Hallo Spaceboy – Exploring the Era of the ‘Contactees’

Nowadays they are almost forgotten as a group of fantasists, charlatans or confidence tricksters from a bygone age. Yet the “Contactees” believed, or at least convinced many others to believe, that they were in contact with human like alien beings from outer space. Thousands flocked to the desert to hear them speak until the humanoid aliens finally stopped coming and/or the people stopped listening.

There have always been people claiming to be in contact with spirits or other worldly beings. But during the 1950s the fusion of both fear and hope caused by the splitting of the atom and the paranoia of the Cold War provided the backdrop for a new movement of alien “Contactees”. They were seemingly ordinary people who, for whatever reasons, were chosen by various humanoid ‘alien ambassadors’ to this planet to spread their word and supposedly raise humanity ‘spiritually’ to another level.

Today most people would probably conclude they were either nuts or just out to make a fast buck in a more innocent age.

But maybe there was something not so obvious going on during the era of the contactees?

Let’s look at a handful of the personalities first.

George Adamski

George Adamski is by far the most celebrated ‘Contactee’. He was a Polish immigrant with only a rudimentary education. Developing his “Universal Law” philosophy he founded the Royal Order of Tibet in the prohibition era of the 1930s. His teachings drew on his psychic channelling from ‘Tibetan’ masters. Whilst, certain exemptions from prohibition during the 1930s, allowed him to produce and sell his wine – always for religious purposes of course.

In 1949 Adamski began publically speaking in Southern California about his UFO experiences and was making some outrageous claims. He proclaimed that all the planets of the Solar System were inhabited, a more advanced species from Mars had built canals on the surface and that the US government had established the existence of alien spacecraft in 1947 after tracking a half mile long spacecraft on the far side of the Moon.

Science, even then, had advanced enough to counter those claims with hard facts. So this also resulted in mainstream "ufologists” becoming hostile to Adamski. They believed he was a total fraud, and that he and other contactees were making serious UFO investigators look ridiculous.

Before 1950 Adamski had substituted his channelling of ‘Tibetan masters’ in favour of space aliens. Yet surprisingly he seemed to be receiving identical philosophical messages from them.

On November 20th 1952 Adamski allegedly had his first truly close encounter. He and six of his colleagues headed out into the Californian desert. Near Mount Palomar he separated from the others to rendezvous with a landed spaceship. Its pilot was a genial, blond-haired , very human looking, Venusian named Orthon.

Orthon used telepathy to warn Adamski of the dangerous path the human race was taking. In his book ‘Inside the Space Ships’ he describes how he was invited on board flying saucers and alien mother ships. He was told about the nature of the universe by beings he described as much more spiritually and technologically advanced than ourselves. He extolled that they were guiding humanity from behind the scenes.

Adamski claimed to have photographed spaceships from other planets, met with friendly ‘Nordic’ aliens, and to have taken flights with them to the Moon and other planets. In 1962, Adamski even announced that he would be attending an interplanetary conference held on the planet Saturn.

Many scoffed at his claims but he was also building up a loyal following and began lecturing further afield in Europe and Australasia. He met with Queen Juliana of the Netherlands and in 1963 Adamski even claimed that he had had a secret audience with Pope John XXIII. During the visit he stated he was given a "Golden Medal of Honour" from the Papal. It was later found to be a cheap souvenir on sale to tourists in the Vatican.

Adamski's tales grew ever more outrageous. His 1955 book ‘Inside the Space Ships’ recalled more excursions with Venusians, Martians, and Saturnians. These people had also come to Earth to express concern for humanity's self-destructive ways. The "Space Brothers," as Adamski and his disciples had dubbed them.

George Adamski passed away of a heart attack in Maryland on, St.George’s day itself, April 23rd 1965 at the age of 74. Although people were still debating his photos, films and credentials long after his death.







Recommended Thread for further reading:

Adamski's "Scout Ship" identified

Which brings us on to another George............

George Van Tassel

George Van Tassel grew up in Ohio but moved out to California in 1930 to work in his uncle’s garage and then later for Douglas Aircraft, Hughes Aircraft, and Lockheed. In 1942 Van Tassel was granted the lease of the abandoned airport near Giant Rock and a contract to develop the abandoned airport. He planned to retire from the air industry when he was 37, to run a tourist stopover for weekend aviators.

The plan changed slightly in 1952 when, he claimed, he was receiving psychic messages from aliens aboard extraterrestrial spaceships. In a room underneath Giant Rock George Van Tassel started hosting group meditation sessions in 1953. According to Van Tassel that same year a visiting Venusian woke him up one day, and invited him to take a trip on his spaceship. Whilst on this trip he was advised on how to rejuvenate the human body by an alien called ‘Solganda’.



By 1954 he had organised a huge contactee gathering at Giant Rock. Speakers included Orfeo Angelucci, Truman Bethurum and Daniel Fry. There were informal lectures during the day and channelling sessions after dark. Addressing the audience from a platform built against the Rock, various speakers took turns to tell their tales of contact with otherworldly beings and spread the word of the ‘Space Brothers’.

Van Tassel's Spacecraft Conventions regularly saw him "channel" various alien beings telepathically. He would use a wide range of different voices and accents to pass on their messages. This entertained the crowds but also led some contactees to feel that Van Tassel was really mocking them.

In 1954, Van Tassel and others began building what they called the "Integratron" to perform the rejuvenation of body and mind. According to Van Tassel, the Integratron was to be a structure for scientific research into time travel, anti-gravity and for extending the human lifespan. He wasn’t ashamed to beg for donations and thousands of dollars were mailed to him by a public fascinated by his stories and excited by his plans.


In 1978 Van Tassel died and the Integratron, despite 24 years of planning and building, remained incomplete. It is still standing today and some visitors to the unfinished Integratron machine have claimed a feeling of spiritual well being after their visit. Van Tassel's teachings are still promoted through an organization called the ‘Ashtar Command’.



Orfeo Angelucci

Orfeo Angelucci had supposedly met and talked with superhuman beings from other planets. His books contained some crazy speculation on biology, physics and astronomy.

In the summer of 1952, Angelucci wrote in his book ‘ The Secret of the Saucers (1955)’ , telling of his first encounters with friendly aliens on his drive home from his job on an aircraft assembly line in Southern California. Somewhat unsurprisingly the aliens knew of his books and told him how accurate his theories were. These beings were not only humanoid but sometimes appeared as transparent beings. According to Orfeo they existed in a higher dimension or spiritual plane. Their space vehicles could appear and disappear at will.

Eventually Angelucci was offered a trip into earth orbit by the beings. There he witnessed a giant "mother ship" pass him by as he gazed out of the porthole window. Angelucci also claimed he suffered a "missing time" episode after living for a week in the body of "space brother" Neptune.

Neptune was from a more evolved society on "the largest asteroid" of the Solar System. The asteroid was all that remained of a destroyed planet. Meanwhile, back on terra firma, Angelucci’s earthly body had wandered around at home and the aircraft plant in a daze. Angelucci also reported encounters with visits from other ‘Space Brothers’ such as Orion and Lyra, and even with Jesus Christ himself!

Perhaps Angelucci really believed he had met with people like Jesus and temporarily lived as Neptune? Notably there is no record of anyone shouting at him “You’re really talking from Uranus!”


>>> continues below >>>>

Truman Bethurum

Truman Bethurum was another of well known 1950s contactees and had discussed his experiences with George Adamski. Bethurum was born in Gavalin, California, and in the early 1950s worked as both a mechanic and also as a spiritual advisor. In 1953 Bethurum first published stories in of his repeated contacts with the crew of a landed space ship. According to his story he often conversed with an alien he described as, the voluptuous female captain, Aura Rhanes.

The aliens came from the unknown planet Clarion, on the other side of the moon, permanently remaining out of sight from Earth!

His 1954 book, “Aboard a Flying Saucer”, gave many details of Bethurum's suffering at the hands of non-believers and a great deal of information about Clarion and its people. ‘Aboard a Flying Saucer’, also explained how, in late July of 1952, he had met several male space travellers and talked with Spaceship Captain Aura Rhanes. He was allowed inside this space-woman's saucer on his very first meeting with her.



In his public speeches Bethurum often jokingly declared he had been so smitten with the beautiful and sexy Captain Rhanes that his wife divorced him out of jealousy! Maybe it was because he had managed to get inside her saucer after such a short time?
 
Daniel. W. Fry

Fry declared how he had met and talked with ‘A-Lan’, a human-appearing spaceman, in his 1954 book, ‘The White Sands Incident’. They had colonized Mars after fleeing catastrophe on Earth and were surviving aboard huge space ships. Fry’s meeting, according to his book, occurred on July 4th, 1950. That was until Fry later, realizing he was not at White Sands during the July 4th holiday, revised the meeting to an earlier date in 1949 whenever he spoke about it afterwards.

A-lan also shared his wisdom telepathically with Fry to become the leader of a religious cult, called ‘Understanding’. He was also given a ride in the saucer to New York City.

Like most of the early contactees, Fry claimed to have various academic qualifications which existed only in his mind. Fry also published a few other books. One was called ‘Men of Earth’ around 1953. Coincidentally this was a science fiction novel that features a major character called A-Lan.

‘The White Sands Incident’ is still in print, and still gives his meeting with A-lan dated as July 4th 1950.

Buck Nelson

Aah Buck Nelson!
His claims as a Contactee go back to 1954 when he was just 60 years of age. Buck had been a cowboy out west in his younger days and was a mildly cross-eyed, bib wearing farmer. Nelson later became a local celebrity after his encounter with spaceships seen over his 80 acre farm in Ozark Mountains, Missouri.

As Buck would recite, one night in April 1954, the radio was going crazy. His dog began to bark frantically and Buck ran out to see what was going on. In the sky were three discs hovering. He shined his flashlight at them only to be struck by a beam of light “hotter and brighter than the sun”. Miraculously the beam of light cured his back problem and his deteriorating eyesight.

Buck grabbed his camera and took three pictures of which only one came out (pictured). That night he did not encounter the occupant s of the disc.

"It was the second or third time before they came out” in March 1955 according to Buck because they knew “he would not shoot them down”. Aboard the craft were three crew members. Bucky a 19 year old American with a Scandinavian accent, an alien spaceman called Bob Solomon who, despite being 200 years old, looked the same age as Bucky to Nelson. (Perhaps the rejuvenating effects of the beam of light on Nelson’s eyesight were now wearing off?)

The third was an old and wrinkled “Extraterristial” with no name. Oh! and a 400lb dog named Bo was aboard as well.

Buck was invited aboard and travelled to Mars, the Moon and Venus with these spacemen and their near half-ton dog Bo? For a number of years in the mid 1950s to the early 1960s he held an annual conference on his farm on the last weekend of June to tell his tales of his adventures in space with Bucky, Bob, the nameless spaceman and Bo.

Eventually he seems to have wound up in California, but there is no record of him attending George Van Tassel's conventions at Giant Rock.

Buck’s book is rather hard to find these days. The bloke at the local second bookshop went almost as cross-eyed as Buck when I enquired. If he had a copy he wasn’t letting on about it.








For further information, and an amusing read at that, please take a peek at Kandinsky’s wonderful thread on Buck Nelson.

Buck Nelson - 1st Man on Mars

To hear the great man speak himself (Buck that is - no offence Kandinsky!) then Faded Discs have archived it here :

Buck Nelson, Trips into Outer Space, 1956 (approx 7.2 mb -31 min of audio)

Howard Menger

Howard Menger claimed to have been a being from Saturn in a previous life. His followers would gather at his New Jersey farm to see strange lights and humanoid figures. After releasing a book,’ From Outer Space to You’ in 1959, and a record album, ‘Music from Another Planet’, Menger would virtually retract his story, vaguely muttering about a CIA experiment.

Menger also admitted that he had worked for the CIA, and that his story was part of an experiment to test public reactions to the idea of extraterrestrial contact. So in effect Menger’s story was all a CIA experiment to see how easily and who specifically could be fooled into believing anything.

But then in the late 1980s he changed his story again and promoted his latest cosmic adventures with yet another book.

Which brings us on to.....

Contactee – Government Agent?

Somehow Buck Nelson’s fun weekends, on his farm, speaking about his days off planet with Bucky, Bob and Bo seem rather removed from the world of clandestine government agents. Yet evidence exists to link the CIA and FBI to at least some of the other Contactees of the 1950s.

In the 1950s there was a genuine concern over the whole UFO issue and the mysterious origins of the ‘flying saucers’. Anyone in possession of an advanced technology able to penetrate US (and allied) airspace at will was a threat. That didn’t matter if it was a foreign power or alien.

Secondly the Contactees (with perhaps the exception of farm boy Buck Nelson) seemed to be promoting a Communist agenda.

Both Georges, Adamski and Van Tassel were monitored and investigated by the FBI. The FBI began monitoring Adamski in September 1950 when a confidential source passed information on to them. According to the source, Adamski promoted the ET view that nuclear weapons were a threat to humanity, claimed that "this country [the USA] has a corrupt form of government and capitalists are enslaving the poor" and that the social system used on the home planets of the “Space Brothers” resembled a form of communism. Such views led the FBI to consider him, along with George Van Tassel, as a subversive and to place a watchful eye on them both.

FBI interest in Van Tassel began in November 1953, when he sent a letter to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright–Patterson Air Force Base on behalf of "Commander Ashtar" to deliver a "friendly warning" concerning the destructive power of the weapons in possession by the US military. Van Tassel also sent three letters to President Eisenhower during the mid 1950s. All of which seem to have been ignored.

Van Tassel was interviewed by FBI agents in 1954. The FBI agents posted a report on to J. Edgar Hoover. This provided details from Van Tassel of his encounters with aliens, the ‘Space Brothers’ views on nuclear weapons, an upcoming Third World War and their ability to communicate telepathically with Van Tassel.

Other contactees and groups were supposedly infiltrated and monitored as well during the 1950s.

Contactee - Disinformation?

There is also the theory that the Contactees of the past were working for (either knowingly or unknowingly) the US intelligence services.

Nick Redfern has unearthed documents under FOIA showing that Van Tassel had “quasi-official links with the FBI”. Links to FBI Special Agent Walter. Van Tassel, it seems had helped him on many cases at Lockheed thwarting Soviet “plants” attempting to steal military secrets from the United States.




In regards to Adamski, George Andrews wrote in his 1986 book “Extra-Terrestrials Among Us”:

People who traveled with Adamski noticed that he had been issued a special passport, such as is usually reserved for diplomats and high government officials. It is entirely possible that he may have been a CIA disinformation agent who successfully fulfilled the mission of making the subject of UFOs seem so absurd that no independent in-depth investigation would be made by qualified academics.”

It is also alleged that scientists attempting to investigate and de-bunk Adamski's claims were warned off by CIA Director Allen Dulles. Leon Davidson (the man who claimed that ECM + CIA = UFO) also claimed that Adamski was controlled by the CIA.

Truman Bethurum and George Hunt Williamson – were also suspected of having a letter agency agenda by Leonard Stringfield after meeting with them. Stringfield strongly suspected some contactees were government plants.

The End of An Era

The Contactee era peaked during the 1950s and was already fading fast in the 1960s. By the 1970s few were talking about the humanoids that had once regularly visited Planet Earth. Even the saucers were being replaced by triangular craft by the time the 1970s were coming to an end.

It seemed like a much darker and sinister ‘Era of the Abductee’ had taken a hold by the 1980s.




What can we make of it all?

It’s easy to dismiss the contactees as a bunch of con-men or cranks being followed by a bunch of gullible believers. That is probably true in some cases. There are the religious undertones from the Contactees. Tales of people from the sky, that mere mortals never see, telling us how primitive we are and how we must reach a higher level of spirituality. A story that seems to permeate itself through human history and one which many people are only too happy to hear and repeat to this day.

More interesting is that once again the whole ‘Flying Saucer/UFO’ mythos seems intertwined with the activities of the intelligence services. The monitoring of these Contactee groups, at a time when Cold War paranoia was at it’s height ,was to be expected. The possibility that people like Adamski were ‘got at’ or on the payroll of the intelligence services to tell fantastic , if somewhat unbelievable stories, is not implausible. These tales could provide a smokescreen to the genuinely puzzling cases and confuse the public. If that was the intention.

But it has also been postulated that some of the Contactees and their groups were the subject of psychological and mind control experiments. That these experiments progressed in time and subjects were then programmed to believe they had been abducted by aliens. The starting point of which seems to be the Betty and Barney Hill abduction.




The Hills were allegedly targeted as a mixed race couple who were very active in the Civil Rights Movement. The objective was to monitor the impact of their experiences on their activities afterwards. The whole abductee phenomenon then expanded slowly at first but became a huge part of the UFO/ET topic due mainly to the efforts of some very clandestine operatives.
I’m not so sure about all of this.

Everywhere you look into the UFO topic it seems that fingers are being pointed at the ‘intel boys’. They proudly claimed themselves they were behind many sightings of the 50s and 60s not so long ago. There’s even a theory that the Heaven’s Gate Cult was the subject of mind control experiments.



If you read too much into this then it sometimes seems like the intel agencies, via various black projects, have been controlling almost the whole UFO mythology from 1947 onwards. There are things that go on in this world that we will never know the truth about or never know about at all.

However , just because there is still no conclusive evidence for alien visitation, aren’t we really guilty of also giving the US intelligence services far too much credit for their endeavours in this field as well?

Further Sources and References



Faded Discs Archive - The Contactees : Free Download & Streaming

Alien Abductions Debunked? The Secret Story of the CIA's Top Secret Program: MK-ULTRA

The Integraton, Tesla, Schumann, and UFOs

From Outer Space to You, by Howard Menger

The CIA and the UFO Mythos

CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90

George Adamski (Free pdf)

Vintage Contactee, Orfeo Angelucci's The Secret of the Saucers, 1955.

The Pied Pipers of the CIA

Secret Spying and a Contactee

Contactee


And to finish with a song

a reply to: mirageman

As a Millenial I wonder how there is no more Contactees anymore at this current decade?

originally posted by: starwarsisreal
a reply to: mirageman

As a Millenial I wonder how there is no more Contactees anymore at this current decade?

Well there probably are ,in very small groups, it's just few people listen to them any more.

Back in the 1950s no one really knew what was going on and people wanted answers to what these flying saucers were and who (or what) was behind the phenomenon. The Contactees provided the answers to them. No matter how ridiculous those answers seem now in a much more advanced and connected world.

Famed researchers like Timothy Good still seem to believe that George Adamski witnessed something truly extraordinary and out of this world at one point but then perhaps began to exaggerate and embellish his stories to seek credibility

The humanoid aliens stories were in massive decline by the 1980s. Perhaps a turning point is the Travis Walton case (1975). His account features contact with both strange aliens similar to the greys and also very human like beings. Nowadays close encounters of the third kind are very much a rarity.

As to why the aliens seemed human like in the 1950s and early 1960s, became little grey guys in later decades and seemed to be done with Planet Earth in recent years is a bit of a conundrum.

Maybe the answer lies with intel boys of the United States?

a reply to: mirageman
Very impressive OP

I wonder though... does this have any correlation with the space race?

IMO people like Wernher von Braun or Einstein, therefore, could also be considered contactees...

i was gonna post this vid to baddogma's breakaway civ thread, but im gonna put it here for now... check it out... what do you think?

a reply to: mirageman

We went through this the other day with the thread on Billy Meier. While these folks can be, or almost can be, proven to be over the top with their stories and what they claim, how can you stop there with an analysis of the cases? In short, you can't, but you may want too as a UFO denier would want to do. Cases closed and sealed.

To deny the accounts of any of these people you mention and silent thousands that have had contact experience (abductees) means that your first rule is to deny that UFOs exist and therefore, such accounts cannot possibly be true. Period! Trash them all even those that seem to have no basic flaws of science or factual matter.

If you allow the premise of UFOs here and now, you must assume that ETs are working on us within our midst and proceed with your analysis from there. Still, some people could make up wild stories for self-aggrandizement to be sure, but what do you or anyone know about the whole situation with UFOs that precludes them from operating a manner such that encounters with them are all baloney? What is your yard stick? What depths of human psychology not to mention ET intentions and techniques do you draw upon to say this person or that or all of them are frauds or even suspected of being frauds?

My point is that you don't know how the minds of some of the people have been effected by whatever form of alleged contact that ensued. If you accept UFOs as real and genuine abductions do take place, then you must look anew at the data of any reported contact/communication resulting from the early contactee accounts. What really happened to make those people make the claims that they did?

I know from my own case (if not others) that the ETs can take over our bodies and minds totally. They can and do implant specific tasks and information that can vastly alter and transform the lives they choose to engage. They can make you a believer in whatever they put into your mind and equally, make you a liar if necessary for the job they want done.

The ETs must have a supportive "movement" within the Earth's peoples if they are to succeed in taming us to their standards without undue turmoil. The UFO religions may have been early attempts directly to the people to establish a "following" outside of official bounds and sanctions. Those tactics worked in days long gone, but not in the modern world where fact supersedes belief.

So they abandoned that approach and began direct, covert tactics, guerrilla tactics. Mass but individual abductions over a few decades were the rule for awhile. Making one "Manchurian Candidate" at a time was the game. Evidently, that hasn't worked too well. Perhaps it is a tricky business for them to block most of an abductee's physical abduction ordeal but yet impart into them the desired information and tasks. And then there is the individual personality of the person. One person may be vocal to some extent with their story and another may bury it, never uttering a word of what they were given to disseminate.

The modern carrier of the UFO message does not work to create a following, or a UFO religion, but attempts to discus in his or her own style the facts of the matter. He or she tries to create a far wider and deeper dialogue about the situation than what typically is found on ATS.

a reply to: mirageman

Kevin Randle recently speculated in an interview with Paul Kimble that they have simply moved on. We went to the moon 1 time and havent gone back.

a reply to: 111DPKING111

We went to the moon 1 time and havent gone back.

*cough...cough...cough*

originally posted by: 111DPKING111
a reply to: mirageman

Kevin Randle recently speculated in an interview with Paul Kimble that they have simply moved on. We went to the moon 1 time and havent gone back.

You, uh, may want to re-check those numbers.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: 111DPKING111

We went to the moon 1 time and havent gone back.

*cough...cough...cough*

He meant we been to Mars one time....

a reply to: Kandinsky

or 2 or 4 or 6 times eek

Another I recently saw reviewed was the grinning man

Interview with Woodrow Derenberger about the grinning man / Indrid Cold

a reply to: Aliensun

To deny the accounts of any of these people you mention and silent thousands that have had contact experience (abductees) means that your first rule is to deny that UFOs exist and therefore, such accounts cannot possibly be true. Period! Trash them all even those that seem to have no basic flaws of science or factual matter. If you allow the premise of UFOs here and now, you must assume that ETs are working on us within our midst

Firstly why do UFOs and ET go together? A UFO is simply something unidentified in the sky. The existence of such things is not in question. ET's that can travel here in nuts and bolts craft are a different matter.

I wrote the OP in a slightly jokey style because the stories from these 'contactees' look completely outdated in the 21st century. I also believe some of these were in it for the money and made their stories up. I am certain British 'contactee' Cedric Allingham and his story "Flying Saucer from Mars" was a fabrication for instance. Some of these books were selling over 100,000 copies back in the 1950s. There was cash to be made.

Now it's possible ALL the contactees were in it for the money. However in more recent times, the CIA have been blamed for brainwashing individuals so perhaps they programmed people like Adamski to tell tales to the public whilst they tried to work out what was really going on? Smoke and mirrors if you like.

Maybe in later years they planted memories of abductions in people to cover something else they were up to? I don't know I'm just speculating. But I also think the trend of putting the intel agencies at the centre of the ET phenomena is also giving them more credit than they deserve.

Perhaps there is an 'alien' intelligence that messes with people's minds. So the experiences of one or two contactees were genuine in that they encountered something alien. But for reasons we cannot understand that alien intelligence also planted false memories of humanoid aliens from the nearby planets. Maybe that manifested into memories of abduction in later years for others.

It could be that this phenomena doesn't even exist in a physical reality we do. What do you think?

I don't have any answers but I don't think there is just one solution either.

originally posted by: 111DPKING111
a reply to: mirageman

Kevin Randle recently speculated in an interview with Paul Kimble that they have simply moved on. We went to the moon 1 time and havent gone back.

I think if you've only watched Apollo 13 you might come to that conclusion. However if you watch the previous 12 and the subsequent 4 movies (not Apollo 18!) the picture becomes clearer.

Sorry couldn't resist squeezing one more joke out of it.

However I get your point. The question is what interested the aliens for 50 years or more and why did the lose interest if that's the case?

a reply to: combatmaster

I am not sure there is a direct link between the likes of Wernher von Braun, Sergei Korolev and the Contactees. So you'll have to explain that one in a bit more detail for me.

But they were designing space rockets and were very much the part of the same era.

a reply to: mirageman

I love the Contactee histories; thanks for posting the thread. Crazy characters and a very crazy time.

As you point out, these guys were symbiotic with intel agencies of the time and we might never know the full extent of the relationship. On the surface we only see hucksters and lost souls seizing their chance to grasp at the limelight and make a few bucks on the side. None of the Contactees had solid careers or professions and the books and tours gave them the opportunities to travel and be someone.

They are almost unknown to most people and, even on ATS, get written off as cranks. They generated a clean sub-culture for white folk that hadn't been seen since the Spiritualist movement of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Yeah, there was a white sub-culture that mixed in with the black, urban music scenes, but I don't think that group generated so much in the way of ideology. It's debatable.

For anyone who's dug deeper, it's a curiosity that the Intel fellows seemed to be instrumental in perpetuating the scene. Maybe the Contactee scene was a test-bed for what came later? By that, I mean COINTELPRO in Sixties America or UK agents infiltrating the peace movement. Whereas they were undermining the counter-culture movements of the 60s, they appear to have encouraged them in the 50s.

Who 'they' were and 'why' it happened is fertile ground for speculation and that's about all that's left. I agree with you that one solution isn't good enough.

a reply to: Kandinsky

As a child of the 1970s I have almost always been dismissive of the 'Contactees'. The distance of time and the advancement of our knowledge of the solar system left them looking rather stupid by the time I was starting to read into all this crazy UFO stuff.

But this past 12 months or so I've quite enjoyed looking back into the earlier years of 'flying saucer history'. So I thought I'd refresh my memory of the Contactee era. The whole post was meant to be slightly light hearted at first. But then you find that modern thinking has also pointed fingers at the letter agencies yet again. Yes, even back then it seems they were poking about in all this mysterious stuff.

But I'm also thinking that they were getting far too much credit for creating something they were supposed to be investigating. That's why I'm not buying that the intel boys are solely responsible for the UFO phenomenon. They are involved in it for sure. But I'm convinced there's something more to it all than weather balloons, spook stories, brainwashing and ECM.

I'd liked to have gone on and explored the Betty/Barney Hill encounter in more detail as well . There seems to be some 'intel' interference there too. But I think that's a whole topic on it's own.

Human like aliens are not real. I have yet to met some. But as for Energy beings that are literal living spirits. Consiousness embued within an animated particle state existing outside the influence of physical laws that current scientists understand.

I guess you could define them as Inter-dimensional beings. They come from multipul different galaxies spanning across space and time.

Galaxies get old and die off, So to escape the blast radius of a decaying galaxy they colonize intergalatically. The whole concept of the soul, And spirituality with understanding of spirits comes from ancient knowledge passed down from sages shamans and scolars from generation to generation.

We are the only humanlike aliens here visiting and actively living on this planet. What else is visiting here can increase the size of its body or decrease it. There are legends of shapeshifting pagan Gods as well as *Spirits* partiularly woodland spirits. The truth of reality is much weirder and a lot less bland than human like E.T creating us and dumping more humans off on this planet.

Think of first contact, It would happened already. People arn't afraid of human looking aliens. They are afraid of confronting something that can't bleed. Looks like nothing on this planet that include matter. Does not look like any color we can perceive, is it's own shade. Can't comprehend the depth of being, As something inbetween solid and not. Cannot comprehend the power exterted by such a force. How can relate to something as incomprehendable. Even when seen, Still is unfathomable.

It's no wonder people flocked to the pleiadian nonsense. I seriously doubt they exist at all. And if they did, such beings would still remain inferior to what is currently lurking on this planet. Their ships can cloak, They themsleves can cloak. They could follow peoples cars and no one would be the wiser. They could stack people who venture away from the city. Real life aliens is a horror story. An awesome horror story in every way such words have definition.
magnitudes more terrorfying than *Ghost* encounters. You wouldn't know the definition unless you saw their technology and realized just how powerless we humans are to them. Of course the contactees you know and love wouldn't speak like this.

They approach it all with the same fuzzy feelz Christians use to lul followers into their love based propaganda.