Contactees, Space Brothers and More...

"Long before there were Alien Abductees, there were the Contactees. They were the people chosen to spread the word by what became known as the "Space Brothers." The "word" meaning: peace, love and understanding. In other words, the aliens were here to help us - provided we followed their slightly bullying agenda. While reports of - and encounters with - these very human-looking, long-haired, jumpsuit-wearing aliens were at their height in the 1950s, reports predated that era and still occasionally surface. The Space Brothers would target people in isolated locations - very often desert environments in the United States - and encourage them to share their experiences, write books, and go on the lecture circuit. So many of these people did exactly that. They included George Adamski, Dana Howard, Howard Menger, George Hunt Williamson, and Orfeo Angelucci. Much has written about the Contactees, but there is one glaring issue that is so often omitted. Or, even, unknown to so many."

That's how one of my recent article begins. It focuses on a lesser known and intriguing aspect of many of the Contactee cases...

"A" Is For Adamski - A Great New Book

Over at Mysterious Universe, I review the new book from Greg Bishop and Adam Gorightly: "A" is for Adamski, which is excellent! Here's how my review begins:

“A” is for Adamski is an excellent new book from UFO authors / Flying Saucer historians Adam Gorightly and Greg Bishop. As you may have already guessed from the title of this large, approximately 400-pages-long book, it is focused on the Contactee movement. It chiefly covers the “Golden Age” of the long-haired Space Brothers, as the authors describe it. They are are talking about 1947 to 1978. And, as you will also likely have deduced, the book is presented in an A-Z style. Both Greg and Adam have a longstanding interest in – and a fascination for – the era of the Contactee and those human-looking aliens from Venus and elsewhere who warned of atomic war and the end of civilization. Allegedly, of course…

UFOs, the "Contactee" issue and Russian meddling...

 

 

For those who may be interested, a new article from me on UFOs, the alien "Contactee" issue, and Russian meddling:

https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2018/08/ufos-russian-meddling-alien-encounters-a-strange-saga/

 

The article begins as follows...

"Russia’s undeniable and outrageous meddling in things that are none of their business has a significant bearing on the UFO issue of yesteryear. With that in mind, I thought it would be timely to bring to your attention a few intriguing and eye-opening issues. Firstly, the pro-Russia stance of a certain famous UFO Contactee. That man was George Adamski. He was arguably the most famous and controversial of all the Contactees: he claimed multiple encounters with human-like aliens from other worlds, including Venus, no less (yeah, right…). The facts concerning the Russian issue are contained in Adamski’s FBI file, which is in the public domain, thanks to the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. An FBI document of May 28, 1952 reveals that the FBI had a credible source who, back in 1950, had shared with them certain data on Adamski."

10 Recent Articles From Me...

1. A strange saga of the Loch Ness Monster and magic...

2. And a follow-up article on supernatural lake-monsters...

3. The controversy surrounding the Chupacabra...

4. Shape-shifting creatures...

5. When George Adamski got hoaxed...

6. Flying Saucers and Uranium poisoning...

7. Taking a look at the Yeti...

8.  Brad Steiger and the Trickster phenomenon...

9. Men in ape-suits...

10. The future of Cryptozoology...

A Few New Articles...

A few new articles from me at Mysterious Universe...

1. George Adamski - Hoaxer or Something Else?

2. A second Adamski-themed article.

3. Will the World's Water Become Scarce?

George Adamski's Doctored Document

A new article from me on a certain official document and contactee George Adamski. It starts like this:

Under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, a significant body of material on the famous/infamous George Adamski has surfaced – the bulk of it from the FBI. It has to be said that the Bureau’s file on the controversial Contactee makes for highly entertaining reading. But, perhaps, for reasons you might not have considered. There’s not a single scrap of paper in the “Adamski File” which suggests the FBI was concerned in the slightest about the man’s alleged alien encounters. Rather, it was his public and vocal stance on communism that had J. Edgar Hoover’s finest hot under the collar.

Adamski was heard to state that communism was the way of the future, and that the Soviet Union would ultimately dominate the planet. That Adamski had thousands of fans, devotees and impressionable people hanging on his every pro-Russia word bothered the FBI to a significant degree. And so, and almost inevitably, a file was opened on George. But, there’s far more to the file than Cold War era commies. There’s the matter of a certain document outrageously doctored by Adamski; yet another affair that got the FBI in a collective state of frustration and anger.

Walt Andrus RIP

Well, I heard tonight that one of the last UFO old-timers, Walt Andrus, has died. I met Walt probably seven or eight times between 2009 and 2014. I lecture regularly for the San Antonio, Texas chapter of MUFON and Walt continued to come to the monthly meetings, even in his 90s. He was still bright and alert and I remember him telling me some cool and amusing stories of when he met George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, and a few others from the old days of the Contactees. He also owned a skull of one of those "Texas Chupacabra"/hairless coyotes and donated it to me in 2009. It now sits on one of my shelves. That's it below! RIP, Walt.

(The photo above was taken at the San Antonio, Texas, MUFON gig on June 24, 2014)

Contact in the Desert

A few photos from this past weekend, at the "Contact in the Desert" gig, at Joshua Tree, California, where I was speaking. The subject: the extensive, now-declassified FBI files on various Contactees from 1950s-era Ufology, including George Adamski, Truman Bethurum, George Van Tassel, George Hunt Williamson, and Frank Stranges. Plus the declassified files on George King and the Aetherius Society that were created by the British Police Force's Special Branch way back when...

Gray Barker's Book of Adamski

 And there's another Mysterious Universe article from me, this one being a review of the new re-release of Gray Barker's Book of Adamski.

It stars like this:

"Available, right now (and thanks to New Saucerian Books),  is a new edition of Gray Barker’s 1967 title, Gray Barker’s Book of Adamski. It’s a highly entertaining mix of fact, fiction, myth-making, and legend-creating. And, as a result of its age and subject-matter, of course, the story it tells harks back to the controversial days of the Contactees and the Space Brothers.

"Born in Poland, in 1891, George Adamski moved to the United States as a child. He spent four years in the military – at the height of the First World War – then spent time working, variously, in a flour mill and at the Yellowstone National Park."

UFO Books: Old Titles Re-Released

I received in the mail a couple of days ago the latest review-batch of book releases from Andy Colvin that his New Saucerian Books company has published. 

I have said it before here at my blog, that if you are into old UFO-themed books from the 1950s/1960s etc, then NSB is definitely a company to support, since they are doing a great job of bringing out decades-old originals in new editions.

The new titles are reprints of Howard Menger's From Outer Space to You; Flying Ships, Humanoids, and Creatures of the Subterranean World; Jim Moseley's Book of Saucer News; Gray Barker's Book of Adamski; Woody Derenberger's Visitors from Lanulos; Alvin Moore's Mystery of the Skymen; and Michael X's Secrets of the Saucer People. There's also Robert R. Lyman's Forbidden Land: Strange Events in the Black Forest, Vol. 1; and Amazing Indeed: Strange Events in the Black Forest, Vol. 2.

A Magnet for Weirdness...

"One of the things that has long fascinated me is how and why certain places on our planet seem to attract an incredibly large amount of paranormal activity of an astounding and varied nature. I guess the best example would be Point Pleasant, West Virginia, USA. Most people would associate it with the legendary Mothman of John Keel’s classic book, The Mothman Prophecies. And they would be right to do so. But, when sightings of the red-eyed winged-thing were at their height in the 1960s, the Men in Black were also making their presence felt in Point Pleasant. Animal mutilations were reported. Contactee-style UFO encounters occurred. The weird list goes on. And, notably, so do the weird places…"

That's how I start my new Mysterious Universe article, which focuses on a little old English village that has been a hotbed of strangeness for more than 130 years. Its name is Ranton, and it's situated only a short drive from where I spent my childhood.

A "Man-Monkey," pixies, alien big cats, and a George Adamski-type UFO encounter are just a few of the things that call this Twin Peaks-like place their home...

RIP Patrick Moore...and a certain book...

Dave Clarke pays tribute to astronomy-legend, Sir Patrick Moore, who has just died, and says of the man's interest in UFOs that it...

"...can be traced back to 1950s when he interviewed Desmond Leslie and George Adamski for the long-running BBC programme Panorama. Adamski had become a minor celebrity at the time because of the success of his 1953 book Flying Saucers Have Landed. The book told a wildly improbable story of his meeting with a tall, blond alien called Orthon from Venus who landed in the Mojave Desert. In 2006 Moore told me that he and Desmond Leslie, Adamski’s co-author, were chums who had both served in the RAF during the war. He admitted that he and Desmond ‘enjoyed playing practical jokes’. And to demonstrate how easy it was to write fairytales about visitors from other worlds, Patrick produced his own spoof novel, Flying Saucer from Mars. Written under the pseudonym Cedric Allingham, it claimed the author had witnessed the landing of a UFO in Scotland in 1954 and that he was taken on board and whisked around the solar system."

Yes, Moore was quite a character!

And here's Dave's full post.

And here's a piece I did some time back on the re-issue of Flying Saucers from Mars.

Quoting Moseley: Contactees and MIB

In the wake of the sad passing of Jim Moseley, I thought I would share with you a few notable quotes that Jim made to me on the several occasions when I interviewed him for my books.

The first one comes from my Contactees book and focuses on Jim's words (highly insightful words, I think it's fair to say) on the controversial Contactee George Adamski, which, I'm pretty sure, got close to the truth about the man who (allegedly!) met the Space Brothers.

Jim said...

“When I met him, Adamski was in his classic mode of the great guru. You could go to him at Palomar without an appointment and he would be sitting there, holding court, and talking to all the people that came in. He seemed like a pleasant sort. He couldn’t prove anything: you had the choice of believing him or not. Now, whether he was genuine or not, he did have a background with the Royal Order of Tibet. Then he wrote his science fiction story, Pioneers of Space, which turned out to be very similar to his later UFO book. I don’t think he literally believed everything he said. But I think what he said was in-line with a personal philosophy that he may very well have taken seriously."

Jim continued:

“I think with Adamski it was like this: if I say ‘I’m Jim Moseley, and I believe in world-peace, love and saving the environment,’ people won’t care. Why should they? But if I say that a spaceman called Orthon told me that we should love each other; well, that certainly gives it more meaning. I think that is one of the big things behind the Contactee movement. They believed in what they were saying; but they needed a higher authority to get it across. Like in religion, you need God. Adamski needed Orthon.”

Moving on, back in September 2010, I interviewed Jim about his views on Albert Bender’s now-legendary claims to have been visited by the Men in Black in the early 1950s.

As the interview progressed, Moseley practically shouted down the telephone to me that: “This is funny: there’s something wrong with the phone here! The longer I talk the more static I get!"

As I noted in The Real Men in Black regarding this odd case of phone interference:

"...Perhaps the souls of [Gray] Barker and [John] Keel decided to turn the tables, and duly partook in a few tricks from the other-side on Moseley. Or, maybe, the Men in Black – so oddly keen on playing disruptive games with our telephones – were engaging in a few Trickster-like shenanigans of their very own on Moseley and me. Given that Moseley is skeptical of much of the MIB lore, possibly, in their own unique way, the Tricksters were trying to tell him that he should not be quite so skeptical, after all."

Well, maybe, now, Jim finally knows the truth behind the MIB, the Contactees and all the rest!

Adamski and the Occult

While any mention of George Adamski inevitably provokes thoughts of all-things flying and saucer-shaped, my new article on the man himself at Mysterious Universe delves into the matter of his links to the world of the occult, which I touched on in my Final Events book.