shaped object dropped out of the sky and landed on the
highway directly in front of him. Stevens, a forty-eight-
year-old resident of Dyersburgh, Mississippi, said that he
thought at first that it was some kind of weather balloon.
Then he noticed that there seemed to be a propeller on
either end and on top of the object. He got out of his truck
and was confronted by three people, two men and a
woman, ail about 4½ feet tall, with pasty white faces. They
were dressed, he said, in gray suits, and they tried to talk to
him in a rapid-fire language which he could not
understand. One of them tried to shake his hand. After a
few minutes of futile attempts at conversation, the beings
got back into the object and flew off.
Stevens later told some of his coworkers about the
episode, and one of them passed it on to the Meridian,
Mississippi, Star. Later, when the Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization investigated, they found him to be
highly regarded as "a reliable family man" and not one to
make up tales or play practical jokes.
The big picture for 1957 is awesome in scope. There
were apparently reliable contact reports earlier in the year
from South America; Professor Guimaraes in Brazil early
in July; Signore Galli in Italy, also early in July; the
Argentine Air Force guard on August 20; Mr. Cook of
England on September 7. And remember, both Cook and
the Argentine airman claimed that they had been warned
about our upsetting the balance of the universe. Cook had
never heard of the Argentine report that preceded his
alleged experience by about only three weeks.
The Argentine airman said that "the voice" told him
that flying saucers would soon be showing themselves all
over the world. That prediction certainly came true in
November, 1957.

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The Contactee Hoax

I have now met and interviewed in depth more than 200

silent contactees who, unlike most of those already named,
have never publicly revealed their experiences. They do not
write books or go on lecture tours. They show little or no
interest in UFO literature. Some of them begin to
experience personality deterioration after their initial
contact. Others find their previously normal lives disrupt-
ed by nightmares and peculiar hallucinations. Poltergeists
(noisy, invisible ghosts) invade their homes. Their
telephones and television sets run amok. My own educated
guess is that there may be 50,000 or more silent contactees
in the United States alone. And new ones are being added
to the list every month.
Nevertheless, a complex and frightening hoax is
involved in all this. But it is not the product of run-of-the-
mill practical jokers, liars, and lunatics. Quite frankly,
many of these contactees lack the imagination to make up
their stories or to construct the complicated "hoaxes"
which develop. They are well-meaning, honest people who
have undergone an experience which seemed very real to
them. In case after case, such people are able to come up
with details which correlate and which have received little
or no publicity. This would be absolutely impossible if they
were simply making up their stories.
No, the real truth lies in another direction. The
contactees from 1897 on have been telling us what they
were told by the ufonauts. The ufonauts are the liars, not
the contactees. And they are lying deliberately as part of
the bewildering smokescreen which they have established
to cover their origin, purpose, and motivation.
In recent years we have been informed by seemingly
sincere contactees, several of whom have undergone
psychiatric and lie detector tests and passed them with
flying colors, that the saucers come from unknown planets
named Clarion, Maser, Schare, Blaau, Tythan, Korendor,
Orion, Fowser, Zomdic, Aenstria, and a dozen other
absurd places. There have also been contactees who talk
freely about the people of Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus,
Saturn, and the moon.
Chances are excellent that the UFOs do not come from
any of these places, any more than the great airships of
1897 came from a secret lab in Nebraska. These names are
plants, not planets. Whatever the UFOs are up to, they are

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doing it on a very large scale ail over the earth, and it is
inevitable that they should come into contact with some of
us from time to time, either accidentally or by design.
When such contacts do occur, they deliberately hand out
ridiculous false information. They exploit our beliefs and
hide safely behind the limited credulity of our scientists and
governments. It is time that we got wise to this simple
psychological trick. They've been pulling it on us for
centuries.
Can we really blame the contactees?
Suppose a strange metallic disk covered with flashing
colored lights settled in your backyard and a tall man in a
one-piece silver space suit got out. Suppose he looked
unlike any man you had ever seen before, and when you
asked him where he was from, he replied, "I am from
Venus." Would you argue with him? Chances are you
would accept his word for it. And if you decided to tell the
world the news, you would naturally proclaim that the
mystery had been solved. The flying saucers were from
Venus. You were certain because this very sincere stranger
had told you so.
Buried within the context of all the contactees' messages
there are clues to an even more complex threat. A direct
threat to us. Each contactee has been able to pass on a
small fragment of the real truth. The endless descriptions
of peaceful far-off worlds and shining cities of glass are
only subterfuges. Before I can extend this further, I must
present you with some of the other evidence. You must be
aware of all the pieces in the puzzle before they can fall into
place and make sense. Already you can understand why so
many people have been in total confusion for so long. This
whole mystery has been designed to keep us confused and
skeptical.
Somebody somewhere is having a good laugh at our
expense.

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12. The Cosmic Jokers

Demonology is not just another crackpot-ology. It is the

ancient and scholarly study of the monsters and demons
who have seemingly coexisted with man throughout
history. Thousands of books have been written on the
subject, many of them authored by educated clergymen,
scientists, and scholars, and uncounted numbers of well-
documented demonic events are readily available to every
researcher. The manifestations and occurrences described
in this imposing literature are similar, if not entirely
identical, to the UFO phenomenon itself. Victims of
demonomania (possession) suffer the very same medical
and emotional symptoms as the UFO contactees. Demon-
omania is so common that it has spawned the minor
medical and psychiatric study of demonopathy.
Throughout most of history, the manifestations of
demonology and demonopathy have been viewed from a
religious perspective and explained as the work of the
Devil. The bizarre manipulations and ill effects described
in the demonological literature are usually regarded as the
result of a great unseen conflict between God and the
Devil. In UFO lore, the same conflict has been observed,
and the believers have explained it as a space war between
the "Guardians" (good guys from outer space), who are
protecting our planet, and some evil extraterrestrial race.
The manifestations are the same, only the frame of
reference is different.
The Devil and his demons can, according to the
literature, manifest themselves in almost any form and can
physically imitate anything from angels to horrifying
monsters with glowing eyes. Strange objects and entities
materialize and dematerialize in these stories, just as the
UFOs and their splendid occupants appear and disappear,
walk through walls, and perform other supernatural feats.
Did ancient man misinterpret UFO manifestations by
placing them in a religious context? Apparently not. The
literature indicates that the phenomenon carefully cultivat-
ed the religious frame of reference in early times, just as the
modern manifestations have carefully supported the
extraterrestrial frame of reference. Operation Trojan

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 Horse is merely the same old game in a new, updated guise.
The Devil's 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 long-haired Venusians.
All of the major religions, and most of the minor ones,
accept the God-Devil conflict, and their scriptures outline
some possibly real episodes in which human beings have
had some direct experience with this conflict. A large
portion of all holy literature consists of material purpor-
tedly dictated to men by supernatural beings, and a good
part of this seems more allegorical or metaphorical than
real. The phenomenon may have passed along information
about man's origin and purpose carefully disguised in
terms and fictitious episodes which could be understood by
the minds of the people during the period when the
messages were transmitted. Thus, the story of Adam and
Eve might not be the actual truth but merely a great
simplification of the truth.
In the Forgotten Books of Eden, an apocryphal book
allegedly translated from ancient Egyptian in the nine-
teenth century, we are told that Satan and his hosts were
fallen angels who populated the earth before Adam was
brought into being, and Satan used lights, fire, and water in
his efforts to rid the planet of this troublesome creature. He
even disguised himself as an angel from time to time and
appeared as a beautiful young woman in his efforts to lead
Adam to his doom. UFO-type lights were one of the Devil's
devices described in the Forgotten Books of Eden. Subtle
variations on this same theme can be found in the Bible and
in the numerous scriptures of the Oriental cultures.
Religious man has always been so enthralled with the main
(and probably allegorical) story line that the hidden point
has been missed. That point is that the earth was occupied
before man arrived or was created. The original occupants
or forces were paraphysical and possessed the power of
transmogrification. Man was the interloper, and the
earth's original occupants or owners were not very happy
over the intrusion. The inevitable conflict arose between
physical man and the paraphysical owners of the planet.
Man accepted the interpretation that this conflict raged
between his creator and the Devil. The religious viewpoint
has always been that the Devil has been attacking man

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 (trying to get rid of him) by foisting disasters, wars, and
sundry evils upon him.
There is historical and modern proof that this may be
so.
A major, but little-explored, aspect of the UFO
phenomenon is therefore theological and philosophical
rather than purely scientific. The UFO problem can never
be untangled by physicists and scientists unless they are
men who have also been schooled in liberal arts, theology,
and philosophy. Unfortunately, most scientific disciplines
are so demanding that their practitioners have little time or
inclination to study complicated subjects outside their own
immediate fields of interest.
Satan and his demons are part of the folklore of all
races, no matter how isolated they have been from one
another. The Indians of North America have many legends
and stories about a devillike entity who appeared as a man
and was known as the trickster because he pulled off so
many vile stunts. Tribes in Africa, South America, and the
remote Pacific islands have similar stories.
Mystery men with strange persuasive powers, some-
times good but more often evil, are described and discussed
in many books with no UFO or religious orientation. A
dark gentleman in a cloak and hood is supposed to have
handed Thomas Jefferson the design for the reverse side of
the Great Seal of the United States (you will find this on a
dollar bill). Julius Caesar, Napoleon, and many others are
supposed to have had enigmatic meetings with these odd
personages. These stories turn up in such unexpected
places as Madame Du Barry's memoirs. She claimed
repeated encounters with a strange young man who would
approach her suddenly on the street and give her startling
prophecies about herself. He pointedly told her that the
last time she would see him would serve as an omen for a
sudden reversal of her fortunes. Sure enough, on April 27,
1774, as she and her ailing lover, King Louis XV, were
heading for the palace of Versailles, the youthful mystery
man appeared one final time.
"I mechanically directed my eyes toward the iron gate
leading to the garden," she wrote. "I felt my face drained of
blood as a cry of horror escaped my lips. For, leaning
against the gate was that singular being."
The coach was halted, and three men searched the area
thoroughly but could find no trace of him. He had
vanished into thin air. Soon afterward Madame Du

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Barry's illustrious career in the royal courts ended, and she
went into exile.
Malcolm X, the late leader of a Negro militant group,
reported a classic experience with a paraphysical "man in
black" in his Autobiography. He was serving a prison
sentence at the time, and the entity materialized in his
prison cell:

As I lay on my bed, I suddenly became aware of a man

sitting beside me in my chair. He had on a dark suit, I
remember. I-could see him as plainly as I see anyone I look at.
He wasn't black, and he wasn't white. He was light-brown-
skinned, an Asiatic cast of countenance, and he had oily
black hair.
I looked right into his face. I didn't get frightened. I knew I
wasn't dreaming. I couldn't move, I didn't speak, and he didn't.
I couldn't place him racially—other than I knew he was a non-
European. I had no idea whatsoever who he was. He just sat
there. Then, as suddenly as he had come, he was gone.

This type of vision is well known to students of psychic

phenomena. The immobility or akinesia experienced by-
Malcolm X is especially common in the "bedroom visitant"
cases in which percipients awaken to sense or even see an
intruder in their bedroom; an intruder who melts away
after passing along a message or a warning. Psychiatrists
tend to dismiss this type of phenomenon as hypnopompic;
that is, the vision is thought to be a dream which overlaps
into the waking state.
Solitary witnesses to UFO landings and contacts
frequently complain of akinesia. They find themselves
completely paralyzed until the object takes off or
disappears. In some cases, the UFO occupant allegedly
aimed a tube or weapon of some sort at the percipient,
leading ufologists to assume that a technological device
was used to induce the paralytic state. Parapsychologists,
on the other hand, have long concluded that akinesia is a
contributing cause; that the entity materializes by utilizing
energy from the percipient himself.
If the UFO phenomenon is largely hallucinatory, and
much of the evidence suggests that it is, then the para-
psychological assumption may be more valid than the
ufological speculation.
Charles Bowen, editor of England's Flying Saucer
Review, the world's most respected ufological journal,
recently observed: "Did these witnesses, widely dispersed
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on earth, and in time, all have experiences with solid
creatures from another world or from another dimension
of reality? Or did they suffer hallucinations of a similar
kind, where the dream creatures were strikingly similar in
many respects?... I pondered over the idea that the
frightening, spooky creatures described by some witnesses
could be some sort of psychic projection. There are
noticeable dreamlike qualities about the incidents de-
scribed in these cases."
The records of demonology are filled with striking
parallels. During the outbreak of vampirism in Europe
during the Middle Ages, witnesses to vampires were often
paralyzed, and the general descriptions of the vampires
themselves are identical to the "men in black." The dark
skin and angular, Orientallike faces were commonly
reported and were immortalized in the paintings of demons
and vampires by artists of the period.
In the UFO reports, innumerable witnesses have
described both the little men and the normal-sized
ufonauts as sharing these basic characteristics, along with
unusually long, clawlike fingers. Malcolm X was not
versed in UFO lore, and he assumed that his apparition
was a phantom of the Black Muslim religion.
Traditionally, the appearance of one of these evil-
looking entities is an ill omen. The witness frequently dies a
short time after his vision, or some other terrible tragedy
befalls him. Thus, we have the Grim Reaper myth.
Voodoo and black magic are also said to produce such
figures. In the early 1950's, Albert K, Bender dabbled in
both black magic and ufology, and he created a stir in
ufological circles when he claimed that he had been visited
by three men with glowing eyes, dressed in black suits. He
suffered all of the classic symptoms of demonomania; the
fierce headaches, the upset stomach, anorexia (loss of
appetite), and lacunar amnesia. He abandoned his UFO
studies after these experiences.
I have in my files hundreds of cases, some of which have
now been investigated by qualified psychiatrists, in which
young men and women obsessed with the UFO phenome-
non have suffered frightening visits from these appari-
tions, been followed by mysterious black Cadillacs which
appeared and disappeared suddenly, and have been
terrified into giving up their pursuit of the UFOs. Many
contactees report similar experiences.
The phenomenon is reflective; the more frightened the

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victim becomes, the more the manifestations are escalated.
Dabbling with UFOs can be as dangerous as dabbling
with black magic. The phenomenon preys upon the
neurotic, the gullible, and the immature. Paranoid-
schizophrenia, demonomania, and even suicide can
result—and has resulted in a number of cases. A mild
curiosity about UFOs can turn into a destructive
obsession. For this reason, I strongly recommend that
parents forbid their children from becoming involved.
Schoolteachers and other adults should not encourage
teen-agers to take an interest in the subject.

Appearances of Angels

There is a balance in nature, and there also seems to be a

careful balance in the UFO/psychic phenomenon. People
have actually died after exposure to the gamma and
ultraviolet rays from UFOs. But other people have had
their ailments cured by similar rays. The entities are most
often mischievous and sometimes completely hostile to
human beings, but there are cases in which people in
trouble have been rescued by these characters.
Occult literature is filled with accounts of this type. A
man is lost in a blinding blizzard high in the Himalayas,
miles from the nearest habitation. Suddenly another man
in khaki coveralls appears in the snow and guides him to an
abandoned hut and safety, then vanishes. A pilot crashes in
the Pacific a mile from a small island. A swimmer appears
and hauls the injured man ashore—then vanishes. The
island is totally deserted. A child is lost in a swamp, and an
unusual man suddenly arrives, takes him by the hand, and
leads him out. (There are dozens of these lost-children
stories. New ones appear in local newspapers every year.
The events are such that routine anonymous Good
Samaritans can be ruled out.)
In the Book of Daniel, Chapter 3, King Nebuchadnez-
zar throws Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into a
blazing furnace. The trio emerges unhurt after the king
observes, "Lo, I see four men loose, walking in the midst of
the fire, and they have no hurt; and the form of the fourth is
like the Son of God."
Our mystery men have allegedly guided trapped miners
out of caved-in shafts.
There are so many of these cases that once again we
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must ask: Who are all these people? Where do they come
from, and where do they go? Could they be the same kinds
of entities who were known to the ancients as angels?
Add up all these stories, and it seems as if our planet has
always been overrun with angels and devils, vampires,
werewolves, ghouls, and ghosts galore; sundry demons
killing animals and people and lapping up blood. Good
guys and bad guys struggling to hold us together or break
us apart.
The Book of the Secrets of Enoch is another apocryphal
book attempting to explain, or at least to interpret, the
invisible world around us. Earlier we discussed the story of
Enoch's trips to other worlds, where he encountered
wondrous beings and was given information to take back
with him and spread among men. Here is how Enoch is
supposed to have vanished at the age of 365 years:

When Enoch had talked to the people, the Lord sent out
darkness onto the earth, and there was darkness, and it covered
those men standing with Enoch, and they took Enoch up to the
highest heaven, where the Lord is; and he received him and
placed him before his face, and the darkness went off from the
earth, and light came again.
And the people saw and understood not how Enoch had
been taken, and glorified God, and found a roll in which was
traced "the invisible God"; and all went to their homes.

The Bible reduces all of this to a single line (Genesis

V:24): "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for
God took him."
All of the religious prophets seem to have undergone
contactee-type experiences. A man named Hermas,
brother to Pius, Bishop of Rome, left behind a
controversial book of visions, which details numerous
UFO-like events early in the Christian era. Hermas was
dictated to write the book by "angels," and in it he
describes seeing a great cloud of dust on the desert. As it
came closer to him he saw "a great beast, as if it were a
whale; and fiery locusts came out of his mouth. The
height of the beast was about 100 feet, and he had a head
like a large earthen vessel.... Now the beast had upon its
head four colors; first black, then a red and bloody color,
then a golden, and then a white." He also spoke with
strange beings dressed in white, with veils over their
faces. Some of his "angels" appeared as human beings
who could suddenly transform themselves into different
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 persons in front of his eyes. Once, he reports, he was
handed a book to read, and as soon as he was finished, it
disappeared magically from his grasp.
The winged angels in gossamer gowns with halos
around their heads are the fictional creations of artists.
Throughout history, those who have claimed actual
experiences with these entities have described them
either as radiant beings surrounded by brilliant light, or
as very ordinary-looking human beings. They sat down
and supped with Lot, just as our modern Venusians
reportedly sit down at kitchen tables and drink coffee
with backwoods farmers. In the great majority of all
these cases, including the numerous UFO stories I have
recounted, these entities appear as very young men in
their late teens or early twenties. We have both male and
female entities in our catalogs of the weird, but there
seem to be more male "angels" and ufonauts than female.
Many witnesses have the distinct impression that these
entities are actually sexless (androgynous). The males
with their long hair, angular faces, and mincing manners
suggest they might be hermaphrodites and homosexuals.
The "inspired" (ghost-written) book Oahspe, by Dr.
John Newbrough, hammers away at the asexual theme,
claiming that the great leaders of early mankind were
sexless, as are the great angels. This condition is called
iesu and is defined as follows in Oahspe:

A sexless person; one without the possibility of sexual

passion. Some men, as Brahma, attain to iesu. Improperly
called iesus. The Hebraic word ieue was made from iesu; one
who can hear the voice of the Great Spirit. Ieue has been
improperly confounded with Jehovih. Men who attain iesu are
said to have attained the state of woman, i.e., to have changed
sex.

Leaders such as Alexander the Great were, in fact,

suspect as homosexuals or asexuals. One very large
religious cult still exists (in the Soviet Union, of all places),
which is founded on the belief that asexuals will eventually
rule the world. Men in the cult are deliberately castrated.
Former Soviet Premier Georgi Malenkov was allegedly a
member of this group and his masculinity—or lack of
same—has been heatedly debated in several books. Today
there is a rampant buffery dedicated to documenting and
combating what they assert is a homosexual conspiracy to
dominate the world.
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208
 Except for those who might be specially constructed for
incubus-succubus activities (invisible entities who report-
edly fornicate with human females and males), it does
appear that our angels and spacemen come from a world
without sex—and, very probably, a world without an
organized society; a world in which each individual is
merely a unit in the whole and is totally controlled by the
collective intelligence or energy mass of that whole. In
other words, these beings have no free will. They are slaves
of a very high order. Often they try to convey this to
percipients with their statements, "We are One," "We are in
bondage."
Such a world would have no need for money, and
contactees are often told that the great civilization in outer
space does not use money. Ego would be unknown, and so
all of the social problems, conflicts, and ambitions
produced by ego would be unknown, too. Even death
would hold no terror. To us, death means the end of our
enjoyment of material things, of sex, of ego. To them,
death means nothing more than the termination of
existence. If they are really mere manipulations of energy,
as I believe them to be, then they might be reconstructed at
some time in the future. Since they lack ego and
personality, it would be like taking an automobile apart
and using those parts to build another one.
All of the above points have been stressed in the ancient
contacts with angels, as well as the modern ufonaut
meetings. Sometimes the information is cunningly
disguised, but it is always there.
Angelology is a fascinating offshoot of demonology.
The appearances of angels have been chronicled down
through the ages, and several new angel reports still turn up
each year. Once again we find that these reports contain all
the basic ingredients of the UFO reports. The same
phenomenon is at work, utilizing a different frame of
reference or being misinterpreted by devout witnesses.
A writer named Gustav Davidson spent several years of
his life sifting through all the religious, occult, and psychic
records to compile his massive Dictionary of Angels. The
reflective factor, so common in ufology and demonology,
seems to have bothered Mr. Davidson, too.
Davidson wrote in the introduction to his book:

At this stage of the quest I was literally bedeviled by angels.

They stalked and leaguered me, by night and day. I could

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 not tell the evil from the good.... I moved, indeed, in a twilight
zone of tall presences.... I remember one occasion—it was
winter and getting dark—returning home from a neighboring
farm. I had cut across an unfamiliar field. Suddenly a
nightmarish shape loomed up in front of me, barring my
progress. After a paralyzing moment, I managed to fight my
way past the phantom. The next morning I could not be sure
whether I had encountered a ghost, an angel, a demon, or God.
There were other such moments and other such encounters,
when I passed from terror to trance, from intimations of realms
unguessed at to the conviction that, beyond the reach of our
senses, beyond the arch of all our experience sacred and
profound, there was only—to use an expression of Paul's in I
Timothy 4—"fable and endless genealogy."

Fable and endless genealogy. That sums up what we

face in trying to isolate the UFO phenomenon from the
larger and more important "big picture," the overall
situation of which the UFOs are merely a small and
perhaps even insignificant part.

The Elementals

When I was just a farmboy new to the big city, I met an

elderly woman who hired me to type up a book manu-
script she had written. It was largely incoherent, and
I suspected she was a little bit off her rocker. The book
described her interminable conversations with an ancient
Roman named Lucretius. She first met him while walking
along Riverside Drive one afternoon. He materialized
suddenly in front of her, Roman toga and all, and when
their conversation ended, he melted away into thin air. He
had long flowing hair, aquiline features, and dark, piercing
eyes. To the best of my recollection, their discussions
revolved around religion and philosophy.
Several times since then I have met other people who
claim to have had frequent encounters with similar entities.
For some reason, most of these percipients seem to be on
the fringes of the art world. They all describe essentially the
same type of being. Those who are bright enough quickly
realize that their mysterious visitors are capable of
assuming any form they wish. One artist told me in great
detail of her thirty years of experiences with an androgy-
nous (neither male nor female) entity who resembled an
Indian and who was fond of playing little jokes on her, such

210
 as turning up in the form of Abraham Lincoln. She also
described his/its volatile temper.
"They're Valkyries, you know," she said. "They have a
wonderful sense of humor, but they also get very angry if
you contradict them."
Throughout history occultists have called these entities
elementals. There are several kinds of elementals in psychic
lore. One type is supposedly conjured up by secret magical
rites and can assume any kind of form ranging from that of
a beautiful woman to hideous, indescribable monsters.
Once a witch or warlock has whipped up such a critter, it
will mindlessly repeat the same actions century after
century in the same place until another occultist comes
along and performs the rite necessary to dissolve it. Many
hauntings are ascribed to elemental beings. Generation
after generation the entity returns to the same spot to walk
along a specific course. If a house is built on the spot, it will
walk through the house leaving unlocked doors in its wake,
parading through bedrooms and pantries, wandering
blindly across gardens. There are innumerable document-
ed instances in which knowledgeable occultists have gotten
rid of such entities by exercising certain rites and chanting
ancient prayers. Sounds ridiculous, but, as with the
exorcism rites of the Church, it seems to work.
The leprechauns of Ireland seem to be another form of
elemental. They may be akin to the legendary elves of the
Black Forest in Germany and the mysterious little "Stick
People" of the North American Indians. The Irish have all
kinds of stories and lore about the "little people." In 1968,
the people in Ballymagroartyscotch were up in arms when
road builders threatened to cut down a skeog, or fairy tree.
According to tradition, some fairies locate themselves in
skeogs, and woe to anyone who tries to cut them down.
Several contractors refused the job of chopping down the
tree. One of them, Ray Greene, said, "I heard of a chap
with the electricity board, and he cut down a fairy tree, and
the next day he fell off an electricity pole and was killed."
The problem was finally solved by diverting the road
around the gnarled old tree.
From the days of Moses' burning bush to the modern
appearances of angels and holy personages, these strange
events seem to have concentrated themselves around trees
and shrubbery.
A few years ago a sidhe, or fairy mound, was found by
workmen building an airport in Ireland. They flatly
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 refused to take a shovel or bulldozer to it. Like the skeog of
Ballymagroartyscotch, the airport sidhe became the focal
point of a controversy before the builders finally gave in
and bypassed it.
At least one man has died on a sidhe. His name was
Robert Kirk, and he was the minister of the church at
Aberfoyle, Ireland, back in the seventeenth century. After
a lifetime of scholarly research, he decided that fairies were
invisible creatures composed of "congealed air." His body
was found on a fairy mound and gave rise to the legend that
the little people had carried off his soul.
The brothers Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, not only
wrote scores of charming fairy stories, but they also studied
the occult and wrote books about it. Some of their
children's tales were based on the lore they collected. You
undoubtedly remember the various stories about how
secretive fairies are about their names. In Spence's The
Fairy Tradition in Britain we are told, "To mention the
fairy name either individually or collectively was not
permissible. This restriction is associated with the belief
that to know the name of a being presupposes a certain
measure of power over him."*
In Scotland, the na fir chlis were "nimble men" who
inhabited the sky. In Ireland and Wales, fairies with
reddish skins were called fir darrig, and the legendary
ancestors of the men who built Stonehenge were known as
fir bolg, the "men with bags," who lingered in swamps and
bogs.
Angels, elementals, and ufonauts all play amusing
games with their names, favoring minor variations on
ancient languages. The late George Adamski, one of the
first UFO contactees to receive publicity in the early 1950's
claimed that he had met an illustrious space person named
Fir Kon; a name that was probably derivative from the
ancient Gaelic, a language completely unknown to Mr.
Adamski.
A forty-six-year-old TV repairman and ham-radio
operator named Sidney Padrick was strolling along
Manresa Beach near Monterey, California, early on the

* I n most religions it is regarded as a grave offense to take the accepted

name of G o d in v a i n , as in the Ten C o m m a n d m e n t s . Earlier cultures also
demanded that the names of the gods be spoken a l o u d only w i t h the
greatest respect. This fear may have been based u p o n a certain awareness
that i n v o k i n g the name of a god could produce sudden supernatural
manifestations.

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 morning of January 30, 1965, when he reportedly
encountered a grounded UFO and was invited aboard by a
mysterious voice. He is supposed to have met a 5-foot, 10-
inch-tall man with short-cropped auburn hair, very pale
skin, a very sharp nose and chin, and unusually long
fingers. This ufonaut identified himself by a name which
Mr. Padrick later spelled phonetically as Zeeno. Although
Padrick had no knowledge of Greek, xeno (pronounced
zee-no) is the word for stranger in that language.
In England, a glass phial filled with silver sand was
found at an alleged UFO landing site in April, 1965. It was
wrapped in a piece of parchment containing Greek
lettering which spelled out "Adelphos Adelpho" meaning
brother to brother. This was just one of the many curious
finds in that Devon field where a gardener named Arthur
Bryant reportedly chatted with two ufonauts on April 24,
1965. One of the ufonauts identified himself as Yamski. It
was weeks before British ufologists learned that contactee
George Adamski had died suddenly in Washington, D.C.,
on April 23, 1965, only a few hours before the Bryant
contact. Mr. Bryant, himself, died of a brain tumor on
June 24, 1967—on the anniversary of Kenneth Arnold's
"first" flying saucer sighting twenty years earlier. Coinci-
dentally, journalist Frank Edwards, author of two popular
UFO books and a longtime researcher, passed away a few
hours before Bryant in his home in Indiana. There have
been other seemingly coincidental deaths in the UFO field
on June 24. Frank Scully, author of Behind the Flying
Saucers, died on June 24, 1964. Richard Church, a well-
known British ufologist and contactee, died on June 24,
1967. And Willy Ley, the pioneer rocket and space
authority, suffered a fatal heart attack on June 24, 1969.
Perceptive readers will note that many of the events, both
modern and historic, outlined in this book occurred on the
twenty-fourth of the month.
Another Englishman, Arthur Shuttlewood, the editor
of Warminster Journal, became involved in UFO
investigations when Warminster experienced a spectacular
flying saucer flap beginning in December, 1964. He was
soon introduced into the twilight world of the elementals.
First he received a long series of phone calls purportedly
from the space people. Later the tall, pale, long-fingered
gentlemen in coveralls came knocking on his door to
engage him in long chats about cosmic matters. They
announced that they were from the cantel (their word for
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 planet) of Aenstria. They identified themselves as Caellsan,
Selorik, and Traellison. These names were probably plays
on old Greek terms. Aenstria could be derived from the
ancient Greek story of Aeneas, the son of the Trojan prince
Anchises and the Goddess Aphrodite. Aeneas roamed the
world for seven years and was the subject of Virgil's
history, Aeneid, a book Shuttlewood had never even heard
of. Caellsan could have had its roots in the story of
Caeneus, a Thessalian woman who was supposed to have
the power to change her sex. According to legend, she
offended Zeus and was punished by being changed into a
bird. One of the seven hills of Rome is named Caelian. The
name "Selorik" might have come from Selene, the moon
goddess of Greek mythology.
The name game is also played at seances, with
materializations claiming a variety of names adopted from
ancient Egyptian, Greek, and various Indian languages.
Apparently the elementals have a language of their own
which sounds like double-talk or bad science fiction, and
they frequently toss in words and names from that
language just to keep things confused.
Thousands of mediums, psychics, and UFO contactees
have been receiving mountains of messages from "Ashtar"
in recent years. Mr. Ashtar represents himself as a leader in
the great intergalactic councils which hold regular
meetings on Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, and many planets
unknown to us. But Ashtar is not a new arrival. Variations
of this name, such as Ashtaroth, Ashar, Asharoth, etc.,
appear in demonological literature throughout history,
both in the Orient and the Occident. Mr. Ashtar has been
around a very long time, posing as assorted gods and
demons and now, in the modern phase, as another glorious
spaceman.
Angels, too, indulge in the name game. Gustav
Davidson's Dictionary of Angels is filled with names very
similar to those which crop up in UFO and occult lore.
And, of course, the fairies and leprechauns of northern
Europe have played the name game with almost delightful
vengeance, particularly during the Middle Ages. There is
more truth to Rumpelstiltskin than most people recognize.
Fairies are supposed to possess magical powers—the
ability to alter physical matter and to paralyze people
through spells. To be bewitched by fairies is to have your
mind and body controlled by them.
Accounts of little humanoids with supernatural powers

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 can be found in almost every culture. In Indian Legends of
the Northern Rockies, Dr. E. E. Clark describes the
various Indian legends about little three-foot-tall beings
who rendered themselves invisible by rubbing themselves
with a certain type of grass. They were supposed to have
incredible strength, and in one story an Indian exposed to
one of these creatures suffered from a swollen face
afterward. As in northern Europe, the"little people" of the
Rocky Mountains reputedly kidnapped children from the
Indian tribes frequently.
An anthropologist from Berkeley, California, Brian
Stross, uncovered some interesting "little men" stories
while studying the Tzeltal Indians of Tenejapa in Chiapas,
Mexico. The local name for the 3-foot-tall hairy human-
oids is ihk'al. Legend claims that the ihk'al fly about with
some kind of rocket attached to their back, and they
occasionally carry off people. A little farther south, similar
beings supposedly live in caves and are able to fly through
the air. They are said to kidnap women and force them to
bear children.
Far in the interior of Brazil, according to the explorer
Lieutenant Colonel P. H. Fawcett, there thrives a dreaded
group of "bat people" who live in caves and possess
telepathic powers.
Why haven't any of these entities ever been photo-
graphed? They have. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle performed a
lengthy investigation into one set of photos of fairies taken
in England by a couple of children. Apparently they were
authentic.
For some reason, children seem to see the little people
more often than adults. Back in 1966, I chatted with a man
on Long Island who told me the following story after
extracting a promise that I wouldn't use his name. One
night that spring, he said, his small daughter ran into the
house and told him that there were some little men in silver
suits running about the backyard. He tried to shrug her off,
but she was insistent. Finally he glanced into the backyard
to appease her, and he was amazed to see three tiny figures
darting around in the grass. They were less than 2 feet high
and were wearing skin-tight metallic suits of some sort. He
cautiously opened the door and stepped outside, and the
three figures instantly ran to the far end of the yard and
vanished.
The historical records certainly indicate that the little
people have always existed all over this planet; that they

215
possess the power of flight, the power of invisibility, and, to
varying degrees, the power to dominate and control the
human mind.
We call them elementals, too. In story after story, the
witnesses encountered them near swamps, lakes, and
rivers, often carrying out the same actions so often
reported by UFO witnesses. Flying lights and spheres are
said to accompany some fairies and little people. Witnesses
were paralyzed in their presence, just as the unfortunate
people who reportedly encountered vampires in central
Europe were supposedly frozen in their tracks by some
mysterious force or power radiating from the entities.
The manifestations have remained the same throughout
history. Only our interpretations of those events have
changed.
The occult literature asserts that there are several
different types of elementals. Fire elementals somehow
utilize the energy of flames and materialize in burning
houses, fireplaces, furnaces. Then there are water elemen-
tals, air elementals, and elementals which feast upon the
energy of plants. (Some fascinating experiments with
plants have been under way for several years by various
independent researchers. Sensitive lie-detector devices
have been hooked up to potted plants and actually respond
when other plants in the room are deliberately injured. The
device also reacts to human pain, indicating that all living
things might somehow be interrelated by undetermined
energy forces.)
The most interesting elemental type is the humanlike
being who materializes at seances. Such beings have
actually been photographed and examined by medical
doctors. The spiritualists have developed their own jargon
to describe and explain these unbelievable materializa-
tions, but it does seem that these entities are identical to the
ufonauts. In these cases, the medium goes into a trance, his
or her metabolism declining almost to the point of death.
Then a figure slowly begins to appear in the seance room.
(In many cases, the room is fully lighted, and the witnesses
completely surround the figure, ruling out mundane
trickery.)
In the majority of cases, the entity resembles an Indian
or an Oriental, with high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and
reddish or olive skin. They usually wear robes or Indian
garb but have also appeared in the accepted dress of the
period. Long hair is a common feature. Both male and

216
 female entities have been described. They can speak
audibly and carry on conversations with the witnesses.
These seance materializations seem to be identical, also, to
the Valkyrie types who appear repeatedly before isolated
individuals.
Sir William Crookes, the famed physicist, attended no
less than forty-five materializations of this kind, photo-
graphing and physically examining the entities.
Here is a rather routine description of a materialization
event from the late 1800's, as recounted by Archbishop
Thomas Colley in a commentary appended to the 1882
edition of Oahspe, witnessed by a group of doctors and
clergymen: "A spirit form, eight inches taller than Dr.
Monck [Reverend Francis Monck, the medium], grew
from him by degrees, and building itself up into giant
proportions, with muscular limbs developed like statuary
of bronze, and of the color, there came into disconnected,
independent vigorous life, apart from the medium, an
ancient Egyptian.... I now got the spirit to measure hands,
placing its palm on mine. The hand was small—like all
Easterns', and the wrist was also small, but the arm was
massive, muscular, bronzed, and hairy. Its eyes were black
and piercing, but not unkindly; its hair lank and jet, and
mustaches and beard long and drooping; its features full of
life and expression, yet Sphinxlike. Its headdress was very
peculiar, a sort of metal skullcap with an emblem in front,
overhanging the brow, which trembled and quivered and
glistened. I was suffered to feel it, but as I did so, it seemed
to melt away like a snowflake under my touch, to grow
solid again the moment after."
In a seance room such an entity is automatically
regarded to be a spirit—the shade of a long-dead Egyptian.
But if the same entity wearing the same metallic skullcap
should stride out of the bushes in West Virginia and alarm
clandestine lovers in a parked car, he would be considered
a spaceman.
Now we can reach another tentative conclusion. In
order to materialize and take on definite form, these
entities seem to require a source of energy; a fire or a living
thing—a plant, a tree, a human medium (or contactee).
Our sciences have not reached a point where they can offer
us any kind of working hypothesis for this process. But we
can speculate that these beings need living energy which
they can restructure into a physical form. Perhaps that is
why dogs and animals tend to vanish in flap areas. Perhaps
217
the living cells of those animals are somehow used by the
ultraterrestrials to create forms which we can see and sense
with our limited perceptions. Perhaps human and animal
blood is also essential for this process.

The Birth of Spiritualism

In 1823, young Joseph Smith woke up in the farmhouse

near Palmyra, New York, to find a faceless "messenger"
standing beside his bed. Within a few years, "Spring-heeled
Jack" was leaping around the British countryside, his cape
fluttering in the still night air. In 1846, the skies went mad
with strange lights and peculiar meteorological phenome-
na. In 1847, the house occupied by the Mitchell Weekman
family in the tiny hamlet of Hydesville, New York, only a
few miles from Joseph Smith's former home in Wayne
County, developed a ghost. Somebody kept knocking on
the door—but there was never anybody there. An eight-
year-old girl in the family screamed that a cold, invisible
hand touched her and caressed her body. The Weekman
family packed up and moved out—and a family named
Fox moved in.
In March, 1848, the two Fox Children, Kate, twelve,
and Margaret, fifteen, not only heard the mysterious
rappings and rattlings of the ghost, but they communicated
with it.* They developed a simple code for yes and no and
for all the letters of the alphabet and carried out
conversations with the unseen entity. The story slowly
leaked out, and the Fox sisters became famous. What's
more, the ghost apparently followed them about, and they
were able to hold seances in other towns with the entity
communicating with them by rapping on walls or tables.
This single sequence (or was it a communications
breakthrough?) was the beginning of modern spiritualism.
So here is another freakish coincidence to ponder: Both
Mormonism and spiritualism were born in the same
county in places only a few miles from each other!
Spiritualism became a rage in the 1850's and 1860's.
Mediums blossomed all over the world. Many of them
proved to be fraudulent and were merely cashing in on the
fad. But others—many others—performed inexplicable
feats. Because ghosts and spiritual manifestations seemed

* T h e date of this breakthrough was M a r c h 3 1 , 1848.

218
to offer proof of religious beliefs, many educated men took
an active interest in investigating such phenomena.
Leading clergymen, educators, and scientists took up the
investigation of these matters as a hobby. Scientific
journals of psychic research were founded and published
the extensive reports of these above-average "ghost
hunters." We have been left a wealth of heavily document-
ed case histories covering most of the nineteenth century.
Thomas Edison's parents were active spiritualists, and
Edison himself privately expressed his belief in the survival
of the human spirit after death. He was born in 1847. Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, spent
the last half of his life pursuing and investigating occult
matters, as did Sir William Crookes, a physicist who made
a number of outstanding contributions to science (he was
among the first to study radioactivity, and he invented the
Crookes tube, predecessor to X rays and radio tubes).
I cannot even begin to review all of the occult evidence
here, but there are dozens of excellent books available
covering the whole spectrum of spiritual events. If you take
the time and trouble to examine some of the better
literature, you will find precise parallels and correlations
with the UFO phenomenon. It appears that the same forces
are at work in both situations, the same patterns prevail
(particularly the hoax patterns), and the same underlying
purposes seem to be present.
In short, we can conclude that spiritualism is just
another means of communication between the ultraterres-
trials and ourselves. And this form of communication has
been in constant use throughout history.

UFOs and Things That Go Bump in the Night

The late Dr. Nandor Fodor, a leading New York

psychiatrist, made an extensive study of seemingly genuine
trance mediums and even attempted to psychoanalyze
their spirit guides, or alter egos. He also performed an
outstanding study of the poltergeist phenomenon. In his
book, Haunted People, written in collaboration with
Hereward Carrington, he presented 375 typical poltergeist
cases from A.D. 355 to A.D. 1947. A great many of these cases
are identical to our modern UFO incidents.
For example, in September, 1824, small "symmetric
objects of metal" rained out of the sky near Orenburg,
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Russia. In 1836, globular lights appeared around the home
of a Captain Lamber in Szeged, Hungary. Strange sounds
were heard in the house, and a "woman in white" appeared
and disappeared frequently over a long period. The
breaking of glassware and rappings on doors and walls
were routine in many of these cases all over the world. "A
floating, vaporous body shaped like a football" was seen
around a boardinghouse in New York in 1882 and was
accompanied by rapping sounds. Dogs frequently reacted
with terror during these manifestations. Bedclothes were
yanked from beds by unseen hands, and many, many of the
victims awoke in the middle of the night to find elusive
phantoms standing over their beds.
One of the most celebrated of all poltergeist cases,
known generally as the Bell Witch, took place in
Robertson County, Tennessee, in the 1820's. The home of
John Bell was plagued for years by a mysterious presence
which made all kinds of noises, indulged in destructive
manifestations, and even talked to the victims and the
numerous witnesses. Lights "like a candle or lamp flitting
across the yard and through the field" were frequently seen.
General Andrew Jackson (seventh President of the
United States, 1829-37) reportedly paid a visit to the Bell
homestead. As he neared the place, his horses suddenly
halted, apparently unable to pull his wagon farther. The
general got down and examined the wheels and the road
and could find no reason for the horses' struggle. Suddenly
a metallic voice rang out from behind some bushes, "All
right, General, let the wagon move," and the horses were
able to pull it again. This sounds like our first electromag-
netic case—even though no motors or electrical circuits
were involved!
Another witness, one William Porter, claimed that he
tussled with an invisible entity in the Bell home. He was
awakened in his bedroom when someone or something
hauled the covers off him. He grappled in the dark and
managed to roll the entity up in the quilt. Then he picked
the struggling shape up and headed for the smoldering
fireplace, intending to throw the cover, "witch," and all
into the fire. "I discovered that it was very weighty," he
wrote later, "and smelled awful. I had not got halfway
across the room before the luggage got so heavy and
became so offensive that I was compelled to drop it on the
floor and rush outside for a breath of fresh air. The odor
emitted from the roll was the most offensive stench I ever

220
smelled."
A detached, derisive voice frequently spoke to the Bells
and the various people who visited them to witness the
manifestations. It actually succeeded in breaking up the
marriage plans of young Betsy Bell, saying"so many things
to Betsy and Joshua [Joshua Gardner, her fiance] in the
presence of their friends of a highly embarrassing nature
that the girl in time became quite hysterical and worn out in
despair."
This is a common factor in many poltergeist cases. The
invisible entities loudly reveal and discuss the intimate
secrets of the victims in the presence of outsiders,
indicating that they, like the UFO entities, know
everything about our life histories. This type of behavior is
reported in case after case, extending far back into history.
An English poltergeist back in A.D. 1190, for example,"used
to talk with people a n d . . . it would reveal publicly deeds
done from the time of their birth, which least of all they
wished others either to hear or know."
(In many modern UFO contact cases, the visible and
apparently physical entities nearly always establish at the
outset their complete knowledge of the contactee's past,
often coming up with information about distant relatives
unknown to the contactee which, when checked out,
proves to be valid.)
Another common factor in poltergeist cases is the
sudden materialization or disappearance of physical
objects. Stones have often fallen from the ceilings of rooms
in such quantities that they had to be shoveled out every
morning. This has even reportedly happened in tents on the
desert. Ordinary objects, such as ashtrays, suddenly vanish
and are later found in outlandish places. UFO contactees
report this same kind of phenomenon shortly after they
receive their first visit from the entities.
The controversial contactee Truman Bethurum soberly
cited an incident in which the beautiful female captain of a
flying saucer, Aura Rhanes, asked him to hold a plastic
flashlight on his open palm. She stared at it intently, and it
vanished instantaneously, without a trace. This, she told
him, was what would happen if we tried to attack "them."
We would simply disappear. Demonstrations of this type
have been staged since the beginning, as in the case of the
prophet Hermas and his magical book which vanished
after he had read it.
Bethurum's story is a classic in ufology. He said he was
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 sleeping on a truck on Mormon Mesa, outside Las Vegas,
Nevada, on Sunday, July 27, 1952, when he awoke to find
himself surrounded by eight or ten men, all under 5 feet in
height. They looked like Latins or Italians, he reported,
with dark olive skins, jet-black hair trimmed short, and
tight-fitting blue-gray jackets and trousers. They spoke to
one another in an unknown language but addressed him in
perfect English. He was led to a hovering saucer and was
introduced to Aura Rhanes. He saw a good deal of Captain
Rhanes after that. She even materialized suddenly in his
bedroom on a number of occasions, somewhat to the
consternation of his wife, who later divorced him. In the
UFO name game, "Aura Rhanes" might well have meant
the aura reigns.
Truman Bethurum died on May 21, 1969.
Bedroom visitants and poltergeist activity are a
common factor in the contactee syndrome. And these
poltergeists are not only thieves and mischiefmakers, they
are also proven arsonists. In hundreds of cases the haunted
houses suffer mysterious fires. As soon as one fire is
extinguished in one part of the house, another breaks out
elsewhere. Witnesses such as doctors, policemen, and
firemen have been present and have actually seen the fires
suddenly burst out in corners of rooms, curtains, waste
baskets, and furniture. There seems to be no earthly
explanation for these sudden conflagrations.
When I was visiting Hyderabad in central India, I heard
stories of a haunted hut on the outskirts of the city that had
been plagued by an arson-bent poltergeist. The local police
chief had gone to investigate, and while he was in the hut,
his trousers suddenly caught fire. That did it! He ordered
the hut vacated and sealed up.
It is traditional that haunted houses eventually burn to
the ground. UFO witnesses, researchers, and contactees
have this same problem, as I pointed out earlier. Soon after
researcher Stephen Yankee acquired a microfilm copy of
Morris K. Jessup's Varo Papers (a strange UFO docu-
ment), his Michigan home went up in flames.
There have also been several cases in which human
beings have been found burned to ashes, even though the
chairs or beds they were in were only slightly scorched. It
takes a very hot flame to reduce human bones to ashes. In
recent years, there has been an increasing number of cases
in which people have been found totally cremated in their
automobiles while the upholstery was only mildly singed.

222
 Water also plays an enigmatic role in the poltergeist
phenomenon. Torrents of water from unknown sources
have flooded houses, gushing from walls containing no
pipes, squirting from ceilings, pouring down staircases,
splashing by buckets full out of nowhere to drench
witnesses.
Just as the UFO cultists have settled upon the
extraterrestrial thesis to explain flying saucers, the
occultists have decided that poltergeists are caused by
energy radiated from disturbed children or by restless
ghosts. The common procedure for investigating polter-
geists is to examine the entire history of the house and land.
In some cases, it is discovered that someone was murdered
there or buried there years—even hundreds of years—
before the manifestations began. So the ghost is blamed for
the phenomenon. There are, of course, thousands of
murders and violent deaths every year, and it might be
useful to perform a study of all the scenes of these crimes to
determine the percentage of hauntings that occur after-
ward. I suspect that percentage would be quite small.
Rather, it seems that these events are concentrated in
base areas and are merely a side effect of the other things
taking place there unnoticed. Small, confined areas all over
the world appear to be haunted century after century by
mischievous entities who are able to adopt any guise and
who maintain such total control over material objects that
they can produce any kind of manifestation. Our
willingness to accept the restless-ghost theories is based
upon our ego-inspired need to believe in the immortality of
the human soul or spirit. The ultraterrestrials might
recognize that need and wickedly take advantage of our
beliefs, tailoring their manifestations so that they appear to
support our religious convictions.
I have prepared two interesting graphs based upon the
independent research of the occultists and the ufologists.
One is a chart of the known UFO reports of the nineteenth
century. The other is a chart of the recorded poltergeist
cases for the same period. We find striking similarities in
these patterns. In some cases, the poltergeist wave
preceded by a few months or a year or two the UFO activity
in the same area. In other cases, the UFO and poltergeist
activities occurred simultaneously. Our biggest problem is
that the occult phenomena have been more thoroughly
investigated, recorded, and researched than the UFO
phenomena. The occult records are lavish with essential

223
details about the people and the areas involved, while the
UFO reports provide little or no details other than
descriptions of the objects.
The problems in computing accurate charts from this
kind of sampling are obvious, particularly since most of the
better poltergeist reports of the period came from Europe,
where investigations were better organized and more
widely published (this holds true today for UFO coverage).
We are forced to estimate that a proportionate amount of
poltergeist activity was occurring in the United States in
those years. Most of the UFO reports in this particular
study were from the United States, and several of them are
detailed elsewhere in this book.
Assuming that each discovered historical report
represents a larger number of unpublished or undiscovered
reports, just as today's published UFO reports represent on
the average 250 unreported or unpublished sightings, we
can conclude that a flap condition existed in the years 1820,
1834, 1844, 1846, and 1849. We find that there was an
outbreak of poltergeists in 1835, 1846, and 1849.
As the nineteenth century progressed, reporting
improved, and we are able to make more precise
correlations. A UFO flap took place in 1850, and there was
also a series of poltergeist cases. A larger poltergeist
outbreak occurred in 1867, following flaps in 1863-64.
UFO activity became more intense beginning in 1870, and
there were notable flaps in 1872,1877 and 1879. The 1880's
produced a major explosion of all kinds of phenomena,
including the sudden disappearances of people. Polter-
geist cases were in abundance in that decade, particularly
in the big flap years of 1883 and 1885.
Morris K. Jessup labeled the years 1877—87 the
Incredible Decade after scouring the astronomical jour-
nals of the period. Astronomers made some remarkable
discoveries during those years. The previously unobserved
satellites of Mars popped into view in 1877, new craters
appeared on the moon, and all kinds of strange objects
flitted around the upper atmosphere. Bonilla photo-
graphed unidentified objects while observing the sun
during the flap year of 1883 (Chapter 2). The great flap of
1897 was apparently in preparation.
In 1866, a New Englander named William Denton
declared himself to be the first modern contactee. He
claimed to be in telepathic contact with beings from
another planet, and he and his whole family later

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purportedly visited Venus and Mars. Denton wrote a series
of books describing saucer-shaped vehicles in detail, which
he thought were made of aluminum. (A commercial
process for manufacturing aluminum was not invented
until 1886.) He also told his audiences (he lectured widely)
that the folks who rode around in aluminum airships
looked very much like us. His narratives were, in many
respects, identical to those of the modern contactees.

Trance Mediums and Possession

Trance mediums were nothing new in 1850. In the

Bible's First Book of Samuel, Chapter 28 describes how
Saul consulted a medium ("...a woman that hath a
familiar spirit"). Mediums acted as oracles in ancient
times, and people with this peculiar gift appeared in each

225
 new generation. Such persons seem to serve as instruments
through which the ultraterrestrials can speak to us directly,
and they often come up with amazingly accurate
prophecies of the future and precise details of events that
could seemingly be known only to the dead relatives of the
people who consulted them.
Of course, when spiritualism became a national fad, a
goodly number of charlatans and hucksters moved in. But
most of the genuine mediums exercised their talents
carefully and for free. They did not indulge in fancy hocus-
pocus and did not need paraphernalia, such as spirit
cabinets. They were—and are—people who can apparently
summon up unseen entities or alien intelligences and
extract information from them.
I am not a spiritualist myself, although I have attended a
few seances over the years, usually in the role of a scoffer and
disbeliever. As a longtime amateur magician, I have been
able to see through the frauds, but I have also been
genuinely perplexed by some of the manifestations I have
personally witnessed.
Essentially, a trance medium lapses into an unconscious
state, and while in this condition, his or her body is taken
over by some outside influence. This influence is usually a
self-styled "Indian guide" from "the other side." Many
mediums have been simple, uneducated people, but when
in a trance state they have been able to talk foreign
languages fluently. Scientists and clergymen have put
countless mediums through severe tests over the years. At
one group of seances in the I920's, sitters, who were all
versed in different languages, grilled mediums in every-
thing from ancient Chinese to Swahili, and the controlling
entities not only conversed in those languages but
corrected the sitters' grammar! The daughter of Judge
Edmunds, president of the Senate in the 1850's, gave
incredible performances while in a trance, speaking
fluently in Greek, Spanish, Polish, Latin, Portuguese,
Hungarian, and several Indian languages.
Since the sitters—and the mediums—assume that they
are dealing with residents of heaven, they ask mostly
spiritual questions. Customarily, the "control" will
announce that Mr. Blank is standing next to him and
wishes to speak to Mrs. Blank, who is attending the seance.
Mrs. Blank excitedly begins to question her dead husband,
Mr. Blank. How is life on the other side? Just fine, the
control replies, a little bored, everyone lives in vine-

226
 covered cottages, and all is sweetness and light. Where did
Mr. Blank hide his valuable gold watch before he died? It's
wrapped in an old sock and buried under some papers in
the bottom drawer of the old rolltop desk, the control
answers. Sure enough, when Mrs. Blank gets home, she
finds the watch exactly where the medium's alter ego said it
would be. Try to convince Mrs. Blank that she didn't talk
with her dead husband!
In many cases, the medium even begins to talk in a voice
that sounds exactly like the dead Mr. Blank, uses his pet
expressions, and even refers to things known only to Mrs.
Blank, indulges in their private jokes, and so on.
Occasionally, a deceased celebrity will "break through."
Recently the late George Bernard Shaw made a tape
recording in England which is now circulating in occult
circles. Those who knew Shaw claim that it sounds exactly
like him, uses his phraseology and vocal mannerisms, and
displays his brilliant and distinctive wit.
The trance phenomenon deserves extensive study
because so many aspects of it are directly related to the
contactee phenomenon. The contactees have been told a
hundred different stories of what life is like on other
planets. If you review the descriptions of heaven produced
at the thousands of possibly genuine seances, you will find
the same contradictions. The entities will lie transparently
at one point in the seance, and a few moments later will
come up with astounding information which could not be
based upon simple trickery.
The mediums themselves have always been aware of
their controls' mischievous sense of humor. They speak
of false shades and malevolent spirits who perform out-
rageous hoaxes. So the mediums and the professional
investigators are always wary. The fact that a control can
imitate George Bernard Shaw does not necessarily mean
that GBS is doing the speaking from the spirit world.
The fact that a control knows where Mr. Blank hid his
gold watch does not necessarily prove that Mr. Blank is
standing at his side "on the other plane."
The medium generally remains completely inert while in
the trance or "occupied" state but in some instances can
become quite animated and make gestures appropriate to
whatever is being said. In a very real sense, the medium's
mind has been blanked out, and his or her body has been
completely taken over by the control. The medium has
become a zombie of sorts, possessed by an alien entity, an

227
 entity who lacks a physical form of his own.
Contactees often find themselves suddenly miles from
home without knowing how they got there. They either
have induced amnesia, wiping out all memory of the trip,
or they were taken over by some means and made the trip
in a blacked-out state. Should they encounter a friend on
the way, the friend would probably note that their eyes
seemed glassy and their behavior seemed peculiar. But if
the friend spoke to them, he might receive a curt reply.
In the language of the silent contactees this process is
called being used. A used person can suddenly lose a day or
a week out of his life. I have known silent contactees to
disappear from their homes for long periods, and when
they returned, they had little or no recollection of where
they had been. One girl sent me a postcard from the
Bahama Islands—which surprised me because I knew she
was very poor. When she returned, she told me that she had
only one memory of the trip. She said she remembered
getting off a jet at an airport—she couldn't recall getting on
the jet or making the trip—and there "Indians" met her and
took her baggage. She remembered nothing further after
that. The next thing she knew she was back home again.
It seems likely the same methods are applied to both
mediums and contactees. In the case of the mediums, the
mind control serves a useful purpose. It enables the entities
to establish direct vocal communication with us and, in
many instances, pass along worthwhile information.
This process can also be destructive. A young man from
Ithaca, New York, called me some time ago at the urging of
William Donovan, president of Aerial Investigation and
Research (AIR), to tell me of his close brush with death.
One evening in the fall of 1967, he said, he left his home to
drive to a meeting. For some reason he couldn't explain, he
got out of his car, went back into his house, and carried out
several aimless actions such as picking up a book from a
table and putting it on the shelf. "Finally, I said to myself,
'Okay, it's time,'" he told me. He remembers leaving the
house and again heading for his parked car.
The next thing he knew he was in a hospital bed.
He had apparently driven about four miles to a railroad
crossing just in time to meet an oncoming train. His car was
demolished, but he escaped rather miraculously with only
a few minor injuries. If he had not gone back into the house
and carried out those meaningless, time-killing chores, he
would have avoided the train altogether. It is possible, of
228
 course, that the shock of the accident blotted out his
memory of that four-mile drive—but he couldn't even
remember putting the key in the ignition.
This man had been active in investigating the UFO flap
that took place around the radio telescope installations
near Ithaca in 1967-68.
In his book Passport to Magonia, Dr. Jacques Vallee, a
NASA astronomer and computer expert, touches on all
this. "In the Soviet Union, not so long ago, a leading
plasma physicist died in strange circumstances," Dr. Vallee
states. "He was thrown under a Moscow subway train by a
mentally deranged woman. It is noteworthy that she
claimed a 'voice from space' had given her orders to kill
that particular man—orders she could not resist. Soviet
criminologists, I have been reliably informed, are worried
by the increase of such cases in recent years. Madmen
rushing through the streets because they think the
Martians are after them have always been commonplace.
But the current wave of mental imbalance that can be
specifically tied to the rise and development of the
contactee myth is an aspect of the UFO problem that must
be considered with special care."
So there seem to be both good and evil forces at work in
this type of phenomenon. The good guys latch onto people
with particularly receptive minds and turn them into trance
mediums. The bad guys use the same methods to tamper
with the minds of contactees and even to commit murders
indirectly. Since incidents of these types can be traced
throughout history, it seems probable that these forces
have always been extant on this planet.
When the good guys worked through mediums, they
needed some excuse that we would accept. The answer
seemed to be "communication with the dead." These
communicative efforts led to the foundation of spiritual-
ism, and the entities played the role to the hilt, using their
complete knowledge of us and our individual lives to
provide us with " p r o o f of the existence of a spirit world.
This is the same precise methodology being employed with
the UFOs to build up support for the extraterrestrial thesis.
We humans need acceptable explanations for unnatural
phenomena, so "they" happily—and often humorously—
supply us with all the explanations we can handle. At the
same time, they give us tiny fragments of the real truth,
hoping no doubt that we will be able to digest them slowly.
Ever so slowly.
229
 In earlier times it seems as if they made a complicated
attempt to convey the truth to us through mediums and
psychics, but we chose to misinterpret these efforts and
placed them within the context of our primitive religious
beliefs. We are still doing this, and they are going along
with it since even misinterpreted communication is better
than no communication at all. Religion may not be truth
but may merely be a step on the long path of the real truth.
Fragments of the truth have been passed along to us
through many different channels of communication. One
of these is called automatic writing. The medium holds a
pen or pencil loosely, and the controlling entity takes
charge, moving the hand to write out the message. Many
thousands of people have this gift, and believe it or not,
whole books have been written by this process. Hundreds
of them have been published over the years and form what
is known as inspired literature. One of the most remarkable
of these works is a huge volume titled Oahspe. It was
written by a New York dentist named Dr. John
Newbrough in 1880. He was, so the story goes, awakened
one morning by a hand on his shoulder and a bodiless
voice. He found his room lit up "with pillars of soft light so
pleasing to the eyes it was indescribable." His mysterious
visitors ordered him to purchase one of the newly invented
typewriters and to spend an hour each morning sitting with
his fingers on the keys. He didn't know how to type, but he
turned out a voluminous manuscript at the rate of about
1,200 words an hour. When it was completed, it was an
intricate history of the human race, filled with amazing
information about our solar system, such as the Van Allen
radiation belt, which has only been recently confirmed by
our space program. Much of the historical information in
Oahspe checks out. A complex language, a mixture of
ancient tongues and even Algonquin Indian, is defined and
utilized in the text. To research such a book and compile
the language would have required many years of study and
hard work for a seasoned linguist—which Newbrough was
not.
Another popular mode of communication is the Ouija
board. This doesn't work for most and produces nothing
but mischievous rubbish (probably from the subconscious
mind) for others. But some medium types have obtained
amazing results with it.
Do the ultraterrestrials really care about us? There is
much disturbing evidence that they don't. They care only

230
 to the extent that we can fulfill our enigmatic use to them.
The Reverend Arthur Ford is one of America's best-
known trance mediums. For most of his life he has served
as an instrument for an entity who calls himself Fletcher. In
1928, Fletcher announced that Harry Houdini (who had
died in 1926) was on hand and had a message which he
wanted conveyed to his widow, Beatrice. The message was
in a code once used by the Houdinis in a mind-reading act.
This code was known only to the couple and had never
been published or revealed to anyone. Fletcher, through
Ford, was able to give precise details of this secret code,
and Mrs. Houdini later confirmed that the message had to
come from her husband. This was only one of Ford's many
coups. In the fall of 1967, Ford went into a trance on
Canadian television and produced a message for Bishop
James Pike from his deceased son. Bishop Pike, who was
present at this televised seance, avowed that the message
seemed authentic and seemed to come from the familiar
personality of his son. This well-publicized seance
launched a major revival of spiritualism in the United
States.
Reverend Ford travels in high circles but has never
made any material gain from his peculiar gift. He gives
freely of his time—and Fletcher's advice from the other
side—at seances all over the country. Mrs. Ruth Mont-
gomery, the well-known author and Washington reporter,
tells of the time that Reverend Ford visited her in
Washington and lapsed into a trance so she could ask
Fletcher for some advice on his behalf. Reverend Ford was
then in the process of moving and wanted to know what he
should do with some of his things. Fletcher seemed totally
disinterested in Ford's problems, Mrs. Montgomery
reported, and when she asked if Ford should visit a clinic
for a checkup, Fletcher snapped, "He'd better do
something. If he doesn't, I can't work through him much
longer."
Although Reverend Ford had voluntarily submitted his
person to Fletcher's use for nearly half a century, the entity
was apparently completely disinterested in his problems
and welfare.
This is, alas, rather typical. Even the most helpful
entities seem more dedicated to the job of communicating
than to any kind of involvement with those to whom (or
through whom) they are communicating. The bizarre
history of psychic phenomena is filled with Fletchers.
 Mrs. Montgomery, incidentally, indulges in automatic
writing herself and has received constant messages for the
past few years, many of which have been valid prophecies
and stern advice meant to govern her future actions.

Psychic Hoaxes

There have been innumerable psychic hoaxes for the

past 150 years, and many of these parallel the UFO hoaxes.
In 1855, the Fox sisters confessed that their spirit rappings
were a hoax. They said they produced the sounds by
"snapping their toes." Think about that for a moment.
Snapping your toes so that it sounded like a rap on a wall
or table would be a most remarkable talent—perhaps even
more remarkable than the ability to communicate with the
spirit world. I don't believe I would pay ten cents to hear
someone talk to a rapping spirit—but I would happily pay
five dollars to examine someone who could duplicate the
rapping sound by snapping his toes.
Later the two sisters said the confession was false, and
they had been bribed to make it.
Mrs. Houdini was genuinely astonished and impressed
by Reverend Ford's messages from her husband, and she
made numerous public statements to that effect, as well as
signing various affidavits. But later, in the 1930's, she chose
to deny it all for a time. Then, shortly before her death, she
reversed her denials.
In ufology we have to contend with teen-agers' hot-air
balloons, and in psychic phenomena we have to worry
about youngsters firing rocks at houses with slingshots and
phony mediums levitating "spirit trumpets" with black
thread. But there are many more UFO sightings than there
are plastic balloons, and there are more poltergeists
dumping rocks in living rooms than there are wild-eyed
youngsters with slingshots.
There are also more ultraterrestrial entities than either
the occultists or the UFO enthusiasts dream of.

232
13. A sure Cure for Alligator Bites

Slag fell out of the sky over Darmstadt, Germany, on

June 7, 1846, according to Charles Fort. Slag! Preposter-
ous, of course. Why, slag could no more fall out of the sky
in Germany than it could over Puget Sound a century later.
Fort detailed more than a dozen other slag-fall cases from
the nineteenth century, always carefully listing his sources.
I have taken the trouble to check out several items from the
works of Fort, and I found that he was painstakingly
accurate. His books, all written in the first three decades of
this century, recount case after case of strange aerial
phenomena which are identical to our modern UFO
sightings. So when the late Mr. Fort informed us that 1846
was a most unusual year, we are obliged to take him
seriously.
Indeed, 1846 was a most extraordinary year!
It not only rained blood and frogs and slag. There were
strange glowing objects circling those garbage-filled skies,
and our naughty poltergeists were having a field day,
particularly in France. Furniture was floating around a
house in La Perriere, France; rocks were being tossed in the
home of M. Larible in Paris; dishes were dancing across the
tables of Rambouillet, France, and in a field outside of the
little town of La Salette a "miracle" was taking place.
Two children, Melanie Calvet, fifteen, and Maximin
Guiraud, twelve, convinced skeptical adults that they had
seen a religious vision—a great globe of light hovering
above the fields. It opened up, they avowed, and a smaller,
brighter light moved out. It was some kind of glowing
entity who spoke to them in French. The two youngsters,
having been schooled in Catholicism, assumed that this
entity was Our Lady. She gave them a series of prophecies,
accurately predicting the terrible potato famine which
struck far-off Ireland in the winter of 1846—47 and the
failure of Europe's wheat crops in 1851. In fact, all kinds of
droughts and diseases affected crops from 1846 to 1854 all
over Europe, causing great suffering and starvation. She
also allegedly stated, "Little children will be seized with
trembling and will die in the arms of those who are holding
them...." This grim prophecy proved valid, too, when

233
 more than 75,000 people, mostly youngsters, died in an
epidemic of ague—a malarialike disease which produced
fever and shivering and death.
This was strong stuff in 1846, particularly since the
children also reported that the Lady warned, "If my people
will not submit, I shall be forced to let the army of my Son
fall on them." But, she added, "If sinners repent, the stones
and rocks will turn into heaps of wheat, and potatoes will
be sown by themselves."
Since it is very unlikely that the two children could have
invented these prophecies, we can assume that their story
was true, and in fact, it appears to conform to the now-
familiar tactics of the ultraterrestrials. Their uncanny
talents of precognition (ability to foresee our future) once
again served to provide us with "proof of contact. This
tactic is still being used.
The next year, 1847, that spirit moved into the little
house in Hydesville, New York, and in 1848 the
redoubtable Fox sisters began to communicate with it.
Spiritualism began in earnest, and by 1852 there were
thousands of adherents in the United States alone. From
1848 to 1851 there was a worldwide UFO flap, and
poltergeist cases hit an interesting peak in 1849. Strange,
isn't it, that all these things should explode at once? The
coming of the UFOs went unnoticed, but the poltergeists
and hauntings created a sensation and gave added impetus
to the spiritualist movement.
In France, a man named Allen Kardec founded Revue
Spirite in 1856, and spiritualism became the rage of Paris.
And then, on February 11, 1858, a fourteen-year-old
girl wandered into the French hillside and fell to her knees,
her eyes filled with a vision of a beautiful woman. The girl's
name was Bernadette Soubirous. The hillside was a
garbage dump outside the town of Lourdes.
The miracle of Bernadette is so well known that we
hardly need comment on it. A local skeptic, one Dr.
Dozous, followed the girl on one of her pilgrimages and
watched in amazement as she entered a trancelike state, lit
a candle, and held her hand in the flame for fifteen minutes
without seeming to feel it or harming her skin. Then she
scraped away at the ground and a spring suddenly bubbled
forth.
Word of Bernadette's visions spread across France, and
although she was the only one who could see the Lady,
those who accompanied her and watched her in trance
234
experienced unquestioned miracles. Between March 5 and
March 25, 1858, a series of miraculous cures took place at
the grotto near Lourdes. Paralytics threw aside their
crutches after drinking the water from that spring.
The following year, 1859, the UFOs were busy again.
And the year after that there was another outbreak of
poltergeist cases in France and Switzerland.
Forgetting the worldwide situation for the moment, we
can draw some interesting conclusions from these French
cases. Two "miracles" occurred in France within twelve
years of each other. The incident at La Salette in 1846 was
definitely ufological in nature. The events at Lourdes were
more subtle and fit more into the "possessed" type of
phenomenon. The simultaneous outbreak of poltergeist
manifestations in France throughout that period, together
with all kinds of aerial and meteorological phenomena (see
Fort's Book of the Damned for listings of these reports),
tends to confirm the thesis that all of these things are
interrelated. When and if French investigators burrow into
the newspapers and journals of this period, they will
undoubtedly uncover many other lost reports which will
add to this evidence.

The Curative Powers of UFO

On September 1, 1965, hundreds of citizens in the

Kosice district of Czechoslovakia complained to their
commissars about the glowing red and black spheres that
were buzzing their towns and villages. A Reuters dispatch
from Prague added that this was "the most recent of a
series of artifacts of unknown origin which have been seen
in the Czechoslovakian skies in recent months...." The
Iron Curtain had sprung a leak, and U-2's from another
world were pouring through.
Two days later, on September 3,1965, four metallic blue
"plates" swooped out of the sky over the town of Cuzco, in
southwest Peru. Hundreds of people, alerted by radio
newscasts, went into the streets to stare at the strange
formation. The objects entertained them for two hours,
performing intricate maneuvers above the town. They
made right-angle turns, hovered, and skittered about in a
manner impossible for any known type of aircraft. When
they finally got bored with their audience, they sped away
at incredible speed.

235
 Others were seeing lights in the sky that same night and
weren't quite so entertained by them as the citizens of
Cuzco. Officer Eugene Bertrand of Exeter, New Hamp-
shire, on a routine patrol, came across a trembling woman
driver who told him an elliptical red object had just
pursued her car from Epping to Exeter. He calmed her but
didn't take the incident too seriously. After all, everyone
knew that flying saucers were nonexistent, the product of
hysteria and hallucination.
A few hours later Officer Bertrand was called upon to
investigate the report of an eighteen-year-old, Norman
Muscarello, who had also seen something weird in the sky.
Muscarello led him to a field near Exeter, and they both
saw a large, dark object marked by a straight row of
pulsating red lights lift above some nearby trees. It bore
down on them and passed within 100 feet of their position.
Bertrand started to draw his gun, thought better of it, and
radioed for help instead. Another officer arrived shortly
afterward, and the three of them watched the object as it
silently moved away at treetop level. This was the
beginning of the now famous book Incident at Exeter,
which was carefully and thoroughly investigated by
reporter John Fuller.
That same night two other police officers more than
1,000 miles from Exeter were also making an unexpected
visit to the twilight zone. It was shortly before midnight,
and Chief Deputy Sheriff William McCoy and Deputy
Robert Goode were cruising along a highway in Brazoria
County, Texas (south of Houston). Goode, who was
driving, was complaining to his partner about a sore and
swollen finger. Earlier in the evening he helped his son
move a pet alligator, and the creature had nipped him on
the left index finger. He had bandaged it, but now it was
throbbing painfully, and he expressed fear that an
infection was setting in. The two men were discussing the
need to wake up a doctor at the end of their patrol and have
the finger tended when they suddenly noticed a large
purple glow in the west, moving horizontally across the
nearby oil fields. At first they thought it was just a light
from the oil fields. Then it turned and began to move
toward them; a great rectangular glob of purple light about
50 feet in height. It was accompanied by a smaller blue
light, the men said later. Goode had his window rolled
down and was waving his aching digit in the breeze. As the
objects rushed toward their car, he said he felt a definite
236
wave of heat on his arm and hand. Whatever the globs
were, neither man felt inclined to stop and investigate.
Goode jabbed his foot on the accelerator, and when they
were some distance away, McCoy looked back and
watched the lights rise upward, flare brilliantly, and go out
altogether.
The two admittedly frightened men sped back to
Damon, Texas, and when their excitement subsided,
Deputy Goode noticed that his finger was no longer
swelling or bleeding, and the pain was gone. He removed
the bandage and discovered that his wound was almost
healed! Had he, he wondered, been cured by fright
(unlikely, say the doctors)—or by the heat from that eerie
"something"?
The wire services had a lot of fun with that story—
"Alligator Bite Cured by Flying Saucer!" But somebody
somewhere took the two men seriously. Low-flying light
planes, apparently unmarked, flew back and forth over the
area of the sighting for the next two days. Shortly after the
incident, two strangers turned up at the sheriffs office
looking for Deputy Goode. They proceeded to describe in
detail what the UFO looked like—even before Goode had
an opportunity to tell them. Then they suggested that if he
should encounter a similar machine in the future, he should
cooperate with its occupants and keep any conversations
with them to himself. The identities of these two mystery
men have never been determined.
There have been innumerable cases in which witnesses
have felt heat radiating from low-flying unidentified flying
objects, and there are several heavily documented cases in
which people have suffered burns from the objects, but the
Texas incident is one of the rare ones in which a wound was
apparently healed by such radiation. When this story first
appeared, it seemed so absurd that most ufologists
neglected it and concentrated on the almost trivial
sightings in Exeter. However, we now know that the
absurd cases are the most important and that the endless
aerial sightings are practically meaningless.

A Major Miracle

Giant winged beings, usually described as headless, are

an integral part of the UFO phenomenon. On September
18, 1877 (the year that marked the beginning of Jessup's
237
 Incredible Decade) a winged human form was seen cruis-
ing casually across the skies of Brooklyn. In 1922, there
were two cases in Nebraska of 8-foot-tall winged creatures
disembarking from circular flying machines and soaring
away under their own power. Headless winged creatures
were reported over Scandinavia in 1946, and on November
16, 1963, four teen-agers in Kent, England, claimed that
they had witnessed the landing of a spherical globe of light
while returning home from a dance. A giant, headless
figure with batlike wings waddled from it and terrified
them, they said. A decade earlier, a 6- to 7-foot-tall man
with wings reportedly appeared in Houston, Texas. UFOs
were also seen at the time.
Starting in November, 1966 and continuing throughout
1967, more than 100 people in Point Pleasant, West
Virginia, insisted that they, too, had encountered a giant
winged creature with blazing red eyes set deep in its
shoulders. Most of these sightings took place around the
TNT area, a World War II ammunition dump. I have
interviewed many of these witnesses and am convinced that
they did see something.
Perhaps that something is the basis for many of our
legends of angels and demons. And perhaps it was that
same something that was flying around Portugal in 1915.
There was a worldwide UFO flap from 1909 to 1914,
encompassing Africa, Australia, Oklahoma, and other
places. The poltergeist reports hit a peak in 1910 and 1913
and concentrated largely in France and Italy, although
there was some activity in Portland, Oregon, during the
period.
We are concerned here with the headless winged beings,
however. The flap of 1909-14 may have merely been a
prelude to World War I and the astounding events* which
followed, or it may not have been connected with those
events in any way. We have no way of knowing.
Unfortunately, until more adequate research is done, we
have to record much of this evidence as purely circumstan-
tial.
But in 1915, four girls were tending sheep at Cabeco,
Portugal, when they allegedly saw a white figure hovering
in the air. "It looked like somebody wrapped in a sheet.
There were no eyes or hands on it," the young girls reported
to their families. (None of the witnesses of that West
Virginia winged creature has reported seeing hands or
arms on it.) These four children are supposed to have seen

238
 this white, headless entity twice again that summer. One of
the girls was named Lucia Abobora. She was born on
March 22, 1907, and she was to become one of the central
figures in the earthshaking drama to follow.
In the summer of 1916, this same Lucia Abobora was
playing near a cave with some friends when they saw a light
flying just above the nearby trees, moving slowly in their
direction. As it drew closer, it became clear that it was a
human figure. Later the children described it as "a
transparent young man" of about fourteen or fifteen years
of age. He settled in front of them near the cave and
announced, "Don't be afraid. I am the Angel of Peace.
Pray with me." The children knelt beside this "transparent
young man" who glowed as brilliantly as crystal and
prayed until he dissolved into nothingness.
A few weeks later the angel appeared again before this
same group in the same place, and again they prayed
together. The initial contact was made. The stage was set.
Europe was in flames and soldiers in the trenches were
seeing strange omens in the sky. Blood was spilling
needlessly in the most mismanaged war in history.
Generals on both sides ordered suicidal attacks which cost
thousands of lives without gaining an inch of ground. And
men were learning to take to the air, carrying the carnage
with them. At first pilots shot at one another with pistols
and rifles, but later machine guns were brought into play.
Spiritualism flourished as the relatives of the dead and the
lost sought communication with their sons and husbands.
Thousands of women woke up screaming in the middle of
the night, always at the precise time that their men fell on
the distant battlefields. This same phenomenon had shored
up faith in spiritualism during the Civil War, and it was to
be repeated during World War II and the Korean War. It
happens still as our young men hurtle headlong into pools
of their own blood in Vietnam.
On April 6, 1917, the United States formally entered the
Great War. One month later, on May 13, a Sunday, Lucia
Abobora, ten, Francisco Marto, nine, and Jacinto Marto,
seven, were in the meadows of a place called Cova da Iria
outside of Fátima, Portugal, when they saw a flash of light
in the clear sky. Thinking that it was lightning, they ran for
shelter under an oak tree, and when they reached it, they
stopped in amazement, for there, hovering just above a 3-
foot-high evergreen nearby, a brilliant globe of light hung
suspended. Within this globe there was an entity garbed in

239
a luminous white robe with a face of light which "dazzled
and hurt the eyes."
"Don't be afraid. I won't hurt you," the entity said
gently in a low, musical voice. The awed children asked her
(it was a feminine voice) where she came from.
"I am from heaven," she reportedly replied. "I come to
ask you to come here for six months in succession, on the
thirteenth day at this same hour. Then I will tell you who I
am, and what I want. And afterward I will return here a
seventh time."
She asked them to say the Rosary every day and to pray
for peace. Then the globe silently rose and floated away. It
is noteworthy that only Lucia and Jacinto claimed to hear
the voice. Francisco saw the object but heard nothing.
The excited trio rushed home and tried to tell their
families about their vision, but the adults refused to take
them seriously. Word spread, however, and on June 13, a
small crowd of devout pilgrims followed the children to the
Cova da Iria and watched from a distance. One of the
witnesses, a woman named Maria Carreira, testified that
she saw nothing when the children suddenly knelt and
began talking to an unseen entity, but she did hear a
peculiar sound—like the buzzing of a bee.*
Lucia later said that the Lady asked them to learn to
read. (A big thing to ask of simple peasants in 1917
Portugal.) On July 13 a much larger crowd gathered as the
three children knelt and addressed the entity whom only
they could see. Ti Marto, one of the adults, reported that he
heard a sound "like a horsefly in an empty waterpot."
Hopeful cripples and blind men urged the children to ask
for a miracle. Lucia relayed the request and said that the
Lady answered, "Continue to come here every month. In
October I will tell you who I am and what I wish and will
perform a miracle that everyone will have to believe.
"When you shall see a night illuminated by an unknown
light," the Lady continued, "know that it is the great sign
that God gives you that He is going to punish the world for
its crimes... To prevent this I come to ask the consecration
of Russia... If they listen to my requests, Russia will be
converted and there will be peace."
Naturally, these small and simple children knew
nothing of Russia (the Russian Revolution began on
March 8, 1917) and could not have regarded it as any kind

*A beelike buzz is frequently said to accompany l o w - f l y i n g U F O s .

240
of threat.
It was at this July contact that the children were
allegedly given a secret which has never been formally
revealed. When adults pressed her for details, Lucia would
only say that this secret was "good for some, for others
bad."
The visions of Fátima were now the sensation of
Portugal. In August the children were seized and
imprisoned by the Administrator of Ourem, who threat-
ened them and tried to make them confess that it was all a
hoax. But the children stuck to their story, even when
threatened with death. The three youngsters were still
being detained in Ourem when August 13 rolled around,
but a crowd of 6,000 gathered at the Cova, and according
to their testimony, a flash of light appeared in the sky and
then something resembling a small, transparent cloud
slowly floated down to rest briefly on top of the evergreen
tree. At the same moment, all the faces in the crowd were
bathed in a multicolored light.
Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinto were freed and returned
to the meadow on August 19. They reportedly saw and
spoke with the Lady again on that day. Thirty days later,
on September 13, the roads around Fátima were teeming
with pilgrims, priests, nuns, poor people, and rich. As is
usual in events like this, most of these people came to beg
for favors from the Lady; they wanted their ailments
healed and their troubles righted. They mobbed the poor
youngsters and pleaded for miracles, even though the
promised miracle of October was common knowledge, and
the children could only repeat that earlier promise.
Among the crowds in the field that day was the
Reverend Doctor Manuel Nunes Fromigao, canon of the
cathedral at Lisbon and professor at the Seminary of
Santarem. He later wrote that he noticed a peculiar
dimming of the sun in the cloudless sky as the children went
into their trance, but he failed to see the luminous globe
reported by other witnesses.
Up until this time the Lady had not identified herself in
any manner. She had been seen only by the three children,
and her voice had been heard by just Lucia and Jacinto.
Determined adults had extracted and embellished a
description of the Lady from the youngsters, but they never
really saw anything beyond a luminous figure. No hair or
features were apparently visible.
An estimated 70,000 people collected at the Cova Da
241
Iria on October 13, 1917, in anticipation of the promised
miracle. Many of them carried cameras, and primitive
hand-cranked movie cameras had been set up by newsreel
men. The weather was sour, with dark, sullen skies and a
heavy rain. The meadows and fields were a sea of mud, and
the faithful huddled under umbrellas. The three children
gathered with their parents in front of the little tree and
waited. Shortly after noon, Lucia gasped, and her upraised
face flushed as she entered a rapturous trance. The Lady
had arrived, even though the crowd saw nothing. The
children declared that she held an infant in her arms, and
for the first time she identified herself, saying that she was
"the Lady of the Rosary." The war was going to end soon,
she told them, and all of the soldiers would be returning
home. (The war continued for another year.)
Suddenly the crowd screamed, and all the people fell to
their knees. Something was coming through the clouds: a
huge silver disk which rotated rapidly as it descended
toward the mob. Fragile strands of silvery "angel hair"
showered from the sky, melting away before any of it could
be collected.
The object bobbed up and down, waltzing under the
cloud layer, and as it whirled faster, it seemed to change
color, going through the whole spectrum. It swooped down
and passed low over the terrified people; then it bobbed
upward again. These gyrations were continued for a full
ten minutes.
Miles from Fátima, others were watching the same
object. A well-known poet named Affonso Lopes Vieira
claimed that he saw it from his home at San Pedro de Moel,
forty kilometers from Fátima. Eighteen kilometers away in
Alburita, Dona Delfina Pereira Lopes, a teacher, and all of
her students reportedly witnessed the spectacle. Father
Inacio Lourenco described it as looking "like a globe of
snow revolving on itself."
Professor Almeida Garrett, a distinguished scientist
from Coimbra University, was in the crowd at Fátima and
reported: "It was raining hard . . . suddenly the sun shone
through the dense cloud which covered it; everybody
looked in its direction.... It looked like a disk, of very
definite contour; it was not dazzling. I don't think it could
be compared to a dull silver disk, as someone said later at
Fátima. No. It rather possessed a clear, changing
brightness, which one could compare to a pearl.... It
looked like a polished wheel.... This is not poetry; my eyes

242
have seen it.... This clear-shaped disk suddenly began
turning. It rotated with increasing speed.... Suddenly, the
crowd began crying with anguish. The 'sun,' revolving all
the time, began falling toward the earth, [now] reddish and
bloody, threatening to crush everybody under its fiery
weight...."
A wave of heat swept over the crowd, drying their rain-
soaked clothes instantly. We might speculate that this same
wave of heat may have affected the miraculous healings
that reportedly took place among some of the sick people
in the crowd, just as the heat from that purple glob in Texas
seemed to heal Officer Goode's infected finger.
Here we had an event of major importance with 70,000
witnesses, many of them priests, scientists, and journalists.
It came at a time when Europe was shuddering with the
violence of the First World War and religious faith was
being strained by the inanity of sudden death. It would
become one of the most thoroughly investigated UFO-type
incidents of the period. Innumerable books were written
about it, yet none of these books contained photos of the
actual object. There were plenty of pictures of the crowds,
many of whom were pointing cameras skyward. But what
happened to all of the pictures they must have taken? What
happened to all of the movie footage? I have tried to locate
some of these photographs without success. I can only
assume that they were collected by somebody and locked
away in some secret archive. Since there was no U.S. Air
Force and no CIA to blame this on, who did confiscate
those pictures?
In the initial reports of the phenomenon, all the
witnesses agreed that the object was white and seemingly
metallic, and that it changed color as the speed of rotation
increased. Later, myth and mysticism replaced fact. The
disk became "the sun," even though observatories around
the world assured the press that the sun remained in its
usual place during the miracle. As the years passed, the
miracle of "the sun" was gradually played down, and
emphasis was shifted to the saintliness of the three
children. The silvery angel hair is now described as "rose
petals" in most current literature.

Analysis of the Miracle

Fátima was not an accidental contact; it was obviously a

243
carefully planned and deliberately executed demonstra-
tion. Dr. Jacques Vallee, Antonio Ribera, and other well-
known UFO researchers have written extensively about it,
but following the style of contemporary UFO research,
they concentrated on the descriptions of the object and the
fact that 70,000 witnesses were present, and they studiously
ignored the whole pattern of events which preceded the
appearance of the object. Those events were far more
important than the climactic sighting.
The correlations are very clear. First, Lucia was singled
out in 1915 for the cautious initial contacts. She saw
something in the sky that summer, and a few weeks later
she and her friends were approached by a luminous
transparent figure which appeared to be a fifteen-year-old
boy. Since the children came from strict Catholic
backgrounds, the contact was conducted on a religious
level. The boy asked the children to join him in prayer.
Fear was replaced by reverence and awe. The experience
undoubtedly amplified Lucia's religious beliefs and
increased her interest in religious training. A study of her
autobiography and the thorough reports written during
and after the miracle suggest that she had many of the
medium characteristics mentioned earlier and that she
willingly prepared her mind for the events of 1917.
In modern contactee reports we find that initial contact
is sometimes carried out months or even years before the
contactee is finally involved in the situation.
(Small children often have a high degree of ESP, but as
they grow older and develop reason—and skepticism
and their minds become more disciplined to the material
world around them, these powers seem to slip away. A
remarkable Italian teacher, Maria Montessori, worked out
educational methods which took advantage of this fact,
and she founded the school system which bears her name.
Four- and five-year-olds in Montessori schools learn to
read, write, and work out complicated mathematical
problems by themselves. The teacher serves more as a
consultant and does no lecturing or open teaching. There
are now Montessori schools worldwide, and many of her
methods have been absorbed into our conventional
educational system. It is probable that small children make
excellent contactee material because of these factors, and
that may explain why so much UFO, ghost, and poltergeist
activity seems to surround children.)
The world was in foment in 1917, and the ultraterrestri-
244
als may have decided that some form of impressive
demonstration was necessary to restore faltering human
values. Random appearances of "signs in the sky" could
not accomplish this. Nor would a repetition of the miracle
of La Salette achieve this.
The world was more sophisticated in 1917 than it had
been in 1858. The ultraterrestrials could see our future, and
they wanted somehow to guide us and help us try to correct
our course. It must have been extremely important to them
for them to make such an effort.
They therefore selected three small children in Portugal
and launched their careful plan. The events had to be
staged so that they would support one another. Valid
prophecies had to be made so that the prophecies dealing
with the more distant future would be taken seriously. And
the whole situation had to fit into the context of the UFO
incidents which were still to come.
In May, 1917, the first contact was made in the usual
UFO manner. A globe of light appeared, and a faceless
entity spoke to the children, probably through ESP or the
trance state. Little Francisco could see the entity but could
not hear it. Lucia had already been prepared through her
earlier encounters so she served as a catalyst. In that first
meeting the entity spoke of religious matters in a way
that the children could understand and promised to return
on the thirteenth of each month for the next six months.
When the children excitedly reported this to adults in
their village, some of the more devout were impressed with
their obvious sincerity, and the stage was set for the
succeeding contacts. Adults who accompanied them to the
field in the months that followed heard sounds and saw
aerial lights and were convinced by the trance which the
children entered into. They spread the word and repeated
the Lady's prophecies. During one of the early contacts,
she promised a big miracle on October 13. Had this failed
to materialize, the whole Fátima thing would have
collapsed, but since it did occur precisely as the children
said it would months before, we are obliged to take all of
their story seriously.
Many of the Lady's statements and prayers, as related
by the children, were phrased in perfect Catholic dogma, a
fact which impressed the attending priests, since it was very
unlikely that the children could have known enough about
theology to make such things up. But all these things were
probably superficial trappings, quite similar to the endless

245
 descriptions of life on other planets given to UFO
contactees. The only important things in the statements
were the basic prophecies themselves.
Skepticism being what it is, the ultraterrestrials
realized that the only way to win attention to these
prophecies was to stage a careful demonstration which
would be practically irrefutable and which would convince
the Church—and the world—that the children had been
speaking the truth. Thus the miracle of Fátima came
about.
Among the minor prophecies was the prediction that
Jacinto and Francisco would soon die. (They were
delighted with this in their childlike way because it meant
they would be going to heaven.) Lucia entered a convent,
became a nun, was renamed Maria of the Sorrows, and was
hidden away from the world for many years. The major
prophecies of Fátima had been written down, sealed in an
envelope, and turned over to the Vatican. They were
supposed to be revealed to the world in 1960, but Pope
John XXIII "decided it was advisable to preserve the
mystery," according to Alfredo Cardinal Ottavianni, head
of the Vatican's sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith, and Pope John took the secret with him to his
grave.
Or did he? All kinds of rumors have leaked from the
Vatican about that secret. It is said to be a prediction of the
end of the world.
Fátima was a modern event, yet it is already clouded
with the distortions of belief. The photographs of the
object have "disappeared." The key prophecy has been
suppressed. Lucia shut herself away from the world. As the
years passed, the object was turned into a "dancing sun,"
the angel hair became "rose petals," and the entire
phenomenon was removed from the field of science and
entrusted to the religionists.
The carefully planned and deliberately executed
demonstration at Fátima was therefore a failure so far as
the ultraterrestrials were concerned. Such demonstrations
had proved highly effective in Biblical times, but times
were changing and new methods were called for. Mankind
was getting scientific—so perhaps the phenomenon should
be altered to a seemingly scientific framework. A scientific
(i.e., seemingly interplanetary) series of demonstrations
might capture the imagination of those who had aban-
doned religion.

246
 There have been many modern miracles of the Fátima
type, but they rarely gain much attention outside of
religious circles. The flying saucers get much more
publicity than the miracles.

Other Miracles, Other Correlations

Between the years 1937 and 1945, an entity who

identified herself as the Queen of the Universe appeared
more than 100 times to four young girls in the tiny hamlet
of Heede, Germany. The girls, aged twelve through
fourteen, were Anna Schulte, Greta and Maria Ganse-
forth, and Susanna Bruns. These visions began in No-
vember, 1937 and continued throughout the war. with
the Lady urging the world to "pray, pray much, especially
for the conversion of sinners." Hitler was probably none
too happy about all of this, especially since he openly
considered himself to be Antichrist.
(There are all kinds of stories and rumors that Hitler
was a trance medium himself and was in contact with evil
entities who advised him and directed many of his
genocidal policies.)
Lesser miracles have included weeping statues and
pictures which seem to fit into the poltergeist category. A
plaster Virgin began crying real tears in Syracuse, Sicily,
on August 29, 1953, and continued to "weep" until
September 1. Investigators could find no rational cause of
the phenomenon. In other cases, pictures and statues have
shed human blood.
On Sunday, June 18, 1961, four young girls were
playing marbles outside of the little village of Garabandal,
Spain, when they suddenly saw an "angel." The girls, Mary
Cruz Gonzalez, eleven ,Conchita Gonzalez, twelve, Jacinta
Gonzalez, twelve, and Mary Loly Mazon, twelve (none of
the Gonzalez girls were directly related), said that he
appeared to be about nine years old, was dressed in a long,
seamless blue robe, had a small face with black eyes, and
"fine hands and short fingernails." For some reason, he
gave the impression of being very strong. This figure was
surrounded by a dazzling glow and faded into thin air
without saying a word.
The excited youngsters ran into the village and told
everyone that they had seen an angel. Fátima was about to
be repeated all over again. Most of the adults scoffed, but
 those whose faith was extreme listened and spread the
word. An angel had visited Garabandal (a village in the
heart of the Cantabrian Mountains in northern Spain;
elevation about 2,000 feet; it's about 150 miles from
Lourdes, France).
Two days later the same four children were walking
along a path outside the town when suddenly a brilliant
white light exploded in front of them, terrifying them and
blinding them briefly. (Brilliant flashes of light from an
unknown source are frequently reported by contactees and
UFO witnesses. There was an epidemic of such flashes in
the spring of 1968. Often people reported that these flashes
suddenly occurred directly in front of their moving
automobiles. Others said that a flash "like a flashgun going
off burst near them as they stepped outside their homes.
These flashes do not seem to be related to the "mystery
photographers" who frequently turn, up and photograph
the homes of witnesses.)
Soon after these initial experiences, the girls began to go
into trances (termed a state of ecstasy by the religionists)
during which they would see the Lady. Sometimes these
trances would last for hours, and the girls would remain
fixed in an awkward kneeling position with their heads
thrown back and their eyes staring at the vision, totally
oblivious of the hundreds of people swarming around
them.
One of their first visits with the Lady is of very special
interest here. Shortly before 6 P.M. on Sunday, July 2,
1961, the children trooped to their now sacred spot outside
of Garabandal and immediately entered the trancelike
state. They were later able to describe in detail what they
had seen. These descriptions were dutifully recorded in the
religious literature later published by Church-affiliated
groups.
The Lady was accompanied by two angels on this
occasion. The angels were dressed alike "as if they were
twins." The Lady had long, thin hands, a long angular face
"with a fine nose," and lips which were "a bit thin." She
seemed to be "rather tall." Her hair was a deep nut brown,
parted in the center. This is, of course, an almost classic
description of the "long finger" UFO entities described by
many contactees. Even more startling, on the Lady's right
the girls said they could see "a square of red fire framing a
triangle with an eye and some writing. The lettering was in
an old Oriental script!"

248
 The angels in all of these cases sound suspiciously like
our celebrated "little men." The Lady who has been so
glorified by the religionists may merely be a variation of
Aura Rhanes.
Conchita and the other children of Garabandal have
now experienced more than 1,000 visions, and they have
been frequently photographed during their ecstasies. A
number of times all four children have awakened
simultaneously in their four separate homes and gone
dashing into the night to the sacred place as if they were all
somehow called by an unseen force. They have been
examined by doctors, high government and Church
officials, parapsychologists, psychiatrists, by everyone
except ufologists (I know of only one ufologist who had
ever even heard of this case). The many messages conveyed
by the Lady have conformed precisely to Catholic dogma,
using phrases and references which are significant to
trained theologists but would be meaningless to the
children. The message of October 18, 1961, as dictated by
the children, read: "We must make many sacrifices, do
much penance. We must visit the Blessed Sacrament
frequently; but first, we must be good, and unless we do
this, a punishment will befall us.
"The cup is already filling and unless we change, a very
great punishment will befall us."
October 18, 1961 fell on a Wednesday.
On Friday, June 18, 1965, Conchita entered a trance
and was purportedly given the following statement by the
Lady:
"As my message of the eighteenth of October has not
been complied with, and as it has not been made known to
the world, I am telling you that this is the last one.
Previously, the cup was filling; now it is brimming
over.... You are now being given the last warnings."
There is a wealth of evidence and testimony which
leaves little doubt that these children of Garabandal were
being possessed by some outside influence and were
undergoing a supernormal experience.
The messages of Garabandal followed the pattern of all
the others received by UFO contactees and religious
visionaries alike: stern warnings that the activities of the
human race displeased the ultraterrestrials. The religious
messages ambiguously threaten worldwide punishment,
while the UFO messages are more specific, i.e., stop
meddling with atom bombs or "we" will paralyze your
249
whole world.
Can we really afford to ignore these warnings?
The Nation of the Third Eye

There is no reason to think that the four children of

Garabandal had ever seen, or even knew about, the eye
symbol on the Great Seal of the United States. Nor is it
remotely possible that the children, or any of the elders of
Garabandal, could have known of the importance that this
symbol plays in the silent contactee situation. In fact, very
few ufologists are aware of it.
Those mysterious "men in black" who travel around in
unlicensed Cadillacs have reportedly been seen wearing
lapel pins bearing the symbol. They have also identified
themselves directly as being from "the Nation of the Third
Eye." So we call the symbol the Third Eye. It would be
interesting to find out why some cultures regarded it as evil,
while others used it to symbolize the Deity.
Why did the Third Eye appear beside the vision at
Garabandal? Was it a symbol of identification? Or was it a
warning?
The Vatican has been most cautious in the handling of
the Garabandal case. The children have promised that a
major miracle will take place there sometime in the near
future. This miracle is supposed to occur above a grove of
pine trees near the sacred place, and it is said that it will
somehow leave a permanent mark in the sky. A mark that
will endure for the ages.
In the meantime, there have been other miracles around
the world. Most of them are greeted by silence from the
Vatican. Two occurred within a few days of each other
toward the end of March, 1968. One was in the Philippines;
the other took place half a world away in Cairo. Egypt.
Eight young girls on the island of Cabra in the
Philippines began to suffer visions in the early part of the
year, and the feminine voice of "the Virgin" promised a
miracle. During the last week of March about 3,000
persons poured onto the island and waited. Some,
including a university professor, a prominent obstetrician,
and an army major, reported seeing a circular object over
the island. It whirled and changed through all the colors of
the spectrum, they said. Others claimed that a brilliant
glowing cross hovered over the island chapel.*
*There were several sightings of g l o w i n g , cross-shaped objects over
England in the summer and fall of 1967.
250
 A luminous female figure appeared on the roof of the
Church of the Virgin in the Zeitoun District of Cairo in the
wee hours of Tuesday morning, April 2, 1968. Thousands
of people quickly gathered to view this entity. She has
allegedly returned several times since and has been seen by
many clergymen of the Coptic Orthodox Church,
including Bishop Athanasius of Beni Suef. The Copts have
even issued a formal declaration affirming their acceptance
of this miracle.
Is the news of these miracles being suppressed? Hardly.
Newsweek reviewed the Philippine case on April 8, 1968,
and the New York Times carried a dispatch from Cairo on
the events there in its issue of May 5, 1968.
Six young Canadian girls, ranging from seven to
thirteen years old, allegedly saw the Virgin Mary on the
evening of Monday, July 22, 1968. They reported that a
luminous entity appeared before them, hovering in the sky
near St. Bruno, Quebec. Four of the girls saw the figure,
but only two, Manon Saint-Jean and Line Grise, heard a
voice which they described as "soft and slow." It advised
them to pray and promised to return again on Monday,
October 7. Others in the area reported seeing unusual
things in the sky that evening. One boy in neighboring St.-
Basile is supposed to have called out to his father, "Look,
Daddy, there's a man walking in the sky."
Among the many other correlations, you will note that
the month of March has often played an important part in
these events, just as March and April have always
produced many of our principal UFO sightings. These
religious manifestations are clearly a variation on the UFO
manifestations (or vice versa). The same methods of
communication are being employed in both phenomena,
and the UFO entities bear a marked resemblance to the
religious entities.
Our awareness of these correlations presents us with a
small dilemma. Are the religious miracles really a
manifestation of some extraterrestrial intelligence? Or are
the UFOs really some manifestation of God?

The Methods of Miracles

Early in January, 1969, a seven-year-old girl named

Maria de Carmen Ocampo was walking in a wooded area
outside of Uruapan, Mexico, when she reportedly saw a
female apparition materialize in front of a large cedar tree.
251
 It identified itself as the Virgin of Guadalupe and asked
that flowers and candles be placed at the foot of the tree.
After the apparition vanished, an airplane mechanic
named Homero Martinez came upon the frightened little
girl on his way home.
"She was very nervous," he said. "She told me what had
happened and what the vision had said to her. Frankly, I
didn't believe her, and I went on my way. A few steps later I
heard a rare kind of music—very beautiful—and I turned
around and couldn't see anything. I learned later the girl
was very sick for a day or two and couldn't talk."
All of the miracles we have discussed here have centered
around trees or bushes: a trifling but perhaps significant
detail. All have involved children in isolated areas.
Information on the Mexican incident is still scanty at this
writing, but if the girl really did become sick and voiceless
after her encounter, we have another interesting factor to
consider. A Wanaque, New Jersey, police officer, Sergeant
Benjamin Thompson, was not only temporarily blinded by
a UFO in 1966, but he said, "It took away my voice, and I
was hoarse for two weeks after that."
Contactees complain that they suffer from nausea,
headaches, and general illnesses after their initial meetings
with the entities. But after a series of such meetings their
bodies seem to adjust, and they are no longer adversely
affected. Normal emotional reactions of nervousness and
fear can account for some of these sudden ailments, but not
all can be dismissed as mere psychosomatic reponses.
Some contactee illnesses are suggestive of radiation
poisoning, while others seem to be induced by the odors
which frequently surround the entities.
Usually the entities connected with these miracles are
reluctant to identify themselves. After several contacts they
offer vague labels for themselves which can be interpreted
in many ways. The Lady at Lourdes finally told
Bernadette. "I am the Immaculate Conception," a phrase
that had no meaning to the young girl but which greatly
excited the theologists. The Lady at Fátima finally
declared herself to be the Lady of the Rosary.
By the same token, the UFO entities seem to adopt
names such as Xeno (Greek for "stranger") or use
variations on ancient Greek and Indian names from
mythology. The long-haired Venusians and the long-
haired angels are unquestionably part of the same package,
coming from the same source but utilizing different frames
252
of reference to approach human beings. It is also highly
probable that they do not actually have individual
identities but are manifestations of a greater force which is
able to manipulate the human mind. This mental (and also
emotional) manipulation is the key to our mystery.
Possession occurs in both good and evil forms. Possession
is part of the overall manifestation. Many contactees
display the classic symptoms of possession. Arthur Ford,
the medium, was possessed on one level; Dr. Newbrough,
author of Oahspe, on another; contactees on still another.
All are subjects of the same phenomenon—a phenomenon
which is not bred in the reaches of outer space but which
has always existed with us here in our own immediate
environment.
The well-investigated miracles are proof that the
human mind can be exposed to induced hallucinations and
that information can somehow be inserted into the mind by
some unknown mechanism. In most contactee events, the
percipient is alone or with a small group when the UFO
contact occurs. Such percipients suffer medical effects
which indicate that the "contact" was actually hallucinato-
ry, just as the episodes involving children and religious
entities have proven to be wholly or partially hallucinato-
ry. The event or vision takes place only in the mind, not in
reality. The exterior manifestations are merely part of that
mechanism, a byproduct rather than a cause. It is likely
that an outsider trepassing on the scene of a UFO contact
would see the contactee standing in a rigid trance, just as
the witnesses to miracles see only the children in a blind
trance state. The contactee's real experience is in his or her
mind as some powerful beam of electromagnetic energy is
broadcasting to that mind, bypassing the biological
sensory channels.
The remembered nonevents are therefore of little or no
importance. This process of broadcasting to the mind has
always been known as possession or mystical illumination.
The modern hippie, under the influence of LSD, often
undergoes the same kind of experience and believes that he
has tuned in to the cosmic consciousness.
We have made the very human mistake of isolating all of
these manifestations into separate categories and studies.
The demonologists, angelologists, theologists, and ufolo-
gists have all been examining the same phenomenon from
slightly different points of view. Aretalogists study the
ancient writings describing man's contacts with supernat-

253
ural or extraterrestrial or ultraterrestrial beings. Spiritual-
ists have been concerned with convincing manifestations
indicating that the human soul endures after death and
populates some other plane or superreality beyond human
perception. Phenomenologists have endeavored to study
larger parts of all this and link them together with abstract
philosophical concepts.
For the past twenty years one group of UFO cultists
have been whispering about the approaching "New Age."
Now astrologers and hippies are expecting the Age of
Aquarius: a new age when the old values and concepts will
be tossed aside as mankind somehow merges with the
"cosmic consciousness" and our awareness of the supercos-
mos leads us further along some predestined path.
If the UFOs exist at all, they exist as a minor part of this
great explosion. They are the blackboard upon which
man's future is being written. To understand the message,
we must first develop a pantology which can bring together
all of these assorted beliefs and studies to form the whole.
All of the assorted literature I have touched upon thus far
merely serves as a beginning. We cannot close our minds to
some aspects of the fantastic while we happily embrace
other equally fantastic parts. The ufologists sneer at the
occultists and vice versa. The theologists and religionists
frown upon both. Orthodox science laughs at the entire
scene.
Open communication with the phenomenon is not
something far in our future. It is here. It is happening now.

254
14. Breakthrough!

Within a year after I had launched my full-time UFO

investigating effort in 1966, the phenomenon had zeroed in
on me, just as it had done with the British newspaper editor
Arthur Shuttlewood and so many others. My telephone
ran amok first, with mysterious strangers calling day and
night to deliver bizarre messages "from the space people."
Then I was catapulted into the dreamlike fantasy world of
demonology. I kept rendezvous with black Cadillacs on
Long Island, and when I tried to pursue them, they would
disappear impossibly on dead-end roads. Throughout
1967, I was called out in the middle of the night to go on
silly wild-goose chases and try to affect "rescues" of
troubled contactees. Luminous aerial objects seemed to
follow me around like faithful dogs. The objects seemed to
know where I was going and where I had been. I would
check into a motel chosen at random only to find that
someone had made a reservation in my name and had even
left a string of nonsensical telephone messages for me. I
was plagued by impossible coincidences, and some of my
closest friends in New York, none of whom was conversant
with the phenomenon, began to report strange experiences
of their own—poltergeists erupted in their apartments,
ugly smells of hydrogen sulfide haunted them. One girl of
my acquaintance suffered an inexplicable two-hour mental
blackout while she was sitting under a hair dryer alone in
her own apartment. More than once I woke up in the
middle of the night to find myself unable to move, with a
huge dark apparition standing over me.
For a time I questioned my own sanity. I kept profusive
notes—a daily journal which now reads like something
from the pen of Edgar Allen Poe or H. P. Lovecraft.
Previous to all this I was a typical hard-boiled skeptic. I
sneered at the occult. I had once published a book. Jadoo,
which denigrated the mystical legends of the Orient. I tried
to adopt a very scientific approach to ufology, and this
meant that I scoffed at the many contactee reports. But as
my experiences mounted and investigations broadened, I
rapidly changed my views.
While traveling through some twenty states to check

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firsthand the innumerable UFO reports, I was astonished
to find many silent contactees, and while the physical
descriptions they offered were varied, it quickly became
obvious that they were all suffering the same physiological
and psychological symptoms. Through these silent
contactees (people whose stories have never been pub-
lished) I actually entered into communication with the
entities themselves. When a UFO would land on an
isolated farm and the ufonaut would visit a contactee, he or
she would call me immediately and I would actually
converse with the entity by telephone, sometimes for
hours. It all sounds ridiculous now, but it happened. My
notes, tapes, and other materials testify to the fact.
I developed an elaborate system of checks and balances
to preclude hoaxes. Unrelated people in several states
became a part of my secret network to that mysterious
"other world." I wasted months playing the mischievous
games of the elementals, searching for nonexistent UFO
bases, trying to find ways to protect witnesses from the
"men in black." Poltergeist manifestations seemed to break
out wherever I went. It was difficult to judge whether I was
unwittingly creating these situations in some manner, or
whether they were entirely independent of my mind.
Now, in retrospect, I can see what was actually taking
place. The phenomenon was slowly introducing me to
aspects I had never even considered before. I was being led
step by step from skepticism to belief to—incredibly—
disbelief. When my thinking went awry and my concepts
were wrong, the phenomenon actually led me back onto
the right path. It was all an educational process, and my
teachers were very, very patient. Other people who have
become involved in this situation have not been so lucky.
They settled upon and accepted a single frame of reference
and were quickly engulfed in disaster. Several examples
will be cited in this chapter.
But let's review some of the game playing first. In May,
1967, the entities promised the silent contactees that a big'
power failure could be expected. On June 4, 1967, the
Arab-Israeli six-day war broke out in the Middle East.
Early the next morning, June 5, a massive power failure
occurred in four states in the northeastern United States.
Throughout that month the contactees were warned that
an even bigger power failure was due. It would be
nationwide in scope and would last for three days, the
entities promised, and would be followed by natural

256
catastrophes in July. New York City was scheduled to slide
into the ocean on July 2. The contactees did not broadcast
these dire predictions, yet the rumors snowballed. By mid-
June nearly all of the hardware stores in the flap areas had
sold out their supplies of candles and flashlights. Late that
May, the UFO entities had also declared that Pope Paul
would visit Turkey in the coming months and would be
bloodily assassinated and that this would precipitate the
blackout and the disasters. Weeks later the Vatican
suddenly announced that the Pope was, indeed, planning
to visit Turkey in July. Panic prevailed in the secret
contactee circles.
I was astonished when I discovered that these same
rumors were also sweeping New York's hippie community.
People began phoning me late in June to ask me where I
was going on July 2.1 was not going anywhere. I refused to
join the exodus, and Manhattan did not sink into the sea.
Other predictions received that month began to come
true right on the nose, however. There were predicted plane
crashes—a jet airliner collided with a private plane over
Henderson, North Carolina, killing, among others, J. T.
McNaughton who had just been appointed U.S. Secretary
of the Navy, and the next day, July 20, an identical accident
occurred in Brazil, killing some leading Brazilian politicos.
I started to get nervous.
What astonished me most was that these predictions
were coming in from a wide variety of sources. Trance
mediums and automatic writers in touch with the spirit
world were coming up with the same things as the UFO
contactees. Often the prophecies were phrased identically
in different sections of the country. Even when they failed
to come off, we still could not overlook this peculiar set of
correlative factors.
So convincing were these demonstrations that I finally
packed up my equipment, rented a car, and drove out to
the flap area near Melville, Long Island, to await the
assassination and the blackout.
Just before I left Manhattan, I stopped in a local
delicatessen and bought three quarts of distilled water. I
figured that a three-day power failure would certainly be
accompanied by a water shortage. On my way out to Long
Island I stopped in on a silent contactee, and he told me he
had received a brief visit from a UFO entity a short time
before. This entity had mentioned me, he said, and had
given him a message to relay to me. The message didn't

257
make sense to the contactee. It was, "Tell John we'll meet
with him and help him drink all that water." (The water
was in the trunk of the car, and the contactee had no way of
knowing I had it.)
The Pope was not assassinated that weekend, happily,
but I saw several UFOs. They seemed to follow me around,
as usual. And I was stuck with all that distilled water.
Throughout the fall the predictions continued to come
in, and a surprisingly high percentage of them came true.
Later in October I had a lengthy long-distance call from a
being who was allegedly a UFO entity. He warned me that
there would soon be a major disaster on the Ohio River and
that many people would drown. He also told me to expect a
startling development when President Johnson turned on
the lights on the White House Christmas tree in December,
implying that a huge blackout would take place as soon as
the President pulled the switch. The warning about the
Ohio disaster disturbed me enough so that I broke my own
silence, and on November 3 I wrote to Mrs. Mary Hyre, a
reporter in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and warned her
that we might expect some sort of calamity in the coming
weeks. She still has that letter.
Around Thanksgiving I returned to West Virginia for a
few days and discovered that a number of people, none of
whom knew about my prophecy, had been having horrible
dreams of a river disaster. Mrs. Virginia Thomas, who
lived in the heart of the TNT area, an abandoned World
War II ammunition dump, was one who told me in some
detail about her nightmares of people drowning in the
river. Mrs. Hyre told me that she had also been having
disturbing dreams; dreams of pleading faces and brightly
wrapped Christmas packages floating on the dark water of
the Ohio.
During my visit I saw more of those puzzling lights in
the sky and listened to more eerie tales of monsters and
poltergeists. As usual, I stayed in a motel across the river
on the outskirts of Gallipolis, Ohio, and every day I drove
my rented car across the rickety 700-foot span of the Silver
Bridge which joined Point Pleasant with the Ohio side.
There seemed to be an air of foreboding in Point
Pleasant that November—something that no one could
quite put his finger on. When I caught a plane for
Washington, D.C., later I felt decidedly uneasy. I
remembered that all of the UFO predictions for July, 1967
had come true except the big one. There had been the plane

258
crashes, and an earthquake had taken place in Turkey just
before the Pope flew there. Several minor prophecies had
also come true. Now, in December, I had a long list to
check off. In October, I had been told that "the Hopi and
Navajo Indians will make headlines shortly before
Christmas." Sure enough, early in December a blizzard
struck the Indian reservations in the Southwest, and they
did make the headlines as rescue efforts were launched to
rush them supplies and medicine.
On the morning of December 11 I was awakened by a
mysterious caller who informed me that there would be an
airplane disaster in Tucson, Arizona. The next day an Air
Force jet plowed into a shopping center in Tucson.
On December 15, President Johnson held the usual
Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the White House.
Since I was expecting a major blackout, I warned a few
close friends (who by now must have thought that I was
quite balmy) and was joined in my New York apartment by
Dan Drasin, the movie-TV producer, and another friend
who is a police official. We nervously watched the tree-
lighting ceremony on television. The President pushed the
switch. The tree lit up, and the assembled crowd oooed and
ahhhed. Everything went off as scheduled. The nation's
power systems did not blow a fuse.
But thirty seconds after the tree was turned on, an
announcer interrupted the news special with a sudden
flash.
"A bridge between Gallipolis, Ohio, and West Virginia
has just collapsed," he intoned soberly. "It was heavily
laden with rush-hour traffic. There are no further details as
yet."
I was stunned. There was only one bridge on that section
of the river. The Silver Bridge between Point Pleasant,
West Virginia, and Ohio.
Christmas packages were floating in the dark waters of
the Ohio.

The World Ended Last Night...

A few hours after the collapse of the Silver Bridge, on

the other side of the world the Prime Minister of Australia
decided to go for a swim on his favorite beach. He
vanished. His body was never washed ashore. The
elementals, had predicted this.
259
 In the Soviet Union, a series of explosions rocked
Moscow that weekend. An apartment house blew up. A
few blocks away, an automobile belonging to an American
newspaperman also exploded into small pieces. There was
no one near it at the time. Another prediction come true.
This is the tiger behind the door of prophecy. Some of
the predictions are unerringly accurate; so precise that
there are no factors of coincidence or lucky guesswork. The
ultraterrestrials or elementals are able to convince their
friends (who sometimes also become victims) that they
have complete foreknowledge of all human events. Then,
when these people are totally sold, the ultraterrestrials
introduce a joker into the deck. They had me buying
distilled water and fleeing to Long Island in the summer of
1967, fully convinced that Pope Paul was going to be
assassinated and that a worldwide blackout was going to
punish the world for three terrible days.
I was lucky. I didn't cry their warning from the
housetops. I didn't surround myself with a wild-eyed cult
impressed with the accuracy of the previous predictions.
Others haven't been so lucky.
Dr. Charles A. Laughead, an MD on the staff of
Michigan State University in Lansing, Michigan, started
communicating with assorted entities "from outer space"
in 1954, largely through trance mediums who served as
instruments for Ashtar and his cronies from that great
intergalactic council in the sky. A number of minor
prophecies were passed along, and as usual, they all came
true on the nose. Then Ashtar tossed in his bombshell. The
world was going to end on December 21, 1954, he
announced convincingly. He spelled out the exact nature
of the cataclysm: North America was going to split in two,
and the Atlantic coast would sink into the sea. France,
England, and Russia were also slated for a watery grave.
However, all was not lost. A few chosen people would be
rescued by spaceships. Naturally, Dr. Laughead and his
friends were among that select group. Having been
impressed by the validity of the earlier predictions of the
entities, Dr. Laughead took this one most seriously, made
the sober declarations to the press, and on December 21,
1954, he and a group of his fellow believers clustered
together in a garden to await rescue. They had been
instructed to wear no metal, and they therefore discarded
belt buckles, pens, clasps, cigarette lighters, and shoes with
metal eyelets. Then they waited.

260
 And waited.
That same year, another doctor named Wilhelm Reich
was watching glittering starlike objects maneuver over his
home in Rangeley, Maine. The "space people" had a little
gift for him, too: a strange theory about cosmic energies
called Orgone. Dr. Reich had studied and worked under
Freud in Vienna and later held posts at several important
educational institutions. He was a brilliant, highly
educated man. But somehow he became convinced that
Orgone was the vital life force of the universe and that it
even powered the UFOs that were flooding the world's
skies in 1954. His colleagues and the Food and Drug
Administration viewed his theories with some dismay. He
was drummed out of the medical ranks, hauled into court,
tried, and jailed. He died in prison eight months later, a
broken man still convinced that he had unlocked a great
cosmic secret.
Two years earlier, in that grand UFO year of 1952, two
men were driving through the mountains near Parana,
Brazil, in the state of Sao Paulo, when they encountered
five saucer-shaped objects hovering in the air. Later one of
these men, Aladino Felix, revisited the spot, and this time a
UFO landed and he was invited aboard. He had a pleasant
chat with the saucer captain, a being who looked very
human and very ordinary, and he went away convinced
that the Venusians were paying us a friendly visit.
Then in March, 1953, there was a knock at the door of
Felix's home, and his wife answered. She reported that
there was "a priest" asking for him. Since Felix was an
atheist at the time, he was a bit surprised. He was even
more surprised when he walked out to meet the man. It was
his old friend, the flying saucer pilot, now turned out in a
cashmere suit, a white shirt with a stiff collar, and a neat
blue tie.
This was the first of a long series of visits during which
the two men discussed flying saucers and their mechanics
and the state of the universe at large. Mr. Felix kept careful
notes of these conversations and later put them into an
interesting little book titled My Contact with Flying
Saucers, under the pseudonym of Dino Kraspedon. It was
first published in 1959 and was largely dismissed as just
another piece of crackpot literature. However, a careful
reading reveals a thorough knowledge of both theology
and science, and many of the ideas and phrases found only
in most obscure occult and contactee literature appear
261
 here. Among other things, the book also discusses an
impending cosmic disaster in lucid, almost convincing
terms: the same kind of warning that is passed on to every
contactee in one way or another.
Dino Kraspedon's real identity remained a mystery for
years. The book ended up on shelves next to George
Adamski's works. (Like Adamski, Kraspedon claimed that
he sometimes met the Venusians in the heart of cities, one
such meeting taking place at a railroad station in Sao
Paulo.) Then, in 1965, Dino Kraspedon surfaced as a self-
styled prophet named Aladino Felix. He warned of a
disaster about to take place in Rio de Janeiro. Sure
enough, floods and landslides struck a month later, killing
600. In 1966, he warned that a Russian cosmonaut would
soon die,* and in the fall of 1967 he appeared on television
in Brazil to soberly discuss the forthcoming assassina-
tions in the United States, naming Martin Luther King
and Senator Robert Kennedy.
The startling accuracy of his major and minor
predictions impressed many people, of course. When he
started predicting an outbreak of violence, bombings, and
murders in Brazil in 1968, no one was too surprised when a
wave of strange terrorist attacks actually began.
Police stations and public buildings in Sao Paulo were
dynamited. There was a wave of bank robberies, and an
armored payroll train was heisted. The Brazilian police
worked overtime and soon rounded up eighteen members
of the gang. A twenty-five-year-old policeman named Jesse
Morais proved to be the gang's bomb expert. They had
blown up Second Army Headquarters, a major newspaper,
and even the American consulate. When the gang members
started to sing, it was learned that they planned to

* M a n y contactees and mediums made similar prophecies. The most

startling of these was the report of Gary W i l c o x , a farmer in Newark
Valley. New Y o r k , who said that an egg-shaped object landed in his field
on A p r i l 24. 1964. and that t w o little men in silvery suits engaged him in
conversation for about t w o hours. In a sworn statement to Miss Priscilla
J. B a l d w i n and the sheriff's office. Tioga C o u n t y , New Y o r k , dated A p r i l
28. 1964. M r . W i l c o x said. " T h e y also mentioned that Astronauts Glenn
and (Grissom and the t w o astronauts f r o m Russia w o u l d die w i t h i n a
y e a r — " V i r g i l Grissom died three years later in the tragic A p o l l o fire of
January 27. 1967. J o h n Glenn is still living. Russian Cosmonaut V l a d i m i r
M. K o m a r o v became the first man to die in space on A p r i l 24. 1967.
exactly three years after Wilcox's encounter. Cosmonaut Y u r i Gargarin
was killed in a plane crash in 1968. He was the first human being to enter
space.

262
 assassinate top government officials and eventually take
over the entire country of Brazil. Jesse Morais had been
promised the job of police chief in the new government.
The leader of this ring w a s . . . Aladino Felix!
When he was arrested on August 22, 1968, the flying
saucer prophet declared, "I was sent here as an ambassador
to the Earth from Venus. My friends from space will come
here and free me and avenge my arrest. You can look for
tragic consequences to humanity when the flying saucers
invade this planet."
Once again the classic, proven pattern had occurred.
Another human being had been engulfed by the ultrater-
restrials and led down the road to ruin. There is no clinical
psychiatric explanation for these cases. These men (it has
happened to women, too) experienced a succession of
convincing events with flying saucers and the UT's. Then
they were smothered with promises or ideas which
destroyed them.
In the fall of 1967, when Dino Kraspedon was publicly
issuing his uncanny predictions in Brazil, another group
was battening down the hatches in Denmark, preparing for
the end of the world. A man named Knud Weiking began
receiving telepathic flashes in May, 1967, including a
number of impressive prophecies which came true. (Just
prior to the capture of the U.S. "spy" ship Pueblo off Korea
in January, 1968, Weiking warned, "Watch Korea.") He
was then instructed to build a leadlined bomb shelter and
prepare for a holocaust on December 24, 1967. This
seemed like an impossible task since twenty-five tons of
lead were needed and the total costs exceeded $30,000. But
donations poured in, and voluntary labor materialized.
The shelter was built in about three weeks. On December
22, Weiking and his friends were "told" to leave the shelter
and lock it up. A telephone blackout next occurred, lasting
throughout the Christmas holidays and cutting off all of
the participants from one another.
Meanwhile, mediums, telepaths, sensitives, and UFO
contactees throughout the world were all reporting
identical messages. There was definitely going to be an
unprecedented event on December 24, 1967. Ashtar was
talking through Ouija boards to people who had never
before heard the name. Another busy entity named Orion
was spreading the word. The curious thing about these
messages was that they were all phrased in the same
manner, no matter what language was being used. They all

263
 carried the same warning. People were reporting strange
dreams that December, dreams involving symbols of
Christmas (such as Christmas cards scattered through a
room). There were also reports of dead telephones and
glowing entities prowling through bedrooms and homes.
Many of these messages, dreams, and prophecies were
collected together by a British organization calling itself
Universal Links. The stage was set for doomsday.
Thousands, perhaps even millions, of people had been
warned. At that time I didn't know about Universal Links
or many of these predictions. But that Christmas week I
received one of those strange phone calls that had become
part of my life. At midnight on December 24, I was told, a
great light would appear in the sky, and t h e n . . .
Various contactees began to report in to me from all
over the country, all with the same message. Christmas Eve
was going to be it!
The Danish cult locked themselves up in their bomb
shelter that night while I sat by my phone watching out the
window of my apartment on Thirty-third Street in New
York City (I had a good view of the sky).
After the imaginary crisis had passed, the American
wire services finally carried stories about the cowering
Danes, ridiculing them, of course. But Mr. Weiking came
up with a message that explained it all: "I told you two
thousand years ago that a time would be given and even so
I would not come. If you had read your Bible a little more
carefully, you would have borne in mind the story of the
bridegroom who did not come at the time he was expected.
Be watchful so that you are not found without oil in your
lamps. I have told you I will come with suddenness, and I
shall be coming soon!"
It was all a dry run! Actually, it was a rather impressive
sequence of events, and it really proved something very
important. Many predictions of the December twenty-
fourth disaster had been documented well in advance of
that date. These messages came through in many different
countries, from people who had no knowledge of or
communication with one another. The UFO contactees
received the same identical messages as the trance mediums
communing with spirits. A link had been established. It
was now clear (to me anyway) that all of these people were
tuned into a central source. My earlier speculations seemed
true—the UFO entities and the spirit entities were part of
the same gigantic system. So more pieces of this

264
 tremendous puzzle were falling into place. A long series of
events had apparently been staged to warn us of that tiger
behind the door. Some of the entities were evil liars. They
had ruined the lives of many by producing "proof which
led to false beliefs and irresponsible actions. Kraspedon,
Dr. Laughead, and Knud Weiking had been victims in this
enormous game.
There were so many others.
One night in the early 1960's (exact date undetermined)
a young man named Fred Evans was out driving with his
girlfriend when a glowing, saucer-shaped object silently
soared out of the night sky and buzzed their car. This
marked the beginning of Mr. Evans' research into UFOs
and astrology. By 1967, he had installed himself as a
prophet and was predicting major black uprisings (he is a
Negro).
In the spring of 1968, Fred Ahmed Evans moved into
Cleveland, Ohio, and opened a storefront with a sign over
the door declaring it to be "The New Libya." Then, on the
night of July 23, 1968, rioting broke out in Cleveland.
Snipers dressed in African clothing killed ten and wounded
nineteen before the police brought the situation under
control. The leader of the ring of well-equipped, well-
organized snipers was Fred Ahmed Evans.
Another UFO prophet had gone wrong.
In California, a man named Allen Noonan claims to
have experienced still another variation of this peculiar
mind-warping phenomenon. Soon after his discharge from
the Army following World War II, Noonan went to work
for a company handling outdoor billboards. One day, he
says, he was working on a billboard when suddenly he was
taken in astral form to a strange place. He found himself in
a huge white building filled with light. A group of "elders"
were situated around a glowing throne, and a great voice
boomed from that throne and asked, "Will you agree to be
the Savior of the World?"
Noonan quickly agreed to this role. Then he was told,
"You may die in the hands of your fellowmen. Their sin
shall remain with you until the Mother Comforter comes
to deliver them."
The next thing he knew, he was back in his body
working on the signboard. In later experiences, he
allegedly visited various planets such as Venus, and he
frequently received telephathic messages and instructions
from our old friend Ashtar. In this case, he knew it was "the
265
Ashtar Command and the United Planets Organization."
When Noonan was interviewed by Lloyd Mallan for
Time magazine, he revealed, "I believe that I am the
Cosmic Master as well as the New Messiah. I believe that a
million years ago when this planet was young I was chosen
to come to the earth and bring with me a Space Command.
"The Space Command flies in and out of the earth. The
earth is hollow and the Higher Command, the Galactic
Command, already has bases inside the earth. There are
great openings at each pole of the earth, and what we call
the northern lights is only the Great Central Sun shining
out of these openings. Many people coming from the polar
regions have reported seeing flying saucers there which
disappeared into the ocean."
The hollow-earth theory is a very old one. In fact, it is
one of the oldest and most widely believed UFO
explanations around. A great many books were published
about it in the nineteenth century, including a strange little
novel called The Smoky God which was supposed to be the
true experiences of two Scandinavian fishermen who
accidentally sailed through the hole at the North Pole and
spent a year living among the gentle giants who inhabited
the beautiful inside of our planet.
During his interview with Mallan, Mr. Noonan
demonstrated his abilities by causing two peculiar UFO-
shaped "clouds" to materialize outside his window. Mallan
photographed the phenomenon and was hard pressed to
explain it. We might point out that many other contactee
claimants were able to provide equally convincing
demonstrations. Brilliantly glowing UFOs frequently
appeared and maneuvered directly over the auditoriums
where they were lecturing, waltzing around the skies in
front of dozens and even hundreds of fascinated witnesses.
Allen Noonan is not the only Space Age messiah
appointed by the Ashtar command. Dozens of humble,
ordinary people suddenly turn into UFO evangelists after a
flying saucer enters their lives. Dino Kraspedon did a lot of
preaching and wrote a "new Bible" before he finally turned
terrorist. Lifelong atheists have become religious fanatics
almost overnight after their UFO encounters. Such people
are now becoming regulars on radio and TV talk shows all
across the country.
One night in November, 1958, an Arkansas truck driver
was unexpectedly introduced into the shadowy half world
of the ultraterrestrials. R. D. Smallridge was making a

266
 routine trip to deliver a truckload of eggs from Hardy,
Arkansas, to Memphis, Tennessee. He stopped for a cup of
coffee, as was his habit, at an all-night truck stop near
Black Rock, Arkansas. When he left the eatery, he checked
his watch with the wall clock. It was exactly 2 A.M. After
looking over his tires and truck routinely, he started his
engine and headed for the highway again. The next lap of
the trip covered 60 miles to Trumann, Arkansas, where he
usually stopped for another cup of coffee.
But, according to his story, he never remembers
reaching the highway. The next thing he knew he was
pulling up in front of the luncheonette in Trumann. When
he walked into the restaurant and looked at its clock, he
was astounded. It was 2:15 A.M. "I had traveled sixty miles
in eight minutes," he declared.
This trip normally required changing highways (from
Route 63 to Route 67) and passing over a state weight scale
near Jonesboro. He could not remember doing any of this.
Somehow he had traveled 450 miles per hour between
Black Rock and Trumann!
A wide variety of strange, inexplicable events engulfed
Mr. Smallridge after this. Eventually he gave up truck
driving and became a minister, traveling about the country
and preaching. December of 1967 found him in California.
Late one night he put aside the book he was reading and
strolled over to the clock on the mantel in the home where
he was staying. It was exactly 12:05 A . M . Suddenly, he
swears, a bright blue light materialized and drifted toward
him. Just as it touched him the room faded away, and he
discovered himself standing in another room surrounded
by a group of strange humanlike beings. He claims that
these people were conversing in an odd language he had
never heard before—yet he was able to understand every
word and could communicate with them. They told him,
among other things, that Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy would die suddenly in 1968 and that there would
be widespread rioting and civil unrest. After about two
hours of this, Smallridge was instantly transferred back to
the California living room. He was still standing in front of
the clock. It was still 12:05 A.M.!
Here, once again, we have a case which can be easily
dismissed as too absurd for consideration. But, believe it
or not, there is nothing exceptional about Mr. Smallridge's
claims. Similar incidents are being reported from all over
the world. Because they are so outlandish, they are rarely

267
well publicized.
The strange language mentioned by Smallridge turns up
again and again in these stories. It seems to be directly
related to the well-known religious phenomenon of
speaking in tongues. Sometimes whole congregations enter
a trancelike state and begin to babble in this language
which is part baby talk, part Greek, part Indian, and part
unknown. Many mediums have laboriously copied down
whole vocabularies for this unknown tongue. In the 1890's
one Helene Smith in Geneva, Switzerland, a psychic who
had UFO-type experiences, produced a veritable diction-
ary of a "Martian" language. In my first visits with a West
Virginia contactee, Woodrow Derenberger, he rattled off
the language of UFO entity Indrid Cold, speaking the
strange jargon as easily as he spoke English. (It did not
seem to be a made-up language of a hoax. It had structure
and grammar.) Numerous cases already cited in this book
have mentioned how the UFO occupants spoke in a
language which the witnesses couldn't understand. But
some contactees claim that they were able to understand
this language instantly, as if it were a second tongue lying
dormant in some recess of their brains. Brazil's Aladino
Felix often spoke in what he called "the universal
language," described by reporters as "a hodgepodge of
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin." This could also describe the
language I have heard the other contactees speak. Greek is
frequently employed by entities in UFO contacts. A large
section of the "inspired" book Oahspe is devoted to a
complete explanation of a supposedly ancient language
known as Panic (language of Pan, a lost continent),
complete with vocabulary and written symbols. It appears
to be a combination of Hebrew, Greek, Latin, American
Indian, and Chinese. To compose such a language as a
hoax, Dr. Newbrough, the medium who wrote Oahspe,
would have had to have been a brilliant linguist, and it
would have taken many years for one man to assemble
such a complex vocabulary. Buried within the fine print of
Oahspe there are many words which I have heard UFO
contactees use! Not many people have the patience and
scholarship to read Oahspe, and I've yet to meet a
contactee who had even heard of it!

So here we have another piece of neglected evidence: the

actual language of the ufonauts. It is not a secret. It is
known and spoken by many.

268
Time Distortion and Distention

Smallridge's sudden transfer across sixty miles of

earthly space might have been caused by a phenomenon
known as apporting in occult lore and teleportation in
science fiction. There are many documented instances in
which objects and human beings have been transported
instantaneously over great distances by some unnatural
force which defies explanation. This force seems to operate
outside the man-made boundaries of time and space. In
theory, such events could be caused by converting the
energy of atoms into a transmissible beam, projecting that
beam to a distant point with the speed of light, and the
reconstructing the original atoms. Some scientists think
this may eventually be a feasible process for our advancing
technology.
But somebody else has been doing it for centuries.
Early in May, 1968, Dr. Gerardo Vidal and his wife got
into their car, a Peugeot 403, at Chascomus, Argentina, to
drive to the town of Maipu some 150 kilometers to the
south. They traveled along National Route 2, following a
car carrying two friends who were heading for Maipu to
visit relatives. When they reached Maipu, they found the
Vidals were not behind them. They turned around and
retraced their route, expecting to find the Vidals changing
a tire or laboring over the motor. But Dr. and Mrs. Vidal
were gone.
Two days later the Rapallini family in Maipu received a
phone call from the Argentine consulate in Mexico City—
6,400 kilometers away. It was Dr. Vidal, and his incredible
story later made headlines in the newspapers in Buenos
Aires and Cordoba.
He and his wife had just left the suburbs of Chascomus,
he reported later, when a dense fog suddenly appeared in
front of them and enveloped their car. The next forty-eight
hours were a total blank. They woke up, still in the car,
parked on an unfamiliar side road. Both had a pain at the
back of their heads but were otherwise unhurt. Dr. Vidal
got out of his car and inspected it, finding that it was badly
scorched, as if a blowtorch had been applied to its surface.
He started driving through the strange scenery, searching
for a sign or landmark. When they saw people by the road,
they stopped and asked for directions and were dumb-
founded to learn that they were in Mexico! Their watches
had stopped, but they quickly learned that two days had

269
somehow passed since they first started out from Chasco-
mus.
They drove to the Argentine consulate in Mexico City
and told their story to amazed officials. Consul Senor
Rafael Lopez Pellegrini advised them to keep quiet while
an investigation was held. Their car was shipped off to the
United States for examination (no information on whom it
was sent to), and later they were given a replacement of the
same make.
Dr. and Senora Vidal flew back to Argentina and went
into seclusion, hiding from the press. The lid came down on
the whole story. But reporters discovered that on the same
night they vanished a man had checked into the Maipu
Hospital for medical treatment, claiming that he, too, had
encountered a strange fog which had left him badly shaken
and nauseated.
All these incidents took place in the vicinity of Bahia
Blanca, where an Argentine businessman had undergone a
similar experience in 1959.
Several of the better UFO books of the 1950's recount
other cases in which human beings were suddenly
transported through space and time involuntarily. Time
lapses and inexplicable periods of total amnesia are a key
aspect in the UFO phenomenon. I have now received well
over 100 reports in which witnesses have lost from five
minutes to several hours immediately after sighting an
unidentified flying object. In nearly every case, these
people were riding in vehicles at the time. Almost all
contactee claimants experience blackouts. Some suffer one
or more such blackouts or fainting spells months or even
years before they finally seem to undergo direct contact
with a grounded UFO. There does not appear to be a
verifiable medical cause for this unusual effect, nor does it
seem to have a psychological foundation.
In Noonan and Smallridge we have astral projection or
classic examples of "instantaneous experience." The body
remains apparently in a fixed position (in front of the
billboard or the California clock) while the mind takes a
trip of sorts. Based upon what we now know of the
phenomenon, it is possible that these two men were
actually experiencing the reliving of a hidden memory. In
other words, we must consider the possibility that
Smallridge had held his two-hour conversation with the
entities weeks, months, or even years before he finally
remembered it. The memory of this conversation was then

270
 suppressed in the same way the Hills were made to forget
their experiences. Then, at a time chosen by the entities, a
ray of some sort was directed at Smallridge(the blue light),
and his memory was triggered. He was made to remember
the earlier conversation as if it had just happened.
There is another type of experience which I call time
compression. Here the witness undergoes a sequence of
events which seem to consume a specific period of time.
Later he or she discovers that only a few minutes had
actually passed, even though the whole sequence seemed to
consume hours. Time compression is common among
contactees who think they have been taken on visits to
other planets.
I do not believe that any of these people are suffering
directly from clinical insanity. Rather, the evidence seems
to indicate that their minds are manipulated by an exterior
influence and that sometimes their intellects are unable to
digest the information they are given, and their emotional
structure is unable to retain its stability in the face of these
experiences. So some of these people crack up under the
strain, or at best, they greatly misinterpret these events.
Induced confabulation produces memories of experiences
which are convincingly real, and a chain reaction of
emotional responses creates irrational fanaticism. These
people abandon their jobs and devote all of their time and
thought to spreading the gospel of the space people. Their
family relationships disintegrate because all of their
energies are channeled into one direction. They become
martyrs to their cause, be it the eminent arrival of the Big
Brothers or the Second Coming of Christ; or, as in the case
of the run-of-the-mill hard-core UFO enthusiasts, trying to
convince the world that flying saucers are real and are
extraterrestrial.
What all this really means is that someone or something
actually has the power to completely possess and control
the human mind. Human beings can be manipulated
through this power and used for both good and evil
purposes.
We have no way of knowing how many human beings
throughout the world may have been processed in this
manner, since they would have absolutely no memory of
undergoing the experience, and so we have no way of
determining who among us has strange and sinister
"programs" lying dormant in the dark corners of his mind.
Suppose the plan is to process millions of people and

271
then at some future date trigger all of those minds at one
time? Would we suddenly have a world of saints? Or would
we have a world of armed maniacs shooting at one
another from bell towers?

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15. You Can't Tell the Players Without a
Scorecard

Now perhaps we can better understand RAF Air

Marshal Sir Victor Goddard's remarks: "The astral world
of illusion, which is greatly inhabited by illusion-prone
spirits, is well known for its multifarious imaginative
activities and exhortations. Seemingly some of its denizens
are eager to exemplify principalities and powers. Others
pronounce upon morality, spirituality, Deity, etc. All of
these astral exponents who invoke human consciousness
may be sincere, but many of their theses may be framed to
propagate some special phantasm... or simply to astonish
and disturb the gullible for the devil of it."
These "illusion-prone spirits" are responsible for nearly
all of the UFO appearances and manipulations. The flying
saucers do not come from some Buck Rogers-type
civilization on some distant planet. They are our next-door
neighbors, part of another space-time continuum where
life, matter, and energy are radically different from ours.
Ancient man knew this and recognized it. The original
Biblical texts employed the word sheol, which meant
invisible world. Somehow, the translators turned this into
"hell" and gave it an entirely different meaning.
After spending more than a decade investigating and
researching the UFO phenomenon, an engineer named
Bryant Reeve published this statement in 1965: " . . . W e
began to see that vehicles in outer space were not really the
important thing. They were merely an indication of
something vastly greater, of earthman's awakening to a
tremendous new awareness."
It had taken Mr. Reeve many years to arrive at a
conclusion which had apparently been reached in the halls
of Washington long before. In January, 1953, the Central
Intelligence Agency collected together a group of leading
scientists to review the flying saucer evidence compiled by
Captain Edward Ruppelt and his Air Force Project Blue
Book teams. The final report of this blue-ribbon panel was
kept in the classified files for thirteen years and was not
released to the press until 1966. In that report, these
scientists, some of whom later became recipients of the
Nobel Prize, declared:
273
 . . . The Panel noted that the cost in technical manpower
effort required to follow up and explain every one of the
thousand or more reports received through channels each year
could not be justified. It was felt that there will always be
sightings, for which complete data is lacking, that can only be
explained with disproportionate effort and with a long time
delay, if at all. The long delay in explaining a sighting tends to
eliminate any intelligence value.... The result is the mass
receipt of low-grade reports which tend to overload channels of
communication with material quite irrelevant to hostile objects
that might someday appear. The panel agreed generally that
this mass of poor-quality reports containing little, if any,
scientific data was of no value. Quite the opposite, it was
possibly dangerous in having a military service foster public
concern in "nocturnal meandering lights." The implication
being, since the interested agency was military, that these
objects were or might be potential direct threats to national
security. Accordingly, the need for deemphasization made
itself apparent....

The panel suggested a program for "debunking" UFOs

and systematically destroying the mystique which had
grown up around the subject. "Such a program," the report
stated, "should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the
public and consequently their susceptibility to clever
hostile propaganda."
As part of a plan for deemphasizing the sightings, the
Air Force files were closed to newsmen and researchers for
several years, and military personnel were forbidden to
discuss UFO material with outsiders. This move inspired
the cries of "Censorship!" which are still bandied about in
the cultist circles.
The phenomenon was much bigger than the U.S. Air
Force, and it proved to be impossible to play down or
explain all the sightings. Air Force public relations were
ineptly handled, and some Air Force officers made
incredible tactical blunders, such as telling reporters that
airlines pilots who saw flying saucers were drunk at the
time and trying to explain some sightings as stars which
were not even visible in the sighting areas. The UFO
enthusiasts were quick to pounce on such careless
explanations and used them to reinforce their allegations
of official censorship.
Project Blue Book's published record clearly illustrates
the official attitude of genuine disinterest. In the 1955
Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, the only

274
 accurate summary of AF statistics, 689 sightings were
listed as "unknown." Fourteen years later, the Air Force
was claiming that a total of 701 sightings were "unidenti-
fied," an increase of only 12 over the 1955 total. Air
Force statistics were shamelessly juggled year after year,
and even the columns of figures were incorrectly added.
On December 17, 1969, Air Force Secretary Robert C.
Seamans, Jr., announced the termination of Project Blue
Book, and Blue Book's files were retired to the archives at
Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Thus ended an era of
almost unbelievable irresponsibility, on the part of both
the Air Force and the UFO enthusiasts who had set
themselves up as critics of the Air Force's noninvestiga-
tions.
Since the phenomenon is partly reflective, it had played
the censorship game in earnest and had worked to
manipulate the cultists into believing that some great
official conspiracy was under way. Mystery men appeared
in flap areas and warned, even threatened, witnesses into
silence. Some of these men appeared in Air Force
uniforms, and when fragments of these stories reached the
cultists, they howled even more about "suppression of the
truth."
I have investigated many of these cases myself, and I
quickly discovered, to my amazement, that these "Air
Force officers" all looked alike. They were slight, olive-
skinned men with Oriental eyes and high cheekbones.
Some witnesses said they looked like Italians; others
thought they were Burmese or Indian. I reported this to the
Pentagon and found that other cases had been turning up,
and that military intelligence, and even the FBI, were
involved in investigating some of them. Early in 1967, I
published a newspaper feature on these Air Force
impersonators, and it was reprinted around the world.
"Three men in black" have repeatedly driven up to the
homes of witnesses in their shiny black Cadillacs to
frighten the people into silence. In nearly every case, these
men have been described as short, dark-skinned Orientals.
For years many of the UFO cultists have believed that
these men in black were CIA and Air Force agents, just as
they believed that the government was tapping their
phones and censoring their mail (much UFO mail seems to
go astray). Recently New York's District Attorney Frank
Hogan revealed that it takes six men to maintain a full
surveillance on a single phone. Phone tapping is a very

275
expensive procedure, and we can seriously question the
need or justification for the Air Force or CIA maintaining
taps on the phones of teen-agers and little old ladies
involved in UFO research. But if the phenomenon itself is
electromagnetic in nature, it might be able to manipulate
our telephone systems just as it seems to manipulate
automobile ignition systems.
The real truth is that the UFO cultists have been played
for suckers for years, not by the government, but by the
phenomenon. Mischievous, even malicious rumors and
nonsense have been passed on to them through the
contactees, and they have accepted this rubbish as fact.
Other classic UFO stories had their beginnings as clearly
labeled fiction in cheap men's magazines. One such story
told how a reporter saw officials conducting a hairy
spaceman through the White House. A newspaper
columnist wryly printed excerpts from it without com-
ment, and it created a sensation among the UFO cultists
for years. Irresponsible tabloid newspapers have cashed in
on the temporary waves of UFO interest by publishing
completely fictitious flying saucer stories as fact. The
celebrated tale of a UFO crashing on the island of
Spitsbergen in the early 1950's was spawned by such a
newspaper and is still being republished as an example of
"government suppression." (The Norwegian government
denied the story, naturally.)
Situations have been engineered by the phenomenon to
make the UFO cultists suspicious of the government and
even of one another. The in-fighting between the various
groups deserves special study by itself. Many cultists are
living in genuine terror. Some no longer trust their own
families. Several have suffered nervous breakdowns.
Ironically, the UFO organizations have, themselves,
suppressed and censored more UFO reports than the Air
Force. When the National Investigation Committees on
Aerial Phenomena received a report from one of their
members on the sighting of Betty and Barney Hill in 1961,
in which they suffered extraordinary effects after they saw
humanlike figures in the window of a UFO, they hid the
full report in their office. The whole story would never have
become public knowledge if author John Fuller had not
stumbled across the Hills years later during his own
independent UFO investigations.
The demonological events discussed in this book have
so baffled and confused the UFO organizations that they
have dismissed most of them as hoaxes without any kind of
276
 investigation. In many cases, they have publicly branded
the witnesses liars, publicity nuts, and mercenaries trying
to exploit the subject.
There's no doubt that the UFO cultists themselves have
thwarted effective research into these matters, and their
antics have created the atmosphere of ridicule which
surrounds the subject and makes qualified professionals
wary of becoming involved.
By early 1967, I had decided that the evidence for
extraterrestrial origin was purely circumstantial, and I
began to hint in print that perhaps a more complex
situation was involved. To my astonishment, my rejection
of the outer-space hypothesis focused the wrath and
suspicion of the UFO cultists on me. Rumors were
circulated nationwide that I was a CIA agent. Later,
contactees began to whisper to local UFO investigators
that the real John Keel had been kidnapped by a flying
saucer and that a cunning android who looked just like me
had been substituted in my place. Incredible though it may
sound, this was taken very seriously, and later even some of
my more rational correspondents admitted that they
carefully compared the signatures on my current letters
with the prerumor letters they had received.
Let's not underestimate the skill of our intelligence
organizations. Let's assume that they have been competent
enough to collect and assimilate the same kinds of data
dealt with in this book. I think we can safely assume that
they figured all of this out many years ago and that they are
coping with it in their own way as quietly as possible. The
huge National Security Agency building outside of
Washington, D.C. is filled with James Bond-type electron-
ic gear, and the organization's annual budget exceeds the
gigantic budget of our space program. I don't think all that
money is going into bureaucratic ratholes. I don't think all
those computers and supersophisticated gadgets are sitting
there collecting dust. The NSA has orbited ELINT
(electronic intelligence) satellites equipped with delicate
sensoring devices which can instantly detect electromag-
netic disturbances on the earth's surface. Other satellites
carry infrared detection devices, and still others are
designed to eavesdrop on all forms of communication. In
1960, Project Saint was announced; this was a plan to orbit
special satellites designed to pursue and investigate
unidentified satellites. No further information was ever
released on this interesting project.

277
 Even Howard Menger, the contactee, had a few kind
words for the CIA (which is merely a subsidiary branch of
the National Security Agency) when he said, in 1967,
" . . . Around this great country of ours is a jungle, whether
you know it or not, and there are specialized men who
know how to deal on the same level with these people on
the outside trying to get in and conquer us. These people
are trained to deal with these other people on their level.
That's the only way we will ever survive, so don't knock the
CIA, please."
It is probable that some small group within the U.S.
government first began to suspect the truth about UFOs
during World War II. There is curious evidence that Adolf
Hitler and his inner circle had some knowledge of the
ultraterrestrials and may have even made an effort to
communicate with them. Perhaps there were even "men in
black" episodes of sabotage and subversion which brought
the phenomenon to the attention of the wartime Office of
Strategic Services (OSS) and other intelligence groups in
the United States and elsewhere. At least we do know that
the "Foo Fighters," the World War II name for UFOs,
caused considerable concern both in Europe and the
Pacific. Subsequent events in the United States in 1945,
including the still-unexplained disappearance of six
airplanes off the coast of Florida on a single, clear day,
probably led to serious and secret investigations.
If the top leaders of the Royal Air Force, such as Sir
Victor Goddard, are aware of these incredible facts, then
we must certainly admit that the American intelligence
community must also have stumbled onto this many years
ago. The official anti-UFO position now makes a great
deal more sense.
Since our long-haired Venusians are only mischievous
imposters, they dare not land on the White House lawn. If
a marvelous flying saucer should sweep over crowded
Times Square on New Year's Eve and land with its brilliant
lights flashing and its antennas rotating, and an awe-
inspiring Michael Rennie type should strut down the ramp
in a tight, metallic spacesuit, in front of the crowds and TV
cameras, it is very probable that he would be whisked off to
the Pentagon, never to be heard from again, and a
general—or the President—would hold a press conference
and soberly reveal that the whole thing was merely a
publicity stunt for a new science-fiction movie. It is the
nature of the game that such a movie would probably even
278
be in the can, and the wonderful flying saucer would
actually be an exact duplicate of the prop used in the film.
We have actually been subjected to a long series of hoaxes
of this type for the past twenty years, although somewhat
less dramatic than this example.
No responsible government could really attempt to
explain this bizarre situation to the general public. Our
military establishment has therefore been forced to follow
a simpler policy, denying the reality of the phenomenon
without trying to explain it. If flying saucers are a cosmic
hoax, then it follows naturally that many of man's basic
beliefs may be based on similar hoaxes. No government is
willing to expose these beliefs or become involved in the
terrible controversies that would result from such expo-
sure.
The Air Force studies of the early 1950's, and my own
recent independent investigations, proved that when the
sighting data alone is reviewed quantitatively, it automati-
cally negates itself. The individual sightings are not part of
a whole but are part of something else. They form the point
of the needle which the ultraterrestrials choose to show us.
There are undoubtedly many objects in the sky which we
never really notice, but which are a part of all this: strange
clouds, weird birds and winged creatures, conventional-
looking airplanes. They constitute the real phenomenon.
And there are other objects, invisible to human eyes, but
discernible, on occasion, to radar and to those people who
are more attuned to receiving the signals from those
unknown electromagnetic radiations around us.
Sir Victor Goddard pointed out that he believed that
most UFO sightings were made by people with psychic
abilities, and by nonpsychics who were standing in the
auras of the real percipients and were, therefore,
temporarily tuned in. There seems to be some merit to this
hypothesis, incredible though it may seem.
However, it would be very dangerous for us to exclude
the possibility that a very small residue of sightings may be
very real. Most scientists agree that there is a chance that
there may be billions of inhabitable planets within our own
galaxy, and there is always a chance that living beings from
those planets might have visited us in the past, are visiting
us now, or are planning to visit us in the future. To regard
all UFO sightings as illusions, hallucinations, and
paraphysical manifestations would expose us to a
potentially volatile situation—an invasion from another

279
world.
There have been many apparently physical sightings
and landings which produced markings on the ground and
other evidence that the objects were solid machines. But if
those events represent the presence of true manufactured
spacecraft in our atmosphere, then the overall evidence
suggests that they are following a long-range plan—a
covert military-style buildup—which will culminate in
hostile action.
In psychic phenomena and demonology we find that
seemingly solid physical objects are materialized and
dematerialized or apported. There are many baffling cases
of houses which appeared and disappeared mysteriously.
In religious demonic possession, well documented by
attending priests and doctors, the victims regurgitated
impossible quantities of stones and even sharp steel
needles. Apparently these foreign objects materialized in
their bodies. Some victims have levitated to the ceiling and
had to be forcibly tied to their beds to keep from floating
away.
Ufologists have constructed elaborate theories about
flying-saucer propulsion and antigravity. But we cannot
exclude the possibility that these wondrous "machines" are
made of the same stuff as our disappearing houses, and
they don't fly—they levitate. They are merely temporary
intrusions into our reality or space-time continuum,
momentary manipulations of electromagnetic energy.
When they "lower their frequencies" (as the contactees put
it) and enter a solid state, they can leave impressions on the
ground. But to enter that state, they need some atoms from
our world—parts of an airplane, an auto, or blood and
matter from an animal or human being. Or, in some cases,
they need to drain off energy from the human percipients
or from power lines and automobile engines. This may
seem like a fantastic concept, but we have wasted twenty
years trying to simplify all this, trying to find a more
mundane explanation. The fact is, all of the evidence
supports our fantastic concepts more readily than it
supports the notion that we are receiving visitors from
Mars or Aenstria.
But if we want to be properly cautious and objective, we
find ourselves facing a double-barreled dilemma. On the
one hand, all the real facts of the situation, the
manifestations and physical effects of the phenomenon,
seem to point to a negative, paraphysical explanation. The

280
UFOs do not seem to exist as tangible, manufactured
objects. They do not conform to the accepted natural laws
of our environment. They seem to be nothing more than
transmogrifications tailoring themselves to our abilities to
understand. The thousands of contacts with the entities
indicate that they are liars and put-on artists. The UFO
manifestations seem to be, by and large, merely minor
variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon.
Officaldom may feel that if we ignore them long enough,
they will go away altogether, taking their place with the
vampire myths of the Middle Ages.
On the other hand, suppose that some other world,
either from another planet or from a region composed of
different frequencies and a different kind of physical
matter, had designs on this world. Suppose that their time
cycle was radically different from ours, and they could
launch a plan for take-over which could require thousands
of our years to complete? While they were making
preparations for this invasion, it would be necessary for
them to divert us, just as we planted all kinds of false
evidence to convince Adolph Hitler that the invasion of
Europe was going to take place far from Normandy. It
would then be logical for them to instrument a plan of
psychological warfare to keep us confused and even to
convince us that flying saucers don't really exist at all. The
few thousand people who took a real interest in the UFO
reports could be deftly diverted by contacts which assured
them that the flying saucers were really being operated by
"nice guys," by Big Brothers from outer space who had our
best interests at heart.
Contactee Howard Menger reported, "They use people
not only from this planet, but people from Mars as well.*
And also other people of your own planet—people you
don't know about. People who live unobserved and
undiscovered as yet...."
What kind of "undiscovered people"? Could he have
meant the elementals?
The late General Douglas MacArthur, a man who must
have been privy to much secret information, repeatedly
made public statements asserting that the next war would
be an interplanetary conflict with mankind uniting to
combat "evil forces" from some other world.

* T h e photos returned by our M a r i n e r space probes in 1969 indicate

that M a r s is uninhabited and uninhabitable.

281
 Having been trained in psychological warfare during
my stint as a propaganda writer for the U.S. Army, I have
been particularly conscious of this double-barreled threat
and particularly concerned over the obvious hoaxes and
manipulations apparently designed to foster both belief
and disbelief in the reality of the flying saucers. I have tried
objectively to weigh all of the factors, pro and con,
throughout my investigations and in this book. Frankly, I
have gone through periods when I was absolutely
convinced that those Trojan horses were, indeed, following
a careful plan designed to ultimately conquer the human
race from within. The physical Trojan horse concept
seemed alarmingly valid to me for a long time.
But I am now inclined to accept the conclusion that the
phenomenon is mainly concerned with undefined (and
undefinable) cosmic patterns and that mankind plays only
a small role in those patterns. That "other world" seems to
be a part of something larger and more infinite. The human
race is also a part of that something, particularly those
people who seem to possess psychic abilities and who seem
to be tuned in to some signal far beyond our normal
perception.
Perhaps the U.S. government was equally concerned
with the Trojan horse possibility in the 1940's, and perhaps
that explains the peculiar official machinations of the early
years. Nobody in Washington has been inclined to confess
to me that this is so, but at a press conference in 1954,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters that flying
saucers were hallucinatory and existed only in the minds of
the observers. In 1966, then-Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara called them illusions. So it seems probable
that, after a period of paranoia in the 1940's and early
1950's, the government settled upon a negative hypothesis
based, undoubtedly, on the same kind of material I have
outlined here.
If intelligent beings actually do exist on Ganymede or
Andromeda, it is even very possible that they, too, have
been observing and wondering about the same kinds of
unidentified flying objects which haunt our planet. Our
astronauts and cosmonauts have frequently sighted
mysterious objects deep in space—objects which appeared
and disappeared just as enigmatically as the things flitting
about the highways and farmfields of earth. The UFO
phenomenon may be universal. And it may be unsolvable.
Finally, we come to the problem: How do you

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 investigate something that doesn't exist?
The answer is that you investigate and study the people
who have experienced these things. You don't investigate
them by checking their reliability. You study the medical
and psychological effects of their experiences. This cannot
be done by teen-agers with telescopes and housewives with
tape recorders. It must be done by trained professionals.
We need to know much more about the human mind
and how it is linked up to the greater source. We must study
the process of confabulation (falsification of memory)
which produces the majority of our UFO landing and
contact stories and demonological events. These victims
genuinely believe that they have met splendid space beings,
but as Goddard stated, they have really encountered
"denizens" who "are eager to exemplify principalities and
powers." In my field work I have developed interviewing
techniques which separate the confabulations from the real
experiences. It can be done. But a large part of the UFO
lore is based entirely on confabulations.
The elementals or ultraterrestrials are somehow able to
manipulate the electrical circuits of the human mind. They
can make us see whatever they want us to see and
remember only what they want us to remember. Human
minds which have been tuned into those super-high-
frequency radiations, described early in this book, are most
vulnerable to these manipulations. Discovering and
understanding this process should be given top priority.
The symptoms of the contactee syndrome usually
appear in early childhood, even though overt contact may
not be established until many years later. Many contactees,
like Howard Menger, have a long sequence of experiences
with the paraphysical entities before their real UFO
encounters formally begin. Some contactees begin to
receive telepathic messages sporadically years before they
have overt contact. Those whose minds misinterpret the
information (or the signal) often begin to suffer weird
forms of psychic attack. Once they untangle the misinter-
pretations, the attack ceases, and they become silent
contactees and remain in almost constant communication
with the source. I do not mean to imply that any of these
people are insane. Far from it. But many are driven insane
when their minds are unable to translate the signal
properly. They fall prey to the negative aspects, and their
mental confusion attracts induced hallucinations, visits
from Oriental gentlemen in dark suits and black Cadillacs,
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and they can eventually suffer total deterioration of
personality. I had to find this out the hard way, only to
discover later that Dr. Meade Layne had worked it all out
in the early 1950's, but nobody would listen to him.
Dr. Layne tried to express his ideas in occult
terminology. He called the ultraterrestrials the Etherians
and thought in terms of "ultrasonics" as well as electro-
magnetic frequencies. In 1955, he published a concise(and
time has proven it valid) appraisal of the situation in which
he stated: "It is possible that some persons may be less
affected by supersonic frequencies than others; this may
account for the selection of certain persons by the
Etherians. It is also possible that some such persons are
now showing signs of amnesia and other physical and
mental deterioration."
If Dr. Layne was aware of these factors fifteen years
ago, then it is almost criminal that no suitable psychiatric
program has been instituted to study and understand this
phenomenon. Thousands, perhaps millions, of people all
over this planet are being directly affected. My mail is filled
with cries for help. I have watched helplessly as witnesses
fell into hopeless personality deterioration and went insane
or even committed suicide. For some time now I have been
working closely with a small group of psychiatrists, but our
efforts can be compared only to the proverbial drop in the
bucket. The whole UFO subject has been so widely
ridiculed and denounced that most qualified men are
reluctant to enter into it.
Not all ultraterrestrial contacts are evil and disastrous,
of course. But there are many people throughout the world
who are deeply involved in all this without realizing it.
They have entangled themselves through other frames of
reference and, in many cases, have been savagely exploited
by the ultraterrestrials in the games being played. These
games have been thoroughly documented and defined in
the literature of the various frames of reference. The
psychology of the elementals or ultraterrestrials is well
known and fully described in the fairy lore of northern
Europe and the ancient legends of Greece, Rome, and
India. In fact, we know almost everything there is to know-
about the entities and their games. Unfortunately, most of
the valuable information has been buried in the beliefs of
the various frames of reference and clouded by obscure
terminology. It will take teams of accomplished and
objective scholars to wade through all the literature and

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distill all the facts. This job should be begun immediately,
for the game seems to be headed for some kind of grand
climax.
Everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the ancient
scriptures of the Orient, and the records of early Egypt to
the modern messages of the psychics and contactees and
the thousands of inspired books indicates that mankind
was directly ruled by the phenomenon for many centuries.
The god-king system established a universal theocracy
which enabled ultraterrestrials posing as gods and
superkings to supervise human events. Remnants of this
system prevailed until the early 1800's when the United
States established a political structure which separated the
church from the state. More than fifty major revolutions
were staged in Europe in 1848, breaking the back of the
god-king system for all time. The phenomenon simply
shifted to new frames of reference, notably spiritualism
and a new cycle of minor religions based upon the
teachings of prophets who were contacted by angels and
elementals. Even Abraham Lincoln was a spiritualist and
openly admitted that he based some of his decisions upon
information and advice he received at seances.
Rapid industrialization and technological development
in the Western cultures apparently led to further
restructuring of the phenomenon's frames of reference.
The inundation of airships in 1896-97 marked the
beginning of the modern UFO phase. Although the
phenomenon experimented with the "outer space" frame
of reference as early as 1866, it did not attempt to advance
this concept on a worldwide scale until 1946. By 1950, it
had, in a mere four years, firmly established the
extraterrestrial visitants idea as a humanly acceptable
frame of reference for the flying objects and manipula-
tions.
The study and interpretation of all this belongs in the
hands of historians, philosophers, psychiatrists, and
theologians. However, physical scientists can also make a
contribution by applying standard scientific methods to
the wealth of data and preparing statistical studies of the
events themselves. My own attempts at this are admittedly
very limited, but it is obvious that the phenomenon is
controlled by hidden laws and cycles as the UFO
phenomenon. The Wednesday-Saturday phenomenon
exists in all the frames of reference. For some reason, the
twenty-fourth days of April, June, September, November,
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 and December seem to produce exceptional activity year
after year. It is probable that manifestations are dependent
upon unknown conditions which have an electromagnetic
basis. When specific individuals (people with latent or
active psychic abilities) are in specific places (window
areas) at specific times (flap periods when the undefined
electromagnetic conditions exist), the phenomenon is able
to manifest itself in one of its many forms.
These events are staged year after year, century after
century, in the same exact areas and often on the same
exact calendar dates. Only the witnesses and the frames of
reference used are different.
The phenomenon can be extremely dangerous, since the
objects move through frequency changes which can
produce deadly gamma and ultraviolet rays. On Friday,
July 4, 1969, Arcesio Bermudez of Anolaima, Colombia,
was a witness to a low-level luminous object maneuvering
over a farm field. Accompanied by other witnesses, he
attempted to signal to it with a flashlight. Representatives
of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO)
investigated this case in depth. The July-August, 1969,
issue of the APRO Bulletin summarized their startling
report:

Within two days of the observation, the principal witness,

Mr. Arcesio Bermudez, was taken very ill; his temperature
dropped to 95° F, and he had a "cold touch" although he
claimed he did not feel cold. Within a few days his condition
became far more serious; he had "black vomit" and diarrhea
with blood flow. He was taken to Bogota and attended by Dr.
Luis Borda at 10 A.M. on July 12 and later by Dr. Cesar Esmeral
at 7:30 P.M. At 11:45 P.M.. local time, Mr. Bermudez died.

Doctors noted that Mr. Bermudez's symptoms indicat-

ed gamma-ray poisoning.
Other UFO witnesses have come down with leukemia
and died shortly after closely approaching an unidentified
flying object. Leukemia can be caused by radiation
poisoning.
This is not a subject for teen-agers and wild-eyed
believers. It demands a cautious, comprehensive, well-
financed investigation by independent, objective profes-
sionals unhampered by the petty causes of the cultists and
the political machinations of the government agencies.
Somebody or something somewhere is trying to tell us
about all this. Our skies are filled with Trojan horses and
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always have been. They are operating on a mysterious
timetable, deliberately sowing confusion and nonsense in
their wake. The believers and cultists have been crying for
us to throw open the gates of the city and wheel the Trojan
horse in. But the governments of the world, and the
churches, have been trying to nail the gates shut. The
Vatican has repeatedly warned that spiritualism is "evil"
and the "work of the Devil." When seemingly authentic
religious miracles occur today, and there have been many,
the theologians and churches approach them with great
caution and try to play down their significance. The Bible
warns us that during "the last days" this planet will be
overrun with wonders in the sky and false prophets and
performers of miracles.
There are now many cases in which the voices of
deceased persons have seemingly called up their loved ones
on the telephone, just as the metallic-voiced space people
have been phoning researchers and reporters around the
world. To add to our problems, the telephone system,
worldwide, is sagging and breaking down, unable to keep
up with the increasing load we are placing on it. We face a
complete breakdown of all communications within the
next few years. Television sets, telephones, ham and
citizen's band (CB) radios in flap areas have been going
awry on a massive scale during the periods when the UFOs
have been most active.
Thousands of people deserted California in April, 1969,
after hundreds of people had received prophecies in
dreams, through Ouija boards, and at seances that the
West Coast was about to slip into the Pacific Ocean.
As Sherlock Holmes used to say, the game is afoot. It is
happening on every level of our society, manifesting itself
in countless ways. The year 1968 was comparable to the
year 1848. Great changes are taking place on our college
campuses, in our churches, and in the halls of government.
The demons of old are marching among us again.
In 1966, I was a lifelong atheist raised in the hard school
of objective journalism, skeptical but hopeful that I could
somehow validate the enthusiasts' speculations about
extraterrestrial visitants. The extraterrestrial hypothesis
then seemed to me to be the only acceptable explanation.
But my experiences over the past few years have changed
both me and my outlook, just as similar experiences have
changed so many others. I have stood on many a windy
hilltop staring in amazement at the multicolored objects
cavorting about the night skies. I have dealt with
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 thousands of honest, sincere witnesses by mail, phone, and
in person. My skepticism has melted away, and I have
turned from science to philosophy in my search for the
elusive truth. The late Wilbert Smith, the Canadian
scientist who chased UFOs in the 1950's, apparently
followed a similar course. "The inevitable conclusion was
that it was all real enough," Smith said in 1958, "but that
the alien science was definitely alien—and possibly even
beyond our comprehension. So another approach was
tried—the philosophical—and here the answer was found
in all its grandeur...."
All of the various ologies represent the famous blind
men trooping to Cathay who encountered an elephant.
Each ology has been examining a different part of the
elephant and giving it a different interpretation. It is time
now for us to gain the total vision necessary for viewing the
elephant as it is, not as we would like it to be.
We all seem to be embarked on some new adventure.
Our little planet seems to be experiencing the interpenetra-
tion of forces or entities from some other space-time
continuum. Perhaps they are trying to lead us into a new
Dark Age of fear and superstition. Or perhaps they will be
guiding us upward to some unexpected destiny. I am not a
scientist, theologian, or philosopher. I am only a reporter.
My business is asking questions, not answering them. But
there are men who do know part of the answers. Among
them are our astronauts who have been closer to the
infinite than anyone else. One of them, Neil A. Armstrong,
the first man to set foot upon the moon, said this when he
addressed Congress on September 16, 1969:
"In the next twenty centuries... humanity may begin to
understand its most baffling mystery—where are we going?
The earth is, in fact, traveling many thousands of miles per
hour in the direction of the constellation Hercules—to
some unknown destination in the cosmos. Man must
understand his universe in order to understand his destiny.
"Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our
lives.
"Mystery creates wonder, and wonder is the basis for
man's desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries
will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will
become the challenge of the new generations?"

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