Famous Alien CONTACTEES and WALK-INs: Their Experiences, Messages and Lives

Famous Alien CONTACTEES and WALK-INs: Their Experiences, Messages and Lives

Part One:

Contactees

Contactees are persons who claim to have experienced contact with extraterrestrials. Some claimed ongoing encounters, while others claimed to have had as few as a single encounter. Evidence is anecdotal in all cases. As a cultural phenomenon, contactees achieved their greatest notoriety during the 1950s, but individuals continue to make similar claims in the present day. Some contactees have shared their messages with small groups of believers and followers, and many have written books, published magazine and newspaper articles, issued newsletters or spoken at UFO conventions. The accounts of contactees generally differ from those who allege alien abduction, in that while contactees frequently describe positive experiences involving humanoid aliens, abductees usually describe their encounters as frightening or disturbing.

The visitation to the earth of generally benign beings whose ostensible purpose is to communicate (generally to a relatively few selected and favored persons) messages of "cosmic importance". These chosen recipients generally have repeated contact experiences, involving additional messages.

Contactees became a cultural phenomenon shortly after the modern era of UFO sightings began at the end of the 1940s. The contactees often gave lectures at UFO conventions and wrote books and articles about their alleged experiences. Though the contactee phenomenon peaked during the 1950s, it still exists today. Skeptics usually consider such "contactees" as charlatans, con artists or deluded in their claims. Susan Clancy wrote that such claims are "false memories" concocted out of a "blend of fantasy-proneness, memory distortion, culturally available scripts, sleep hallucinations, and scientific illiteracy”

Contactees usually portrayed aliens as more or less identical in appearance and mannerisms to humans. The aliens are also almost invariably reported as disturbed by the preponderance of violence, crime, and wars that occur on earth, and by the possession of various earth nations of nuclear and thermonuclear weapons. Curtis Peebles summarizes the common features of many contactee claims…

• Certain humans have had physical or mental contact with seemingly peaceful and benevolent, humanoid space aliens.

• The contactees have also flown aboard seemingly otherworldly spacecraft and traveled into space and to other planets.

• The Aliens want to aid mankind in solving its problems, stop nuclear testing and prevent the inevitable destruction of the human race.

• This will be accomplished by the brotherhood spreading a simple message of love and brotherhood throughout the world.

• Other sinister beings, such as the Men in Black, use force and coercion to continue to cover-up the government's knowledge of UFOs and suppress the message of peace and hope.

Early examples

As early as the 18th century, people like Emanuel Swedenborg were claiming to be in psychic contact with inhabitants of other planets. 1758 saw the publication of Concerning Earths in the Solar World, in which Swedenborg detailed his alleged journeys to the inhabited planets. J. Gordon Melton notes that Swedenborg's planetary tour stops at Saturn, the furthest planet discovered during Swedenborg's era, he did not visit then unknown Uranus, Neptune or Pluto.

In 1891, Thomas Blott's book The Man From Mars was published. The author claimed to have met a Martian in Kentucky. Unusually for an early contactee, Blott reported that the Martian communicated not via telepathy, but in English.

1900s

George Adamski, who is probably the best known UFO contactee of the 1950s, had an earlier interest in the occult and in the 1930s founded the Royal Order of Tibet, a neo-theosophical organization. Michael Barkun wrote of Adamski: "His [later] messages from the Venusians sounded suspiciously like his own earlier occult teachings.”

Christopher Partridge noted significantly that the pre-1947 contactees "do not involve UFOs".

Contactees in the UFO era

To support their claims, the early 1950s contactees sometimes produced photographs of the alleged flying saucers or their occupants. A number of photos of a "Venusian scout ship" by George Adamski and identified by him as a typical extraterrestrial flying saucer were noted to suspiciously bear a remarkable resemblance to a type of once commonly available chicken egg incubator, complete with three light bulbs which Adamski said were "landing gear”.

For over two decades, contactee George Van Tassel hosted the annual "Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention" in the Mojave Desert.

Even in ufology— the study itself limited to sporadic or little mainstream scientific or academic interest—contactees were generally dismissed as charlatans or regarded as the lunatic fringe by serious ufologists. Many ignored the subject altogether, out of possible harm to serious study of the UFO phenomenon. Jacques Vallée notes, "No serious investigator has ever been very worried by the claims of the 'contactees'.”

Carl Sagan has expressed skepticism about contactees and alien contact in general, remarking that aliens seem very happy to answer vague questions, but when confronted with specific, technical questions, they are silent:

Some time after interest in the contactee phenomenon had waned, Temple University historian DavidM. Jacobs noted a few interesting facts: the accounts of the prominent contactees grew ever more elaborate and as new claimants gained notoriety, the older contactees often backdated their first encounter, claiming it occurred earlier than anyone else's. Jacobs speculates that this was an attempt to gain a degree of "authenticity" over later contactees.

Prominent UFO Contactees

George Adamski

George Adamski (17 April 1891 – 23 April 1965) was a Polish-American author who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he displayed numerous photographs in the 1940s and 1950s that he said were of alien spacecraft, claimed to have met with friendly Nordic alien or "Space Brothers", and claimed to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets.

Adamski was the first, and most famous, of several so-called UFO contactees who came to prominence during the 1950s. Adamski called himself a "philosopher, teacher, student and saucer researcher", although most UFO researchers and investigators regarded him as a charlatan and a con artist and concluded that his many claims were an elaborate hoax.

Adamski authored three books describing his meetings with Nordic aliens and his travels with them aboard their spaceships: Flying Saucers Have Landed (co-written with Desmond Leslie) in 1953, Inside the Space Ships in 1955, and Flying Saucers Farewell in 1961. The first two books were both bestsellers; by 1960 they had sold a combined 200,000 copies in addition to his contributions to ufology in the United States, Adamski's work became popular in other countries, especially Japan and helped inspire many depictions of aliens and UFOs in postwar Japanese culture and media.

Adamski was born in Bromberg in the Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire. He was one of five siblings born to ethnic Polish parents, Józef Adamski (1867–1937) and Franciszka Adamska (1862–1946).

When Adamski was two years old his family emigrated to the United States and settled in New York City. From 1913 to 1916, beginning at the age of 22, he was a soldier in the 13th U.S. Cavalry Regiment (K Troop) fighting at the Mexican border during the Pancho Villa Expedition.

In 1917, Adamski married Mary Shimbersky. She died in 1954, they had no children. Following his marriage Adamski moved west, doing maintenance work in Yellowstone National Park and working in an Oregon flour mill and a California concrete factory In the 1920s, Adamski became interested in the esoteric occultist religion Theosophy, and a variant called Neo-Theosophy. By 1930, "Adamski was a minor figure on the California occult scene", teaching his personal mixture of Christianity and Eastern religions, which he called "Universal Progressive Christianity" and "Universal Law.”

In the early 1930s, while living in Southern California, Adamski founded the "Royal Order of Tibet" in Laguna Beach, which held its meetings in the "Temple of Scientific Philosophy"  Adamski served as a "philosopher" and teacher at the temple. The "Royal Order of Tibet" was given a government license to make wine for "religious purposes" during Prohibition; Adamski was quoted as saying "I made enough wine for all of Southern California ... I was making a fortune!" However, the end of Prohibition in December 1933 also marked the decline of his profitable wine-making business, and Adamski later told two friends that's when he "had to get into this [flying] saucer crap.

In 1940, Adamski, his wife, and some close friends moved to a ranch near California's Palomar Mountain, where they dedicated their time to studying religion, philosophy, and farming. In 1944, with funding from Alice K. Wells, a student of Adamski, they purchased 20 acres of land at the base of Palomar Mountain, along highway S6, where they built a new home, a campground called Palomar Gardens, and a small diner called Palomar Gardens Cafe.

At the campground and diner, Adamski "often gave lectures on Eastern philosophy and religion, sometimes late into the night" to students, admirers, and tourists. He also built a wooden observatory at the campground to house his six-inch telescope, and visitors and tourists to Palomar Mountain often received the false impression that Adamski was an astronomer connected to the famed Palomar Observatory at the top of the mountain. Adamski usually did nothing to correct this inaccurate impression; he would tell visitors the truth "only when pressed to do so.” Though he was usually referred to as "Professor" Adamski by his admirers and followers and he often implied or claimed to possess various academic degrees, Adamski held no graduate or undergraduate degree from any accredited college or university and in fact had only a third grade education.

In 1962, Adamski announced that he would be attending an interplanetary conference held on the planet Saturn In 1963, Adamski claimed that he had been granted a secret audience with Pope John XXIII and that he had received a "Golden Medal of Honor" from the pope. However, skeptics noted that the medal was actually a common tourist souvenir made by a company in Milan, Italy, and that Adamski displayed it to his friends in a cheap plastic box - which is how it was sold in tourist shops in Rome. Adamski said he met with the Pope at the request of the extraterrestrials he was allegedly in contact with, in order to request a "final agreement" from the Pope because of his decision not to communicate directly with any extraterrestrials, and also to offer him a liquid substance in order to save him from the gastroenteritis that he suffered from, which would later become acute peritonitis.

Wayne Sulo Aho

Wayne Sulo Aho (August 24 1916 – January 16 2006) was one of the more obscure members of the 1950s wave of contactees who claimed to have contact with extraterrestrial beings. He was one of several contactees of this period who appeared following George Adamski and Truman Bethurum.

Born in the state of Washington, Aho was one of seven children of Finnish homesteaders and worked for most of his life as a logger. He was a captain in the United States Army Coast Artillery Corps in the 1940s.

Like Howard Menger, Aho claimed to have been in contact with humanoid space aliens since childhood, in his case the age of 12. He mainly spoke about a contact occurring in 1957, the year he claimed to have been initiated as a "Cosmic Master of Wisdom" after attending contactee George Van Tassel's Giant Rock Interplanetary Space Craft Convention. Aho said a telepathic summons led him into the desert where a saucer appeared and a voice ordered him to go forth and create his own yearly convention in his home state of Washington.

Aho and fellow contactee Reinhold O. Schmidt went on the lecture circuit together in California, and their double-header lectures continued until Schmidt was arrested for and convicted of grand theft. Aho's presentations tended to emphasize his military service in World War II, and spent very little time on "spiritual revelations" he had received from the Space Brothers, either directly or through later sessions with a spirit medium. Aho tended to refer to himself as "Major W. S. Aho," inviting confusion with Major Donald E. Keyhoe, a UFO researcher and writer who thought UFOs were real but held contactees in low regard.

In September 1957, Aho was a speaker at the second annual "Interplanetary Space Conference" held by the Cosmic Circle of Fellowship UFO religion in Washington, D.C. During the conference, he played audio which he claimed was "conversations of Venutians", who "described life on their planet and told of inter-planetary experiences"; this audience included some people from the Pentagon, who the Allentown, Pennsylvania-based Sunday Call-Chronicle noted as "seem[ing] skeptical of the whole thing".

Aho soon fell under the spell of another one-time Adamski follower, Otis T. Carr. Carr claimed to have built a functioning full-size flying saucer which operated on authentic Adamskian or Teslarian "magnetic" principles. After a suitable amount of money had been fleeced from gullible elderly attendees at Aho and Carr's lectures, they announced the Carr saucer, piloted by the two men, would take off from a fairground in front of thousands of witnesses and fly to the moon and back in a few hours, returning with incontrovertible proof of the trip. Criminal charges against both Aho and Carr resulted from the inevitable public fiasco, but Aho was later judged to be innocent, himself duped by Carr's improbable claims.

Like several of the other 1950s contactees, including George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, Daniel Fry and George King, Aho founded his own religious cult based on the teachings of the Space Brothers. In Aho's case, the Church of the New Age, in Seattle, Washington. Following the instructions of the Space Brothers, Aho's yearly convention held near the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park, in the so-called Spacecraft Protective Landing Area for Advancement of Science and Humanities (SPLAASH), created in honor of Kenneth Arnold, tended to emphasize New Age theories of various kinds rather than being strictly a meeting-place for flying saucer fans.

Aho spent the last decade of his life in Gardnerville, Nevada. He died on January 16, 2006, in Carson City, Nevada.

Orfeo Matthew Angelucci

Orfeo Matthew Angelucci (Orville Angelucci) (June 25, 1912 – July 24, 1993) was an American author, lecturer, and one of the so-called UFO contactees who rose to prominence in the 1950s. Angelucci claimed that he had experiences with extraterrestrial beings. He lectured extensively on the subject of his extraterrestrial encounters during the 1950s and 1960s.

Angelucci's alleged UFO encounter has drawn significant interest due to the sheer religious symbolism and spiritual imagery contained within. He felt a great responsibility for disseminating information about his purported extraterrestrial visitations, billing himself as an emissary for the Being called Neptune, whom made multiple visitations with him. Angelucci recalled that his insistence upon the absolute truth of his experiences had resulted in alienating him from his friends and family.

While his story was delivered in good faith, some doubted its accuracy. When facing the challenge of providing factual proof to his skeptics, Angelucci responded that "ideas preponderantly spiritual cannot now and have never been capable of proof by material methods. Hence no material proof of the reality of my experiences may be given to satisfy skeptics.”

Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung examined Angelucci's account in detail in his book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, providing a comprehensive analysis spanning around ten pages. The analysis of Jung, along with media ridicule of Angelucci’s claims, caused his story to be largely disregarded.

Born in 1912 in New Jersey, Angelucci worked for a flooring company owned by his uncle. Though he was raised in a comfortable background in Trenton, New Jersey, Angelucci suffered from poor health and extreme nervousness for most of his life. He experienced recurrent episodes of ill health, which often led to a state of total exhaustion and painful nervous prostration, sometimes requiring him to be hospitalized. This health condition was attributed by one physician to the effects of a childhood battle with trichinosis, which caused his formal schooling to end in the ninth grade. Despite this, Angelucci's inquisitive mind was always active, exploring and studying scientific concepts from virology to the nature of infinite entities. One such study, performed in 1946. included the release of weather balloons filled with different varieties of mould into the atmosphere in order to ascertain the effects of altitude, temperature, and air pressure on the samples.

Angelucci married in 1936 and had two sons. Motivated by his fear of thunderstorms and the rumours of their rarity in California, in 1948 the family moved to Los Angeles. Taking up a job on the assembly line at the Lockheed aircraft plant in Burbank, Angelucci worked in the same location as another contactee, George Van Tassel, was also employed for a time at this plant. Here, Angelucci led a largely happy life, albeit with recurring episodes of ill health.

According to Angelucci in his book The Secret of the Saucers (1955), he first encountered flying saucers and their friendly human-appearing pilots during his drive home from the Boeing aircraft plant at Burbank, California, during the summer of 1952. It was shortly after midnight on Friday 23 May 1952 that Angelucci began driving home. As he crossed a bridge over the Los Angeles River, he perceived a blue ball of light following him. The circular light, roughly the size of a beach ball, quickly shifted its trajectory appearing in front of the car. Angelucci reduced his speed while observing the orb, and noted two green balls of light exited the larger one, drifting towards him. Via telepathy, a voice informed Angelucci that he had been monitored since his 1946 mould balloon experiment. The two green balls of light united to form a larger ball of light that became the disembodied images of superhuman extraterrestrial humanoids resembling the faces of a male and female. Angelucci was asked to spread the message of the supposedly benevolent aliens. After stating that they would return, the entities disappeared, leaving Angelucci in shock as he continued his journey home

Following his first encounter with ETs, Angelucci was taken in an unmanned saucer to Earth orbit, where he saw a giant "mother ship" drift past a porthole. He also described having experienced a "missing time" episode and eventually remembered living for a week in the body of "space brother" called Neptune, in a more evolved society. Whilst living as Neptune, Angelluci reported inhabiting "the largest asteroid" of the remains of a destroyed planet, while his usual body wandered around the aircraft plant in a daze.

Angelucci was convinced that his physical frailty enabled him to have spiritual attunement, permitting extraterrestrial contact and imparting knowledge of Beings of immense benevolence.

Truman Bethurum 

Truman Bethurum (August 21, 1898 – May 21, 1969) was one of the well known UFO or alien contactees who gained notoriety during the 1950s. He was most known for his 1954 book Aboard a Flying Saucer, and also founded the group Sanctuary of Thought.

Bethurum was born in August 21, 1898 in Gavilan, California. He had little formal education and largely undertook blue-collar work.

Bethurum claimed that one night, July 28 1952, while he was doing roadwork in the Mojave Desert in Nevada, he fell asleep and was contacted by aliens. The aliens, of "Latin" appearance woke him up and transported him into a flying saucer called The Admiral's Scow. There he met the ship's captain, a beautiful woman named Aura Rhanes. He claimed he was then contacted several times.

Bethurum claimed that the flying saucer and its crew came from the planet Clarion. Clarion was allegedly located on the other side of the Moon, and thus could not be viewed from the Earth, which is why it was otherwise unknown to mankind. The planet was a utopia, with no war, disease, or traffic. Clarions worship a supreme god. They were said to resemble the Space Brothers.According to his narrative, the aliens came to represent other aliens that were worried about humanity's nuclear weapons. His claims followed the ones of George Adamski, also a contactee. Bethurum first told this story at a UFO convention in Giant Rock later that year, where he was a regular. He also regularly attended many other contactee conventions. The next year in 1953, a shortened version of this story was published in the UFO magazine Saucers.

Bethurum's 1954 book Aboard a Flying Saucer covered his experiences That year he also spoke at the Giant Rock UFO convention with other contactees. Following the publication of Aboard a Flying Saucer, Bethurum became a celebrity among UFO and flying saucer buffs, and gained many followers. Other UFO researchers and investigators mostly dismissed Bethurum, largely due to his implausible claims. He was supported by George Adamski, who he had visited in 1953.The editor of the UFO publication Saucer News, James W. Moseley believed him a liar. The claim about the additional planet was obviously impossible and so resulted in much criticism from others, including ufologists. He refused to undergo polygraph tests and refused to submit for analysis a paper that had supposedly originated on Clarion. An early outside chronicle of the contactee movement, the 1957 book Flying Saucer Pilgrimage, believed that Bethurum was completely sincere in his beliefs; they wrote that they were "favorably and very deeply impressed with Mr. Bethurum's unimaginative sincerity"

He claimed Rhanes told him to begin seeking donations in 1955 to establish a group called the Sanctuary of Thought, which was in the mid-1950s in Prescott, Arizona, It functioned as a communal organization.

Some of his later books include The Voice of the Planet Clarion (1957), Facing Reality (1958), and The People of the Planet Clarion (1970), published the year after his death.

Bethurum remarked that his first wife, Mary, divorced him citing jealousy over Aura Rhanes His wife, who was also a believer, accused him of cheating on her by having a sexual relationship with the alien. According to an artist who worked with him, Columba Krebs, Bethurum hired a secretary who looked quite like Rhanes In 1960, Bethurum married his third wife, Alvira, their wedding taking place at the annual Giant Rock Spacecraft Convention.

The contactee Dorothy Martin also claimed to commune with aliens from Clarion, taking this from Bethurum, but had a different conception of it as an ethereal planet, not a physical one.

Aladino Félix 

Aladino Félix (March 1, 1905 — November 11, 1985), better known by his pen name Dino Kraspedon, was a Brazilian writer, right-wing paramilitary leader, and self-proclaimed messiah of the Jewish people, who claimed in a 1959 book to have been contacted by an extraterrestrial from Jupiter. Much information of a scientific (mainly astrophysics), medical, and moral nature is given in his book.

Félix was born in Lorena, halfway between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, and is reported to have died in 1985. Félix served in the army in World War II. In 1959 Félix under his pen name Dino Kraspedon published Meu Contato com os discos voadores (My Contact with Flying Saucers). The book tells the story of his claimed contact with a flying saucer commander, at his home. Félix (as Dino Kraspedon) wrote that he gave the extraterrestrial visitor was given a lengthy Q&A interview in which the visitor explained advanced concepts in physics and gave insights on how to improve humanity's social conditions on earth. Félix (as Dino Kraspedon), later publicly clarified that he did not witness the male human extraterrestrial leaving or entering any spacecraft.

Under his pen name Dino Kraspedon, Félix appeared to correctly predict that there would be a period of terrorism. However Félix seems to have been motivated to fulfill his own prediction since a 2018 Brazilian investigative journalism report revealed that in 1967-68 Félix himself was actually leading a group of 14 police officers in a false flag operation committing acts of terrorism in coordination with a general with close ties to Brazil's right wing dictatorship. The terrorist acts included detonating 14 bombs, stealing arms and explosives and robbing a bank. Evidence shows this terrorism was carried out in order to allow the dictatorship a pretense for tightening their repression of Brazilian society. Aladino Félix was arrested and charged with terrorism in 1968 and served three years in prison.

William R. Ferguson 

William R. Ferguson (July 23, 1900 – June 20, 1967) was an American contactee, fraudster, and religious leader. He was the leader and co-founder of the UFO religion the Cosmic Circle of Fellowship. A former mail carrier and taxi driver, he promoted techniques of "absolute relaxation" that he claimed allowed him to travel to other dimensions, and later claimed he was in communication with a Martian entity named Khauga. He wrote several books propounding these techniques and concepts.

Ferguson began to gather followers in the 1940s due to alleged cosmic healing techniques, including a quack medical device called the Zerret Applicator, which he sold as a cure-all. Ferguson was convicted of fraud over his medical claims about the applicator in 1950 and spent a year in prison. Following his release, Ferguson founded the Cosmic Circle of Fellowship in 1954 in Chicago, after he said he had received a vision from aliens that UFOs were beneficial and desired to help the Earth. After its founding, Ferguson traveled around the United States and established several chapters of the organization in different cities. Following Ferguson's death in 1967, the Circle continued to publish his works.

William R. Ferguson was born on July 23, 1900. He had one sister.He was a mail carrier and another time a taxi driver. He had five children with his wife, Marie Ferguson taught himself a technique of relaxation which he called "absolute relaxation", and authored a 1937 book entitled Relax First which set out this practice. He taught this technique to others.

Ferguson claimed that through this technique of "absolute relaxation", he was able to travel to other dimensions.Ferguson claimed that while he was in one of these states of absolute relaxation, on July 9, 1938, his body became charged with energy, and that he was then transported to the seventh dimension, where he stayed for two hours, resulting in his soul being "illuminated". Upon his return, his body was incorporeal, but he soon regained form.

Ferguson, reported several alien encounters, all of which occurred during meditation sessions In 1954, he published a narrative of his claimed contact with Martians in a book, My Trip to Mars. On January 12, 1947, Ferguson claimed that in a trance state he was visited by a being named Khauga, who was identified as the angel who had given the Book of Revelation to John of Patmos, the Spirit of Truth, and a "perfected being from the Holy Triune". Khauga then took him on a trip to the planet Mars, which he traveled to at the "speed of consciousness”. Ferguson said that he had been bodily transported there, but then after arrival he had been remade "along Martian lines" Ferguson described the Martians as being a foot shorter than the average Earth person, being red haired, red complexioned, broad featured, and with the ability to levitate,

Martians were said to be "twenty thousand years ahead of earthlings in spiritual evolution and scientific development".  He claimed that on Mars, one could swim in the water without getting wet, breathing was unnecessary, and that the food was simply absorbed and did not need to be excreted. According to his description, Mars had a large network of canals that covered it, with electromagnetic fields shielding it.

In the 1940s, people began to follow Ferguson for his "cosmic healing techniques", particularly a "clarified water device" which he said Khauga had taught him to manufacture. Ferguson manufactured and created the Zerret Applicator, or Zerret, a blue and white celluloid dumbbell shaped device that contained "a mysterious fluid.” In reality, the Zerret Applicator was made of two plastic globes which were originally from a baby rattle, and the globes only contained paraffin wax, dust, and tap water. It was nicknamed the "dumbbell cure" for its resemblance to a plastic dumbbell.

In 1963, an issue of the magazine Popular Mechanics listed the Zerret Applicator among the "typical fraudulent machines", in an article on quack medicine. Writer Carl Sifakis sarcastically deemed the Zerret Applicator as "one of the grandest miracle devices of all" in an article on quackery. The Zerret Applicator was about 10 inches long and was claimed to contain what was called "Zerret water", which was supposed to produce the "Z-ray, a force unknown to science". The device was advertised as an "atomic cure" that functioned via "expanded hydrogen atoms" and would reverse aging; Ferguson claimed that "life rays from the body flow into the Zerret, are rejuvenated and invigorated, then flow back into the body".expanding the molecules in the body. He said this would result in relaxation and "improve chemistry of the body", which would cure all ailments.

Specific illnesses Ferguson claimed could be cured by the Zerret included arthritis and rheumatism Instructions for usage were to hold the applicator with all ten fingers on both hands, without crossing one's legs, at least three times a day for 15 minutes. If one crossed their legs, it was said to "short circuit" the mechanism.

Ferguson's sales director was Mary Stanakis, who met Ferguson when he picked her up for a taxi ride in April 1946. Stanakis then had asthma, and believed she felt better after Ferguson gave her the applicator. She decided to buy one and afterwards became an associate of Ferguson and his sales director In July 1946, Ferguson quit his taxi driving job to sell Zerrets. Ferguson had 25 salespeople and the Zerrets were sold through mail order. The Zerrets were manufactured by Ferguson, who sold them to Stanakis, who sold them to a salesperson for $25, who then sold them to the public for $50. Other sales agents sold the applicators in several other states. After being sold the Zerret, several customers agreed to sell Zerrets to others. They sold over 5000 of them, each costing $50.

Fraud trial

A customer eventually complained to police after not getting a result from the Zerret Applicator. On September 11, 1948, Ferguson, Stanakis, and Flay Smith, one of his salespeople, were arrested in Chicago and were held and charged with running a scam. All three were released on $1,000 bond, and banned from mailing items by the post office on a fraud order. Ferguson claimed he was uninterested in money and only cared about helping humanity. In October, Ferguson was charged with fraud. His defense lawyer called over 40 witnesses, who testified to a judge that the device had helped them. In response, the judge expressed his doubts and stated "I think you are all suckers. But I'll keep an open mind. After the arrests, the devices were studied by city chemists.

In April 1949, Ferguson and Stanakis were charged federally with a violation of the Pure Food and Drug Act, for entering a misbranded therapeutic device into interstate commerce. Attorney Robert C. Eardley said they had sent three shipments of the device across interstate lines, with misleading information. During the federal trial in 1950 presided over by judge John P. Barnes, it was demonstrated by American nuclear physicist Bernard Waldman, using a Geiger counter, that the Zerret contained no radioactive material. Several physicians testified that the object was useless. Physiologist Anton Julius Carlson testified that the devices had no therapeutic value. A chemical analysis was done on the contents of the Zerret, and its contents were found to be the same as Chicago tap water. 

Stanakis and Ferguson were tried by a jury, which delivered its verdict on May 17, 1950. They were found guilty and convicted of fraud, specifically of entering a misbranded therapeutic device into interstate commerce.

Ferguson was sentenced to two years in federal prison and Stanakis was sentenced to a year. Ferguson only served a year in prison.

Daniel William Fry 

Daniel William Fry (July 19, 1908 – December 20, 1992) was an American contactee of the 1950s who claimed he had multiple contacts with an alien and took a ride in a remotely piloted alien spacecraft. Fry was born in Verdon Township, Minnesota. He was also the founder of the UFO religion Understanding, Inc., though Fry insisted it was not a religion.

Daniel William Fry was born on July 19, 1908, near a small steamboat landing on the Mississippi River called Verdon Township in the northern part of Aitkin County, Minnesota, to Fred Nelson Fry and Clara Jane Baehr. Clara died in 1916 and left Daniel and his older sister, Florence, to be raised by their grandmother while Fred found work where he could as a carpenter and labourer. Fred died two years later in 1918 during the influenza pandemic and left Daniel orphaned at the age of ten. He and his sister were reared under the guardianship of his grandmother and came with her to South Pasadena, California, in 1920. Daniel attended the now defunct El Centro Elementary school and went to high school in Antelope Valley.

His parents left practically no estate and at the age of eighteen he found himself entirely dependent upon his own resources. He completed high school, but because of increasing unemployment that preceded the 1930s depression he abandoned plans for university. However, he found what jobs he could and studied during the evenings. He worked through the subjects he would have taken at university by using material from the Pasadena Public Library. He became interested in chemistry and eventually specialized in the use of explosives finally settling on the new field of rocketry.

He married his first wife, Elma, in 1934 and had three children. He divorced Elma in 1964 while living in Merlin, Oregon, and took up common-law residence with Bertha (aka Tahahlita) until moving to Tonopah, Arizona, in the mid 1970s. There he married Florence, and before Florence died of breast cancer in 1980, they retired to Alamogordo, New Mexico. Fry then married Cleona, a local Alamogordo resident in 1982 and they remained married until his death there on December 20, 1992.

Fry worked as a "powder man" or explosives supervisor in the 1930s and 1940s on such jobs as the Salinas Dam near San Luis Obispo, California, for the Basic Magnesium Corporation and on the Pan American Highway in Honduras. From 1949 until 1954, Daniel worked at Aerojet designing, building and installing transducers for control, feedback and measurement of rockets during flight and static tests. From 1954 onward, Fry helped build the Crescent Engineering & Research Company into a multimillion-dollar company along with the founder, Edmund Vail Sawyer, eventually becoming the Vice President of Research  and a stockholder. Crescent made parts related to rockets including transducers, and did JATO rocket nozzle rework during the war. 

In the early 1960s, Fry sold his share in Crescent and moved to Merlin, Oregon. In the October 1963 issue of Understanding, he wrote, "During the past year and a half, Understanding has been in the process of a gradual shift of location from southern California to southern Oregon. In Merlin, he ran the Merlin Development Company until moving to Tonopah, Arizona, in the 1970s. There he looked after Enid Smith until her death and managed her estate including property she had donated to Understanding, Inc. Shortly before Understanding ceased to function in 1979, Daniel retired to Alamogordo, New Mexico but a few years later restarted publication of the Understanding newsletter, by now reduced to a single 8" x 14" page, which he continued until 1989.

White Sands incident

On July 4, 1949, at the White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico where he was employed, Fry had planned to join the Independence day festivities that evening in nearby Las Cruces, but he missed the last bus. Finding the temperature in his room at the Bachelor Officers Quarters (BOQ) uncomfortably hot, he decided to take a walk and explore a path in the desert where he had never been before. There, Fry claimed a 30-foot (10 m) diameter, 16 foot (5 m) high "oblate spheroid" landed in front of him, and he talked remotely with the pilot who operated the craft from a "mother ship" 900 miles (1400 km) above Earth. Fry claimed he was invited aboard and flown over New York City and back in 30 minutes.

During the flight and subsequent meetings, Fry asserted that he talked with the pilot named Alan, (pronounced "a-lawn") who gave Fry information on physics, the prehistory of Earth including Atlantis and Lemuria and the foundations of civilization.

Shortly after Fry went public with his story in 1954, he failed a polygraph examination about his claims. Fry also took photos and 16 mm film of supposed UFOs, but subsequent analysis of the original footage has provided evidence both the film and photographs were a hoax.

Later, Fry claimed to have received a doctorate; the "degree" was from a UK mail-order company in London, called Saint Andrew College and was a "Doctorate of Cosmism".

Many years later, Fry also changed the date the event took place from July 4, 1950, to July 4, 1949.

In 1954, Fry published his first book called The White Sands Incident and a year later started an organization called Understanding which published a monthly newsletter by the same name. Understanding was eventually incorporated as a non-profit corporation, which was described in a 1959 pamphlet as "From a start of nine members at El Monte, California in 1955, Understanding Inc., has grown into an international organization of more than sixty units and many members-at-large throughout the world. These units and members have sponsored hundreds of lectures and meetings, circulated thousands of books and magazines to reach many people in the spirit of 'bringing about a greater degree of understanding among all the peoples of the earth and preparing them for their eventual inevitable meetings with other races in space”.

Using Alan's ideas as a foundation, Understanding Inc. served to spread alternative social and spiritual ideas by speeches, meetings and in the newsletter. The newsletter, first published in 1956, was typically about 20 pages long, published monthly and ran for 240+ issues until October 1979.

It was also known as World Understanding. Understanding Inc. peaked in the early 1960s with about 1,500 paid members and 60 or so "Units" in America. Mid-way through its waning years in 1974, Understanding was donated55 acres (220,000 m) of land including eight buildings near Tonopah, Arizona, by Enid Smith. The buildings, first intended as a religious college, had the coincidental feature of being round and saucer shaped. Understanding Inc. had fully taken the property over by 1976 but given Daniel's tight finances during his retirement and the falling Understanding membership, the property fell into disrepair. In late September and early October 1978, the kitchen and the library were burned to the ground by an arsonist and never rebuilt.

The group has been classified by scholars as a UFO religion. Fry insisted that it wasn't in a 1969 Daily Courier article: "The group is not mystic, he says, and is not a flying saucer watching organization although some members hold definite beliefs and interests in both areas. Understanding Inc. which is a non-profit, tax exempt corporation, works on the principles that there is nothing that members are required to believe or accept or do, Dr. Fry said.” 

During the early 1970s, Professor Robert S. Ellwood of the University of Southern California studied many new and unconventional religious and spiritual groups in the United States. During his research, he attended a meeting held in Inglewood, California, by members of Understanding, Inc. and noted that, "There is no particular religious practice connected with the meeting, although the New Age Prayer derived from the Alice Bailey writings is used as an invocation.”

From 1954 onward, with little reimbursement, Fry gave thousands of lectures to organizations such as service clubs, radio and television stations. He also published other books such as Atoms, Galaxies and Understanding, To Men of Earth, Steps to the Stars, Curve of Development, Can God Fill Teeth? and Verse and Worse. He, along with other contactees would attend the yearly Spacecraft Convention at Giant Rock in Yucca Valley, California for the next twenty years, hosted by friend and fellow contactee, George Van Tassel.

Gabriel Green (November 11, 1924 – September 8, 2001) was an American UFO contactee active from the 1950s to 1970s. During this time he claimed to be in regular contact with extraterrestrials, and founded the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America. Green had a minor political career, unsuccessfully running for President in the 1960 and 1972 elections, and for United States Senate in the 1962 election.

Early life

Green was born on November 11, 1924, in Whittier, California. He would attend Los Angeles City College and Woodbury Business College. He worked as a photographer for the Los Angeles Board of Education until 1959, when he chose to focus on ufology.

Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America

After observing a UFO, Green became interested in the extraterrestrial In 1956 Green founded the Los Angeles Interplanetary Study Groups, which published the "semi-religious” magazine Thy Kingdom Come In 1959 the LAISG grew into the California-based Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, with Green serving as its director Green stated that the purpose of the AFSCA was to gain the UFO movement prestige by demonstrating its size, to pressure congress, and to "hold a national convention". The inaugural three-day convention, which Green claimed space people advised him to arrange, was marred by conflict between the attending clubs. 45 contactees spoke at the event, including Daniel Fry. 

In 1959, Green became president of the AFSCA. At its peak, the AFSCA comprised over 5,000 members across 24 countries.The group effectively ceased to exist after the termination of its final publication in 1969, subsequently only publishing occasional information sheets.

The AFSCA continued to publish Thy Kingdom Come, renamed to World Report in 1959 and to UFO International in 1962. UFO International ceased publication in 1965. The AFSCA also published the periodical Flying Saucers International from 1962 to 1969. In 1967 Green published the book, Let's Face Facts about Flying Saucers.

Green used his platform in the AFSCA to run in the 1960 United States presidential election claiming to have done so at the behest of an alien named Rentan who represented the Universal Confederation of Planets. He ran under the Outer Space Party on a platform of "prior choice economics", an economic system he explained by stating "Everything is or should be the sum total of all that has gone before.l” Under this system, Green claimed that there would be complete abundance, universal health care, free college education, and the full elimination of poverty. He also advocated for the banning of atmospheric nuclear testing, the releasing all government information on UFOs, and the launching manned missions to the Moon and Mars. Green dropped out of the race before the election, stating that it was difficult to run because voters had not interacted much with aliens. He subsequently endorsed John F. Kennedy, believing that Kennedy would release government information on extraterrestrials.

Green would run in the California Democratic Primary for the 1962 United States Senate election on a broadly left-wing, pro-peace platform. While he failed to win, he accumulated over 171,000 votes and an endorsement from Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling.

Green would run again in the 1972 United States presidential election under the Universal Party, an outgrowth of a group run by Daniel Fry. Fry was elected as Green's running-mate. The Universal Party platform was based on an economic system called "universal economics" that Green believed was used by aliens. In this system, people were allocated credits based on their contributions to society. Goods would be evenly distributed to people, but if there were a shortage of a product, it would be allocated based on people's credits. The party also planned to remove systems of representative democracy such as the electoral college and replace them with direct democracy systems. He did not expect to win the election, instead running to spread his ideas. Green was only on the ballot in Iowa and lost the election after receiving only 199 votes.

Beliefs

Green claimed that he was in frequent contact with extraterrestrials, stating he had seen over 100 flying saucers. He called these aliens "Space Masters" and the "Great White Brotherhood". He believed that the galaxy was split into dozens of planetary confederations, each with complex alliances and diverse species. However, he stated that his visits with aliens had ended by the mid-1960s. A reoccurring figure was Rentan, a 2,000 year-old 4-foot tall humanoid from Alpha Centauri who represented the Universal Confederation of Planets, possessed the body of Jesus, and could teleport.

Green frequently lectured at UFO conferences about New Age topics such as reincarnation, channeling, Spiritualism, past life regression and psychic phenomena.

Death

Green died on September 8, 2001, in Yucca Valley, California. Following his death the few remaining activities of the AFSCA were suspended.

Steven Macon Greer

Steven Macon Greer (born 1955) is an American ufologist and a retired physician. He founded the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project, which claims to seek the disclosure of alleged classified UFO information.

Greer was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1955. He claims he saw an unidentified flying object at close range when he was eight years old, and another UFO when he was 18.

He was trained as a Transcendental Meditation teacher and served as director of a meditation organization in the early 1970s.

He received a B.S. degree in biology from Appalachian State University in 1982 and an M.D. degree from James H. Quillen College of Medicine of East Tennessee State University in 1987.

Greer received his Virginia medical license in 1989, and worked as an emergency room physician. In 1998, he decided to retire as a physician in favor of his ufology activities.

Greer founded the Center for the Study of Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) in 1990 to create a diplomatic and research-based initiative to contact extraterrestrial civilizations. The group defined CE-5 or 'close encounters of the fifth kind' as human initiated contact and communication with extraterrestrial life. CSETI claims to have over 3,000 confirmed reports of UFO sightings by pilots and over 4,000 of what they describe as landing traces. The organisation uses RAMITs ('Rapid Mobilisation Investigative Teams') with the aim of arriving at landing sites as quickly as possible. CSETI has defined a psychic protocol for human initiated contact to UFOs.

In 1993, Greer founded the Disclosure Project, the goal of which is to publicly disclose the government's alleged knowledge of UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and advanced energy and propulsion systems. Greer describes the Disclosure Project as an effort to grant amnesty to government whistleblowers willing to violate their security oaths by sharing classified information about UFOs

In October 1994, Greer appeared in Larry King's TV special The UFO Coverup?

In May 2001, Greer held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. that featured 20 retired Air Force, Federal Aviation Administration members.

In 2013, Greer co-produced Sirius, a documentary detailing his work and hypotheses regarding extraterrestrial life, government cover-ups and close encounters of the fifth kind. The film was directed by Amardeep Kaleka and narrated by Thomas Jane, and covers Greer's 2006 book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge. The movie premiered on April 22, 2013, in Los Angeles, California, and features interviews from former government and military officials. Sirius depicts a six-inch (15 cm) human skeleton known as the Atacama skeleton, which was claimed to be an alien skeleton. Genetic evidence, however, demonstrated that it was human, with genetic markers found in "indigenous women from the Chilean region of South America". The director of the center that performed the genetic analysis said, "It's an interesting medical mystery of an unfortunate human with a series of birth defects.”

In 2017, Unacknowledged, a crowdfunded documentary featuring Greer was released. It was directed by Michael Mazzola and narrated by Giancarlo Esposito. After debuting on iTunes and digital platforms on May 9, Unacknowledged moved to the number one documentary spot on those platforms internationally, and number two in the U.S.

Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind: Contact has Begun was released April 2020. The documentary was directed and written by Michael Mazzola and features Greer, Daniel Sheehan, Jan Harzan, and Russell Targ. Writing in Variety, film critic Owen Gleiberman described the film as "fantasy propaganda...a conspiracy documentary built around the thesis that the 'national security state' has concealed it from all of us," adding that "[Greer is] like a '70s computer nerd played by John Waters with a touch of Guy Pearce.” Critic Noel Murray reported in the Los Angeles Times that the film was "overlong and rambling – more concerned with disconnected anecdotes than making a compelling case or telling an interesting story.” John Defore of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film "is far too impassioned in its nuttiness to be a purely cynical, Scientology-style sham", that it "rather strangely squeezes the last few years of UFO-related news coverage into a misleading frame, arguing that journalists, pundits and the government are collaborating to build fear in the public that would justify the establishment of a 'one-world government' that could wage an 'interplanetary war'", and notes that "though [Greer's] been summoning [UFOs] from across the galaxy for decades, he can never convince an alien ship to travel an extra couple of miles and hover for a good photograph.”

George King 

George King (23 January 1919, Wellington, Shropshire – 12 July 1997, Santa Barbara, California) was a British author, esotericist, and spiritual figure who founded the Aetherius Society, a new religious movement, during the mid-1950s.

George King was born on 23 January 1919, in Wellington, Shropshire, England and brought up in a protestant family with strong occult interests. His father (also called George King) was a school teacher and mother Mary a nurse and later small business owner. The family relocated on several occasions as his father sought better appointments, settling for a period in North Yorkshire. King was educated at Guisborough Grammar School. In 1937 King at the age of 18 left the family home and moved to London. Led by his belief in pacifism he became a conscientious objector during the Second World War, serving in the Auxiliary Fire Service. Later he worked as a chauffeur and security officer.

As a youth and young man King studied theosophy, spiritualism, anthroposophy, rosicrucianism and yoga. In 1954, he claimed that a voice told him "Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of Interplanetary Parliament”. Afterwards in 1955, he founded the Aetherius Society and published the book Contact Your Higher Self Through Yoga. In 1959 he was interviewed on BBC television about his beliefs and experiences.

George King died in Santa Barbara, California, on 12 July 1997, at the age of 78, according to the Aetherius Society. However, his death was not reported in major newspapers.

The Aetherius Society usually refers to King as "Dr. George King". The society does not, however, document where King received his doctorate. Barrett states that King received his doctorate from the "International Theological Seminary of California, a degree mill with no accreditation". King is also referred to as Metropolitan Archbishop of the Aetherius Churches. His consecration as a bishop was from the Theosophy-related Liberal Catholic Church.

King is also "referred to [by the society] as an author, inventor, metaphysician, occultist, prophet, psychic, spiritual healer, spiritual leader, teacher, yogi and Aquarian master". He was also lavished with innumerable titles, degrees, and honors from unorthodox sources. According to the society, the various honors were all given to King as a "token offer of gratitude" for his work. Michael Rothstein observes that all of this hagiographical material is primarily aimed at believers who have special, 'esoteric' knowledge about King, whereas the society's communications during publicity campaigns are angled differently.

Barrett notes that amongst King's titles are listed a Knighthood in the Sovereign Military Orthodox Dynastic Imperial Constantinian Order of Saint George, which was from a branch of the Byzantine Royal House in exile, and was not recognized by the College of Arms in England, as the title "Sir" might imply. King received other chivalric titles and various degrees. Barrett states that neither the chivalric titles nor the degrees were recognized by any mainstream bodies.

According to one source. King used as a formal title "His Eminence Sir George King, O.S.P.  Ph.D., Th.D., D.D., Metropolitan Archbishop of the Aetherius Churches." The knighthood is not British but from "an unspecified foreign source". American radio personality Long John Nebel had King as a guest on his show and later wrote: " 'George King of England' – is what he calls himself, and you can't be sure whether he's pausing after 'George,' or after 'King,' but it doesn't really matter because after about three minutes you get the idea strong and clear.”

In 1991 King was "presented Letters Patent of Armorial Bearings also known as a Grant of Arms, by Bluemantle Pursuivant, a Herald of Her Majesty's College of Arms in England.” A Grant of Arms is applied for; anyone can receive a Grant of Arms, if they can satisfy one of several requirements, but King could not and his grant was annulled the following year.

According to skeptic James Randi, George King's titles of 'Reverend', 'Doctor' and 'Sir' are unverified.

King has been described as a mystagogue and a religious virtuoso in the manner he formed and led the development of the Aetherius Society as a 'magico-religious' organisation. His claims have been denounced as pseudoscience by some skeptics.

Elizabeth Klarer

Elizabeth Klarer (Woollatt; 1 July 1910 – 9 February 1994) was a South African woman who, starting in 1956, publicly claimed to have been contacted by aliens multiple times between 1954 and 1963. Her first visitation supposedly occurred when she was seven, and she was one of the first women to claim a sexual relationship with an extraterrestrial. She promoted an ideal of a better world and beliefs in a cosmic consciousness. In her book Beyond the Light Barrier, she strived to convey a message of peace, love, understanding and environmentalism, which she credited to the superior wisdom of an advanced and immaculately utopian Venusian civilization. She promoted conspiracy theories of an international cover-up that kept vital information from the public and claimed to have been threatened with abduction to press her into revealing details about alien technology.

Cathkin Peak plateau  supposed scene of a day-long rendezvous with Akon during which Ayling was conceived.

Klarer was born at Mooi River, Natal, the youngest daughter of Samuel Bancroft ("SB") Woollatt and Florence Woollatt. SB was a pioneering veterinary surgeon who subsequently settled at Connington farm near Rosetta in the Natal midlands, where he became a successful shorthorn farmer, and as a dedicated polo player, introduced young people to the sport.

It was there that, at age seven, Elizabeth and her older sister Barbara claimed to have had their first UFO encounter. While feeding their Sealyham puppies outside the farmhouse, Elizabeth and her sister claimed they witnessed a silver disc bathed in a pearly luster which swooped over them. Simultaneously a giant, orange-red and cratered planetoid was observed orbiting and rotating high in the atmosphere. The disc rushed to meet it, pacing and guiding it northwards, while the planetoid left a smoke trail in its wake.

Only months later she had another sighting in the company of Ladam, their Zulu farm manager. Ladam interpreted the sighting in terms of Zulu mythology. Klarer sometimes alluded to an even earlier sighting, at age three in 1913/14. 

Klarer graduated from St. Anne's Diocesan College in Pietermaritzburg, and moved to Florence, Italy, to study art and music. She then completed a four-year diploma in meteorology at Girton College, Cambridge, and was taught by her first husband to fly a Tiger Moth light aircraft, In 1932 the three Woollatt sisters and Maureen Taylor formed the Connington polo team and drew a match against the Durban ladies' team, seen as the first officially recorded ladies' match in South Africa, During a 1937 flight from Durban to Baragwanath in a Leopard Moth aircraft, Klarer and her husband reportedly saw a saucer that approached, coasted along, then departed. During World War II, she held a responsible position in RAF Intelligence.

Klarer believed in telepathic powers, and tried to enhance these abilities since her youth.

Flying Saucer Hill

In 1954, Klarer's sister May, then residing on the farm Whyteleafe in the Natal midlands, relayed to her that the native Zulu people were reporting appearances of the lightning bird in the sky. In response, Elizabeth and her children travelled from Johannesburg to the farm, and she ascended Flying Saucer Hill the following day, 27 December. There she claimed to have seen the starship descend. It hovered three metres above ground, emitting only a soft hum – its hull spinning, though its central dome remained stationary. The spaceman who later identified himself as Akon was supposedly clearly visible through one of three portholes, but a barrier of heat that emanated from the ship prevented her from approaching, and his scout ship departed again.

On 7 April 1956, she visited the hilltop again, after further reports of the "lightning bird". This time.Akon took her aboard his scout ship, a craft some 60 feet (18 m) in diameter. Inside, she met a second pilot, stocky and darker-skinned than Akon, who was supposedly a botanist as well as an astrophysicist. She was allegedly shown a lens that offered views through the craft's floor. With only a hum emanating from below and no sense of movement, they were transported to the enormous cigar-shaped mother ship which had a garden-like interior. After meeting its inhabitants, she was returned to the hilltop. a similar arrangement as that made between Adamski and Orthon in 1952. During the encounter kisses were exchanged and Akon revealed that Elizabeth was in fact a reincarnated Venusian, and long-lost soulmate. He further explained that they occasionally took Earth women as partners, as the offspring strengthened their race with an infusion of new blood. He also claimed that a number of Venusians were surreptitiously living among human beings.

From 17:45 on 30 April 1956, various observers noted a steady red glow poised at a rocky section of the hill, which remained there until 2:00 in the morning. No sign of a fire could be found afterwards.

On 17 July, 1956, after their family farm was sold, Klarer revisited the area, and claimed to have taken a series of seven photos of Akon's scout ship using her sister's (or daughter's) simple Brownie box camera. She claimed that vivid light flashes turned into a dull grey craft enveloped in a shimmering heat haze, and that for an hour the disc darted silently over a rise near the farmhouse, making several weaving detours, and shone like silver in bright sunlight before streaking away out of sight. Edgar Sievers, a ufologist from Pretoria, said that Klarer's family saw her leave the homestead alone, and suggested that the frail Elizabeth would have found it difficult to throw a car hubcap and photograph it at the same time. He also stated that no type of hubcap was known to sufficiently resemble the disc in the photos.

Flying Saucer Hill

On one occasion she befriended SAAF helicopter pilots who sought shelter on the farm during a storm, and they facilitated visits to the hill when a ride on horseback became too difficult for her. Her third husband Aubrey Fielding died in 1981 and his ashes were strewn on the hill. Elizabeth died of breast cancer at age 84,  leaving her second book The Gravity File unfinished. The book filled in the gaps of the first, besides elucidating the military and political aspects of UFO research, and explaining Akon's "electro-gravity propulsion" technology. Before her death she related to acquaintances that Ayling (like Akon) was now an astrophysicist, who was crisscrossing the universe with his father, his space woman Clea, and their son.

Gloria Lee Byrd

Gloria Lee Byrd (March 22, 1926 – December 2, 1962) was an American airline flight attendant who was one of the most prominent figures of the contactee movement in the 1960s. She founded and led the Cosmos Research Foundation, headquartered in Torrance, California. Lee claimed to receive automatic writing and later telepathic communications from a Venusian entity named J. W.; she wrote two books which she claimed were dictated to her through automatic writing. Her group had up to 2000 members.

Lee held talks on flying saucers and was described as a "space cultist" or cult leader by some press outlets. As a result of her claims husband urged her to see a psychiatrist in 1959, resulting in her being diagnosed with paranoia, after which she refused consultations. After she visited Washington, D.C., in an effort for politicians to take her seriously, they did not, and she died in a hunger strike out of protest.

Gloria Lee was born March 22, 1926, in Los Angeles, California, in the United States. As a teenager, she was a movie actress. Having an early interest in flying, she became one of the earliest flight attendants beginning in 1948, also serving in the Korean airlift. She married William H. Byrd in 1952, an aircraft engineer six years her senior. She quit her job as a flight attendant after their marriage. They had two children together. She got another job as the grand hostess of Los Angeles International Airport.

About the same time as her marriage to Byrd, Lee developed an interest in flying saucers. The year after her marriage, in 1953, Lee claimed she began to receive messages from the "saucer brothers" through automatic writing, which later became telepathic communication. These messages were received while she was at work, and she came into contact with several occult groups as a result. She said the entity communicating with her was J. W., from the planet Venus, where his race had abandoned vocal communication for telepathy. She said it had started while on coffee break, and then heard a voice saying she had "made contact", which told her to go outside and look up, where she saw a flying saucer.

She founded the Cosmon Research Foundation in 1959, and she held talks on flying saucers. They were headquartered in Torrance, California. Local newspapers described her as a "space cultist” or as a cult leader. According to her husband, after he had urged her to visit a psychiatrist, she was diagnosed with paranoia in 1959. The psychiatrist believed she would not respond well to treatment, and she refused consultations after her diagnosis. Her movement had 2000 followers, and owned a 10-acre Californian retreat. Her husband disapproved and did not involve himself.

In September 1959, she was set to attend the Northern California Spacecraft Convention. She became a well known figure in the contactee movement in the 1960s. She published a book, Why We Are Here! (1959); the book has some theosophical elements, with a "space command hierarchy". A second J.W. book was published in 1962, The Changing Conditions of Your World! (1962). Both her books contained material alleged to be passed on from her alien communicators, and were both published by Cosmon. 

Later that year, with Hedy Hood (who had many of the same ideas), Lee visited Washington, D.C. to attempt to bring her views to the attention of officials. However, after being rebuffed, she launched a hunger strike or protest fast. They booked a room at the Hotel Claridge where she fasted, telling others in the UFO contactee community that she expected to enter a coma resembling death, then "return" with renewed spiritual energy to carry on her "great work". However, the press were not notified of Lee's hunger strike until some time after it had begun, and she attracted no publicity.

After approximately 66 days without eating, she was taken to George Washington University Hospital on November 28, when her husband called the doctors there. She never regained consciousness, and died there on December 2, 1962 at the age of 36. According to her husband she died of a brain hemorrhage, though it was initially attributed to malnutrition. Her husband said he did not want to discuss her death in order to not help her followers. After Lee's death Hood was placed for observation in a psychiatric hospital, but was released by the next month.  Her two children came under care of a local family.

After her death, several contactees claimed they could contact her from the beyond through a medium.  This included Verity of the Herald of the New Age group and Yolanda of Mark-Age; both produced written materials claimed to be from Lee from the afterlife. The executive secretary of Cosmon said she was in "daily contact" and could "tune in" with Lee. They initially considered her a martyr, but she was forgotten by the movement when new people joined.

Eduard Albert Meier

Eduard Albert Meier (born 3 February 1937), commonly nicknamed "Billy", is the founder of a UFO religion called the "Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien" (Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies) and alleged contactee whose UFO photographs are claimed to show alien spacecraft. Meier claims to be in regular contact with extraterrestrial beings he calls the Plejaren. He also presented other material during the 1970s such as metal samples, sound recordings and film footage. Meier claims to be the seventh reincarnation after six prophets common to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam: Enoch, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Immanuel (Jesus), and Muhammad.

Meier was born in the town of Bülach in the Zürcher Unterland. Meier left public schools before finishing 6th grade. In his teens he was convicted multiple times of minor offenses. In 1953, he was convicted of thievery and forgery and sentenced to a prison term in Rheinau. After escaping from the facility, Meier illegally crossed the border and joined the French Foreign Legion. He went AWOL from the Legion to return home. In 1965, he lost his left arm in a bus accident in Turkey. Some time later, he met and married a Greek woman, Kalliope Zafiriou, with whom he had three children. The nickname "Billy" came by way of an American friend who thought Meier's cowboy style of dress reminded her of Billy the Kid.

Meier claims his extraterrestrial encounters began in 1942, at the age of five, when he met an elderly Plejaren man named Sfath. After Sfath's death in 1953, Meier said, he began communicating with an extraterrestrial woman (though not a Plejaren), Asket. He said all contact ceased in 1964, then resumed on January 28, 1975, when he met Semjase  the granddaughter of Sfath, and shortly thereafter another Plejaren man, Ptaah. Other extraterrestrials have since allegedly joined the dialog as well.

Meier founded Freie Interessengemeinschaft für Grenz- und Geisteswissenschaften und Ufologiestudien ("Free Community of Interests for the Border and Spiritual Sciences and Ufological Studies"), a non-profit organization based on his alleged contacts with Semjase, in the late 1970s and established his Semjase Silver Star Center. The organization's headquarters is in Switzerland.

Some of Meier's photos are claimed by him to show prehistoric Earth scenes, extraterrestrials, and celestial objects from an alleged non-Earthly vantage point. Meier's claims are widely characterized as fraudulent by scientists, skeptics, and most ufologists, who say that his photographs and films are hoaxes. In interviews with author Gary Kinder, Meier admitted to using models to recreate scenes after his wife showed photos of incomplete models he thought he had destroyed by burning. During a 2017 art exhibit about conspiracies, many of Meier's photographs were shown. Photography curator Gordon MacDonald commented on examinations from the 1970s that the photos weren't doctored saying "Just because photographs are real – ie real images made with a real camera – doesn't mean they are of what the person says they're of.”  One of Meier's photographs is notable for being the background of the "I want to believe" poster in The X-Files before an intellectual property lawsuit forced producers to change the poster background to a different photo in the fourth season of the series.

In 1997, Meier's ex-wife, Kalliope, told interviewers that his photos were of spaceship models he crafted with items like trash can lids, carpet tacks and other household objects, and that the stories he told of his adventures with the aliens were similarly fictitious. She also said that photos of purported extraterrestrial women "Asket" and "Nera" were really photos of Michelle DellaFave and Susan Lund, members of the singing and dancing troupe The Golddiggers. It was later confirmed that the women in the photographs were members of The Golddiggers.

Howard Menger

Howard Menger (February 17, 1922 – February 25, 2009) was an American contactee who claimed to have met extraterrestrials throughout the course of his life, meetings which were the subject of books he wrote, such as From Outer Space To You and The High Bridge Incident. Menger, who rose to prominence as a charismatic contactee detailing his chats with friendly Adamski-style Venusian "space brothers" in the late 1950s, was accepted by some UFO believers.

Later in his life Menger stated in several documentaries that he believed he had misunderstood the space aliens and where they came from. He stated the space aliens did not live on Venus but they had bases on Venus or were passing by or exploring the planet. Menger also wrote about this newer position about where he believed the space people come from in one of his later books.

Menger states:

"'Years ago, on a T.V. program, when I first voiced my opinion that the people I met and talked with from the craft might not be extraterrestrial, it was thought that I had recanted. However, they (the aliens) said they had just come from the planet we call Venus (or Mars). It is my opinion that these space travelers may have by-passed or visited other planets (as we are planning) but were not native to those planets any more than our astronauts are native to the moon.”

There are also some who claim the memories of Howard Menger, George Adamski, Buck Nelson and other contactees were manipulated by evil ET's (known as the Omegans) in order to trick them into believing in life on Venus in order to discredit the message of the positive ET's.

Menger had religious revelations to impart after his "experiences," and also came back from his contacts with practical messages.

When he was still young he moved with his parents to the rolling hills of Hunterdon County, New Jersey. His first alleged contact with a person from another planet was at the age of ten, in the woods near his hometown of High Bridge, New Jersey.

Jean-Richard Miguères

Jean-Richard Miguères (11 May 1940 – 28 July 1992) was a French UFO contactee and ufologist. He wrote several books putting forth a narrative of having been visited by extraterrestrials after a car accident in 1969. Miguères was a controversial figure even among other ufologists, who criticized him for illogical and inconsistent claims, and accused him of forging documents. His message greatly shifted over time, with his earlier books focusing more on proving his claims through medical and psychological records, and his third and final book establishing a basically religious message.

He was the founder of the UFO religious organization CEIRUS, though Miguères insisted that CEIRUS was not a religion. It was deemed a cult by the anti-cult group ADFI, and in 1992, Miguères was killed by his father-in-law, a member of AFDI, who believed he was a cult leader. Miguères was a friend of Raël, the creator of Raëlism; after his death, Raël and his followers protested the actions of AFDI.

Jean-Richard Miguères was born 11 May 1940 in Algiers, in French Algeria. He had a younger brother, Alain. Miguères underwent no formal education, and served for the last two years of the Algerian War. According to his books, in his youth he was a moderately successful motocross racer; he said of himself that at this point he had little interest in UFOs.  According to his narrative, he moved to Paris, becoming a train guard for the RATP Group for several years.He afterwards moved to Perpignan. His first wife was a nurse named Odile with whom he had two children. Odile later divorced him. Miguères got a diploma in first aid and became, according to his telling of events, a private ambulance driver, from which he experienced some success.

Miguères was one of the most famous contactees in France. Miguères claimed that, in 1969 while working as a paramedic, he had crashed an ambulance, and right before it had crashed he had been contacted by extraterrestrials. After the crash, a strange entity appeared to him and after speaking to him placed a small disc on his neck that healed his body.Afterwards at the hospital, he was pronounced dead, before the aliens appeared and revived him. When in hospital again in 1970, he said he received more alien messages. In 1971 he contacted ufologist Guy Tarade after reading his book Soucoupes volantes et civilisations d’outre espace (transl. Flying Saucers and Outer Space Civilizations). In an unrelated incident in 1973, he claimed to the French media that there were actually 10 planets in the Solar System, resulting in widespread mockery from astrophysicists. That year, he joined Tarade's CEREIC (French: Centre d'Etude et de Recherches d’Elements inconnus de la Civilisation, lit. 'Center for the Study and Research of Unknown Elements of Civilization') and became its vice president in 1975, befriending other ufologists.

He published three books putting forth this narrative. His first two books were published by the paranormal-focused publisher Alain Lefeuvre, a reporter for L’Espoir Hebdo who wrote a paper on him, who launched his publishing with Miguères' initial book. The first was in 1977, J'ai été le cobaye des extraterrestres (transl. I Was the Guinea Pig of the Extraterrestrials). The book was also sold in French Canada, where Miguères gave lectures promoting his books. He was interviewed by Richard Glenn, a Canadian TV presenter and esotericist.The veracity of Miguères' claims was the subject of wide debate among ufologists in the late 1970s and 1980s, many viewed it as a hoax, but others thought he was genuine. Unlike other members of the contactee movement, who largely did not try to convince outside other believers, he tried to get scientific support for his claims and claimed that he could prove his claims with actual evidence. He initially did this through his medical records, later through claimed astronomical details that he said aliens communicated to him. The book contains alleged medical documents and psychiatric evaluations which deem him sane, as well as pictures and magazine articles. The first half of the book is focused on his initial experience with the events and the visitation, and the second half focuses on the 1970 messages from the second visit.

In July 1979, the French ufology group AESV (French: Association d'Études sur les Soucoupes Volantes, lit. 'Association for the Study of Flying Saucers') dedicated an entire special issue of their bulletin to him, which contained an examination of his claims and book, which was signed by the director Perry Petrakis. The AESV criticized him for illogical and inconsistent claims, with the precise locations and times being inaccurate (e.g. he claimed the existence of a route between Nice and Marseille that did not exist), and criticized the narrative as illogical (namely that the aliens he said he had encountered needed computers despite being telepathic). They also questioned his alleged professional background and insinuated many of the documents in the book were forgeries. Miguères later obtained an apology from Petrakis in the next issue through a legal representative, who admitted their investigation had some mistakes but refused to withdraw it in its entirety. A second book was published in 1979, Le cobaye des extra-terrestres face au scientifiques (transl. The Extraterrestrials' Guinea Pig Confronts the Scientists).

Miguères was a friend of Raël, the leader and founder of Raëlism. Unlike Raël, who was an atheist, Miguères considered himself to be Catholic and attended Mass. This was done in a contradictory manner; he both criticized religion and presented himself as a devoted Catholic.

In 1987, Miguères founded the religious movement CEIRUS (French: Centre européen d'initiation à la recherche ufologique à caractère scientifique, Center for the Initiation of Scientific Ufological Research') based in Lyon. One of CEIRUS's goals is to prepare for the arrival of aliens. That year, he published a third book, 1996: la révélation (transl. 1996: The Revelation). His third book had a great departure in tone from the first two; unlike the prior books that claimed to be able to back up his claims with evidence, it was basically religious in nature and made no mention of proof, instead arguing that one had to look inside for the answer. This book had a lesser distribution.

Miguères insisted that CEIRUS was not a religion, and wrote that the aliens' interventions on man had been misinterpreted to create "sects and religions", which were considered to be "primitive conceptions. He wrote of it that it was a "fantastic spiritual movement, which shall neither be a sect, nor a new religion, but rather simply a live force at the service of the 'light'”.  CEIRUS was deemed a cult by the anti-cult group ADFI and Miguères was designated a cult leader. In Spring 1992, he met 32-year-old Odile Dorysse, who had been attending CEIRUS meetings for several months. They married 4 July 1992. Dorysse had a daughter from a previous marriage, and after they married she broke off contact with her parents.

Miguères was killed by his father-in-law Roger Dorysse in Lyon, France on 28 July 1992. Doryssa was a 62-year-old retiree, and also a member (as was his wife) of the anti-cult group ADFI. AFDI classified CEIRUS as a cult and Miguères as a cult leader. Dorysse disliked Miguères's beliefs and activities, and was made aware of them through the AFDI. He had previously sued for custody of his granddaughter, but lost the case. He heard a rumor that Miguères was going to move to either Canada or South America, with Dorysse's daughter and granddaughter. Viewing him as a cult leader, he decided to kill him.

On 28 July, Dorysse waited near Miguères's car at the Boulevard de la Croix-Rousse in Lyon. When Miguères arrived, Dorysse shot him in the legs with a 22-caliber rifle. He then shot and killed him at close range. Dorysse later turned himself in to the police. He was largely portrayed sympathetically by the media: he received six years in prison and was released after three. His wife later told the press that "my husband is very sorry for his act, but he is totally at peace because he knows he acted for the best.” After his death, Yvette Genosy, one of the presidents of AFDI, stressed Miguères' beliefs in trying to make sense of the killing. Dorysse died in 2015.

Following Miguères' death, Raël gave a speech in November 1992 at a Raëlian movement meeting in Montreal, where he said that though he had disagreements with Miguères and his ideas he should have had a right to free speech, and requested donations for Miguères's widow (which she eventually refused). After his death, Raëlians collected signatures to protest against AFDI; Raël wrote a book in December of that year, Le Racisme religieux financé en France par le gouvernement Socialiste (transl. Religious racism sponsored in France by the Socialist government), in which he accused the UNAFDI of being itself a Catholic "fundamentalist cult" which organized "witch hunts" against "philosophical minorities", and criticized the government for funding it. The book is dedicated to Miguères. In October, in response to Miguères death, Raël founded FIREPHIM (French: Fédération internationale des religions et philosophies minoritaire, lit. 'International Federation of Minority Religions and Philosophies'), in what Raël called an attempt to "counterbalance the lies and perverse effects of ADFI". In the aftermath, the Church of Scientology also complained of the AFDI's role in his death.

Scholar Stefano Bigliardi said of Miguères that since, unlike Raël, Miguères' prophecies had an explicit end date of 1996. "if Miguères had normally lived on, the (likely) failure of those very prophecies might have quickly eroded his credibility.”. Pierre Lagrange said of his speech that it seemed to foreshadow later developments in conspiracy theory rhetoric, quoting Miguères's statement that "the levers of control on planet Earth are less and less in the hands of earthlings".He also noted that it was of "special interest" how his message had changed over time, going from emphasizing "scientific proof" to internal realization, which altered the debate with other ufologists as his message was "ever more elaborate, and who is not the same person/contactee from one book to the next"; Lagrange said that when a skeptic read his books and noticed the contradictions, it would naturally seem to be a hoax or a sign of Miguères' mental unwellness, but that for Miguères the constantly shifting narrative was not just not a problem, but "what makes the transmission of the message possible".

Buck Nelson

Buck Nelson (April 9, 1895 – 1982) was an American farmer who gained some notoriety as a 1950s UFO contactee. Nelson claims to have had an encounter with an unidentified flying object and its human crew while living in Missouri in 1954. Nelson believed the friendly occupants of the spacecraft to be humans from the planet Venus. His story is contained in a booklet he authored, My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus, published in 1956.

Nelson claims to have seen three flying saucers over his farmhouse; he took photographs and attempted to signal the saucers with a flashlight. A beam of light "much brighter and hotter than the sun” was shined at him. Consequently, he testified that his chronic lumbago disappeared and his eyesight dramatically improved. He goes on to claim that, after dusk fell, three "friendly human spacemen" accompanied by a large dog, visited him and spent some time talking with him.

Nelson further stated that two of the people from Venus had adopted the names "Bucky" and "Bob" and their main message concerned the "Twelve Laws of God", similar to the biblical Ten Commandments. He claimed to have been taken on trips to the Moon, Mars and Venus. He described how space people told him that on earth, past civilizations existed and destroyed themselves "They had learned of a power even greater than our Atomic power". He said the space people warned him that the inappropriate use of nuclear energy was threatening the earth again; "We are here to see which way this world will use Atomic power; for peace or war. We have stood by and seen other planets, one after another, destroy itself. Is this world next? We wonder and watch and wait. Again I say; give up your Atomic weapons and may Peace be on this Earth".

Similar to Moses, Nelson was also given Commandments; these are a set of biblical principles relating to ethics and worship.

Nelson described the "book machine" thus "on Venus, Bucky managed to show me what I called a "Book Machine". When a book was put into it, it would read the pages, play any music or show any picture it contained. It was about the size of a television set".

In 1956, Nelson published a booklet, My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus, and became something of a celebrity in the Ozarks. He held a successful annual Spacecraft Convention near his farm for about a decade, where he sold his pamphlet, and pay envelopes containing a small amounts of black hair, which he claimed had fallen off the large dog called "Bo".

Nelson died in 1982; an unconfirmed account states that he spent his last years living with relatives in California. Although Nelson and his story achieved a degree of notoriety, it was less than that of other 1950s contactees such as George Adamski, Truman Bethurum and Daniel Fry.

Ted Owens

Ted Owens (1920-1987) was an alleged UFO contactee who claimed paranormal powers.

Owens, claimed to have had a genius-level IQ and to be a member of Mensa, believed he had been subject to "psychic surgery" by "space intelligences" who had operated on his brain to allow him to receive their telepathic messages. He considered himself a "UFO prophet" and compared himself with Moses, claiming psychokinetic powers that enabled him to not only predict but control lightning, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and volcanoes. Dubbing himself the "PK Man", Owens professed that his alleged powers were given to him by space intelligences who wished to call attention to the dangers that nuclear weapons and environmental pollution posed for mankind.

Jeffrey Mishlove wrote a book about Owens, The PK Man: A True Story of Mind Over Matter, with a foreword by John E. Mack.

Reinhold Oscar Albert Schmidt

Reinhold Oscar Albert Schmidt (1897–1974) was a fraudster and convicted embezzler who was one of the more obscure UFO contactees of the 1950s.

Schmidt was born and grew up in Nebraska, where he worked for most of his adult life as a grain buyer and dealer. In 1938, he was convicted of embezzlement and was imprisoned in the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

According to Schmidt, while driving through a rural area near Kearney, Nebraska on November 5, 1957, he saw a large, blimp-shaped object on the ground in a field. He claimed two men left the object and escorted him inside it, wherein he witnessed a group of four men and two women speaking a language he described as "High German." The group claimed to be from the planet Venus. After a conversation lasting about thirty minutes, Schmidt departed the craft and ascended into the air, revealing large propellers at each end.

Following this alleged experience Schmidt contacted the local sheriff and brought two local police officers to view the supposed landing site, where a greasy, greenish substance was observed. That same evening Schmidt began publicizing his story via telephone, radio interviews and a television appearance. The police were skeptical, and held him overnight in jail while they continued their investigation. After uncovering his prior embezzlement conviction and finding a can of green motor oil near the alleged contact site, Schmidt was transferred to the Hastings State Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Schmidt traveled with alleged UFO contactees Wayne Sulo Aho and John Otto on their lecture circuit, and in 1958 published an account of his claimed experience entitled The Kearney Incident Up To Now: The Report of Reinhold Schmidt. Schmidt also contacted exploitation movie producers June and Ron Ormond about making a film based on his alleged experiences. The film, Edge of Tomorrow, premiered on May 28, 1961 at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. Shortly after this, Schmidt's 1958 booklet was republished under the title Edge of Tomorrow. Schmidt also had a minor role in another exploitation film produced by the Ormonds, Please Don't Touch Me.

Schmidt relocated to Bakersfield, California, where he continued to present lectures about his alleged UFO experience for the next few years, soliciting money from audience members that, he claimed, he would use to mine unique crystals identified for him by his extraterrestrial contacts. In late 1961, Schmidt went on trial for grand theft, charged with tricking several elderly women out of over $30,000 by claiming that flying saucers had directed him to a mine that was full of "free energy crystals.” The prosecution called Carl Sagan to testify that the planet Saturn could not support life, an experience later described by Sagan in his 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe, using the pseudonym "Henry Winckler" for Schmidt. Schmidt insisted that the jury be shown his film Edge of Tomorrow. Schmidt was convicted on October 26, 1961, and sentenced in June 1963 to a term of one to ten years in prison.

Following his release from prison, Schmidt returned to Nebraska, where he died in 1974.

George Wellington Van Tassel

Van Tassel was born in Jefferson, Ohio in 1910, and grew up in a fairly prosperous middle-class family. He finished high school in the 10th grade and held a job at a small municipal airport near Cleveland; he also acquired a private pilot license. At age 20, he moved to California, where he worked as an automobile mechanic at a garage owned by an uncle.

While pumping gas at the garage, Van Tassel met and befriended Frank Critzer, an eccentric loner who claimed to be working a mine somewhere near Giant Rock, a 7-story boulder near Landers, California in the Mojave Desert. Although Critzer was born in the US and an American citizen, others believed him to be a German immigrant, and during World War II, he was suspected of being a spy for Germany. In 1942, Critzer killed himself by detonating dynamite during a police siege at Giant Rock. After learning of Critzer's death, Van Tassel applied for a lease of the small abandoned airport near Giant Rock from the Bureau of Land Management and eventually was given a Federal Government contract to develop and maintain the airstrip

Van Tassel became an aircraft mechanic and flight inspector who at various times between 1930 and 1947 worked for Douglas Aircraft, Hughes Aircraft, and Lockheed. While at Hughes Aircraft he was their Top Flight Inspector. In 1947, Van Tassel left Southern California's booming aerospace industry to live in the desert with his family. At first, he lived a simple existence in the rooms Frank Critzer had dug out under Giant Rock. Van Tassel eventually built a new home, a café, a gas station, a store, a small airstrip, and a guest ranch beside the Rock.

George Van Tassel started hosting group meditation in 1953 in a room underneath Giant Rock, excavated by Frank Critzer. That year, according to Van Tassel the occupant of a space ship from the planet Venus woke him up, invited him on board his space ship, and both verbally and telepathically gave him a technique for rejuvenating the human body. In 1954, Van Tassel and others began building what they called the "Integratron" to perform the rejuvenation. According to Van Tassel, the Integratron was to be a structure for scientific research into time, anti-gravity and at extending human life, built partially upon the research of Nikola Tesla and Georges Lakhovsky. Van Tassel described the Integratron as being created for scientific and spiritual research with the aim to recharge and rejuvenate people's cells, "a time machine for basic research on rejuvenation, anti-gravity and time travel". The domed wood structure has a rotating metal apparatus on the outside he called an "electrostatic dirod". Van Tassel claimed it was made of non-ferromagnetic materials: wood, concrete, glass, and fibreglass, lacking even metal screws or nails. The Integratron was never fully completed due to Van Tassel's sudden death a few weeks before the official opening. In recent times some people who visit the unfinished Integratron claim to be rejuvenated by staying there, and experiencing "sound baths" inside.

Van Tassel was a classic 1950s contactee in the mold of George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, Daniel Fry, Orfeo Angelucci and many others. He hosted "The Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention" annually beside the Rock, from 1953 to 1971, which attracted at its peak in 1959 as many as 10,000 attendees. Guests trekked to the desert by car or landed airplanes on Van Tassel's small airstrip, called Giant Rock Airport.

Over the years, every famous contactee of the period appeared personally at these conventions, and many more not-so-famous ones. References often state that the first and most famous contactee, George Adamski, pointedly boycotted these conventions; however, Adamski did, in fact attend the third convention, held in 1955, where he gave a 35-minute lecture and was interviewed by Edward J. Ruppelt, once head of the Air Force Project Blue Book. It was apparently the only such convention Adamski ever attended.

Van Tassel founded a metaphysics research organization called The Ministry of Universal Wisdom, and The College of Universal Wisdom to codify the spiritual revelations he claimed to be receiving via communications with the people from space. He published and distributed Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom from 1953 until his death in 1978. His widow published one more newsletter in 1979.

George Van Tassel died in Santa Ana while printing a publication and visiting friends. There is some controversy surrounding Van Tassel's death as he was known to be very healthy, at age 67, but the cause of death was listed as a heart attack. Van Tassel's body was cremated before his family was advised of his death. According to Van Tassel's widow, government agents ransacked their home and confiscated his papers and equipment while she was attending his funeral.

Samuel Eaton Thompson

Samuel Eaton Thompson (1875? – 1960?) was an American contactee who claimed to have been in contact with extraterrestrials. Although his claims earned him little publicity during his lifetime, Thompson might have been the first North American contactee. Researcher Jerome Clark describes the account as "surely the most outlandish story in early UFO history [and] also one of the most obscure".The story earned a brief, 11 paragraph, mention in a local newspaper in 1950 (on April 1, leading some to suspect the entire story was a hoax or prank), and the full story was not publicized until more than three decades afterwards.

A retired railroad worker in his 70s, Thompson claimed that on the evening of March 28, 1950, while driving to his home in Centralia, Washington, he came across a large flying saucer in the woods. The saucer, he claimed, was about 80 feet across and 30 feet tall. Two naked, deeply tanned children, human in form but very attractive, were playing near the craft's entrance ramp.

Thompson claimed to have approached to within about 50 feet of the saucer, which emitted a strong sun-like heat. Several naked adults — humanoid, attractive, and also deeply tanned — then appeared at the craft's door. After realizing Thompson meant them no harm, they beckoned him closer. The crew consisted of 20 adults and 25 children, the latter from about 5 to 15 years of age.

Thompson claimed to have spent the next 40 hours with the humanoids. They were from Venus, he learned, and had stopped at Earth despite the fact that other Venusian saucers had been shot at by Earth-based military forces. The Venusians said that all of Earth's problems stemmed from astrology: humans were born under different star signs, while Venusians were all born under the sign of Venus, as was Thompson.

The Venusians further claimed, said Thompson, that they were vegetarian, and that they never grew ill. Thompson also claimed the Venusians were naïve and childlike: they did not know who had built their flying saucers, and seemed to possess little to no curiosity.

Thompson claimed that he was the first of many Earthlings who would meet the Venusians, and that after humanity had seen the wisdom of Venusian ways, Jesus Christ would return in 10,000 AD.

Thompson claimed to have stayed on the spaceship until March 30, 1950. He tried to photograph the spaceship, he claimed, but the object was too bright to appear on film as more than a blob of light. He could see the Venusians any time he wanted, but could not tell all the information he had learned from them.

Afterwards, pilot Kenneth Arnold — whose 1947 flying saucer sighting had sparked widespread public interest in UFOs — interviewed Thompson. Although Arnold did not really believe Thompson's story was true, he also had difficulty in accepting that the poorly-educated, seemingly sincere Thompson was a blatant liar or hoaxer. Arnold speculated that Thompson might have had some sort of psychic experience.

In 1980, Arnold donated a copy of his 1950 Thompson interview tape to Fate magazine. Clark's article "The Coming of the Venusians" was published in the January 1981 issue of Fate. Clark speculated that Thompson had had a visionary experience, which was inspired by, and which drew from, UFO folklore and Biblical stories.

Clark noted the Thompson case was similar to an encounter reported during the mystery airship wave of 1897. There are also some similarities between Thompson's story and the far better known account of contactee George Adamski; but Clark argues that it is unlikely that Adamski knew of Thompson.

Rael

(born Claude Maurice Marcel Vorilhon. 30 September 1946), sometimes referred to as Maitreya Raël or simply Rael, is a French journalist who founded and leads the Raëlian Movement, an international UFO religion.

Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. He stated that his second book, Les extra-terrestres m'ont emmené sur leur planète (Extraterrestrials Took Me To Their Planet), relates the teaching he received from these people. In this book, Raël describes harmonious and peaceable beings free of money, sickness, and war.

In 1974, Raël decided to give up his automobile magazine, Autopop. That September, the last issue, number 34, was published. Raël then devoted himself to the task he said was given by his "biological father", an extraterrestrial named Yahweh. Shortly after a first public conference, Raël founded MADECH, a group of people interested in helping him in his task, which later became the International Raëlian Movement.

Raël has been married three times. His first wife was Marie-Paul Cristini. Sociologist Susan J. Palmer said that Cristini, a nurse, diagnosed Raël as clinically depressed after he appeared at her doorstep in 1987, burnt out from the tasks he carried out within the movement.

Raël focused on spreading his message in Japan in the 1980s, and by 1987, he met Lisa Sunagawa. Sunagawa soon began accompanying Raël during his travels to Lima, Miami, Brazil, and Martinique. In the 1990 Radio Canada television documentary They're Coming!, Raël is seen with four women, while Lisa, in slow motion, wears a pink tutu and holds hands with him.

Raël separated from Sunagawa sometime between 1990 and 1992. Around that time, Sophie de Niverville, whose mother and aunt were both Raëlians, was convinced of the authenticity of the messages. Sophie received a Raëlian baptism at age 15. When she turned 16, she married Raël at Montreal's city hall. During a December 2001 interview with Palmer, Sophie spoke positively about Raël, despite their divorce the previous year; they continued to live together.

In 1994, wealthy Japanese Raëlians rented a race car and showed it to Raël. They believed that if he raced it, it would generate publicity for the movement. Raël accepted the offer on the condition that the funding not come from member tithes or embassy funding. Funding for Raël's races, which took place in the 1990s and early 2000s, came mostly from well-funded European and Japanese people. His best finishes included "a 3rd place finish in GT1 in Lime Rock with the Mosler Raptor in 1997, and a 7th place finish at Watkins Glen with a Viper GTS R in a 1999 FIA GT race". Raël participated in the 1999 BFGoodrich Tires Trans-Am Series and the 2000 Speedvision GT Championship. According to Palmer, Raël announced in November 2001 that he intended to retire from professional auto racing. He said that he still enjoyed racing in the form of video games.

On 13 December 1994, Gérard Chol, director of Le Maine Libre, was declared guilty by the High Court of Le Mans for public defamation for claiming that the Raël's movement was laundering money coming from drug trafficking, prostitution, arms dealing, and the sale of pornographic videotapes. Chol was ordered to pay 1FF in damages and 3,000FF in proceedings costs and to publish the penal judgment in Le Maine Libre.

In 2003, Vorilhon sued Ottawa columnist Denis Gratton and Le Droit newspaper for $85,000 in defamation damages over a 23 January 2003 column; Raël lost and was ordered to pay court costs by Quebec Superior Court.

In response to Raël's association with Clonaid, South Korean immigration authorities at the airport denied him entry into their country in 2003. A planned Raëlian seminar continued, with Raël making some brief "big screen" video-camera appearances via the internet for the several hundred who attended. Raël instructed South Korean Raëlians to protest near the Ministry of Health and Welfare that ordered him to leave

In February 2007, Raël, who wanted to start commercial activities with Swiss vintners, was denied residence in the Swiss Canton Valais, in part because he was feared to be endangering public values by promoting sexual liberty and the education of children on how to obtain sexual pleasure. Also cited was his association with the Clonaid human cloning claim; Switzerland forbade human cloning. In a brief statement, Raël said he considered appeal at the European level.

George Hunt Williamson

George Hunt Williamson (December 9, 1926 – January 1986), aka Michael d'Obrenovic and Brother Philip, was an American flying saucer contactee, channel, and metaphysical author who came to prominence in the 1950s.

The founding of the Jewish and Christian religions, impersonating "gods" and providing "miracles" when needed. Williamson spiced his books with additional Ouija-revelations to the effect that some South, Central and North American ancient civilizations actually began as colonies of human-appearing extraterrestrials. Williamson can be considered a more mystically-inclined forerunner of Erich von Däniken; Secret Places of the Lion also displays the clear and explicit influence of Immanuel Velikovsky.

Like his role-model Adamski, Williamson enjoyed referring to himself as "professor," and claimed an extensive academic background, which was in fact, completely false. In the late 1950s, he withdrew from the contactee scene and even changed his name, concocting a new fictitious academic and family background to go along with the new name, while continuing to reside in California. His 1961 book was published under a still different pen name. Little is known about his life between 1961 and his reported death in 1986, other than that at one time he became a priest of the Nestorian Church, actually the Assyrian Church of the East.

A number of books by Williamson are still in print, in paperback editions. The only other well-known 1950s contactees whose books are still available are Truman Bethurum and Daniel Fry.

Part Two:

WALK-INs

DEFINITION 

A Walk-In is a new age concept of a person whose original soul has departed his/her/their body. At which time, a new soul/entity replaces the old, either temporarily or permanently.

The term "walk-in aliens" refers to a concept, often found in paranormal and spiritual beliefs, where an alien entity or soul is said to enter a human body, either at birth or at some point later in life, essentially taking over the body and consciousness. This differs from traditional alien abduction scenarios, as it doesn't involve physical transportation to another world. It's a form of what's sometimes called "cryptoterrestrial" hypothesis, where extraterrestrial beings live among us in secret. 

Belief System:
The concept of walk-ins is prevalent in some New Age and spiritual circles. It's often seen as a form of spiritual evolution or a way for advanced beings to experience life on Earth.

Not Abduction:
Unlike abduction stories, walk-ins are believed to willingly choose to inhabit a human body. There's no forced removal or transportation involved.

Gradual or Sudden:
The transition can be gradual, with the walk-in slowly taking over the body's functions and personality, or it can be sudden and complete.

Possible Characteristics:
People who believe they are walk-ins may exhibit unusual abilities, sensitivities, or a strong sense of purpose or connection to a higher power.

Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis:
The "cryptoterrestrial" hypothesis, mentioned in a study by researchers from Harvard University and Montana Technological University, explores the possibility of technologically advanced beings living secretly on Earth, possibly even posing as humans according to FOX 10 Phoenix. This hypothesis is considered speculative and not affiliated with Harvard's Human Flourishing Program, but it does suggest the possibility of advanced beings already living among us.

Stranger Within: An Introduction To Walk-Ins

Written by Clara Bush

Have you ever woke one morning and felt like an entirely different person? Sure people change. As a kid you hate veggies. You get older and you acquire a taste for them.

People change. But this is different. What I’m referring to is an overnight, or after an illness, sudden change. Several times in my life this has happened to me. And for over thirty years, I’ve searched for an explanation.

This sudden change may be accompanied by perhaps a burst of energy, a loss of weight, a new love interest, an unexplainable attraction to a foreign country never before felt, or a craving for something not craved before.

Noted journalist and successful New Age writer of the seventies and eighties, Ruth Montgomery, offers an explanation. She poses an interesting theory she coined as Walk-Ins that might offer answers to this phenomena.

Montgomery’s concept of Walk-Ins infiltrated the seventies’ New Age religion, but her fame came first as a well-respected journalist and political columnist, not as a writer of unorthodox ideas.

Instead, her career boasts such accomplishments as the first female reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Daily News in 1943. And the only female of the twelve reporters invited to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral. Baylor University and Ashland College awarded Montgomery honorary doctors of law degrees.

It wasn’t until after her retirement from journalism, in 1969, that publishers put into print her New Age concepts.

Ruth Montgomery was a person of education, intelligence, and respect. A political influence ahead of her time—not someone associated with weird. Yet, she believed in Walk-Ins and automatic writing.

Her career and accomplishments give validation to the theory of Walk-Ins.

Since a Walk-in must never enter a body without the permission of its owner, this is not to be confused with those well-publicized cases — such as described in The Three Faces of Eve, The Exorcist, et al. — in which multiple egos of evil spirits are vying for possession of an inhabited body.—Ruth Montgomery (1912-2001), Strangers Among Us

This is where my theory deviates from Montgomery’s. In my experience, this entity doesn’t take over the body but inhabits the shell and coexists with its original owner, interjecting its likes and dislikes, its strengths and weaknesses, its memories and feelings into that of the host’s often making the host a stronger, more driven person.

Driven because the Walk-In and host won’t always coexist. One might journey on, continuing his/her/their path and purpose. The Walk-In may have only a limited amount of time to accomplish whatever task they have undertaken. I believe many times they come to inspire us, to coach us toward our purpose, or to connect with a loved one they lost. Some writers and artists refer to this entity as their muse.

Although, I believe much of Montgomery’s concept; she says that when a Walk-In enters another’s physical body, of course with permission only, the original soul moves on.

I think they exist together, unless the original chooses to move on. The original’s memories will dominate, but there will be those fleeting moments of déjà vu or connecting immediately with a stranger for unknown reasons that are triggered by the Walk-In.

The original may experience a weakened state, maybe illness, and an empty feeling when the Walk-In leaves.

There is no hard evidence to support my concept except for my own personal experiences. I believe I have housed a Walk-In or two in my life. My original self might take a back seat and let the Walk-In do the driving, but I don’t go anywhere. I don’t move on because I choose to stay.

As I searched the internet and books for more information on Walk-Ins, I found it to be sparse and out-dated to some extent.

My research uncovered that there could be three types of Walk-Ins. This coincides with my experience, but is contrary to Montgomery’s writings on Walk-Ins. She believed in only one type of Walk-In. One that replaces the soul of the original while the original moves on.

Montgomery’s type, type one, I named The Swap.

The original is in such a mental and/or physical disarray that he/she/they wish to move on to her next form of existence, to evacuate her now physical being — perhaps because of illness or unhappiness — and allow the higher entity to replace it and carry out her life’s mission. The Swap might occur during a near death experience.

Type Two, the Envoy, is an ambassador, a messenger.

The original remains in her physical body, in a limited capacity, and triggers memories and expectations. This envoy moves in and enlightens the soul of the original, causing her to see more clearly and to define goals. The original may have been self-centered or naïve. Now she feels an overpowering purpose and drive to help humanity and earth.

The Envoy might take control when the original feels too weary to decide and continue her mission. Or it may be as simple as the original’s plea: God, I need help. I can’t do it on my own anymore. Entry of The Envoy gives the original new life, energy, and direction.

In type three, The Woven, the higher entity interweaves with the original. They are so entwined that there is no difference between where one begins and the other ends. Each takes over the lead, the driver’s seat, at different times, as dictated by the demands of their culture.

If the entity is a visionary and writer, he will control the time to write. If the original is nurturing and family oriented, he will take over when the need arises. 

The Woven will never feel alone, or feel the need for friends. They have each other. Once the original acknowledges her Walk-In, peace and purpose surface.

I speculate that the original and Walk-In may have loved one another in their past lives and agreed to the woven union in lives to come. The original is as highly evolved as the Walk-In, which is what makes The Woven possible and the strongest of the three types.

I found other names for the three types of Walk-Ins during my research. Such as, some articles refer to The Woven as Braided.

I devised terminology to better understand the difference. I remember the names of the three types of Walk-Ins by using the mnemonic SEW — Swap, Envoy, Woven.

And sew, as we know, means to join. To remember the three types of Walk-Ins, I use the following.

The Swap — I swap me for you.
The Envoy — I am your messenger.
The Woven — I am you. You are me.

If you are host to a Walk-In or believe in them, please share your experience with a comment. Those of us searching for others with Walk-In encounters appreciate it.

Even if you have a speculative premise — scientific, fictional, or otherwise — I loved to hear it. Except no demons, exorcism, or evil possession suppositions, please. Walk-Ins are something entirely different. 

The changes that I am interested in are not like the ones in horror flicks. Walk-Ins are not sinister. They don’t bring death. Instead, they bring enlightenment to the individual, thereby advancing humanity.

Only with permission, not force, is the birthing of another soul into an existing body consummated.

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