First, updates and news. Follow my writing at this blog, my other blog - www.peterhuston.blogspot.com and the Hamchuck Writers' Collective Website, www.hamchuckwc.com
And you can also try my Goodreads page at https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/339311.Peter_Huston Or my Amazon.com page at https://www.amazon.com/Peter-Huston/e/B000APT3YY?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1646105078&sr=8-1
I have pieces scheduled to appear, most likely within the next year in the following edited volumes.
Second piece is scheduled to appear here:
The Reliability of UFO Witness Testimony, edited by VICENTE-JUAN BALLESTER OLMOS
For this one, I also drew on past events, and wrote about my experiences meeting Betty Hill, Richard Price, and many other UFO Abductees, of the late 1990s / early 21st century. Read it, and you can learn why I remain skeptical of their stories.
The Contactee Phase of Modern UFOlogy
The so-called “Contactee Phase” of UFOlogy began in the mid 1950s, less than ten years after Kenneth Arnold’s sighting. It would only make sense that if people were seeing piloted objects of unknown origin zipping around in the skey, that sooner or later someone would claim to have met their pilots. And so, it happened.
Although during
this period, there were a few people who claimed such contact, George Adamski
was the first and most famous. Although Adamski made his name spreading the
philosophical teachings of the benevolent saucer beings who had allegedly
spoken to him, prior to his claims of contact with saucer beings, Adamski had
been spreading the messages of other enlightened beings and had created his own
order, the Brotherhood of Tibet. In addition to this, he ran a hamburger stand near the famous Hale
Telescope and lectured on Eastern philosophy.
The teachings of
this organization, like those of Adamski’s later flying saucer related
organization, were heavily influenced by Theosophy and similar organizations.
Theosophy was an American religious or philosophical organization based on the
teachings and ideas that Russian immigrant Helena Petrovna Blavatsky had
allegedly received from Ascended Masters reported to be living in exotic places
such as Tibet or Egypt. These teachings consisted of several Asian religious or
mystical concepts that at that time were largely unknown or unfamiliar to
Americans (such as “karma” and”reincarnation”), mixed in with reworked versions
of more familiar Western fringe concepts such as the stories of Atlantis, Mu,
and Lemuria, mixed in with the ideas of the spiritualists of those days such as
astral projection and telepathic communication.
Although little known today, Theosophy had a lasting impact and
influence on the Western intellectual landscape and many of today’s popular
fringe, esoteric, “New Age,” and other pop-spiritual beliefs and ideas.
While Adamski had
limited formal schooling, he lectured regularly on such subjects using the
title “Professor.” He also took advantage of prohibition and his special
standing as a religious order to manufacture wine, something very much in demand
when prohibition made the sale and purchase of alcohol against the law, against
the law, of course, except for special religious orders.
Adamski seems to
have realized that by using the public interest in flying saucers to add to his
mix and attributing the messages he spread to enlightened beings from Venus,
Mars, and the Moon he could better capture the public imagination, spread these
messages and teachings, and get attention and profit for his organization.
Although he and a
ghost writer had together written a novel describing contact with aliens and a
voyage through the solar system on a flying saucer in 1949, it was in 1950 that
he gave his first lecture on “flying saucers” in which he shared the story of
how the US Naval Laboratory had asked him for assistance with using the
observatory to take pictures of flying saucers. Alas, the Navy denied it
although the fact was that two members of their laboratory personnel had,
indeed, visited his hamburger stand and bought lunch one day and they had chatted
with him while doing so.
According to
Adamski’s reports, it was November 20, 1952, when he made his own personal
first contact with a saucer being named Orthon who came from Venus and shared
important messages about how we should all be nice to each other. Ultimately,
he wrote two more books on his contact with the saucer beings and lectured and
travelled widely speaking on the subject. Although most flying saucer
enthusiasts of the time were skeptical of the truth of Adamski’s cl;aims,
nevertheless he became a regular speaker and panelist at UFO and flying saucer
related gatherings for the next few decades.
In his memoir, “Shockingly Close to the Truth
–Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist,” James Moseley describes Adamski as
“charming,” clearly enjoyed interacting with him, but points out several
discrepancies between Adamski’s claims about the events described and the
people who witnessed them. Similarly, a French biographer of Adamski, Marc
Hallet, while reportedly beginning his biography of Adamski as a believer, came
to a very different conclusion by the time he finished. His conclusions were
summarized in the very bluntly titled, nine page document, “Why I can say
Adamski is a liar.” For reasons such as those offered by these two men, as well
as what astronomers have since learned about conditions on Venus, Mars, and the
Moon that make it difficult to believe that they are or ever were home to the
societies and peoples that Adamski described, it’s safe to say very few
historians consider George Adamski’s claim of contact with enlighted beings as
having taken place and being historically important events.
Nevertheless, soon
there were others claiming similar experiences, telling similar stories,
spreading similar teachings, and writing similar books. These included Truman
Bethurum, Daniel Fry, Orfeo Angelucci, and Howard Menger.
To put this in
historical context, although all the prominent contactees began to share their
stories in the 1950s, Adamski, the first, begin in 1953, they all claimed to
have been interacting with the enlightened space beings for several years.
Nevertheless, most historians see them as a mid-1950s cultural development.
Gordon J. Melton,
scholar of new religious movements, has made a few generalizations about these
contactees and their stories. In order, he offered the following. As can be
seen, these points make it clear how in many ways the contactees and their
stories were doing and offering a distinctly different message, experience, and
approach to the issue of alleged extraterrestrial visitation than the later UFO
abduction proponents.
First, and this is
unlike later beliefs held in ufological circles about on-going extraterrestrial
visitation to our planet, the visitors came from within our solar system. Originally,
they were beings from Mars, Venus, and the Moon. Later they came from a little
further, places like Jupiter and Saturn. In 1953, one contactee, Truman
Bethurum began telling stories of being visited and taken on flying saucer
trips by the inhabitants of the mysterious Planet Clarion, but as he also
reported that this unknown world was directly opposite the Earth on the other
side of the sun (and thus impossible for us to see), it was still located in
the solar system. Although flying saucers from other worlds were visiting, they
were not presented or said to be interstellar craft.
Second, according
to Melton, “the flying saucer remains the only new element in the contactee
story.” The other elements of the Contactees’ stories, argues Melton, had all
been seen before in other stories, in other tales which reported the teachings
of enlightened beings and otherworldly teachers. The difference was that they
met their enlightened, mystical teachers through astral travel or other means,
not by travel in flying saucer.
In the reports of
the Contactees, interactions with the alien saucer pilots were surprisingly
easy. Communication was either done in English or through non-verbal telepathy.
(As a teacher of English as a Second or Other Language, I confess that I have
never understood how this could possibly happen as so much of human thought is,
indeed, based in language.)
Bottom line is,
however, that very little in these reports was terribly groundbreaking or eye
opening.
Third, what the
Contactees did share tended to be ethical and religious teachings. Very little
time and focus was spent on describing the anthropological details of the alien
societies or the intricacies of their technologies. In other words, the Aliens
and the Contactees who had met them were much more interested in spreading
messages that warned the people of Earth about the dangers of atomic weapons
testing or pollution and advocating for world peace than they were interested
in telling us about themselves or sharing their advanced technologies or
teaching us how to make our own flying saucers.
Fourth, the
Contactees operated in a religious context. Many came from a religious or
occult background or a background where the two overlapped such as Theosophy.
As Peebles wrote in his excellent history,
Many founded churches or organizations devoted to spreading religious or
philosophical teachings. (It needs to be mentioned, that under US law, there
are many advantages to structuring an entity as a church, a fact that no doubt
affected the way many contactees structured their organizations.)
In summary, the
picture presented by the contactees was that highly advanced space brothers
lived in the other worlds of our solar system, and, if one was lucky enough,
they would take you on a trip around the solar system on one of their flying
saucers. Since their societies were free of war and disease, they had a lot to
teach us and one thing in particular that they hope we would do was stop atomic
testing. They offered us a message of peace and brotherhood and since they
either spoke good English or else communicated through telepathy, the message
was not just simple but also easy to understand.
The whole thing
was in some ways delightful. Optimistic.
Although the world
was in trouble and humanity imperiled, fear not.
There were beings out there who knew more about this than we did, and they were
here to offer guidance. All we had to do was listen and believe and all would
be well.
Unlike the later
grays and other extraterrestrials of later decades, rather than presenting a
mystery and leaving us with disturbing questions as to who were the aliens and
what were they hoping to ultimately accomplish, the contactees of this era
claimed to have answers for us instead.
And they were more than willing to share the answers they had obtained
through lectures, radio appearances, and books.
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