Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction

Introduction

The era of the flying saucer was ushered in on June 24, 1947, when a pilot named Kenneth Arnold had an extraordinary airborne encounter at the Cascade Mountains, Washington State, USA. It was around 3.00 p.m. and Arnold was engaged in looking for an airplane that had crashed on the southwest side of Mt. Rainier. I hadn’t flown more than two or three minutes on my course when a bright flash reflected on my airplane, said Arnold. It startled me as I thought I was too close to some other aircraft. I looked every place in the sky and couldn’t find where the reflection had come from until I looked to the left and the north of Mt. Rainier, where I observed a chain of nine peculiar looking aircraft flying from north to south at approximately 9,500 feet elevation and going, seemingly, in a definite direction of about 170 degrees (Palmer, 1952).

Arnold added that the mysterious crafts were closing in rapidly on Mt. Rainier, and that he was highly puzzled by their overall design: I thought it was very peculiar that I couldn’t find their tails but assumed they were some type of jet plane. The more I observed these objects, the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground or at higher altitudes. The chain of these saucer-like objects [was] at least five miles long. I felt confident that after I would land, there would be some explanation of what I saw [sic] (Ibid.).

No firm conclusion for Arnold’s encounter ever did surface; however, as the skies of the United States became populated with more and more flying saucers during the heady summer of 1947, the United States military quickly realized that finding an answer to the mystery was an issue of paramount importance. As a result, investigations were put into place, and which became unified under the banner of an official operation named Project Sign. In 1948, Sign was replaced by Project Grudge, which, in turn, became Project Blue Book—the latter being the Air Force’s most famous and publicly visible UFO study program. It continued until 1969, when it was finally closed down.

Although the Air Force grudgingly admitted that of the 12,618 reports it had investigated between 1947 and 1969, no less than 701 seemingly defied definitive explanation, military officials were adamant that no evidence existed in support of the notion that alien beings were visiting the Earth. But perhaps the Air Force’s apparent inability to resolve the matter was because the phenomenon did not behave in a fashion that its personnel might have anticipated or expected of them. There was never any War of the Worlds or Independence Day-style invasion of the planet; and human beings were not secretly replaced by alien look-a-likes, in some macabre, real-life version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But, equally, there was no friendly, historic touch-down of an extra-terrestrial vehicle on the lawns of the White House, in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, or outside the doors of the Kremlin.

Indeed, there are reasons for believing that those whose role it was to protect the free world from hostile invaders were seemingly looking for the aliens in all the wrong places: While the military was dispatching its jets to chase flying saucers in the skies above, or scanning its radar screens for evidence of unknown objects violating sensitive airspace, it was at ground-level that remarkable things were reportedly afoot.

Since the late 1940s, countless people, all across the world, have claimed face-to-face contact with eerily human-like aliens from far-off planets. The aliens in question are usually seen dressed in tight-fitting, one-piece-outfits, while sporting heads of lush, long, and flowing blond hair. Not only that, our cosmic visitors assure those of us who they deem worthy of contact that they are deeply concerned by our warlike ways. They wish us to disarm our nuclear arsenals, live in peace and harmony with one another, and elevate ourselves to whole new spiritual levels. The aliens in question have become known as the Space-Brothers; those whose lives have been touched and forever changed by their encounters with such alleged extra-terrestrial entities are an elite body of people known as the Contactees.

If the testimony of the witnesses can be considered valid, then in the early years of contact the aliens took a decidedly alternative approach to their liaisons with the people of Earth, something that may explain why the military had such a hard time proving the reality of the UFO phenomenon. Allegedly preferring face-to-face encounters with everyday members of society, the Space-Brothers arranged their clandestine meetings at such out-of-the-way locations as blisteringly hot deserts, dense forests, stark mountain peaks, and even within isolated diners situated on long stretches of dusty, sand and wind-blasted highway. And California was a particularly favorite haunt and haven of the Space-Brothers, too.

Moreover, in many cases on record, the aliens did not even greet their elite, chosen ones in glistening, futuristic spacecraft. Rather, exhibiting surprisingly good taste and a high degree of flair and panache, in the formative years of contact they sometimes preferred far more conventional forms of travel, including cool-looking cars of the type that dominated 1950s America. This book tells the collective, curious, and cosmic story in all its appropriately weird wonder.

1

Early Encounters

Although there can be no doubt that it was during the early to late 1950s that all-things of a Contactee nature dominated the world of flying saucers, a few earlier encounters were reported. One such case can be found in the declassified UFO files of the FBI. The story began on July 9, 1949, when columnist Walter Winchell brought to the attention of J. Edgar Hoover a story he had received from a Mr. Jones of Los Angeles who maintained he had seen a flying saucer in the summer of 1947. Winchell advised Hoover that Jones had mailed him a letter that was very well written, obviously by a man of intelligence (Winchell, 1949).

In view of this, the FBI took time out to pursue the matter, as the following memorandum, written by FBI Assistant Director D.M. Ladd shows:

In this letter, Jones stated that in August of 1947 he left Los Angeles for the mountains and started hiking through the mountains. About 10:00 a.m. he was laying on the ground when he observed about one-half block away from him a large, silver, metal object, greenish in color, shaped like a child’s top and about the size of the balloons used at country fairs.

He stated that there appeared to be two windows in the object and portions of metal appeared transparent and that he gained the impression that there was some life within this object although he saw no persons. The object appeared as though sealed as a pressure chamber. He stood up and waved toward this object and this so-called flying saucer was off the ground in a second, knocking Jones to the ground. In its flight he stated that its power was silent and he raised the question as to whether this was an inter-global landing on our planet. He thought that it might be a device to land on our planet because the occupants of another planet had become curious as to the reaction caused by the atomic bomb causing trouble in an expanding universe. He asked the question as to whether it was possible that the occupants of another planet might have solved the theory of negative energy (FBI, 1949).

A source whose name has been excised from the FBI files—but who was described as having a scientific background—advised the Bureau that Jones’s communication suggested he possessed a very good knowledge of physics, and added it might be to the FBI’s advantage to check into Jones’s background and interview him at the earliest opportunity. All attempts to do so were unsuccessful, however: Jones could not be located, or had seemingly vanished. There are, however, a couple of issues that are worthy of note.

First: Jones reportedly lived in California—just like many of the original Contactees. Second: As was the case with many who followed in his path, Jones’s encounter occurred in a remote location. Then, there is the matter of the concern exhibited by the aliens in relation to the power of the atom. Was this merely a case of Jones speculating? If so, it was an astonishing coincidence: Only a few years later countless other people were making very similar observations of an atomic kind.

Furthermore, that Jones’s encounter occurred in the mountains while he was laying on the ground, raises an important question: Was Jones in some form of altered state of mind throughout his encounter, and perhaps one brought on by the occupants of the strange, aerial device? If that was the case, then Jones’ story may possibly represent one of the earliest Contactee cases on record. As will become clear later, however, there are indications that the Contactee phenomenon may actually be a very ancient one, and one in which altered states play a vital role.

Born in Township, Minnesota, in 1908, Daniel William Fry claimed a close encounter of the alien kind at the White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico: He asserted he took a flight in an extraterrestrial spacecraft—on Independence Day, 1949, no less—to New York and back in barely half-an-hour! So the story went, Fry intended to celebrate the holiday period with colleagues from the base in the town of Las Cruces. Unfortunately, he missed the bus and was forced to remain on-base—alone. So, instead, he decided to do a bit of exploring in the vast expanse of desert that makes up what is, today, called the White Sands Missile Range. It’s highly unlikely that Fry ever anticipated coming into contact with a being from another world while he roamed the isolated area, and yet that is precisely what he said happened.

I headed first in the direction of the old static test stand, on which we were mounting our largest rocket motor, reported Fry. About two thirds of the way to the test stand, a small dirt road intersects [with] the main road, and leads off to the right toward the base of the Organ Mountains (Fry, 1992).

He added: Directly ahead of me, and just over the peaks of the Organ Mountains, an especially bright group of stars seemed to beckon to me as I walked leisurely along. Then, suddenly, the brightest of the stars simply went out…something I could not see was eclipsing the light of the star (Ibid.).

Fry soon found out what that something was.

Out of the skies descended a spheroid, considerably flattened at the top and bottom. The vertical dimension was about 16 feet, and the horizontal dimension about 30 feet at the widest point…if viewed from directly below it might appear to be saucer shaped, but actually it was more nearly like a soup bowl inverted over a sauce dish (Ibid.).

As Fry looked on (as a child might stare at the rabbit which a stage magician has just pulled from his hat), a disembodied voice that went by the name of A-lan told Fry that the device appearing before him was being remotely controlled by a mother-ship orbiting the planet at a height of around 900 miles (Ibid.). Then there came a bombshell-style question: Would Fry like to take a ride across the country in the craft? Of course, he would! He was supposedly whisked across the night sky to New York and back in no more than half an hour. The journey may not have been long; but it was significant. While Fry was on board, the voice of A-lan related a wealth of data relative to the forgotten history of humanity:

Tens of thousands of years ago, some of our ancestors lived upon this planet, Earth. There was, at that time, a small continent in a part of the now sea-covered area which you have named the Pacific Ocean. Some of your ancient legends refer to this sunken land mass as the ‘Lost Continent of Lemuria or Mu.’ Our ancestors had built a great empire and mighty science upon this continent. At the same time, there was another rapidly developing race upon a land mass in the southwestern portion of the present Atlantic Ocean. In your legends, this continent has been named Atlantis (Challenor, 2001).

The White Sands Missile Range—the scene of Daniel Fry’s alien encounter. Courtesy of Nick Redfern,

According to A-lan, increasing bitterness between the two cultures, as well as their constantly increasing command of destructive energies, led to a catastrophic war. He explained to Fry: …the resulting nuclear radiation was so intense and so widespread, that the entire surface became virtually unfit for habitation, for a number of generations. Before departing, and in a fashion that would become typical of the Space-Brothers, A-lan gave Fry a message pertaining to the potential for atomic disaster that faced humankind: As nuclear weapons proliferate among your nations, it should always be remembered that an ounce of understanding is worth a megaton of deterrent’ (Ibid.).

In essence, that is Daniel Fry’s tale. But what should we make of it? It’s worth noting that Fry’s interest in rocketry was formulated in his youth, and his undoubtedly skilled work at White Sands was with the prestigious company Aerojet. Based out of Sacramento, California, Aerojet is today the only United States-based body to provide both solid-rocket and liquid-rocket engines, and has the contract to provide nearly all the U.S. Army’s tactical-missile rocket-motors. In other words, to have been employed by such a company, Fry had to have something in his favor. But, there were a few problems.

In 1954, shortly after going public with his story, Fry flunked a lie-detector test, and it was later learned that his much-flaunted doctorate, bestowed upon him around early 1960, had actually been obtained via a London, England, mail-order organization called the Saint Andrews College. This did not stop Fry from developing a large following of like-minded individuals, however. From 1954 onward, Fry delivered numerous lectures across the United States; one year later, established a group called Understanding Inc. that helped spread the word of the Space-Brothers.

Such was the interest in Fry’s claims of alien contact that Understanding Inc. went on to publish a monthly newsletter that ran for 23 years: Nearly 250 issues were published between 1956 and 1979. Moreover, at its height, in the early 1960s, Understanding Inc. boasted almost 1,500 members, and became the recipient of 55-acres of land near Tonopah, Arizona, that had been donated by a Reverend Enid Smith. The irony of this was that the buildings, first intended by Smith to act as a religious college, were shaped like classic flying saucers. Understanding, Inc. took full control of the property in 1976; however, with membership falling, the site ultimately fell into disrepair. In late September and early October 1978, the kitchen and library were burned to the ground by an arsonist and were never rebuilt. Further tragedy followed: One year later, Fry’s second wife, Florence, died from breast cancer—he had divorced wife number one, Elma, in 1964. Although Fry’s place within the annals of UFOlogy was largely over by the dawning of the 1980s, he continued to give the occasional lecture and interview, before ultimately passing on in December 1992—still standing by his every assertion of that long gone, July 4, 1949, night when he soared across the starlit skies of the United States, with nothing but an intergalactic, disembodied voice for company.

Let us now turn to the controversial story of Samuel Eaton Thompson, who claimed an encounter in March 1950, that certainly set the scene for a whole range of similar tales that would soon follow in its bizarre wake. Respected UFO authority Jerome Clark has justifiably described Thompson’s story as surely the most outlandish story in early UFO history [and] also one of the most obscure (Clark, 1998).

That the tale surfaced on April Fools’ Day in 1950, has led some commentators to suspect that Thompson’s claims were merely borne out of a good-natured prank; others, meanwhile, are not quite so certain that fakery was a dominating factor. As Thompson told the story, on the night of March 28, 1950, he was driving between the towns of Morton and Mineral, Washington State; he had been visiting relatives in Markham and was headed towards his Centralia home. Tired, and needing a break, Thompson pulled his vehicle over to the side of the road in a heavily-wooded area, and took a walk along a nearby logging trail. He was shocked to the core by the scene upon which he stumbled.

As he reached a clearing in the trees, Thompson maintained that sat before him was a large object, shaped liked two saucers fused together, that was around 80 feet in width, 30 feet in height, and hovering very slightly above the forest floor. Two naked and heavily sun-tanned, human-like children were blissfully playing near the entrance to the craft, which could be accessed via a small ramp. Thompson added that as he got to within about 50 feet of the craft, he felt extremely hot, at which point several adults—humanoid, attractive, and also naked—appeared in the doorway of the strange object. When Thompson succeeded in convincing them that he meant no harm, they invited him aboard what he quickly deduced was an alien spacecraft, but not before being made to remove his shoes and socks (Centralia Daily Chronicle, 1950).

Thompson learned from the crew—who spoke in a stilted form of English—that there were 20 adults and 25 children aboard the craft, who originated on the planet Venus, and that this was not merely a space vessel: It was their home, too, as they adventurously explored the solar system. Strangely, as Jerome Clark noted when commenting on Thompson’s recollections, the entities seemed to operate more by instinct than by intellect (Clark, 1998). As Thompson watched the aliens’ actions, he noted that, although they understood which levers to pull and which buttons to press to operate their craft, it was all done parrot-fashion and without any actual understanding of their actions.

Evidently, this didn’t bother Thompson: He claimed to have spent 40 hours romping around the ship—during which time he learned a great deal, such as the revelation that several of their craft had been shot down by military forces on Earth and that everyone of humankind’s problems stemmed from astrology, and specifically because human beings were born under a variety of star-signs (which always led to conflict), whereas Venusians were all born under the sign of—what else?—Venus. And Thompson seemed to accept, quite matter-of-factly, the startling assertions of the aliens that he, Thompson, was nothing less than a fully fledged, reincarnated Venusian! Thompson was also told that the aliens were vegetarian, enjoyed excellent health, and desired to help us by ushering in a new era of humanity that would culminate in a return to our planet by Jesus Christ in 10,000 AD.

According to Thompson, he remained on the spaceship until March 30th. He did admit, however, that at one point he quickly returned home to get his camera, so that he might capture the moment on film for posterity. The photographs came out as either just blank or as mere blobs of light. Before he finally left for good, Thompson was given a friendly warning by his cosmic friends that he should keep certain information strictly confidential. Whether