The Golden Age of Flying Saucers

Monday, March 2, 2009

RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region

For four long days before the fateful crash of a flying disc near Roswell, New Mexico, military radar installations tracked a mysterious object as it flitted about in the southern skies, periodically vanishing from radar screens, but always return-ing. Most UFO historians set July 2, 1947 as the official date of the crash, but it was not until July 4, Independence Day, that the unidentified blip disappeared from radar for good. Two full days before rancher Mac Brazel would alert the local sheriff to the metallic debris littering his field, Roswell Army Air Force officials knew the object was down, somewhere north of town. They had, from their safe radar haven, watched it crash.

William Woody watched the crash with his own eyes. He described a bright white light with red streaks in it, spinning silently and slowly downward. His father joined him in a search for the crash site, but they found highway 285 already blocked by military personnel.

By afternoon, July 5, great flatbed trucks had arrived at the site. Every visible scrap of debris, including the bodies of five extraterrestrial biological entities (EBEs), was loaded up and transported to the base at Roswell. Camouflage experts were brought in to eliminate all traces of the crash from the natural environment.

Within hours of the EBE bodies reaching the Roswell base, town mortician Glen Dennis received a series of strange tele-phone calls. Did he have a number of small, child-sized coffins in stock? Could they be hermetically sealed? How might badly burned and decomposing bodies be preserved without altering their chemical makeup? Certain some terrible disaster had occurred, Dennis offered to help in any way that he could. He was told the questions were for future reference only. There was no disaster.

Glen Dennis wound up at the Roswell base hospital that day, anyway – in that small community, he was the local ambulance driver as well as the mortician. Called to transport an injured airman for treatment, Dennis found the hospital parking lot blocked by a line of military field ambulances loaded with metallic debris. Some pieces were inscribed with what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Guessing a plane had crashed, he again offered his help, only to find himself roughly escorted off the base by two MPs. A gruff, red-haired captain warned him:

"There was no crash here. You did not see anything. You don't go into town. You don't tell anybody you saw anything. If you do... somebody'll be picking your bones out of the sand."

THE STRANGE DEBRIS

Meanwhile, Mac Brazel, a Corona, New Mexico rancher, was scratching his head in bewilderment before what would paradoxically become known as the "first site" (the "second site" being the location where the bodies were recovered). His pasture was thick with metallic debris, as far as the eye could see.

On Sunday, July 6, he loaded a box with samples of the strange material and headed for Roswell. Sheriff George Wilcox could not identify the metal fragments, but guessed from Brazel's description of the sheer quantity of debris scattered across his land that a military plane, or even a secret weapon, must have crashed there. He telephoned the Intel-ligence Officer for Roswell's 509th Bomb Group, Major Jesse Marcel.

Marcel and Captain Sheridan Cavitt drove together to the Brazel ranch. At first light, July 7, they visited the crash site, finding debris spread out over an area approximately three quarters of a mile long, and several hundred feet wide. Samples held over a cigarette lighter would not burn. Pieces as light as a feather could not be broken or cut with a knife. They loaded the truck with debris, and Marcel ordered Cavitt to drive back to the base.

Alone in the field, he then filled a box with the strange material, and raced home to show his family what he was convinced were pieces of a flying saucer. Three decades later, Major Marcel's son, Jesse Marcel, Jr., would undergo hypnosis to more clearly remember that night. He described seeing silver foil which, when crumpled, quickly expanded again to its original, wrinkle-free shape. He remembered I-beams etched with strange, purple writing and different geometric shapes, leaves, and circles. He helped his father load the debris back into the family car. Major Marcel returned to base.

THE PRESS RELEASE

Public Information Officer Lieutenant Walter Haut turned Marcel's report into a military press release, and, on July 8, The Roswell Daily Record broke the story:

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer.

Evening papers across the country pulled the story off the wire service and announced the "invasion" to the world. Telephones at the sheriff's office, the Roswell Daily Record newsroom, and RAAF headquarters went crazy with demands for confirmation.

Major Marcel was ordered to fly to Fort Worth, and then to Wright Field in Ohio to meet with a General Ramey concerning the incident. Marcel spread chunks of debris across the general's desk, and demonstrated the material's special properties for the general and his staff.

THE COVER-UP

Ramey took Marcel down a long hallway to have him mark the crash site on a large map. When they returned to the office, the mysterious debris was gone, and the twisted pieces of a weather balloon were laid out on the office floor.

Public Information Officer Major Charles Chashen took two photos of Marcel crouching next to the balloon, and the Fort Worth Star Telegram was fed the now official story that no flying disc had been recovered. In his excitement, the revised account stated, Marcel had merely misidentified one of the hundreds of Project Skyhook weather balloons launched daily from the Roswell base.

A press conference was held, at which several weather officers verified the new version of the story. The crashed disc rumors died almost overnight.

Soon after, Mac Brazel was escorted by military officers to the broadcast booth of KGFL radio, where they waited nearby as he publicly recanted his original version of the crash story. Then they escorted him out.

Frankie Rowe was 12 years old in 1947. Her father, a lieutenant in the fire department, had handled pieces of the debris and had shown them to his daughter. Soldiers came to their house, threatening their lives.

Sheriff Wilcox was warned to keep silent.

It was suggested that Robert Dennis, a fighter pilot and the brother of Glen Dennis, might suffer should the mortician speak out.

THE EBE BODIES

Eager to discover the truth, Dennis contacted a nurse he knew at the base. She agreed to meet him at the officer's club.

"I can't believe what I've just seen," she told him, face pale, her hands shaking. "This is the most horrible thing I've ever seen in my life."

She took out a small prescription pad and sketched one of the "foreign bodies" she had helped autopsy. She described the unbearable stench of the operating theater, the inhuman anatomy of the creatures.

Still shaking, she excused herself to return to the base before her absence was noticed. She was never seen again.

MARCEL SPEAKS OUT

Major Jesse Marcel returned to Roswell and his military career. But many years later, from 1978 until his death in 1986, he finally broke his public silence on the incident, speaking out against the ridiculous weather balloon hoax in which he was compelled by his commanding officers to participate, and making it clear that the debris he gathered from Mac Brazel's field that fateful summer was the remains of nothing constructed on this Earth. "It came to Earth," he told reporters, "but not from Earth!"
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This is an excerpt from the book The Golden Age of Flying Saucers: Classic UFO Sightings, Saucer Crashes and Extraterrestrial Contact Encounters by Frank G. Wilkinson, which can be purchased through Amazon.com, or direct from the publisher at www.NewParadigmPress.com.

To read more excerpts from The Golden Age of Flying Saucers,, click here!

Mayhem Over Maury Island

June 21, 1947, approximately 2:00 PM: Harbor patrolman Harold A Dahl was cruising near Maury Island, three miles off the shore of Tacoma, Washington, along with two crewmen, his 15 year old son, and the family dog, when he spotted six doughnut-shaped objects overhead, hovering about 2,000 feet above the waters of Puget Sound.

He at first believed they were balloons, since they were completely silent and had no motors, propellers or other visible means of propulsion. But their surfaces appeared metallic, a glistening, seashell-like gold and silver color that reflected the sun with a dazzling, jagged brilliance. Each "doughnut" was fully 100 feet in diameter, with large portholes equally spaced around the outside rim. Dark, circular continuous windows lined the inside bottom of each object. Five of the strange constructions were circling slowly around the sixth, which held stationary at the center of the formation, but was losing altitude rapidly. Dahl guessed that the center object was experiencing technical difficulty, and the others had moved in to assist. The whole formation descended to about 500 feet overhead, then stopped abruptly.

Dahl ordered his crew to pull over to the beach, where he took several pictures. After five or six minutes, one of the assisting craft dropped down beside its ailing sister to almost within touching distance. The men on the beach heard a dull thud, like a boot being stomped on damp ground, and the crippled center disc suddenly began spewing out a rain of what Dahl at first thought were newspapers, but which he later identified as small bars of an extremely light white metal.

Almost immediately, a second rain began, this time a shower of near-molten, dark chunks of a metal resembling slag or pumice, which hissed and steamed as they hit the water. The shower was so heavy that, even under cover, Dahl's son was injured and the dog was killed. The hot rain ended and, relieved of its burden, the floundering craft and its companions rose slowly away until they disappeared into the afternoon sky.

The men moved cautiously back to where their patrol boat sat rocking in the still-agitated water. The wheelhouse had been smashed by the falling metal. All attempts to radio port authorities were thwarted by a wall of impenetrable static. After inspecting their crippled vessel for seaworthiness, the men loaded the boat with samples of the strange metal fragments, buried the dog at sea, and turned toward home.

Upon reaching the dock, Dahl related the crew's experience to his superior officer, Fred Lee Crisman. Crisman was clearly incredulous, but took charge of the debris samples and the camera for inspection. The developed film showed the strange aerial vehicles, but the negatives were covered with white splotches, as though the film had been exposed to intense radiation.

A MYSTERIOUS VISITOR

Early the next morning, Harold Dahl received a mysterious visitor at his home. Dressed all in black and driving a shiny, new 1947 Buick sedan, the stranger offered to buy him breakfast in town. Dahl was used to being courted by lumber executives out to purchase logs salvaged from harbor waters, so he accepted the offer gladly, and followed the sedan in his own car to an uptown cafe.

Over breakfast, however, the mysterious man in black proved he was no lumberman. He quickly and accurately de-scribed every detail of Dahl's saucer sighting, then finished with this warning:

"What I have said is proof to you that I know a great deal more about this experience of yours than you will want to believe. Silence is the best thing for you and your family. You have seen what you ought not to have seen."

The stranger made it clear that, if Dahl loved his family and did not wish to see harm come to them or to himself, he would not tell anyone about his experience.

But he had already told Fred Lee Crisman, who was at that very moment on Maury Island, gathering further samples of debris and having his own encounter with the doughnut-shaped discs. Alone on the beach, a saucer fragment in each hand, Crisman watched a lone disc sweep down from a cloud, make a slow reconnoiter of the small bay as if searching for something, then circle off and vanish again into the clouds.

HOAX!

At the request of publisher Ray Palmer, world-famous saucer-sighter Kenneth Arnold was sent to investigate the story. He brought with him United Airlines Captain E. J. Smith, who, like Arnold, had been a witness to the flying disc phenomenon, and who Arnold trusted implicitly for his reason and objectivity.

From day one of the investigation, things went strange: Upon arriving in Tacoma, Arnold was unable to locate a vacant hotel room – until he called the Winthrop, the fanciest, most expensive establishment in town, to discover that a room had already been mysteriously reserved in his name.

After initial interviews with both Dahl and Crisman, the two investigators were shocked to receive a call from Ted Morello, head man for the Tacoma branch of United Press, informing them that an anonymous "crackpot" had been calling his office all evening with verbatim transcripts of every word being spoken in Arnold's room, including conversations held when no one but Smith and Arnold were present. A search for hidden listening devices turned up nothing.

The next morning, Dahl and Crisman brought samples of the saucer fragments for inspection. The pilots immediately recognized the "light white metal" as ordinary aluminum, likely scrap from a military salvage yard. The darker material they judged to be common slag, or at most, pieces of a large, insulated power tube which had been broken into curved pieces. When they asked to see the photographs, Dahl claimed to have given them to Crisman, who seemed to have misplaced them.

Smelling a hoax, Arnold called in two Military Intelligence friends, Lieutenant Frank Brown and Captain William Davidson, in hopes that their presence might shake the two witnesses up a little and settle the issue once and for all.

Dahl refused to meet with the military men, but Crisman gleefully retold the tale. Brown and Davidson listened intently while passing pieces of the debris back and forth without comment.
Once Crisman was gone, however, they seemed to lose interest altogether, and began to make excuses for their having to leave Tacoma before sundown. Arnold was sure they had determined the story a hoax, and were keeping silent so as not to embarrass Smith or himself. They showed no interest in the box of metal fragments, and had to be coaxed into taking it with them at all.

TRAGEDY STRIKES

By morning, both Brown and Davidson were dead. Their B-25 bomber exploded in midair shortly after takeoff. Based on the anonymous tipster's calls, coupled with a survivor's report that a heavy box had come onto the plane with the officers, as well as official confirmation that "classified materials" had, indeed, been aboard, newspapers were already speculating that the flight had been sabotaged to prevent captured saucer pieces from being analyzed.

The Air Force disagreed, stating that the accident had been caused by a mechanical fault in the plane's left engine. The "classified materials" were merely reports which the officers had volunteered to escort to Hamilton Field.

In light of this tragedy, Arnold and Smith dropped their investigation. Arnold stopped by Dahl's home on his way out of town, to find it deserted. Crisman had vanished from the scene, as well.

Former Project Blue Book head Edward J. Ruppelt, in his Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, writes that soon after the crash, both Dahl and Crisman admitted to perpetrating the hoax. He states that neither of the men were actually harbor patrolmen at all, but merely owned a small salvage boat. The "Man in Black" didn't really exist. The metal fragments were just slag from the Tacoma Smelting Company. The Air Force chose not to press charges because, despite the hoax, the two men could not in any way be tied to the crash of the B-25.

A FINAL TWIST

So the official verdict on Maury Island was hoax, and that's where things stood until 1968, when "hoaxter" Fred Lee Crisman emerged again into public view – this time appearing before a Grand Jury investigation led by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who claimed to have uncovered a pre-Dallas plot involving Lee Harvey Oswald, Clay Shaw, Guy Bannister, David Ferrie and others to assassinate President John F. Kennedy in his city.

Crisman denied having "insider" knowledge of anything, but in a press release dated October 31, 1968, Garrison stated:

"Mr. Crisman has been engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex for years... in connection with his undercover work for that part of the warfare industry engaged in the manufacture of what is termed, in military language, 'hardware' – meaning those weapons sold to the US government which are uniquely large and expensive."

Before the Grand Jury, Crisman swore he was not a government agent of any kind, in direct contradiction of CIA files subpoenaed for the investigation. The files named Crisman as a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, where he served as a liaison officer with the British Royal Air Force. After the war, he entered a special OSS International Security School, from which he was later transferred to the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He operated there as an internal security specialist in "disruption" activities, and was connected with the highly classified Internal Security subsection Easy Section, whose very existence was denied by the CIA.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED?

Was it all a hoax, perpetrated on a gullible public by a pair of two-bit salvage men? Was it a CIA plan designed to discredit Kenneth Arnold and his June 24, 1947 saucer sighting? Did Dahl have a genuine encounter with extraterrestrial or secret military flying discs, the investigation of which CIA agent Crisman "disrupted" by intimidating Dahl, and providing investigators with faked evidence and an inconsistent story? What cargo really went down with Lieutenant Brown and Captain Davidson on that ill-fated flight?

In the six decades that have passed since the Maury Island incident took place, none of these questions has been satis-factorily put to rest. What actually took place in the air over that isolated locale in the summer of 1947 remains to this day an unsolved mystery of the Golden Age of Flying Saucers.

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Flier Dies Chasing a Flying Saucer: The Mysterious Death of Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr.

At 1:30 in the afternoon, January 7, 1948, the central tower at Godman Air Force Base outside Louisville, Kentucky, received a strange telephone call. The people of tiny Maysville, KY, about 80 miles east of the base had sighted a large, white object with a red light moving swiftly over the town. Soon other communities in the object's path were adding to the alarm. Calls from Owensboro and Irvington contributed details: the craft was circular, 250-300 feet in diameter, and moving westward at great speed.

At 1:45, Godman sighted the object. The spotter, sure he was not seeing an airplane or weather balloon, contacted Flight Operations. The operations officer, accompanied by the base intelligence officer and the base commander, Colonel Hix, soon joined the tower crew. All of the assembled men observed the strange bogey through 6 X 50 binoculars, and agreed that it was not identifiable as any known aircraft.

THE CHASE

2:30 arrived, and the object remained visible. A flight of F-51s came into view as they passed over Godman en route to nearby Standiford Air Force Base. The tower radioed the flight leader, Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr., and requested that he engage and attempt to identify the strange visitor. One of the four planes was low on fuel and received permission to continue on to Standiford. Mantell and his remaining wing men turned and began to climb toward the shimmering disc.

At 10,000 feet, Captain Mantell pulled ahead of his companions. "I see something above and ahead of me and I'm still climbing," he reported. "I've sighted the thing. It looks metallic and it's tremendous size... Now it's starting to climb." Then a few seconds later, "It's above me and I'm gaining on it. I'm going to 20,000 feet." The two wing men leveled of at 15,000 feet and tried frantically to reach their leader by radio. The F-51s, postwar versions of the famed P-51 Mustang, were not equipped with oxygen, so to fly over 15,000 feet was to court near-certain oxygen deprivation and loss of consciousness.

THE CRASH

Mantell's plane leveled off at 30,000 feet, then plunged into a spiral dive. It crashed on the Franklin, KY farm of William J. Phillips. The flier's watch had stopped at 3:18 PM. Project Sign, the official Air Force UFO investigation agency at that time, was quick to publicly explain the incident, concluding that Captain Mantell had misidentified the planet Venus. He flew beyond safe altitude limits, blacked out, and plummeted to his death.

UFOlogists immediately countered that Venus had been too dim to be seen at all in the sunlit afternoon, let alone to be mistaken for a "metallic object" of "tremendous size."

But the apparent official certainty convinced newspaper reporters, and the early media speculation that Mantell had been shot down by invaders from another world, or, more conservatively, from Russia, was soon replaced by the official line.

A SILENCED WITNESS

But there was plenty of reason to doubt that line, not least of which was the testimony of Richard T. Miller. At the time of the Mantell incident, Miller was standing in the operations room of Scott Air Force Base, in Belleville, Illinois, listening in on the entire exchange between the F-51 crew and Godman tower. According to his report, Mantell's final transmission was, "My God! I see people in this thing!" Miller also claims to have learned from inside sources that the doomed F-51 had remained airborne for an extended period of time after having run completely out of fuel, a fact no ordinary explanation could account for. According to Miller, the original conclusion reached by Air Force investigators was that Mantell had died "Pursuing an intelligently controlled unidentified flying object." But before this finding could be publicly released, Air Technical Intelligence officers from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base arrived to confiscate all evidence, and to make clear that no deviation from the Venus story would be tolerated.

Another witness, Captain James F. Duesler, examined the Mantell wreckage shortly after the pilot's body had been removed. He was dumbfounded to discover that no damage had been done to the surrounding trees, as would be expected had the F-51 glided into the field, nor was there any furrow in the ground such an approach would necessarily have created. Neither had the nose-heavy craft hit the ground nose-down, the most likely result of a downward, uncontrolled spin. The vehicle, instead, appeared to have simply "belly-flopped" directly into the clearing where it was found, without causing even a fraction of the damage to the airplane or the crash site that should have occurred according to calculations factoring the plane's known weight and estimated speed of descent. Duesler saw no blood whatsoever in the cockpit.

Even beyond this eyewitness testimony, common sense argued powerfully against the notion that Mantell, a highly-experienced military pilot, would risk life and limb chasing the tiny pinpoint of light Venus must have been that afternoon, had it been visible at all.

WHO KILLED THOMAS MANTELL?

Speculation concerning the true culprit behind the tragedy began immediately. Civilian UFOlogists were quick to point out that Venus, even if it had been visible that afternoon, was at least 15 degrees lower in the sky than the reported position of the object. Project Sign offered the possibility that Mantell had seen a Project Skyhook balloon, though no specific launch could be traced to that day. Saucer debunker Donald Menzel wrote that the disc Mantell believed he was pursuing had actually been a "sun dog" or "mock sun" caused by the reflection of sunlight off ice crystals in cirrus clouds of the upper atmosphere. Contactee George Adamski's "Space Brothers" (see Chapter Seven) informed him that the crash had been accidental, the result of the magnetic field of their spaceship encountering the poor design of Mantell's plane.

A little over a year later, the Air Force backed away from its stance of certainty, releasing a revised "official report" on the Mantell incident on April 27, 1949. Penned by none other than future civilian UFOlogist Dr. J. Allen Hyneck, the report framed a vague new picture of the previous year's events in what Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who was, himself, about to enter UFOlogical history as head of Project Sign's immediate descendent, Project Grudge, referred to as "weasel wording." According to Hyneck's report, the object Captain Mantell died chasing was probably Venus, though that was doubtful, as Venus was too dim, so it might have been a balloon. Or maybe even two balloons.

This weak revision placed the question of exactly what, or maybe who, overflew Godman Air Force Base on that gray January afternoon squarely back into the realm of uncertainty and speculation, where it remains to this day. Scarcely mentioned in our modern "Age of the Abductee," the tragic death of Captain Thomas F. Mantell, Jr. remains one of the most compelling cases in UFO history.

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Saturday, February 28, 2009

George Adamski Meets the Space Brothers

Part I: Flying Saucers Have Landed!

On Thursday, November 20, 1952, George Adamski, philosopher, student, teacher and saucer researcher, made personal contact with a man from another world. Though the contact involved telepathic communication between Adamski and the visitor, it was far more than a strictly psychic or channeled event. What took place was a real, physical meeting in the California desert, a meeting witnessed by at least six people.

The story of this legendary encounter, along with photo-graphic and documentary evidence verifying its reality, first appeared in British author Desmond Leslie's book Flying Saucers Have Landed!, published in 1953. Most of the book, comprising "Book One" as it was finally published, had already been written and was awaiting publication when a 60 page document from George Adamski appeared in the author's mailbox. Desmond Leslie and his publisher were so impressed with the account of Adamski's contact that they immediately labeled the document "Book Two," and added it, verbatim, to the text of Mr. Leslie's book.

With its strong spiritual message and its condemnation of nuclear testing, this first-ever message from the "Space Brothers" seemed a natural confirmation of Mr. Leslie's spec-ulations concerning the relation between modern flying saucer sightings and ancient Hindu, Celtic and Atlantean legends and writings. More than 100,000 copies were sold, and the term Contactee entered the American, and eventually the global, vocabulary to stay.

DESERT SIGHTINGS

George Adamski's journey toward contact began October 9, 1946, as he and several friends observed a meteor shower through a 6" Newtonian reflector telescope from his home at Palomar Gardens, eleven miles from the 200" telescope at Mt. Palomar's Hale Observatory. They witnessed a gigantic cigar-shaped object hovering above the mountains to the south. Adamski guessed the object to be a government dirigible, perhaps studying the meteor shower from the upper atmosphere. But when they turned on the radio, it was announced that a large, cylindrical spaceship had been seen by hundreds of people, hanging silently in the air over nearby San Diego.

In August, 1947, Adamski was out in his yard one evening when a brightly lighted object appeared, moving through the sky from east to west above the mountain ridge to the south, followed swiftly by another, and then another! He called his friends out of the house. Together, they counted 184 saucers moving across the sky in regimented squadrons of 32 ships each. Tony Belmonte, a Soil Conservation employee working in the area, confirmed the sighting the next day, estimating the number of saucers at 204.

With cameras attached to his 6" and 15" telescopes, Adamski had been attempting to photograph the ships ever since the October, 1946 sighting, with limited success. At the request of the military, he had even sent several pictures to the Point Loma Navy Electronic Laboratory near San Diego for analysis. The photos disappeared, and the Navy denied ever receiving them. After the "squadron sighting," Adamski devoted himself to full time saucer research, taking hundreds of photographs, many of which provided clear, undeniable proof of flying saucers in our atmosphere and in space.

THE LANDING

Throughout the year of 1952, there had been numerous reports of saucer landings in the California desert. Adamski personally investigated many of these reports, dragging his telescopes and cameras out into the desert in hopes of meeting face to face with beings from another world.

By this time, many people had heard of Adamski and his photographs, and they would visit him at Palomar Gardens to hear him tell his stories, and speak on matters of life, religion and philosophy. Four such visitors, Alfred and Betty Bailey, and George Hunt Williamson and his wife, also named Betty, had heard of Adamski's treks to reputed landing sites. They requested to be allowed to join him on future excursions, in hopes that they, too, might become firsthand witnesses to the ships. Adamski agreed.

On November 18, 1952, Adamski asked that the couples meet him in two days time at a site near Blythe, California. When the 20th arrived, they met and drove together, at Adamski's intuitive direction, to a point in the desert about 10 miles from Desert Centre, California. Also present were Alice K. Wells and Lucy McGinnis. They all witnessed a gigantic, cigar-shaped, silvery ship, orange on top, approaching over the distant mountain ridge.

"Someone take me down the road – quick!" Adamski ordered, feeling an inner call to a distant spot in the desert. He knew intuitively that the ship had come looking for him, and he didn't want to keep its crew waiting!

Lucy McGinnis and Al Bailey accompanied Adamski to his intuited destination, out of sight from the highway. They set up their cameras and waited. The large ship moved directly over them. Adamski sent his companions off to watch from a safe distance as the hovering ship shot away and vanished from sight, chased off by fast-moving government planes.

No sooner had the roar of aerial pursuit subsided into the distance, when there was a bright flash from the sky, and a saucer, tiny in comparison to the craft that had just vanished, appeared and began to drift slowly down. It landed about a half mile from where Adamski stood, now alone. He took seven pictures in quick succession. The little saucer flashed brightly, lifted off, and shot out of sight.

Adamski presumed the experience was over, but as he turned to walk back to where his friends were waiting, he found himself confronted by a stranger – a man of unparalleled, almost feminine beauty, approximately 5' 6" tall, with sandy hair past his shoulders, wearing a seamless, chocolate brown, one-piece jumpsuit.

THE MEETING

As George Adamski had intuitively known to come to this isolated desert location on just this day, as he had known that the large ship was searching for him, as he had known to abandon the road to find this landing site, so he now knew in his heart that the being standing before him was not of this Earth. The stranger offered his hand in greeting, but when Adamski shook it in the customary manner, the other smiled and merely pressed their two palms flat together. The visitor's flesh was delicate, like a baby's, but firm and warm.
A difficult conversation ensued, carried out in a mix of telepathic language, hand signs, and drawings in the sand. Though from different, distant worlds, Adamski and the visitor managed to bridge the gulf between them and make intelligible contact.

THE VISITOR'S MESSAGE

Reason for Contact:

The visitor identified Venus as his planet of origin. His people had come to Earth out of concern over our testing of nuclear weapons. Not only did we stand to destroy ourselves, but we were polluting outer space with our radiation as well.

The Ships:

The smaller ship had returned, and the visitor explained that it was magnetically propelled and incapable of interplanet-ary flight. The many small scout ships Adamski had witnessed were dependent on the larger cigar-shaped "motherships" for crossing the great expanses of space.

God:

The stranger explained that we on Earth really know very little about the Creator of the Universe. Beyond Earth, beings live according to the true Laws of the Creator, and not according to the laws of materialism, as do Earthlings.

Other Worlds:

There is life everywhere. Every planet in our solar system is inhabited. It is only our limited perception which makes us think otherwise.

Visitors:

Space travel is easy and common beyond our terrestrial boundaries, and beings from throughout space visit us continually, and even walk among us. The human form is universal. People from far corners of the universe can walk our streets without fear of detection, because the differences in form from planet to planet are no greater than those between terrestrial races.

Death:

Bodies die on all planets, but intelligence and soul live on, continually evolving from lifetime to lifetime, reincarnating among all the worlds of the universe. Extraterrestrials have experienced lives on Earth. We Earthlings have lived among the stars, and will again.

The Footprints:

As the stranger was preparing to leave, he made several heavy, deep impressions in the sand with his boots, then drew Adamski's attention to the prints left behind, and the cryptic symbols inside them. When the Venusian visitor had gone, Adamski called his companions down to see the prints, and George Hunt Williamson made plaster casts to preserve them for study (see photo section for sketches of the Venusian foot-prints and their mysterious symbols).

Part II: Inside the Spaceships!

On February 18, 1953, three months after his initial Desert Centre, California contact, George Adamski again made face-to-face, physical contact with extraterrestrials.

It began in the morning, when he felt the same intuitive knowing that had led him to the saucer landing site in November, pulling him now toward Los Angeles. He took a bus into the great city, and by afternoon he had checked into a hotel and begun to wait - although what, exactly, he was waiting for was still unclear.

When evening came, he was approached in the hotel lobby by two men in business suits who greeted him by name. As Adamski acknowledged the greeting, the speaker extended his hand, but rather than shaking hands normally, he pressed his palm firmly into Adamski's own in precisely the same manner as had the Venusian three months prior. A great joy filled Adamski's heart, and he knew he was, once again, in the presence of the Space Brothers.

But these men, unlike his previous contact, spoke perfect English! They had a car waiting, and on the long drive to the desert meeting place, Adamski learned that his companions were two of many special "contact men" on Earth – people from other worlds who live among us, learn our languages and customs, and study our culture from within. The taller of the two hailed from Saturn, the other from Mars. Both had lived on Earth for many years, holding jobs and maintaining homes, but not families. They compared their role to that of college students who study abroad in order, not only to learn about, but to physically experience a foreign society.

They stopped the car at a secluded desert location, where a scout saucer waited on the ground. The Venusian from Adamski's first meeting was there as well, just finishing some minor repairs to the hull of the disc. They all boarded the scout, and ascended to a great, cigar-shaped mother ship.

Although the Space Brothers do not use names as we do, and, in person, this causes no difficulties, Adamski assigned each a name in order to distinguish them in narrative: the Martian he named Firkon, the Saturnian, Ramu, and his Venusian friend he named Orthon.

AGELESS LIFE

Aboard the Venusian mothership, Adamski was taken to a vast lounge, where he was introduced to two female pilots, Kalna of Venus and Ilmuth of Mars. Their exquisite beauty made a tremendous impression on him. But even in their fine company, he was struck dumb with awe to behold on the wall of the lounge, exactly opposite the door through which they had entered, a portrait Adamski was certain represented the Space Brothers' concept of deity. It showed the head and shoulders of a Being of startling youth and beauty, whose face was somehow both male and female, perfectly balanced together, and whose eyes reflected tremendous wisdom and compassion.

Kalna explained that the portrait was their symbol of "Ageless Life," which is displayed on all ships and in all homes. She explained that, because they keep this symbol ever before them, he would find no age among their People.

After considerable discussion concerning the ship's functioning, and social customs on other worlds, the mother-ship was taken up to 50,000 miles above the Earth, so that Adamski could view the planet against the backdrop of infinite space.

Faced with the ship's awesome power, he wondered whether the Space Brothers had weapons, and would they defend themselves if attacked? Firkon answered that, although they were not defenseless, they would, in a confrontation, allow themselves to be destroyed rather than slay a fellow being.

The ship descended again to 40,000 feet above the Earth. Adamski was guided into a large room, where a long table was set with crystal goblets filled with a sweet nectar-like fluid. All of Adamski's new friends were either seated around the table, or appeared shortly to join the assembly. An elder Space Brother Adamski had not before met was at the head of the table. By his own intuitive sense, as well as by the reactions of all those gathered around the table, Adamski recognized this older space man as a unique, highly evolved being in whose presence all had fallen silent in humble attentiveness.

MEETING WITH A MASTER

The Master began the lesson by explaining that outer space is not empty, but constantly active, filled with moving particles from which all things arise. Throughout the universe are innumerable planets people by creatures like ourselves, all at various stages of physical, social and spiritual evolution.

Earth humans are not the least developed beings in the universe, but we are the least developed in our own solar system. In deep space lie many worlds without significant social or scientific development, as well as worlds on which a high degree of scientific and technological advancement has occurred, even the attainment of space travel, but where social and spiritual development remain barbaric.

Our brethren in our own solar system have walked the same evolutionary path we are now on, and have overcome such obstacles as hate, greed and warfare. They are willing to assist us in our evolution by giving help and knowledge to all who are willing to accept it.

THE MASTER'S MESSAGE

The Master taught Adamski that inhabitants of other worlds are not fundamentally different from ourselves. All life, regardless of form, exists for the same purpose: to learn and evolve. The universe is a grand school, quite comparable to our own school system, with many levels, like our various grades. We are born on a particular planet to learn its lessons. Once those lessons have been learned, we will "graduate" to another world, ever growing in our understanding from experience to experience, life to life.

He also explained that, though we will someday learn to travel to other worlds in our own spaceships, we will not be allowed to go far until we abandon our destructive ways and learn to get along here on Earth, embracing the kind of universal brotherhood which permeates the cosmos beyond our little world.

He closed with a dire warning for all Humanity regarding the price of developing and using the atomic bomb, proph-esying the sterilization of the Earth and the annihilation of Humankind should we fail or refuse to turn away from our fascination with the technological terror of nuclear weaponry.

SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Before being returned to Earth, Adamski was allowed to question his newfound friends on any matter that interested him. The following are some of the intriguing answers he received:

 Radiation from bomb testing is already polluting our air and water, causing negative changes to our atmosphere.

 The Space Brothers will not interfere directly to change our course because, in their understanding of Universal Law, all intelligent life must decide its own destiny without interference from another.

 High ranking government officials and leading scien-tists have been contacted, but have been unable to overcome their deep fears, prejudices and bureaucratic power structures. Our only real hope for change lies with the ordinary man in the streets, multiplied by his millions.

 At their first meeting in the California desert, Orthon could have spoken English, but did not because Adamski was being tested for his intelligence and telepathic abilities. It is because he passed these tests with flying colors that he was chosen for this second contact.

 Mental telepathy works by transmission and reception of thought from one living brain to another in much the same way that radio waves are exchanged between amateur radio "ham" operators. All that is needed is an open "receptive" mind.

 Earth has known many great civilizations over the eons, all of which eventually fell to the same total destruction which we now face. War has not existed beyond Earth for millions of years. It is a stage all cultures pass through, but we on Earth have ceased to evolve naturally; we are, instead, stuck in a repeating pattern of growth and destruction, growth and destruction.

 Life on other worlds is bright and full of laughter and joy. Yet, the Space Brothers are willing to share the sadness of Earth, and strive ceaselessly through the centuries to bring us to light.

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To read the rest of George Adamski's contact encounter story, including Part III: To the Moon and Back!, and Part IV: Flying Saucers Farewell, please purchase a copy of The Golden Age of Flying Saucers: Classic UFO Sightings, Saucer Crashes and Extraterrestrial Contact Encounters.

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Friday, February 27, 2009

Behind the Flying Saucers: How the World's First-Ever UFO Book Told the First-Ever Crashed-Disc Retrieval Story, and Quite Possibly Perpetrated the...

... First-Ever UFO Hoax (or Maybe Not)

Three years after Kenneth Arnold's June 24, 1947 saucer sighting convinced Americans to Watch the Skies!, the author of the world's first flying saucer book sought, ironically, to direct the collective attention once again to the ground – specifically to the sandy desert floor near Aztec, New Mexico, and two other Southwestern United States locations where inter-planetary spaceships were rumored to have landed and to have come into the possession of military officials.

Frank Scully never mentions Roswell or crashed discs, but on September 8, 1950, his book Behind the Flying Saucers captured the American imagination with an early version of a story that continues to haunt UFOlogy to this day: A flying disc is grounded in the desert. Ship and undersized humanoid crew are retrieved by US military personnel. A cloak of secrecy is thrown over the event by order of high-level Washington bureaucrats in the name of "National Security." Sound familiar?

MYSTERY SPEAKER

Scully's tale begins on March 8, 1950, when an "unidentified middle-aged lecturer" addressed 350 students and professors at the University of Denver on the topic of flying saucers, their pilots, and many technical aspects of the vehicles' operation. The lecture had been arranged for students of a basic science class on the condition that the speaker remain anonymous, and that the talk not be publicized. But word got around and, by the time the speaker was introduced (under a false name), the lecture hall was filled to overflowing, every seat occupied, the aisles jammed with students and professors alike, notebooks at the ready to record the torrent of revelations about to rain down from the podium on the sensational topic of alien visitation.

They were not disappointed. The speaker addressed the standing-room-only crowd for 50 minutes, after which he was whisked away through a side exit to catch a waiting flight.

WHAT THE SCIENTIST SAID

The man at the podium spoke slowly and with a powerful command of scientific language. He verified that flying saucers are real, and revealed that four such vehicles were known to have landed on Earth – three of which had been retrieved by military officials and examined in detail by scientists. The bodies of 34 extraterrestrial crewmen, ranging from 36" to 40" in height, had been recovered and stored for study.

The Aztec saucer, on which he had the most detailed information, contained in its construction at least two substances not found anywhere on Earth, ruling out the possibility that the disc might be Russian or American made. The ship used a magnetic system of propulsion, by which scientists estimated the saucer might bridge the 161,000,000 miles between Earth and Venus (the craft's hypothesized planet of origin) in under an hour. The vehicle measured 99.9 feet in diameter, and had a cabin 72" in height – plenty of headroom for its diminutive occupants.

The second captured disc was only 72 feet in diameter, and the last was smaller still, at only 36 feet across. All measurements of and within each ship were found to be divisible by the number nine, a mysterious clue, perhaps, to their creators' system of mathematics.

Sixteen humanoid beings had been removed from the Aztec saucer, their slight bodies burned a deep chocolate brown as the atmosphere inside their ship rushed out through a small hole in one circular window. Sixteen more bodies were recovered from the 72' saucer, but only two from the smallest disc. All of the extraterrestrial visitors were dead when discovered.

The fourth, uncaptured, disc had, like the others, landed on the hot desert sands, but as scientists and military personnel approached it, the ship's crew, still very much alive, scampered frantically back aboard the vehicle. The gleaming disc rose slowly over the observers' heads, then fired off like lightning into the afternoon sky.

Of the three ships captured, none carried any identifiable weapons. All were well stocked with food wafers and water said to be "twice as heavy" as its earthly counterpart. The alien crewmen bunked in hidden sleeping units which retracted invisibly into the walls when not in use.

The mysterious speaker illustrated his lecture with chalkboard drawings detailing the "system of nines" used in all the saucers' construction, as well as schematics of the Aztec disc's interior as viewed from varying angles. Another drawing revealed the magnetic lines of force running between the sun and planets, the presumed "highways" by which the visitors traversed the apparent "emptiness" of interplanetary space.

THE SPEAKER EXPOSED

Soon after the explosive lecture, University and law enforcement officials began working to uncover the speaker's true identity. They discovered that he was not a scientist as he had claimed, but was, rather, Silas M. Newton, a millionaire oilman famous for using microwaves to locate gold and oil deposits, often deep beneath sites long abandoned by his less technologically adventurous competitors. Newton claimed to have received his information from a "Dr. Gee," a magnetics specialist who had personally examined the captured discs as a member of the government's team of experts. While Newton was disappointed that "Dr. Gee" had not been able to grant him a personal peek at the alien spaceships, he did manage to acquire from him several disc-shaped samples of metal and a few tiny gears which "Dr. Gee" had smuggled out as souvenirs of his secret government work.

But in the coming days, these souvenirs would prove the unraveling of Newton's secondhand story.

J. P. Cahn, a reporter with the San Francisco Chronicle, took interest in Scully's book and published several articles on the saucer mystery. He met with Newton, offering $35,000 for his story, but only if the oilman could verify its truth. He asked to borrow one of the metal discs for analysis, but Newton refused. Cahn pulled a switch, pocketing Newton's sample and successfully replacing it with a homemade look-alike.

Newton's metal, which he claimed was 100% pure aluminum with a heat resistance of up to 10,000 degrees, turned out to be aluminum, all right, but low grade and common, with a melting point of just over 650 degrees. There was nothing "unearthly" about it.

Cahn went on to locate the mysterious "Dr. Gee." He was Leo Gebauer, an Arizona electrician who, in Cahn's opinion, had joined in cahoots with Silas Newton to perpetrate a hoax on the University of Denver, on writer Frank Scully, and, through Scully's bestselling Behind the Flying Saucers, on America and the world.

THE STORY THAT WOULDN'T DIE

But the "defrauded" story simply wouldn't die. In 1974, author Robert Carr presented new evidence that a saucer had, indeed, crashed at Aztec, New Mexico. According to Carr, Scully had been right, even if a few of his details had missed the mark. World-class UFOlogist Stanton Friedman would echo this sentiment a few years later in his investigations of claimed UFO crashes at Aztec and the Plains of San Augustin, both desert sites perched precariously close to the now legendary Roswell.

Just how many interplanetary visitors met their sad fate in New Mexican skies? Was the US government shooting them down? Were all the stories simply diluted shadows of the Roswell crash, spun out of the fragmentary and disconnected bits of information that managed to slip past the well-documented Roswell cover up?

More than 50 years after its initial publication, Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers remains an open book, and the search for the truth behind the military retrieval of crashed discs goes on.

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Thursday, February 26, 2009

Aboard a Flying Saucer: Truman Bethurum and the People of the Planet Clarion

Part I: Aboard A Flying Saucer!

Late in July, 1952, Truman Bethurum received a frantic long distance telephone call from his friend E. E. "Whitey" Edwards insisting that he leave the cool comfort of Santa Barbara, California, where he was waiting out an Operating Engineers strike, to sign on as Batch Plant operator and night mechanic at Edwards' asphalt mixing plant under the blistering summer heat of Mormon Mesa, Nevada. He accepted reluctantly, compelled by his friendship with Edwards, as well as his strike-strained finances, and soon found himself sweating between the blacktop and the merciless desert sun.

Bethurum had heard about flying saucer sightings in the Desert Southwest – by 1952, everyone had. But he was not a believer, nor could he have suspected that by responding to his friend's call, he had taken his first step toward the greatest adventure of his life – extraterrestrial contact.

STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT

On July 27th, after completing an evening work shift at the asphalt plant, Bethurum set off into the desert in his small truck. His wife loved the sea, and he had heard that the vast Nevada wasteland had once, long ago, been covered by ocean. He hoped to locate a variety of ancient, fossilized shells for her collection. But even with a bright full moon and a flashlight, he had no luck. After a long day under the blazing sun, the cool desert night lulled him toward sleep, and he decided to take a short nap under the stars before turning back empty handed to the work camp and another day of labor.

As he dozed in his truck, a soft hum broke through his dreams, and, as he came fully awake, he was shocked to find his vehicle surrounded by a group of small men, each between 4 and 5 feet tall. The men were mumbling to each other in a low, unintelligible language, the "hum" which had awakened him. Each wore an unfamiliar black uniform, a black-billed cap, and trousers that reflected a blue-gray cast under the bright moonlight. The flesh of their dark faces was taught and hard, free of any wrinkle or blemish. No weapons were apparent.

Bethurum froze with fright and noted the truck's open windows with alarm. One of the men stepped close and spoke to him in the strange language. Bethurum indicated as best he could that he did not understand, at which point the man nodded, then said in clear English, "You name it!"

Hearing his own tongue spoken sent a wave of relief rushing down Bethurum's spine, and he climbed out of the truck, his hand extended in friendship – but what he saw next sent him once again into stunned paralysis, freezing his greeting in his throat – hovering low behind his truck was a flying saucer!

A monstrous disc of burnished steel, the saucer measured 300 feet across and six yards deep at its center. A three foot metal rim encircled the craft. Wingless and free of any visible means of support, the disc floated as if weightless several feet above the scrubby desert brush.

The little men crowded around him, anxious to shake his hand. One fellow identified himself as the group's leader and, grasping Bethurum's arm firmly, agreed to introduce the Earthling to their ship's captain. As they moved together toward the waiting craft, Bethurum asked his guide what country they called home. Like a character from a Brothers Grimm fairytale, the little man answered cryptically, "Our homes are our castles in a far away land."

As they neared the saucer, the whole disc tilted toward them, revealing a landing step with a single hand rail. They ascended and entered the vehicle through a topside doorway. They walked fifteen paces down a brightly-lit corridor, then Bethurum was ushered into a furnished cabin, where he fell once again into stunned silence to behold the ship's captain - a beautiful woman.

THE LADY CAPTAIN

She was shorter than the men he had seen thus far. Black-haired, olive-skinned, she wore no jewelry or makeup. Her uniform was a bright red skirt, velvety black blouse, and a black and red beret. Her proud eyes considered Bethurum for a long moment. Apparently satisfied, she dismissed his escorts, then gestured for him to take a seat on a long couch which lined the far wall.

She began by explaining that she and her crew were interplanetary travelers who had only very recently begun their contact with Earth. Amazed, Bethurum asked about their planet of origin and how they managed to survive the great lengths of time required to traverse the void of space. She responded that time and distance we inconsequential to her people, and that such questions held little meaning for them. She made it clear that her race had already, in their short stay, divined Humanity's warlike nature, and warned that, although theirs was a peaceful, religious and understanding people, they were also cautious and well-equipped to evade attack or capture by Earthly military powers.

He watched her striking figure as she talked, and again made note of the strange, taught quality of the skin he had noticed in the little men. Her face was gaunt and sharp-boned, almost as if some sort of plastic sheet had been drawn tight over an underlying frame. Her dark eyes reflected great understanding, and seemed to guide his questioning, leading him psychically toward certain questions, away from others. In a hypnotic, sing-songy voice, like someone reading Mother Goose stories aloud to a child, she questioned him about his work, and about the men building structures in the desert (the asphalt plant).

She answered his questions, too, explaining that, while some of the flying saucers being sighted in American skies belonged to her people, the more bizarre news stories involving monsters with hooks or grotesque tails were creations of liars seeking publicity.

As if in response to some imperceptible signal, the lady captain rose without warning and led Bethurum back down the long corridor and out of the saucer. As they emerged into the desert air through the topside portal, he was shocked to discover that the sun was already well over the horizon. Many hours had passed in what seemed to him like mere moments.

He thanked his interplanetary hosts for allowing him to come aboard the "Admiral's Scow," as they had referred to their ship. The captain promised to return soon to visit him again – all he needed to do was to think the place and the day. She and her crew would hear his thoughts and keep the appointment.

The great saucer dipped again toward the sandy desert floor. Bethurum stepped off and the door closed silently behind him. As the disc rose away into the dawn sky, he examined its immensity end to end in the sunlight. No propellers, rudders or exhaust vents dimmed its gleaming exterior. It made no sound at all as it drifted toward the clouds then vanished suddenly, without leaving so much as a vapor trail in its wake.

SPILLING THE BEANS

Bethurum resolved not to tell anyone about his experience. On the long ride back to the work camp, he imagined the ridicule and persecution he would receive if his fellows knew what had transpired – the same ridicule and disbelief he would have heaped on anyone telling him the same story only the day before.

The last thing he expected was corroboration of his experience. When he got back to the camp, he was surprised to find Whitey Edwards waiting anxiously for his return. Had an airplane landed or crashed in the desert? His boss had per-sonally witnessed something huge and metallic descending toward Bethurum's location in the night. What was it? Had Bethurum seen it land?
"It...," Bethurum admitted reluctantly, his natural honesty getting the better of him in the face of his friend's genuine concern, "... It was a flying saucer!"

The rest of the day he got the jokes and jibes he expected as his fellow workmen teased him about "little green men," and questioned his sobriety and sanity. But, to his surprise, a few of the men asked him serious questions, too, allowing themselves to wonder at the possibility of life on other worlds.

When the workday was done, Bethurum returned to his small hotel room. He was still so highly charged from the encounter that, with shaking hands, he located stationary and pen, wrote out a letter, and placed it carefully on the nightstand before retiring to his dreams: "If I am found dead in my bed," he wrote, "it will be because my heart has stopped from the terrible excitement induced by seeing and going aboard a flying saucer!"

Part II: Clarion Call!

Truman Bethurum's story about meeting the Space People spread quickly through the Wells Cargo Company work camp, winning him much derision. His coworkers nicknamed his "Saucers." He became embittered, isolating himself from the others, even questioning his own memory of the most important event of his life – had he really seen and gone aboard a flying saucer? Had it all been a dream or heat-induced hallucination?

But on the night of August 3, 1952, he encountered the gleaming disc again, confirming forever, at least for himself, the physical reality of his experience, and the real presence of extraterrestrial vehicles and their occupants on Earth.

Still working the night shift, Bethurum was just completing repairs to several trucks on the camp's perimeter when he saw what looked like a meteor streaking through the night sky, pulsing brightly from bluish-green to yellow, orange, and back again. The "meteor" fell from the sky, vanishing silently behind the duned desert landscape about a half mile east of the site of his initial encounter. Sure the saucer had returned, Bethurum lit out across the desert in his own small truck, bumping and bouncing over the rough terrain, too eager even to bother searching out a road toward his destination. He found the ship again hovering close to the ground, only a mile from busy Highway 91, the main thoroughfare through Salt Lake City.

A group of small men milled about in front of the saucer, talking together in that same mumbling language whose rumble had awakened him in his truck when they first met. A doorway opened and the lady captain appeared, beckoning for him to approach with a wave of her hand. He followed her into the ship and down the long corridor to her cabin. The captain gestured for him to take a seat on the curving couch, then sat beside him, smiling.

They talked openly together, like old friends. She explained that the nature of earthlings and of her own people were very similar, that the people of her world were human beings, too, sharing the same feelings and foibles, the same natural talents and challenges. Her people, however, had met these challenges directly, and had chosen a less destructive course than the one presently being pursued by the people of Earth. She was unimpressed by Earth technology and military might as well, lamenting our invariably destructive use of these resources. She valued Earth's politics and politicians no more highly.

"These things are sad," she answered in response to questions concerning economic inequality and juvenile delinquency. "I'm glad we're troubled with neither on Clarion."

So, their home world was called Clarion. What a place it must be, Bethurum thought! A world without trouble of any kind. A world very much like an earthling's dream of Heaven...

After only half an hour, the lady captain from the planet Clarion signaled that the visit was over. As soon as Bethurum placed his feet on the sandy ground outside the great saucer, the disc was gone, streaking away into the night sky as myster-iously as it had appeared.

He glanced at his watch, but it had stopped. Even the winding gears of the now-useless device appeared to have given out under the assault of the saucer's magnetic filed. He shoved the broken timepiece into his pocket and started toward his truck.

A PROPER INTRODUCTION

Barely two weeks later, on August 18, 1952, the "scow" returned, this time streaking down from the sky to a spectacular, silent landing less than 200 yards from Bethurum's small truck. He joined the captain again in her cabin, this time armed, in anticipation of their conversation, with a list of questions he had compiled since their last meeting.

Topping his list was the lady captain's name. His friend and boss, Whitey Edwards, had inquired about the name of the heavenly feminine creature Bethurum had so enthusiastically described, and, when he had to admit that he did not know, that he had never even thought to ask, Edwards had chided him, "Then you haven't been properly introduced yet!" He would remedy that!

"Aura Rhanes," she told him, then she spelled it out loud, in English, so that he could accurately record it among the grow-ing notes he had begun to keep of his encounters.

They spoke together of the vast desert spaces, the extreme heat, the scarcity of water in the arid landscape around them – to which she concluded, cryptically, "I expect to be around for a thousand years, but the water in your deserts will mostly be tears."

She allowed him to touch her arm and shoulder, to assure himself of her reality, that he was not dreaming. They ex-changed family stories, the tiny, seemingly youthful Captain Rhanes revealing that she was a grandmother, with two small grandchildren back on Clarion.

The conversation turned again to the social conditions found on Earth. She spoke sadly about the continual strife her crew had observed among earthlings, concluding that the inhabitants of other planets are much too busy improving the welfare of their people to have time for even minor contro-versies.

Other planets, Bethurum questioned? He explained that scientists on Earth believed that life was not possible on any other world. She said that such a view was understandable, in that, in her experience, signs of life on any world were virtually impossible to detect from a great distance. All one sees is a hodgepodge of lights and shadow. Nothing even hinting of life can be discerned on any planet until it is approached at close-range by an interplanetary vehicle like the Clarion scow.

Bethurum's last questions focused mainly on the mechanical operations and capabilities of the saucer itself. But each time he asked for technical details, his questions went unanswered, or were gently deflected back toward issues of philosophy and social conditions on Earth. He allowed Captain Rhanes' direction in this, recognizing that this wise and beautiful woman from another world was not prepared to trust him, or any earthling, with the secrets of so powerful a technology whose potential might be perverted for destructive purposes, even turned against the Clarionites themselves someday, by his own primitive and warlike race.

She sent him back to the desert with a promise to return yet again. He only needed to think of the time and place, and they would appear. Dawn was just breaking in the east as the gleaming saucer shot like a meteor back into the heavens.

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To read the rest of Truman Bethurum's contact story, including Part III: Trouble In Saucerland!, Part IV: The Christians of Clarion, and Part V: Good-by Aura Rhanes, please purchase The Golden Age of Flying Saucers: Classic UFO Sightings, Saucer Crashes and Extraterrestrial Contact Encounters. Thank you!

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